[Posted Wednesday a.m.]
Masters Quiz: 1) Jack Nicklaus is the oldest to win it at age 46 (1986). Who is the second oldest? 2) This is a short-term memory check if you get Sports Illustrated. Between 1958 and 1966, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Jack Nicklaus won all but one Masters. Who was the other? Answers below.
It’s Villanova
Yup, they’ll be talking about this one for decades, just as some of us still remember Villanova’s perfect game against Georgetown in 1985; the school’s two titles being among the best in the sport’s history.
Villanova is one of those schools that is easy to like. Those of us in the general geographic area know it has a terrific academic reputation and in terms of their high-profile basketball program, they’ve pretty much done things the right way and their players seem to comport themselves well on the court and off. Plus, since the school doesn’t attract the one-and-doners that a Kentucky or Duke does, it’s nice they stick around for four years and actually go to class.
So we start with the fact Nova is a popular champion.
As for the game, just a few stats for the archives. North Carolina led 39-34 at the half on 15 of 28 shooting from the field (53.6%), but a stupendous 7 for 9 from three, when this was the worst-shooting Carolina team from downtown in program history, .319 for the season coming into last night. Joel Berry lit it up for 15 points, 6 of 7, 3 of 3 from downtown in the first 20 minutes.
But Nova was 14 of 24 from the field in the first half (3 of 7 from three) to stay in it, and in the second half they were the same sharpshooting 14 of 24, so 28 of 48 (58.3%) for the game, while UNC stumbled, hitting only 12 of 35 in the second half (42.9% for the game), though the Tar Heels totally dominated on the offensive glass all night, 16-2 over the Wildcats.
So it came down to UNC’s Marcus Paige’s awesome double-clutch three that tied it at 74-74 with 4.7 left and then Ryan Arcidiacono worked it down court, passed off to the trailing Kris Jenkins, who calmly sank the game-winner. The look on Villanova coach Jay Wright’s face was classic. As in he showed zero emotion, “because I was just shocked,” he would say after. [Wright also had to make sure the shot got off before the buzzer.]
Nancy Armour / USA TODAY Sports
“This Villanova team couldn’t match the perfect game.
“It did the ’85 squad even better: Its game against North Carolina, the last 90 seconds in particular, will be remembered as the best national championship ever.
“Maybe the best in college basketball period….
“All season long, the knock was that there was no one great team. It took until the very end, but the show Villanova and North Carolina put on Monday night proved both were deserving of that title.
“For the last minute and a half, the teams answered one big play with another. In the last five seconds, it was a high-stakes game of H-O-R-S-E, with only the E left to decide.
“ ‘We couldn’t ask for a better way to go out,’ guard Phil Booth said. ‘This was better than a blowout any day of the week.’
“What had been a 10-point Villanova lead was down to 70-64 after a free throw by Josh Hart with 1:52 left. Marcus Paige’s jumper was off, but North Carolina collected the rebound and Brice Johnson kicked it back out to Paige. He drilled a 3, and it was a 3-point ball game.
“After a rare turnover at the other end by Ryan Arcidiacono, Johnson made a jumper and the lead was down to 1 with 1:06 left. After a timeout, North Carolina quickly fouled, and Phil Booth made both to make it 72-69 with 35 seconds left.
“North Carolina got the ball to – who else? – Paige, whose first effort at a layup wouldn’t fall. He snagged the rebound and put it up again. This one was good, and Villanova’s lead was now 1 with 22 seconds left.
“After a pair of free throws by Hart, North Carolina got the ball back for what would be the decisive play. Make it, and the Tar Heels had overtime to hope for. Miss it and, well, you just can’t think like that.”
Paige made his terrific three, and then it was Jenkins.
Chuck Culpepper / Washington Post
“As a roaring basketball game in a roaring football stadium distilled to one final, soaring shot making its descent, 74,300 seemed almost to hush. The hush would not last. Kris Jenkins’ cocksure three-pointer from the right of the top of the key swished down through the net and into deathless fame, and all manner of noise broke out and threatened to stream through the years.
