New York Giants Quiz: Name the five to rush for 4,000 yards in their career as a Giant. [One is old time.] Answer below.
–So much for my “Pick to Click,” as well as the choice of many others, as No. 2 USC lost to No. 21 Stanford, 21-14, in Palo Alto, thus killing the Trojans’ chances at a national title. It wasn’t even that close in terms of USC being outplayed and outgained, 417-280 yards, with presumed Heisman Trophy winner Matt Barkley having a poor game, 20-41, 254 yards and 2 INTs, while the Trojans had just 26 yards on the ground.
“They came from nowhere and everywhere, a stampede of red and white streaming from all corners, filling the Stanford Stadium grass with a mob of passion and power.
“What happened to the USC football team for nearly four hours was symbolized in about four minutes late Saturday, Stanford’s fans mimicking their players by surrounding the Trojans and pushing them out the door into the chilly night.
“The idea of a perfect Trojans season. The idea of an easy Matt Barkley Heisman. The lovely notion that a college football team can come off two years of probation and dominate the football world as if it never left.
“Just three games into what was supposed to be a dream season, the Trojans were slapped awake and senseless Saturday by Stanford in a 21-14 loss that felt like a 12th-round knockout.”
It also needs to be noted Lane Kiffin was totally outcoached, while Barkley appears to have lost arm strength.
Actually, USC could still be in the title hunt if they get their act together, what with a game still looming against mighty Oregon, Nov. 3, but no one is holding their breath.
Heck, the last two weeks of the season the Trojans face UCLA and Notre Dame! They could easily go from national title aspirants to 8-4 the way the season is shaping up. Plus they go up against a solid Arizona squad the week before Oregon…make that 7-5.
—No. 1 Alabama ran roughshod over Arkansas, 52-0.
—No. 4 Oregon slaughtered Tennessee Tech, 63-14, as De’Anthony Thomas is averaging 17.5 yards on his first 13 rushing attempts of the year with 4 TDs…3 other TDs receiving.
Reminder…I had USC winning it all, but I’m a Duck fan…so now we ride the Ducks all the way.
—No. 5 Florida State crushed the Deacs, 52-0, as Chris Thompson had 197 yards on just nine carries…all in the first half.
I mean to tell ya, this game sucked on so many levels, not the least of which was that it was the noon national TV game, so not only was Wake humiliated in being outgained 612-126! but we made all the early newscasts because ours was about the only game involving a ranked team that was over at that point. Like they showed Thompson shredding our D over and over and over…
–Hey, did you see the Cal cheerleaders? Steve G., you need to do some scouting for Bar Chat. Are the Cal girls contenders, especially now that the USC girls will be incredibly despondent the rest of the way? Are we talking Cal and Oregon as one-two in the nation on this front?
—No. 20 Notre Dame went to 3-0 with a nice 20-3 win over No. 10 Michigan State in East Lansing, with the Fighting Irish holding the Spartans to just 237 yards of offense.
–And what a great win for Western Kentucky over Kentucky, 32-31 in overtime. In all seriousness, the Hilltoppers are constantly belittled by the Wildcat faithful but this time got oh so sweet revenge. We’re talking obnoxious Kentucky partisans constantly ridicule WKU students, as in “you couldn’t get into Kentucky, so you had to settle for Western…” Total bulls—. For those of you who are younger, one thing you learn when you get to be my age is that no one with any character whatsoever gives a damn where you went to school. You’re judged on what kind of person you are, your work ethic and such. At least that’s how I look at people.
–The ACC cannot suck enough, but I really hope both Florida State and Clemson roll from here on, though these two play each other in what should be an outstanding game next Saturday night; in case you’re wondering what I’ll be doing with my time…Domestic? Check. Chex Mix? Check. Foie Gras? Check. [Have a tin leftover from my travels, you see. Sympathies to the goose that was force-fed for my pleasure.]
Anyway, North Carolina lost to Louisville, 39-34, but the Tar Heels were down 36-7 at half; Maryland lost to UConn, 24-21, and one of the weekend’s other stunners, Pitt defeated No. 13 Virginia Tech, 35-17.
