Everybody panic!!!

"Is it a pandemic yet?" "Is it a pandemic yet?" "Is it a pandemic yet?" "Is it a pandemic yet?"

I imagine scientists with the World Health Organization are positively tingling these days. They have their "black plague." Or at least they hope they do.

Please forgive me if I'm not ready to stock up on antibiotics, hand sanitizer, Kleenex, chicken soup, ginger ale and Vitamin C. I don't feel particularly compelled to buy in to Swine Flu panic just yet.

I course, if I die from this damn thing in a few weeks, you can file this blog post under "tragic irony."

Scientists who portended the end of the world with the Avian Flu three years ago are crossing their collective fingers, hoping they can say, "I told you so!" this time around. Never mind that Swine Flu has claimed fewer lives worldwide in the past week than has accidents involving donkeys. (true statistic!) The Powers That Be won't let a chance for a good crisis to go unexploited.

Swine Flu may be a legitimate concern, but it's more likely that it's the 2009 version of the "Shark Attack" scare---a scare that was wiped off of the headlines following 9-11-01.

Folks, I'm in the news business. I know that nothing draws listeners (or viewers or readers) more than a damn good headline story. You can't get much deeper in terms of public interest than "National Health Scare!" But lets face facts. How many times have the scientific community cried "wolf?"

And by the way---didn't Gerald Ford cure swine flu when he rolled up his sleeves back in 1975?

Doomsday scientists are swarming around the Swine Flu scare for the same reason that the Weather Channel executives root for maximum damage from tornadoes and hurricanes. It makes them relevant. No one gives a damn about Jim Cantore when it's sunny and 85 degrees. No one calls the Centers for Disease Control when they're feeling fine.

So join me, won't you, in rejecting the hype. That is, of course, until you die in a donkey-related tragedy!

4/16 Plus two

It was a little after 9AM in the newsroom when the AP Alert went off. Nothing unusual there. The damn thing goes off every time there's a thunderstorm in Eastern North Carolina. I dutifully moved to my computer screen and looked. There was a slug.

AP-APNewsAlert- (Blacksburg)

I clicked on the header. It read:

(Blacksburg) -- Shooting at Virginia Tech dormitory...developing...

Given the location and my close emotional ties to the school, I perked up. I was not particularly worried, though. Hey, it's a big campus. These things unfortunately happen. I figured a couple of guys had gotten into it and someone fired a shot or two. The next update came minutes later.

(Blacksburg) -- Shooting at Virginia Tech dormitory...West Ambler Johnston...two fatalities confirmed...developing...

Well this upped the ante. My News Director's brain kicked in. "O-K. Maybe I'll run a state story during my midday news. About thirty minutes later, the ante was upped again.

(Blacksburg) -- Multiple shots fired inside Norris Hall Virginia Tech ...developing...

"What the hell is this, I wondered." Did AP screw up the earlier story? Did they have the location wrong? The stories I was working on concerning two large trees falling in the downtown area during heavy winds got pushed to the back burner. It was forgotten completely after the next AP Alert.

(Blacksburg) -- Multiple fatalities confirmed inside Norris Hall, Virginia Tech campus locked down...shooter unknown...developing...

What followed seemed like a blur. I continued tracking AP and giving live updates on both stations. By noon, we knew this was catastrophic.

It didn't hit me until early afternoon what had happened. Until then, I had kept my professional veneer and reported the facts as they came in---gruesome as they were. It wasn't until I got a little down time and happened to glance at FOX News that it hit me. Seeing those familiar-looking buildings, juxtaposed against the backdrop of the kind of coverage reserved only for events like 9-11 hit me like a ton of bricks. This was MY school! I lived a couple hundred yards from Norris Hall! I had several classes there! Was I ever in the upper floor? I couldn't remember.

After having done news for 20 years you learn to keep stories at arms length. Many of the stories we tackle have strong emotions attached to them, and you would quickly become overwhelmed if you got too involved. I thought I was tough. I thought I could handle anything in a news context. I was wrong.

After about 15-to-20 minutes of watching national TV coverage, I had to go out into the hallway and do something I hadn't done in years. I cried. (only briefly, though---gotta maintain my man-cred).

The days that followed produced a full range of emotions. There was the obvious sadness. There was white-hot anger at the shooter, which quickly evolved into utter indifference. I have yet to get to "forgiveness," but I'm working on it. It also produced immense pride at MY university! What a response from staff and students alike! I'd like to think only Tech could have handled such a situation so well. I pray that we never have to find out.

Other emotions have intermingled in the intervening two years. Disappointment at the family members of some of the victims and survivors who seem hell-bent on blaming everything on the school, and not the gunman. I've also been enraged at those who have used the massacre as a front for their anti-gun agenda. My anger includes NBC for airing the footage sent to them by the shooter. Also, the mindless bimbo posing as a reporter at one of the press conferences who chastised President Steger and Chief Flinchum for not "showing more emotion."