“Villanova’s players surged into a pile. Villanova’s coaches hugged and hopped. Jaws dropped. Fans boomed. Streamers fell. North Carolina’s players walked off toward hard comprehension. The scoreboard suddenly read 77-74, and Villanova, a sturdy men’s basketball program with an eternal Monday night glittering from its distant past, had found another Monday night all witnesses will find impossible to forget.”
Ben Cohen / Wall Street Journal
“Villanova won the 1985 national championship with the biggest upset ever in the NCAA tournament’s title game. But what the Wildcats did Monday night was even better: They won an all-time classic national championship with a shot that may have been the most unforgettable in the history of college basketball.
“Kris Jenkins launched a last-second 3-pointer that instantly took its spot in the annals of the sport – right there alongside Jim Valvano running around the court and Christian Laettner beating the buzzer – when it swished through the net as time expired and handed No. 2 seed Villanova an epic 77-74 upset over No. 1 seed North Carolina….
“The craziest four seconds in college basketball this season started with one miraculous shot and ended with another. There were flying seat cushions, brilliant strategy and then the sport’s most iconic moment in decades, if not ever.”
Jenkins game-winner was the first buzzer-beater to win a national championship since 1983.
Ben Cohen:
“Every school that has won a national championship in the modern era of college basketball had celebrated with sought-after NBA stars cutting down the nets. It seemed impossible to imagine any team could win without such outlier talent.
“But the Wildcats did it without anyone who leaps out as an obvious NBA superstar. Every title team in the past two decades had a first-round NBA draft pick on its roster. Villanova is now the likely exception.
“The Wildcats didn’t need NBA potential. This is college basketball, after all, and their blistering offense and lockdown defense were more than enough for a remarkable NCAA tournament run. All they did was dispatch the NCAA tournament’s No. 1 overall seed (Kansas) in the Elite Eight, eliminate college basketball’s premier individual player (Oklahoma’s Buddy Hield) in the biggest Final Four blowout ever and beat the sport’s preseason No. 1 team (North Carolina) in the national championship with a historic shot.
“This was only the latest chapter in Villanova’s history of defying expectations on the sport’s grandest stage. The school’s proudest moment prior to Monday came when that championship team in 1985, coached by Rollie Massimino, played a nearly perfect game to pull off a massive upset of Georgetown and steal the title as a No. 8 seed.
“Massimino was walking through the bowels of the stadium late Monday night, being stopped every few steps by someone else who wanted to congratulate him, including a priest, when a golf cart rolled by with Wright in the passenger’s seat. He leaped off and hugged Villanova’s other title-winning coach.
“ ‘I love you,’ Massimino said.
“ ‘I love you, too,’ Wright said.
“Massimino’s team had been Villanova’s standard for three decades. Now, after the shot that won another national championship, there is finally a new one.”
Myron Medcalf / ESPN
“At halftime…Michael Jordan walked through a corridor toward the North Carolina locker room. Media, fans and bulky-armed security personnel hovered as Jordan chatted with Mark Emmert, the NCAA’s president.
“A median divided the pack in the tunnel. Mortals to the left. Jordan and his crew to the right.
“When the greatest player in the game’s history helped the Tar Heels win their second national title in 1982, North Carolina began its stint in college basketball’s roped off, VIP room. An exclusive section of the game reserved for teams that constructed concrete brands they preserved with elite talent during decades of dominance.
“Entering Monday’s game, Kentucky, Duke, Connecticut and North Carolina had won 12 of the previous 20 national championships in Division I basketball.
“So, the Wildcats won a national title for their alumni, former coach Rollie Massimino, the Big East, Jay Wright and their fans. But they also won a championship for every team in the nosebleeds that has watched the powerhouses control the game for years.
“College basketball’s 68-team, single-elimination tournament comprises one of the few arrangements in major sports that still offers the have-nots a fair chance to become kings. The game rarely surrenders the crown, however, to any team outside the blockade of blue-bloods.