–Reminder on Notre Dame moving to the ACC. While the Irish will be part of the ACC’s bowl structure, they will not be eligible for the league’s spot in the Orange Bowl. But they could play the ACC champion in that one. It’s the ACC’s bowl structure that clinched it for ND, even as they get to keep their independence in coming up with seven non-ACC opponents each year.
–As for Rutgers (off to a 3-0 start, by the way), with the Big East in a shambles, I forgot a New York Times study conducted awhile back that indicated Rutgers, at 20.9 percent, is more than twice as popular as Notre Dame, 9.2 percent, among the 3 million college football fans in this area.
–Kudos to La.-Monroe. Last week they defeated Arkansas and this week they almost handed Auburn a big defeat, with the Warhawks losing in OT, 31-28. So Johnny Mac and I have Wisconsin-Whitewater Warhawkswear and we’re thinking no one in our respective towns will know the difference if we pawn ourselves off as being UL-Monroe fans.
And this just in…Wisc.-Whitewater’s 46-game winning streak in Division III came to a crashing end as they lost on Saturday to Buffalo State, 7-6!
Yup, Johnny. We are officially UL-Monroe Warhawks fans.
And not for nothing, but not only is UL-Monroe doing the Sun Belt Conference proud, but Western Kentucky is a Sun Belt Conference member, too.
–Finally, a high school running back from Oregon, Thomas Tyner, ran for 644 yards, the third-highest single game rushing total according to the National High School Sports Record Book, on 38 carries while scoring 10 touchdowns in Aloha’s 84-63 win over Lakeridge. Tyner is going to be wearing Duckwear next fall.
The national record, incidentally, is held by a Jersey boy, John Giannantonio of Netcong, who ran for 754 yards in 1950.
New AP Poll
1. Alabama
2. LSU
3. Oregon
4. Florida State
5. Georgia
6. Oklahoma
7. South Carolina..hosting Georgia Oct. 6. Don’t bother me that night, either.
8. West Virginia
9. Stanford
10. Clemson
11. Notre Dame
–In a super game at the Meadowlands, the Giants evened their record at 1-1 in defeating Tampa Bay, 41-34, as Eli Manning, who had thrown three picks that the Buccaneers turned into 21 points, all in the first half, proceeded to throw for 295 yards in the second half, 510 overall, the latter just three yards shy of Phil Simms’ team record of 513.
For the Giants, receivers Hakeem Nicks and Victor Cruz were spectacular, with Nicks, who is going to be battling a bad ankle all year, catching 10 passes for 199 yards, while Cruz, after a poor first game, had 11 for 179; both career days for the two.
Once again, Manning, who had an NFL record 15 fourth-quarter touchdown passes last year, came through with two on Sunday.
–The Arizona Cardinals moved to 2-0 with a 20-18 win at New England, as Stephen Gostkowski missed a 42-yarder for the Pats at the end. The Cards’ Larry Fitzgerald, who I’m voting for for president even though he is just 29 and ineligible (tell me either of the two leading candidates would be better) has only five receptions the first two games but it doesn’t matter.
–The treatment of concussions has indeed changed and there can’t be one fan of the Jets who wasn’t thankful superstar corner Darrelle Revis didn’t play against the Steelers after getting his bell rung last week.
But then the Jets totally laid an egg in losing at Pittsburgh, 27-10. Next up for New York, down to Miami, whose Reggie Bush had a nice afternoon, 172 yards rushing in the Dolphins’ 35-13 dismantling of the Raiders on Sunday.
—Michael Vick threw for 370 yards in leading the 2-0 Eagles to a 24-23 win over the Ravens.
–So I kept telling you that C.J. Spiller would be a superstar when he came out of Clemson in 2010, but he’s been slow getting started.
Not this year. Spiller has taken advantage of an injury to Fred Jackson to rush for 292 yards on 29 carries in his first two contests for the Bills, 364 yards from scrimmage. Buffalo evened its record at 1-1 with a 35-17 win over Kansas City.