But mostly, I'm bursting with pride today at MY school! It's said that it takes our worst to bring out our best. We certainly saw the worst humanity has to offer on 4-16-07, but we also saw us at our best. God Bless all Virginia Tech Hokies everywhere today! Those with and without diplomas. Ut Prosim!!!

Bye-bye, Birdie.

You'll have to forgive this completely self-serving post. Hey, that's what blogs are for, right? A slice of my childhood died yesterday.

Mark "The Bird" Fidrych was found dead yesterday at his farm in Massachusetts. He was apparently working underneath a dump truck. The truck fell on top of him, killing him.

For one glorious summer in 1976, Fidrych was the best pitcher in baseball. He was also the most colorful. I was eight years old at the time, and was just REALLY beginning to get into sports. To a little boy, Fidrych was close to God. He got his nickname from his resemblence to "Big Bird" on Sesame Street.

It wasn't just the devastating fastball and nasty slider. It was the way he carried himself on the mound. With his curly afro bouncing up and down, Fidrych would sling pitch after pitch, with a pace that would exhaust anyone else. He would meticulously manicure the dirt in front of the pitcher's mount before each inning. He placed the baseball in front of him and talked to it before each pitch! He would bounce up and down like a bunny rabbit when one of his infielders made a play---then would go out and personally congratulate them!!

His appeal to kids was obvious. He was one of us! This is exactly the way WE would act if we were to pitch in a major-league game!

But this wasn't an act. Everyone who played with Fidrych says he had an uber-bubbly personality. He was 21 years old when he made his Major League debut, going on ten! One teammate called him "the most natural and unaffected person I've ever met."

As further evidence of his naivete, Fidrych was a guest analyst on Monday Night Baseball once. During the middle of the broadcast, he said, "Where's the John, I gotta go!" Out of the mouths of babes...

How popular was Fidrych? The Tigers sold out his last 12 home starts. Tiger opponents would request that Fidrych pitch at least once against their teams when the Tigers hit the road, to ensure a huge turnout.

In Spring Training the following year, Fidrych suffered what would ultimately prove to be a career-ending rotator cuff injury. It was only natural the the injury would occur while he was horseplaying with a teammate in the outfield. He was never an effective pitcher again. To make the story even harder to swallow, he was hurt about two years before doctors perfected the now-famous rotator cuff surgery that would have brought that wonderful right arm back to full strength.

It would be trite to say that baseball needs more people like Fidrych, but it does. That unbridled enthusiasm was contagious. I can't remember how many times I asked Dad, "Is The Bird pitching tonight?" I wonder how many kids ask that same question today about Roy Oswalt or Jake Peavy?

The "personalities" we are left with range from assholes (Barry Bonds) to jerks (Randy Johnson), the aloof (Derek Jeter), media-savvy (A-Rod), and incomprehensible (Manny Ramirez.) The closest thing we've had to Fidrych the past thirty years is Kirby Puckett---another one who died before his time. Maybe David Ortiz fits the bill today. I don't know.

What I DO know is that no other sports figure struck this Little League Superstar like Mark Fidrych. Hopefully he's throwing a few sliders today to Ted Williams.

Bullseye!!

It might be the testosterone flowing through my glands. It might be my take-charge foreign policy in dealing with those who threaten us. Maybe it's just the reptilian portion of my brain re-assuming dominant status. But I'm feeling a healthy amount of man-love today for U.S. Navy Seals.

In case you missed it, some of America's finest yesterday needed all of three shots to take out three Somali pirates who were holding an American ship captain hostage. The sharpshooters were several-hundred yards away, perched on top of a destroyer, in pitch-black darkness, riding on choppy waters. They fired once they saw the "head and shoulders" of the pirates. They nailed all three in the head!

In what has to be the understatement of the year so far, Admiral Richard Gortney, when asked how this was possible, said the snipers were, "extremely well-trained." Boo-ya!

It's not often in life that the bad guys get what's coming to them while the good guys escape unharmed. Karma's a bitch, isn't it Pirate-boy?

The issue has shed the light on the problem of high-seas piracy. No, not the fun kind portrayed by Johnny Depp in the Disney movies, nor the ones made famous by Veggie-Tales (see picture). I have noted that the national media has ignored the previously-established connection between piracy as a funding front for Al-Quiada. Oh well. I guess I should expect no less at this point. The Associated Press' Official Stylesheet dissuades reporters from using phrases like "Islamic Radicals," or even "terrorists." Those terms are substituted with euphemstic phrases like "militants," "insurgents," and my favorite, "opposition leaders." Those who control the language control the debate.