“Even the teams that snuck into the club in the past 20 years – Syracuse, Louisville, Florida, Kansas, Michigan State, etc. – do not qualify as true underdogs.
“But North Carolina represents the 1 percent.
“Villanova reps a group that lacks the sexy national name and rent-a-player talent to reboot every season….
“Nova toppled one of the game’s titans. Not with a game-winning shot but with a strong unit that ignored the circumstances, the odds and the history that always seemed to favor North Carolina.”
Shu passed along the following from Adam Lucas of GoHeels.com:
“The fact that, as Carolina fans, we get so many chances to get this close is one of the luckiest things that has happened to us in our sports fan lives, even if it brings with it the occasional gut punch.
“Sitting there, watching the Villanova players and coaches celebrate, the toughest part was how easy it was to picture Brice Johnson and Marcus Paige and Joel Berry wearing those hats and playing in the confetti. It could have so easily been them. It could have so easily been us.”
Marcus Paige had the following to say in the media room after the game.
“The whole four years means the world to me. I wouldn’t trade any of the losses, any of the games. It’s hard to say, but even including this one, I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
“This has been the happiest and most fun four years of my life, talking this year especially. Hasn’t been my best year as a player, but this has been the most fun I’ve had in my entire life with this team, all the way up until that last horn went off.”
Adam Lucas:
“(Michael) Jordan addressed the team in the Carolina locker room after the game. He had a simple message for them: sometimes life has adversity, and you have to use it as fuel for the next time. And then he said the perfect thing, because he is Michael Jordan, but also because he is a Tar Heel. He said exactly what every single one of us would’ve said if we had been in that room right at that moment:
“ ‘I’m proud of you.’”
–Mark R. lives near Westtown School in West Chester, Pennsylvania, and he just wanted me to mention that Villanova’s Daniel Ochefu went there. So I looked it up and this Quaker institution seems very cool. It’s also hardly a basketball powerhouse.
Westtown is a pre-K-12 school that welcomes students from around the world. 10 percent of the students are Quaker.
—In looking at the 2016-17 season, USA TODAY has the following Top Ten.
1. Duke…IF Grayson Allen returns, though this doesn’t seem likely. Regardless, Duke has another stud freshman class, some veterans, plus it’s very possible Amile Jefferson will be granted a medical redshirt.
2. Kentucky…the No. 1 recruiting class in the country…five in the top 26 by Rivals.
3. Villanova…Hart, Jenkins and Jalen Brunson return, plus they have a big recruit coming in.
4. Oregon…especially if guard Dillon Brooks returns, which he very well might.
5. North Carolina
6. Xavier
7. Michigan State
8. Virginia
9. Kansas
10. UConn
–Chad Ford of ESPN has an early draft list.
1. Ben Simmons, LSU, forward
2. Brandon Ingram, Duke, forward
3. Dragan Bender, Croatia, forward/center
4. Jamal Murray, Kentucky, guard
5. Buddy Hield, Oklahoma, guard
6. Henry Ellenson, Marquette, forward/center
7. Kris Dunn, Providence, guard
8. Marquese Chriss, Washington, forward
9. Jaylen Brown, Cal, forward
10. Jakob Poeltl, Utah, center
UConn
The Lady Huskies won an unprecedented fourth straight women’s basketball title on Tuesday, destroying Syracuse 82-51, making it 75 in a row in the process. 122-1.
For coach Geno Auriemma it was his record eleventh title, one more than John Wooden, and tying Phil Jackson’s 11.
Consider UConn senior Breanna Stewart, the 3-time AP National Player of the Year, who just completed a near-perfect run. She was four-for-four in national titles, along with teammates Morgan Tuck and Moriah Jefferson, plus Stewart was named the Final Four Most Outstanding Performer in all four, which is rather phenomenal.
Just one loss, to Stanford in November 2014, prevented her from leading her squad to three straight undefeated seasons.