–Tennessee’s Chris Johnson, who rushed for over 5,600 yards his first four seasons, has 21 in 19 carries the first two games of the 2012 campaign. Very Eddie Georgesque.
–You would have to pay me huge dollars to attend a Jacksonville Jaguars game; the Jags losing to Houston, 27-7.
Ball Bits…I’ll get into the pennant / wild card races next time.
–For now, it’s all about the Yankees in these parts and whether or not they can hang on. CC Sabathia has failed to come through in the clutch, but Derek Jeter continues to bang out the hits and climb the all-time list, while A-Rod is seemingly back after a lost season.
Ken Davidoff of the New York Post, however, starts off a recent column thusly:
“ ‘Let’s go,’ Derek Jeter said calmly to Andruw Jones, and the two future Hall of Famers departed the Fenway Park visitors’ clubhouse late last night.”
Andruw Jones in the Hall of Fame? No freakin’ way. This is a guy who was certainly headed to Cooperstown, with 352 home runs by the age of 29, but since 2006 he has hit only 91 and his career batting average is down to a mere .254 (.197 this season). He’ll be lucky to get one more year in the big leagues.
Of course his peak seasons were also during the height of the steroid era, so draw your own conclusions. I’ve drawn mine.
Yes, he was one of the great defensive outfielders of his generation, but if he makes the Hall, I’ll be shocked.
–My Mets are now 20-40 since the All-Star break. Some of us are also seriously asking why we want to commit to a long-term, $20 million per season contract for third baseman David Wright. I mean he is a very good ballplayer, and a real good guy, but the fact is he hit .351 the first 86 games before the break, with 11 homers and 59 RBI, but in the 60 games since he has just 22 ribbies.
–As for the Pirates, they blew a 9-5 lead on Sunday in losing to the Cubs, 13-9, to move to 73-72. Ughh…will it be a 20th straight season under .500? It doesn’t look good.
—Adam Dunn missed nine games for the White Sox with an oblique injury but is lighting it up since his return and now has 39 home runs and 90 RBI.
–Back to the Mets, they are 4-21 their last 25 at home! Really makes you want to go out there and deal with the awful traffic in the area, doesn’t it?
–Milwaukee’s Ryan Braun now has 40 home runs. This really, really sucks; Mr. Braun being a ‘roider supreme.
—Chipper Jones penned a nice piece in Sports Illustrated this week as he hopes the final games of his tremendous, Hall of Fame career end in the playoffs.
“I’ve been good to the Braves, but they’ve been better to me. They never even let me get to a free-agency year. The money I’ve made in the game is ridiculous, but I’d like to think it hasn’t changed me. The Braves in my day brought baseball, winning major league baseball, to the South….
“My father, the original Larry Jones, taught me the game. He grew up in Vero Beach, Florida, where the Dodgers used to train, but Mickey Mantle was his guy. As a young player I did a card show with Mickey, not long before cancer took him. He was a god to me. Because he batted switch, I wanted to bat switch. Because he spent his whole career with one club, I wanted to spend my whole career with one club. Because he played hard and played hurt, I wanted to play hard and play hurt. Because he found time to play golf and to fish and hunt and hang out with his friends, I wanted to do all that too….
“We ballplayers lead strange lives, flying all over the country, playing a kid’s game late at night. How many times did the kitchen at the Parc 55, our team hotel in San Francisco, bring me up a three-egg omelet and a mountain of bacon at one in the morning? More than I can count. Thank you, St. Louis, for having an indoor visiting-team batting cage near the dugout, where a guy can get loose coming off the bench. Thank you, Philadelphia, for letting me play Merion and Pine Valley and all those other good courses, and thank you to John Smoltz and Tommy Glavine and Greg Maddux for letting me fill out your foursome. Thank you, Bobby Cox, for everything. I played for one of the greatest managers in baseball history. He grew me up.