Somewhere, Charles Bronson is smiling. This episode ended like all of the movies. Everyone who should be dead is dead---everyone who should be alive is alive. If only things always worked out so well. I'll drink a beer or two tonight for the Navy Seals, Captain Richard Phillips, each member of the Maersk-Alabama, every enlisted man in the Navy---well, you get the point!

Nothin' could be finer...

Well, that was an anti-climatic ending to the NCAA tourney! North Carolina took all of the drama out of the National Championship game. Before I could get to my second beer, the Heels had built up a double-digit lead, en route to a thrashing of Michigan State. Sherman's March to the Sea seemed liked a quagmire in comparison.

That I could have cared less about the outcome shows maturity, I guess. You see, I grew up with a white-hot hatred of Carolina. Got it from my dad. Not sure why, though. Dad didn't have a real favorite college team---he just hated Carolina. I grew up with a steady diet of racially-tinged epithets hurled at Phil Ford; questions about Dean Smith's sexual preference; suggestions about Mitch Kupchak's ancestry. As the sins of the father passed on to the son, I picked up with similar diatribes against Rich Yonaker, Matt Doherty, even the great Michael Jordan.

These days, I can appreciate Carolina basketball for what it is. When they square off against Duke, I don't have a dog in the hunt. My sports vitriol is now limited to watching Detroit Tiger pitchers struggle, Virginia Tech's offensive line acting like a sieve, and line drives hitting me on the pitcher's mound while playing softball.

Not even good ol' standby UVA is worth my contempt these days. There's a part of me that longs for the era when the Cavs were truly hate-worthy. Trust me, though, I'm more than content for them to continue to play the role of Vanderbilt to our Tennessee.

Where have all the evil forces gone in sports? We no longer have the Russians to root against in the Olympics---China just doesn't do it for me. Barry Bonds is "retired." The Yankees haven't won a World Series in nine years. UVa sucks AND swallows in football. Bobby Bowden passed senility about four exits ago.

The closest thing we may have as a savior in this regard is new Tennessee football coach Lane Kiffin. This guy is going to be fun! Check out my friend's blog about the newest addition to the fraternity of colorful SEC football coaches.

My search for evil will have to go back to the political realm I guess. Not too many good guys there. With the new baseball season, and my one-week free preview of the MLB package, I'll have plenty of opportunities to bitch between now and Sunday.

Play ball!!

What promises to be a steroid-free 2009 baseball season opens this weekend. On the upside, it'll be the second season in a row without Barry Bonds' snarling visage. On the downside, it'll be the umpteenth season in a row that my Detroit Tigers have employed a "We don't need no stinkin' pitching" strategy.

It's funny---most of the folks I hang around with could care less about baseball. We're football folk, and fiercely proud of it. While nothing beats a rockin' Lane Stadium on a crisp autumn afternoon, my fondness for baseball comes in a close second. Oh sure, the Grand Old Game has left me hanging several times. The strikes in 1981 and 1994 made me feel like a scorned lover. But my "battered husband" syndrome sends me crawling back each time she bats her alluring eyes at me. (I'm sorry---I've got to go look at a few files in my "Asian Girls" folder).

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Now, where were we? Ah yes---baseball. Since I was too fat to play organized football as a youngster, baseball became my first love. I found that my good hand-eye coordination and quick reflexes were a good combo at the plate. My fat ass relegated me to either Catcher or First Base. My spaghetti-like arm had me stationed at first.

After hitting .737 in my last year of Little League, I considered signing a lease on an apartment in Detroit. Hey, I needed someplace to stay after the Tigers signed me, right?! It was when I tried out for the Junior High School team at Blairs that I discovered I was not going to bat cleanup in Motown. I was introduced to the curve ball---and I haven't touched one yet!

Relegated to a life-long status as an observer, I still followed baseball pretty regularly. As an adult, I've also delved headlong into the history of the game. I now count it right up there with the Civil War as my favorite historical subject. Ken Burns would be proud!

An earlier rant of mine bemoaned the decreasing popularity of baseball, but I understand fully. Baseball is not too easy to follow on television. It's like hockey, in that it's MUCH more fun to watch live than it is in front of the tube. It's no coincidence that these two sports are showing a steady decline in TV ratings, despite healthy attendance figures.

As I get older I find that baseball appeals to my intellectual side (such as it is), while football appeals to my red-blooded, reptilian-brained, cro-magnon side---a side that is still flourishing, thank you very much. Whereas baseball prompts me to nurse a couple of beers over nine innings while munching on peanuts, football compels me to consume large amounts of dead animal flesh and chips, while testing my liver's capacity with concoctions straight out of "The Twilight Zone."

That having been said, "Play Ball!" Unlike the NCAA tournament, this time-wasting activity lasts six months!