Syracuse, which made its first-ever appearance in the Final Four, had defeated Washington 80-59 to get to the title game, while the Huskies had their way with the Beavers of Oregon State, 80-51, in the other semi.
NBA
–The scramble in the Eastern Conference is fierce for the 3-6 playoff slots.
[Thru Tuesday’s play]
1. Cleveland 56-22
2. Toronto 52-25
3. Atlanta 46-32
4. Boston 45-32
5. Miami 45-32
6. Charlotte 44-33
7. Indiana 41-36
8. Detroit 41-37
9. Chicago 39-39
Meanwhile, in the Western Conference….
Golden State 69-9
San Antonio 65-12
Yes, the Warriors are up to 9 losses as they shockingly blew a 17-point lead at home against the Timberwolves, Tuesday, losing 124-117 in overtime as Stephen Curry was just 7 of 25 from the field.
So Golden State now must win its final four games, two against San Antonio, in order to best the Bulls’ all-time mark of 72-10. This will be a major choke job.
–The Washington Wizards are a hugely disappointing 37-40. It’s almost better being a Knicks fan this season than a Washington one.
Dan Steinberg / Washington Post
“How do you disappoint a fan base weaned on disappointment? How do you disgust a group of loonies whose past 35 years should have left them immune from disgust?
“You give them a sliver of hope. A sniff of promise. A tingling that maybe, finally, Washington pro basketball has crawled out from that never –ending swamp of sorrow.
“Then you take it away, sending everyone spiraling back down into the quagmire. That muck smells even worse when you were promised fresh ocean air.
“I’ve heard from multiple Wizards fans in recent days who think this season felt as frustrating as those laugh-track Wizards campaigns of five or six years ago. Those teams were a joke, but they were never supposed to be more than that. With new ownership and high draft picks, the future was going to be different.
“These Wizards? They were coming off two straight second-round playoff appearances. They had a pair of potential young stars in John Wall and Bradley Beal, plus last spring’s hint that Otto Porter might be next. Their preseason Vegas over/under was in the neighborhood of 46 wins – about the same as Miami and Toronto – meaning the playoffs felt like a formality. And they had that unspoken dream scenario: maybe a run to the Eastern Conference finals would be enough to lure Kevin Durant home.”
Instead, this will be the 15th time in 37 seasons Washington finishes with between 37 and 42 wins. “No NBA team has spent more time in that flabby midsection of mediocrity. At least they’re first in something.”
And get this; the Wizards are the only NBA franchise that hasn’t reached the 50-win milestone in those 37 seasons, after Toronto just did for the first time.
MLB
–A few Opening Day games stand out. After I posted on Sunday night, I watched the Mets painfully having to face the Royals in Kansas City, an act of cruelty exacted on them by Major League Baseball, though to be fair the schedule was set up a month before the baseball playoffs began last fall. Even Royals manager Ned Yost said having the Mets there kind of took away from the celebration because he felt sorry for the Met players.
And then in the bottom of the first inning, Yoenis Cespedes had a routine fly ball pop out of his mit and that was followed by a critical passed ball and I went to bed after five (desperately needing sleep…and it’s a long season, sports fans!) as the Mets went on to a desultory 4-3 loss.
But on Tuesday, the Mets got some revenge behind budding superstar Noah Syndergaard, who struck out nine in six innings as the Mets won 2-0. I know it was just the second game, but this was huge for the Mets’ psyche.
–Elsewhere, new acquisition Denard Span had five RBIs in the Giants’ 12-3 win over the Brewers as San Francisco embarks on another ‘even’ year mission.
The Giants then won Tuesday 2-1 behind Johnny Cueto.
Bryce Harper homered in his first at-bat of the season in the Nationals’ eventual 4-3 win in 10 over the Braves. Ex-Met Daniel Murphy also homered for Washington (ughh).
Clayton Kershaw gave up one hit in seven innings, fanning nine, as the Dodgers handed the Padres their worst opening-day loss, 15-0!
And then the Dodgers rode Scott Kazmir’s six-inning, one-hit effort to take their second game 3-0. We can now project the Padres will score just 48 runs all season.