“I’ve had a lot of failings, as a ballplayer, as a father, as a husband. I married at 20 the first time, too young, but I didn’t know that then. I’m getting divorced now from my second wife, and I will never, ever, get married again. But I honestly wouldn’t change a thing. I believe everything happens for a reason. My four kids, three with my second wife, are athletic, smart, fun, still young. I’ve been a part-time father. Now, come October, I’m going to be a full-time father, like my father was to me. I’m going to teach Shea to bat switch. He’s eight. It’s time. I’m saying goodbye without a tear in my eye. I gave it my all.”
Jim Calhoun
I only listen to sports radio while in the car but caught UConn men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun’s retirement announcement. What a career he had, Hall of Famer who won 873 games, seven Big East championships and three national titles.
Make that what a controversial career he had.
“Despite the success, the final decade of his career has been tainted by controversy because of perceived questionable recruiting tactics. In 2003, UConn paid $25,000 to play an exhibition game against the former summer league team of Rudy Gay, whom UConn was recruiting. The scheme was permitted at the time by NCAA rules but raised eyebrows nonetheless.
“UConn’s tactics during the recruitment of Gay, who signed with the Huskies, rankled another national championship-winning coach, Maryland’s Gary Williams, for years and underscored the sentiment among coaches that Calhoun, at the very least, operated in a recruiting gray area.
“ ‘If (Gay) wanted to come here, and we recruited him, and we offered him a scholarship, why didn’t he come here?’ Williams said in 2009. ‘It had to be for another reason, right?’
“Then in 2011, after the NCAA found recruiting violations at UConn, Calhoun was cited by the NCAA for failing to create an atmosphere of compliance. He was suspended for the first three Big East games of last season. The NCAA also reduced scholarships and restricted UConn’s recruiting….
“(But) on the court, he will be fondly remembered for the improbable run at the end of the 2010-2011 regular season, when the Huskies finished ninth in the Big East. Behind irrepressible guard Kemba Walker, the Huskies won 11 straight postseason games, including five in five days in the Big East tournament, to win the national title.”
“It takes a huge commitment to achieve what Calhoun did, basically from scratch, at Connecticut, along with a tenacity bordering on obsession. For 26 years of a 40-year career, through three bouts with cancer, and other afflictions and distractions, Calhoun badgered and bullied his Connecticut program to dizzying heights, taking on all competitors, including critics who so much as looked at him cross-eyed.
“Calhoun’s age, 70, and uncertain health will probably spare him much derision for the self-serving timing of his sudden retirement, announced Thursday, along with the appointment of the assistant coach and former Husky Kevin Ollie to replace him on a one-year, $625,00 contract.
“But the change does come weeks before the start of a season that will find the Huskies depleted by NBA defectors and ineligible for tournament play after years of embarrassingly low graduation rates that finally caught up with them. By the latter standard, Calhoun wasn’t even the most-accomplished basketball coach on campus, given the far superior academic history of the women’s program (on top of Coach Geno Auriemma’s seven national titles).
“That said, men’s basketball operates on a different financial plane, and Calhoun was the highest-paid state employee in Connecticut – as we learned a few years ago when a reporter dared question him on the subject of his salary during harsh recessionary times.
“So, yes, perhaps he should have hung around to usher his program through what promises to be a most difficult season. It is in a state of disarray that Calhoun, more than anyone else, is responsible for. Instead, he waited until the bell lap sounded for summer to decide he was done, too late for Connecticut to search for a more credentialed replacement at a most tenuous time – not only for the program he built but for the struggling Big East Conference that has been so instrumental to Calhoun’s success….
“How much greater a challenge will it be to maintain Connecticut’s national profile with old conference rivalries in tatters and the lion of Storrs permanently sidelined?
“Calhoun said he would sleep well at night, knowing his handpicked successor – as opposed to an accomplished outsider with no loyalty to him – would be in charge….
“Referring to the transgressions that have plagued his program, Calhoun said, ‘I never said I was mistake-free.’
“He added ‘I always tried to do the right thing’ and referred to Connecticut’s current situation as a ‘small bump.’ Only if the top of the scale is Penn State football could he be proportionally correct….
