MBB: College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin

[Mr. Ypsi]

Well, I guess you have disclosed what a diehard fan of the Tigers I am!

I confess that the last Tigers game I attended, Mark (The Bird) Fidrych was the pitcher!  In 36 years in the Detroit area, I have attended 2 Tigers games, 1 Pistons game, and zero Lions or Red Wings games - pro sports is NOT my bag.  (I've attended more Major League Soccer games in Chicago and Columbus than all pro-sports games together in Detroit!)

Still, as pathetic as the pussycats have been for the last dozen years, I don't think I should be treated TOO harshly for a bit of pre-mature gloating (even if I obviously don't even know who the players are)!

[Pat Coleman]

You're a lot closer to Detroit than to Bloomington. Not sure there's a reasonable excuse for that.

Even I have been to more Tigers games in the past 36 years than you have, and I only lived in Ypsi for four years.

[augiedad]

Heard from a very reliable source that Hersey H.S. point-guard Sean Dwyer has commited to Illinois Wesleyan.  Every other D2/D3/NAIA school recruiting him played the "Trost is leaving" card as much as they could, but the kid still selected IWU.  He is a great student, which obviously favored IWU.

This is big news, as Dwyer is going to be a CCIW stud.  He is just a fantastic leader on the floor - I saw him play dozens of H.S. games.  I can just about guarantee that Dwyer will start at the point for the Titans next year.  Can the Gilmore kid play the 2?? 

Big land for Trost and Titans.   IWU has their next Adam Dauksas.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Pat,

My 'excuse' is, as I said, I'm not into pro sports!  The Tigers' games both occurred because I was the pitcher for a 'beeper-ball' team (a form of baseball for blind people where the ball emits a beep - the pitcher's job is to get batters to have a consistent enough swing that I can get the ball where they will hit it if their timing is correct.  If a fielder, all of whom are blind except the pitcher, picks up the ball before the hitter reaches a beeping base, it is an out; otherwise it is a run).  For a couple of years the Tigers would have a beeper-ball exhibition game before the regular game.  The Pistons' game came after months of nagging by my pro-sports obsessed 14-year-old!

The MLS games were an easier sell to me, but happened only as special treats for the kids.

I confess to being a fair-weather fan of the Detroit pro teams (at least tepidly following the ones worth following), though I still rarely watch the games.  But if I didn't follow them at least a little, I might NEVER have a conversation with my 14-year-old!  (I get a pass on knowing about Chris Shelton, since baseball is the one sport he hates! )

[Pat Coleman]

Ah the Tigers of my youth (I grew up in the Bronx).

The Yankee Killer Frank Lary

Al Kaline
Paw Paw Charley Maxwell (he of the Sunday homeruns).
Hank Aguirre
Frank 'Pig' House

I saw the Yankees and Tigers hook up in many Sunday afternoon doubleheaders before gigantic crowds at Yankee Stadium.

MW

Mine:

Lance Parrish, Dave Bergman, Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammell, Tom Brookens, Larry Herndon, Chet Lemon, Kirk Gibson, Jack Morris, Milt Wilcox, Dan Petry, Juan Berenguer, Dave Rozema, Doug Bair, Willie Hernandez, Aurelio Lopez.

[Mr. Ypsi]

Yep, I remember those guys, though that is before my time as even a tepid Tiger fan (I grew up in Peoria, IL, as a Cardinal fan).  But #1 I was a Mickey Mantle fan, and thus a Yankee fan - so I hated Frank Lary!

Back then I was a HUGE baseball fan - while I couldn't rattle them off anymore, I probably once knew every player on every team from the late 50s to mid-60s.  While I have forgiven the poor old lady, I used to give my mom a hard time - after I went to college, she threw out my baseball card collection!  As I pointed out to her, it was probably worth more today than my house!  (I had SIX Mantle rookies, 2 Maris rookies, a Jackie Robinson rookie - you get the picture!)

Too many strikes, too many steroids, individualism, greed, ...; my love of the game has been pretty much completely destroyed.  To me, the single-season HR record still belongs to Maris, and (barring a REAL home run era) the career HR record will probably forever be 1. Hammerin' Hank, 2. the Babe, ...

[Mr. Ypsi]

Pat,

The previous post was, of course, responding to Dennis.  It's pretty hard for even a fairweather fan to forget the 1984 line-up!

My personal favorite (even though he was largely a bust other than 1984) was Senor Smoke.  And I think that HoF voters may be exacerbating the tendency towards personal glory and theatrics - it is a CRIME that Trammell and Whittaker are not in Cooperstown (IMO, because they were quiet guys who just did their job).

[Pat Coleman]

Agree re: Trammell and Whitaker.

And not just because I was a 12-year-old middle infielder in 1984.

[gordonmann]

I'm a pretty big Tigers fan.  And I'm disappointed with the way Trammel's tenure went as manager.