Zack Greinke, he of the $34 million annual contract, was shelled in his debut for the Diamondbacks, giving up 7 earned in four innings as Arizona lost to Colorado 10-5.
But the Cubs’ Jake Arrieta got off to a flying start, tossing seven innings of shutout ball in Chicago’s 9-0 pasting of the awful Angels (as I’m already anointing them).
Chicago then beat the Angels 6-1 on Tuesday.
Boston’s David Price gave up just two runs in six innings, striking out 10, in his debut as the Red Sox beat the Indians 6-2.
Finally, the Yankees’ home opener was delayed until Tuesday because of the awful weather in the area and Tuesday’s game-time temperature was 36 with a wind-chill of 25! Only half the announced capacity crowd actually showed.
And the Yanks ended up playing the game under protest, as Dallas Keuchel and the Astros won 5-3, owing to a throwing error by reliever Dellin Betances as Houston’s Carlos Correa was clearly inside the baseline as he dashed to first after hitting a dribbler near the mound. The umpires saw it differently as Betances, trying to avoid hitting Correa, threw it wildly over first baseman Mark Teixeira’s head, leading to three unearned runs. He should have plunked Correa.
–I did want to get down a few spring training marks for the record.
Arizona 24-8
Washington 19-4
Cubs 11-19
Mets 8-17
Reading the local coverage, the Washington scribes love manager Dusty Baker. I’ve always kind of thought, ‘What’s the big deal with him?’ He has one pennant in 21 years as a manager, with a mediocre .526 winning percentage. Like as Derrick Coleman would say, “Whoopty-damn-do.”
But, on the other hand, he may be what this dysfunctional Nationals franchise needs, a true players manager who is known for handling disparate personalities, and you have some interesting figures on this Nats team, like Harper, Max Scherzer, and, especially, Jonathan Papelbon.
Washington has a lot of talent, so we’ll see. Us Mets fans don’t want Dusty doing that well of a job.
The Masters
It’s going to be interesting to see how the weather impacts play. After a showery and mild Thursday, the highs, Fri.-Sun., are only going to be in the 60s and it looks like there will be a lot of wind on Saturday. I am going with Rory, who is focused big time.
–So we got more details on the Donald Trump-Jim Herman relationship following Herman’s dramatic win, Sunday, at the Houston Open, beating off some of the best in the world in the process for his first PGA Tour title at the age of 38.
USA TODAY Sports’ Steve DiMeglio reached Trump Sunday night in Milwaukee, where Trump was campaigning, and Trump said of the man who used to work for him at Trump National in Bedminster, N.J., “That’s some story. I feel awfully good. …It was really nice to see him win. He’s such a good guy. A nice person. And he deserves it. Such a great story. He’s what America is all about. He never gave up, never gave up on his dream. I’m proud of him.”
The deal is, 10 years ago, when Herman was an assistant pro at Trump Bedminster, he played a round with Trump, and, as Trump said Sunday, he was impressed from the get-go.
“I’m a good golfer. I play with a lot of golfers who think they have the goods for the PGA Tour and I can tell after one hole that they don’t,” Trump said. “But Jim was different. I said to him, ‘Why aren’t you trying to get on Tour? You are talented.’ He hits it long. Ball striking is incredible. So I gave him money and told him to give it a shot. Such an amazing story….
“He got a late start because he had no money and he had to teach. So I staked him. I told him if you make it you’ll pay me back. If you don’t, don’t worry about it. You can still work for me.”
Herman said Sunday: “He gave me a lot of confidence, you know….(Trump) helped me financially. He wrote me a check.”
It was the day before Easter Sunday that Herman played with Trump at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla.
“He’s as good as anybody. I thought the same thing years ago.”
I’m curious to see how Herman does this week.
—Esteban Toledo is the boxer-turned-golfer who played the PGA Tour for years but never won an event, finishing second twice, which meant he never qualified for the Masters.