“In 1990, in the tournament that seemed to launch his program, Calhoun lit into the reporter who had witnessed his conversation with Tate George for having implied in print that the shot had been providential – strangely enough, moments after Connecticut was beaten in the regional final by Duke’s Christian Laettner on another buzzer beater.
“Which brings us to the moral of that story and, by extension, of Jim Calhoun’s Hall of Fame career: Enjoy the madness while it lasts and hail the victorious coach. But peel back the blue curtain of big-time college sports at your own peril.”
Billy Packer, longtime CBS analyst, told USA TODAY that if UConn does not leave the diminished Big East for a power conference, ‘whoever succeeds Jim basically has no chance. That was the greatest building of a basketball program in intercollegiate sports history. No one took a program and brought it where he took it. He cannot be duplicated, kind of like Obama with Clinton now.”
–Back in 1990 I did an extensive Civil War battlefield tour from Gettysburg to Appomattox, and since I’ve been to a few others, like Shiloh, and back to Gettysburg, but we note the 150th anniversary of the bloodiest single day in American military history, Antietam, Sept. 17, 1862. I can’t believe I haven’t been back there in 22 years but without a doubt, along with Shiloh these are the two best preserved battlefields in the nation and worth seeing. There were 21-23,000 casualties at Antietam (4,000 being the commonly accepted figure for the number dead) in just 12 hours of fighting.
CBS’ “Sunday Morning” had a great segment you can find on their site, plus PBS’ “American Experience” is highlighting Antietam this Tuesday.
–So we have another NHL lockout. What a waste, with training camps scheduled to open Sept. 21. The last move by the owners puts the players’ share of hockey-related revenue from a starting point of 49% in Year 1 to 47% by Year 6. Last season the players earned 57% of revenue.
But as I wrote a few weeks ago, the January 1 Winter Classic, scheduled for Michigan Stadium, with Detroit playing Toronto, triggers the television revenue and a lockout will end before then.
Otherwise, this entire issue bores the hell out of me. The owners are the real bastards in this one.
—Brad Keselowski won the first event in the 10-race Chase for the Sprint Cup.
–I saw where golfer Raymond Floyd’s wife Maria died the other day after a long battle with cancer. Old-time golf fans certainly know of her and the impact she had on her husband’s career. Raymond Sr., the four-time major winner, said the day after her passing, “She was my partner. She was my inspiration. She got me up when I was down. She kept me on track. It wasn’t just me and my family. It’s incredible how many lives she impacted and touched.” Barbara Nicklaus said, “If Maria was your friend, you couldn’t have a more loyal one.”
Raymond Floyd was an incredible talent when he burst on the scene, but he was also a notorious playboy and his game suffered because of it. But then he met Maria and his career really took off. They were married 38 years.
–According to a Scandinavian medical journal, golfers live five years longer than nonplayers, and the lower your handicap, the longer you live! [Golf Magazine]
Well, I golf, but I suck…so maybe I live 18 months longer.
–As the FedEx Cup competition ends this coming weekend with the Tour Championship, no winner of the Cup has ever made it back to East Lake GC the following year, including Bill Haas this time. I mentioned the other day Haas is the one athlete I’ll never criticize, but reading Golf World, Haas admitted himself to a major choke job at Crooked Stick when he bogeyed four of his final five holes to drop out of the Top 30 for Atlanta.
Haas told the magazine, “It seems like the same old story, something I’ve been doing a lot this year. Under the gun I haven’t been able to get it done….When there’s some pressure and there’s a pressure situation, I have to be able to bear down and shoot a good number and not just blow up. I seem to do it often….Right now I’m far from competitive…I don’t know what else to say.”
–Our long national nightmare is going to continue, golf fans. ESPN announced Chris Berman will anchor U.S. Open coverage the next six years. Noooo!!!!
–Speaking of nightmares, the Star-Ledger’s Dave D’Alessandro reports that New York Knicks owner Jim Dolan is definitely serious about bringing back Isiah Thomas.
“This is no longer a news bulletin, but we now have unassailable proof that Jim Dolan spends all his nights pacing the floor and thinking groggy, counterintuitive thoughts.
