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Cards are aces

Posted by pblackwell | 11/06/06

Okay, so you’re not Dr. Emmett Brown. But imagine, for a moment, cruising in Doc’s DeLorean and traveling back in time – specifically, to Oct. 3, when the baseball playoffs got underway.
And imagine also if you told everyone that the St. Louis Cardinals – the 83-win, backed-into-the-playoffs, nearly-threw-the-whole-thing-away-in-the-last-two-weeks Cardinals – would win the World Series?
The next sound you would have heard, even in loyal burgh like St. Louis, would be a roar of laughter similar to what is emanating from the theaters these days anywhere the “Borat” movie is showing.
Anyone else in the field had an argument. The Yankees were all but handed the crown. Oakland and (especially) Minnesota had their defenders. Some sensed the destiny in Detroit...

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Basketball banter

Posted by pblackwell | 11/19/06

You hear some laments about college basketball tipping off earlier than in years past – some teams got going on Nov. 10 – but you’ll never hear that complaint from this desk.
Even with some stretching out, the season is nowhere near the length of other major sports, and you’ve got time to grow into it before the chaos of March.
So for those just tuning again, here’s a look at the 2006-07 campaign, which will be humming until April 2, when they decide things in Atlanta.
When last we left you, Florida had taken full advantage of the top-seeded carnage around them and won it all, even though the Final Four in Indy was a crashing anticlimax after the George Mason-fueled mayhem of the Dance’s first two weeks...

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The Maroon Miracle

Posted by pblackwell | 11/26/06

Here in Upstate New York, we’re quite familiar with the tales of sports teams not expected to find their way to the top, but doing so anyway.
That U.S. hockey team in 1980 at Lake Placid. Or the Buffalo Bills making that playoff comeback against Houston. Or Syracuse basketball in 2003 riding the hot hands of a couple of freshmen to the NCAA crown.
Now, in the form of the 2006 state Class AA football champion Auburn Maroons, we have found an equivalent in the high school ranks, a 37-day odyssey that just about trumps anything a writer of fiction could come up with.
Go back to the afternoon of Oct. 19. Tired and frustrated, the Maroons trudged from the classroom to the practice field on that rain-soaked Thursday without much enthusiasm, for good reason...

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