But Toledo, who has won four times on the Champions Tour and is now 53, still wanted to get to Augusta so he’s going to caddie for Sandy Lyle, the 1988 champion.
Toledo told Golf Week that he thought of the idea last year and asked Ben Crenshaw if he could carry his bag, but Crenshaw, in his last Masters appearance, was committed to longtime bagman, Carl Jackson. Lyle had also committed to someone else.
But days after winning the Allianz Champions event in February, Toledo asked Lyle again, though he had to wait a month before Lyle’s wife called Esteban from Scotland and told him, “You’re on.”
Toledo: “I’m like a kid in a candy store. I’m a former caddie, and I know the job description is ‘show up, keep up, shut up.’ But I’m not going to shut up. I’m going to push him all the way. I know he is a fighter, and I’m the same way.”
Stuff
—U.S. men’s national soccer players Alejandro Bedoya and Jozy Altidore made jokes at the expense of Abby Wambach following the former U.S. women’s star’s DUI arrest in Portland, Oregon, on Sunday.
Upon her retirement in December, Wambach had criticized U.S. men’s coach Jurgen Klinsmann for bringing in “a bunch of these foreign guys” on a Bill Simmons podcast.
So following her arrest, Bedoya tweeted that Wambach’s arrest “must’ve been a foreign American player’s fault.”
So this is yet another issue between the U.S. men and women soccer teams.
Regarding the recently filed action with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over wage discrimination by five members of the women’s team, former U.S. men’s star Landon Donovan said, “I’m not for equal pay, I’m for fair pay,” warning their contracts should be collectively bargained.
Seeing as these two sides don’t like each other, I’m thinking if they had a challenge match between the two, it would resemble the Hungary-Soviet Union water polo game at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
–In the Premier League, Cinderella Leicester was a 5,000-to-1 pick to win the league title at the beginning of the season and bookmaker William Hill said the other day that the Foxes winning it all will cost English sportsbooks more than $14 million in payouts.
Big match on Sunday, Tottenham hosts Manchester United.
—Soccer superstar Lionel Messi, the current World Player of the Year, has been under investigation for tax fraud in Spain, where he is starring for Barcelona, but now his name has emerged as part of the “Panama Papers” tax evasion scandal and so the Argentinian is potentially in even more trouble.
Holding money in offshore companies is not illegal, the basis of the deal that I will be writing on in that other column I do, later on, but according to the Spanish newspaper El Confidencial, Messi, 28, is being accused of creating a company with the aim of evading tax.
In a statement the Messi family denies all such accusations. [His father is involved in the Spanish inquiry, with the state attorney recommending a jail term of up to 22 months if the two are found guilty.]
In a Champions League quarterfinal on Tuesday, Messi’s Barcelona defeated Atletico Madrid 2-1.
–Follow-up to my story on the Cherry Blossom 10-miler in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, a race run in absolutely brutal conditions with wind gusts up to 59 mph.
Kenya’s Sam Chelanga (now a U.S.-naturalized citizen) won it in 48:26. The American record for a 10-mile race, by the way, is 46:13, set way back in 1983.
Meb Keflezighi kept his promise to run with the six-minute milers and finished in 1:00.41.
–The lawyer for Death Row founder Suge Knight is claiming in a filing that his client is being held without phone, mail or visitor privileges to keep him from ‘connecting’ his pending 2015 murder case to the 2014 nightclub shooting that nearly killed him.
Attorney Thaddeus Culpepper alleges that the main sheriff’s detective now investigating Knight for murder also worked the nightclub investigation and previously told him a man identified only as ‘Tee-Money’ confessed he was one of the shooters.
According to Culpepper’s motion, the same detective “informed Knight that the gunman stated that Dr. Dre paid him and a friend $50,000 to kill Knight.”
As reported in the New York Daily News, the filing doesn’t give a motive for Dr. Dre, who released his 1992 breakthrough album “The Chronic” on Death Row but later cut ties to Knight, wanting to take Suge out.
And that’s your gangsta rap update.