“Thoughts such as these: How can I get multitudes of fans to cross the Rubicon – or in this case, the East River – as quickly as possible? How can I demonstrate once again to all patrons with thick wallets and thicker heads what little basketball sense I possess? How many more thousands can I convert to Brooklyn supporters by the time camps open?”
D’Alessandro adds that if Dolan tosses Thomas another lifeboat:
“Think about that. We can all name a half-dozen people for whom this market has exhausted its tolerance. Tiki Barber. Carl Pavano. Charles Smith. Tom Poti. Bobby Bonilla. Ray Handley. Rich Kotite. A.J. Burnett.
“But if you can stuff all of them in a single laundry sack, they don’t come close to sizing up to the gargantuan gasbag that is Dolan. He is the only owner we know of who is satisfied with mediocrity, because he had spent a decade learning to live with abject failure….
“We can only think back to what a wise man said about Dolan’s stewardship in November of 2007:
“ ‘They,’ David Stern observed, ‘are not a model of intelligent management.’
“Rehire Isiah, and they’ll never erase that from the Seventh Avenue marquee.”
“Formula One racing is one of the world’s fastest motorsports, and in the 1970s it was one of the most dangerous. Fiery crashes occurred so frequently that drivers were often seriously injured or killed.
“Dr. Sid Watkins, an English neurosurgeon who died Wednesday in London at 84, changed that.
“Dr. Watkins, who was Grand Prix racing’s top medical and safety official for almost 30 years, is widely considered to have been responsible for vast improvements in the sport’s safety. A 2002 profile in Car and Driver magazine said he ‘likely saved the lives of more eternally grateful Formula One luminaries in the past 25 years than any single new safety device, track redesign or rules change – although he was the catalyst for many of them.’….
“His lifesaving efforts were often hands-on. In 1989 he pulled the Austrian driver Gerhard Berger from a wreck as fuel from his Ferrari’s ruptured tanks drenched both of them at the San Marino Grand Prix in Italy. In 1990 he resuscitated the Irish racer Martin Donnelly after Donnelly crashed with such force that he was thrown clear of his cockpit, despite wearing a seat belt, at the Spanish Grand Prix. In 1995 Dr. Watkins twice restarted the heart of the two-time world champion Mika Hakkinen after he flipped at the Adelaide Grand Prix in Australia.
“Nelson Piquet, whom Dr. Watkins revived after a 200-mph crash at the Imola Grand Prix in Italy, called him ‘our guardian angel.’…
“Dr. Watkin’s most famous intervention may have been one that did not succeed. At the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, he was the first on the scene after a car part flew off and penetrated the visor and forehead of Ayrton Senna, a three-time Formula One world champion. Senna, 34, died after several hours on life support.
“Dr. Watkins had tried to persuade Senna, a friend, not to race; the day before, the driver Roland Ratzenberger had been killed when a front wheel came off and struck him in the head. ‘Sid, there are certain things over which we have no control,’ Senna told Dr. Watkins, by the doctor’s account. ‘I cannot quit. I have to go on.’”
Senna was the last person to die in a Formula One race.
–Archaeologists from the University of Leicester, in central England, may have discovered the remains of Richard III, the king immortalized by William Shakespeare. Richard was the last English monarch to die in battle, in 1485, at Bosworth Field against his successor, Henry VII. Described as “deform’d” by Shakespeare, he was buried without pomp in a medieval friary in Leicester.
So now as they excavate a small downtown parking lot, archaeologists first discovered the ruins of the supposed friary and then the skeleton of an adult male bearing signs of possible battle wounds and of a severe curvature of the spine, or “severe scoliosis,” “consistent with contemporary accounts of Richard’s appearance,” according to Richard Taylor of the university.
The bones are being sent to a lab for DNA analysis, to be compared against a sample from a man believed to be a present-day descendant.
As for how the All-Species List committee handles these matters, the lesula needs to be monitored for 75 years before it can be ranked.