But I'm not sure either he or Sweet Lou are Cooperstown material.  It's not an exact criteria, but I always think of guys who dominated at their position for a significant amount of time in that category.  I'm not sure either could say they did that.

[BeastMaster]

I'm receiving word that Millikin has received its first committment from Seneca's 6'8" Robert Rexroade!!!!! This is a great recruit for the Big Blue!!!!

[BeastMaster]

Millikin has also received a verbal from Meridian's 6'5" Heath Houser.  An Athletic "3" for the Blue who can jump out of the gym.  Things keep on looking up 

[David Collinge]

1968:  Bill Freehan, "Stormin'" Norman Cash, Dick McAuliffe, Ray Oyler, Dick Wert (immortalized on every typewriter keyboard), Willie Horton, Jim Northrup, Mickey Stanley, Al Kaline.  Denny McLain, Mickey Lolich, Earl Wilson, Joe Sparma.  Stanley playing short in the World Series so Kaline's bat could be in the lineup (rather than Oyler's.)  Lolich beating Bob Gibson (1.12 ERA) in Game 7.  A bright memory from an otherwise terrible year in American history.

Trammell might be a marginal candidate for HoF enshrinement, but not Lou Whitaker.  The Hall is overpopulated as it is; no room for career .276 hitters with only above-average gloves.

Note to Ypsi:  since you are strictly a "fair weather" fan of Detroit pro sports, you might be surprised to learn that the Detroit Lions are still in business. 

[True Basketball Fan]

This is big news, as Dwyer is going to be a CCIW stud.  He is just a fantastic leader on the floor - I saw him play dozens of H.S. games.  I can just about guarantee that Dwyer will start at the point for the Titans next year.  Can the Gilmore kid play the 2?? 

Big land for Trost and Titans.   IWU has their next Adam Dauksas.

Next Adam Dauksas?  So, he's going to be a 2-Time 1ST TEAM All-American?  I highly doubt that.  He will be good, but All-American is a stretch.  Sorry if this offends you, Augiedad, but you sound like one of those arrogant IWU fans.

[Gregory Sager]

Is that Cyrus Shelton from Moline? Wow, there's a name out of the past. He played a little bit as a junior on Moline's 2000-01 state quarterfinalist team (with Jay McAdams-Thornton and Travis Hoyt). He didn't play at Moline as a senior and last I knew he played some at Southeastern CC in '04-05. I really don't recall too much about him, it'll be interesting to see how he does for the Vikings.

One and the same. He came to NPU this past year because his best friend is Vikings soccer star Darryl Payne. Shelton's been described in basketball terms as "athletic, but a bit undisciplined." I'm not sure where he'll fit into the scheme of things next year for the Park, but I suspect that things are wide-open enough for him to get a shot in fall practice at proving himself worthy of varsity PT.

I can't for the life of me remember the last time that NPU has had a player from the QC. I'll have to throw this one over to the Prike. The closest that they've come in my memory was Sterling's Jason Austin back in the late nineties (Jason's now the principal at the elementary school there). And even I, a city slicker who thinks that everything west of Aurora is "Iowa", know that Sterling is not quite far enough out there to qualify as the QC.

(Of course, the NPU women's basketball team has had a player from the QC for the past four years -- and a very good one, at that -- in East Moline United's Shandrel Young.

[Gregory Sager]

Greg, just an FYI I don't live anywhere near Hollywood... I'm like 1.5 hours away from LA. (in my head that's merely most of the way from Wheaton to Bloomington or Whitewater which is why I ended up at so many SCIAC games this year). Culturewise, I live in Southern California Wine country. There are 12+ wineries on the way from work to my house (which is a 14 mile drive). There are also apparently above average golf courses, and orchards and horse farms. Jokes to make fun of those would be more appropriate than the Hollywood ones.... such as the irony of a "community covenant" Wheatie moving to wine country.

It wasn't a "Hollywood" joke as much as a general nod in the direction of all the La-La-Land stereotypes we heartlanders harbor so fondly. I'd recommend that you rent Sideways to see if they fit your locale, but I'm not sure that you'd like that movie. And, given SoCal freeway traffic, "1.5 hours away from LA" is, what, twenty or thirty miles?

One thing that isn't ironic, however, is the ever-earnest gullibility with which you've once again taken one of my incredibly lame jokes at face value and dissected it like it was a Bio 101 fetal pig.  You can take the girl out of Wheaton, but you can't take Wheaton out of the girl. We are a classic case of role reversal -- I'm the midwesterner and you're the SoCalian, so I ought to be the wide-eyed naif and you ought to be the hard-bitten cynic. Right?

And, actually, David, Hollywood now appears to be trying to sell the gritty image of L.A. rather than the air-kisses-and-Pellegrino version (e.g., Crash and Collateral). Judging by the box office totals of the past few years, my impression is that Flyover U.S.A. is not that much interested in any version of reality that Hollywood is selling at the moment.