–You see the picture of Miley Cyrus’ face after she was mauled by a cat? Good lord. The unidentified feline left bloody marks across Miley’s face and one of her arms, photos of which she posted on Instagram along with an obscene caption. I mean Cyrus had several deep lacerations on the arm.
It wasn’t clear who the cat belonged to, but ‘Cat’ is hereby suspended one week from the All-Species List.
–A few weeks ago I was at The Raptor Trust in Millington, NJ, a very cool place, and I picked up some material I’ve been meaning to pass on.
As in longevity for some birds. The Raptor Trust, this one apparently among the best in the Northeast, has become a permanent home for many injured birds. In fact, some of the owls there have been with them over 20 years. A Bald Eagle, who came to them at age 6, lived another 15 years.
The Trust once had an American Crow named “Fred” that came to them from a local zoo, where she had lived for at least 6 years and proceeded to live at The Trust another 29 before she died, meaning she was a minimum of 35 years old – “probably a longevity record for an American Crow.”
Some of the info is a few years old, but banding data collected from around the country has the record for a Bald Eagle in the wild at 29 years. 27 for a Great Horned Owl. 26 for a Mallard Duck! 17 for a Blue Jay (these guys are assholes), 13 for an American Robin (wow…I think the average is more like two years…)
For birds in captivity, like at The Raptor Trust, the record is an Andean Condor, 72 years. Others….
Cockatoo…70; Raven…50; Bald Eagle…48; Snowy Owl…43; Canada Goose (Booo! Booo!)…33; American Robin…17.
Of course the cat that mauled Miley Cyrus would like to eat many of the above birds, though I’d like to see the Great Horned Owl or Bald Eagle do a number on the feline.
The cat would stay away from the goose because the goose would just aerial bombard it.
–I’ve written of the problems with wild turkeys in New Jersey and the town of Teaneck is being terrorized by them these days. Including this situation, as reported by Anthony G. Attrino for NJ.com:
“A mother who sat down to dinner with two of her three children says a wild turkey crashed through her kitchen window, sending glass, debris and mud everywhere.
“ ‘It landed on the table in front of us,’ Courtney L. told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday. ‘We got up and literally ran for our lives.’
“Mrs. L. says the turkey was one of a pack of four that has been roaming her neighborhood in recent months.
“ ‘They’re like gangster turkeys,’ she said. ‘They terrorize kids at bus stops and chase people to their cars.’”
I saw a local NBC news report from her home and what a story…and what damage. In fact, $6,000 worth. Mrs. L. said her homeowner’s insurance refuses to pay for damages caused by “birds, reptiles or vermin.”
“In addition to suffering minor cuts and bruises, L. said she and her children found themselves picking glass out of their hair and clothes.”
Police and firefighters grabbed the bird and released it outdoors.
It was in the same county that a mailman was surrounded by turkeys on his route back in February.
Now it’s mating season. Watch out.
Top 3 songs for the week 4/4/70: #1 “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (Simon & Garfunkel) #2 “Let It Be” (The Beatles) #3 “Instant Karma (We All Shine On)”…and…#4 “ABC” (The Jackson 5) #5 Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)” (Edison Lighthouse)…#6 “Spirit In The Sky” (Norman Greenbaum…ughh…) #7 “House of the Rising Sun” (Frijid Pink…man, had to look this up because I sure as heck didn’t remember it…so this was a rock group from Detroit, their only top 40, and it’s kind of shocking a rip-off like this got as high as #7…) #8 “The Rapper” (The Jaggerz) #9 “Come And Get It” (Badfinger) #10 “Easy Come, Easy Go” (Bobby Sherman… seriously, this is not awful…really…though I know enough on a job interview not to bring it up…)
Masters Quiz Answers: 1) Ben Crenshaw is the second oldest to win at age 43 (1995). 2) Arnold Palmer won the Masters in 1958, 60, 62 and 64. Gary Player won in 1961. Jack Nicklaus in 1963, 65, and 66. Art Wall Jr. won it in 1959.
Next Bar Chat, Monday.