However, should there be a documented case of a lesula performing more than three “good acts,” or three “very bad ones,” the ASL folks can speed the process for inclusion.
Of course now I’ll be watching for lesula supporters to begin submitting false reports, like:
“Lesula takes over controls of United jet filled with 200 passengers when pilot and co-pilot are stricken with salmonella poisoning after eating a salad…landing it safely with no injuries.”
–Yikes, did you see the story of the Louisiana fisherman who caught a 12-foot, 800-pound alligator?! Rob Neil, a commercial fisherman who sells gator meat and skins to restaurants and clothing manufacturers, caught the beast near Houma, about 60 miles south of New Orleans.
“The fearless gator hunter pumped 15 rifle rounds into the massive beast before bringing it aboard, the Houma Courier reported.”
After posing for a few pics, which I saw in the New York Daily News, Neil sold it to Big Al’s Seafood restaurant in Houma for $350. Despite all the rounds being fired into it, Big Al himself said the carcass was “in pretty good shape.” The skin will be shipped to Europe for shoes, clothes and bags.
—Dog remains No. 1 on the ASL From Charlie Wells / New York Daily News:
“One Argentinian dog has spent the past six years proving he’s a man’s best friend, even though that man is dead.
“Capitan, a mutt who is some parts German Shepherd, disappeared from his home in the small town of Villa Carlos Paz in the center of Argentina following the death of his owner, Miguel Guzman, in March of 2006.
“For days, nobody in Guzman’s family noticed the absence of the dog, a surprise gift the man had given his young son, Damian, in the middle of 2005.
“That was, until the family visited Miguel’s grave at a municipal cemetery.
“ ‘Damien started to shout that it was Capitan and the dog came toward us barking, as if he were crying,’ Guzman’s wife, Veronica Moreno, told La Voz del Interior, a large Spanish-language newspaper published in the Argentinian province of Cordoba.
“Even though the family called to the dog, he stayed by his master’s grave.
“This surprised them: Miguel had passed away in a hospital in the city and his body was taken to a funeral home far away from their residence. None of the family members recalled the dog following them to the cemetery before.
“ ‘The next Sunday we went to visit Miguel’s grave and the dog was there. This time he followed us when we returned, because we had walked. He stayed with us at home for a while but later went back to the cemetery,’ Veronica said.
“He has made that cemetery his home for the past six years.”
The municipal cemetery’s director, Hector Baccega, says the dog has a special sense for Miguel and a very particular schedule.
“The first time Baccega saw the dog, he arrived at the cemetery alone. The dog then did a couple of laps around the place before finding his master’s grave – all on his own.
“ ‘And that’s not all,’ Baccega said. ‘Every day, at six in the evening, he lies in the front of (Miguel’s) grave.’”
–“American Idol” has settled on four judges, not three, for the season starting next January. Nicki Minaj and Keith Urban will join Mariah Carey and the returning Randy Jackson. I still probably won’t watch. Ryan Seacrest remains as host.
Top 3 songs of 9/13/80: #1 “Upside Down” (Diana Ross) #2 “All Out Of Love” (Air Supply…gasbags) #3 “Emotional Rescue” (The Rolling Stones…dreadful) …and…#4 “Fame” (Irene Cara) #5 “Sailing” (Christopher Cross) #6 “Give Me The Night” (George Benson) #7 “Late In The Evening” (Paul Simon) #8 “Lookin’ For Love” (Johnny Lee) #9 “Another One Bites The Dust” (Queen) #10 “Drivin’ My Life Away” (Eddie Rabbitt… underrated artist…otherwise, just an incredibly boring week…a week that saw your editor complete his first week as a clerk/typist at an insurance brokerage outfit in Manhattan, my first job…$175 a week…it all went for beer, as there was a bar in our building and I had some fun co-workers…like the perfect entry to the business world…)
New York Giants Quiz Answer: 4,000 yards rushing.
Tiki Barber 10,449
Rodney Hampton 6,897
Joe Morris 5,296
Brandon Jacobs 4,849
Alex Webster 4,638
Ron Johnson 3,836
Frank Gifford 3,609
