SeeperSports

Thank you to my teammate Michael Evans for a great fall season. We won the Sunday No-Tap league championship at Midway Lanes in Vestal, N.Y. This season, I also won my seventh high-average title.

I thought the recent Ohio State-USC game (for which I was very fortunate to score tickets) was a good reason to revive this blog. Even though the Buckeyes lost, I'm happy that I was able to attend the game.

In the last two days, I have been reading a lot of post-game coverage, and it seems that many people are blaming the OSU coaching staff for the team's 18-15 loss. Head coach Jim Tressel is a convenient - and justified - target; however, you win as a team and lose as a team. He can't take all the blame. If the Buckeyes had won, I wouldn't have given him all the credit. The offense and the defense had their chances to put the game away, and neither was able to get the job done. You let a team like USC hang around long enough and, chances are, you're going to come away with a loss.

At this point, I'm not going to be one of these doomsday bloggers who says the Buckeyes are in complete disarray. The program is merely adequate. OSU will win Big Ten titles and beat Michigan with regularity. But, when it's for all the wheat against a big out-of-conference opponent, the OSU faithful will walk away disappointed. Adequate and elite are two different things. For all the resources the program has, OSU should be elite.

I knew this was going to be trouble as soon as I heard it: During the New York Mets' game on Saturday night, former Met and current broadcaster Keith Hernandez said, during the gamecast, women "don't belong in the dugout".

That came after he spotted a woman in the San Diego Padres dugout; as it turns out, she's the team's massage therapist. She and the Padres' manager both took offense to the comment.

Hernandez tried to clean it up by saying "I won't say that women belong in the kitchen, but they don't belong in the dugout...You know I am only teasing. I love you gals out there - always have."

What a weak attempt to atone for a purely boneheaded comment. While anything can happen during a live broadcast, and things can slip out, a broadcaster should have a better internal filtering system.

I've been away for a while. You may have noticed. It's an understatement to say things have been busy.

By this time next month, I'll be living in a new place here in the Binghamton area and will have a new job. As I've been getting ready for this transition, I just haven't had the time and energy to work on this site.

At this point, I'd like to keep SeeperSports going; however, the updates may not be as frequent.

I'm one of the few people who faithfully watches Denny's PBA Tour telecasts each weekend on ESPN. Instead of taping yesterday's cast and watching it later, as I usually do, I passed altogether.

The Tournament of Champions used to have real appeal. In the past, the entire season built up to this event. There was no question about it: that was the biggest tournament of the year. The current PBA ownership has built more hype around the other major events, and the prestige of this tournament has diminished.

For years, the T of C was held annually at Riviera Lanes, near Akron, Ohio. Watching this tournament as a teenager in the New York City area, I never thought I'd get to see this historic place. While living in Ohio, I had occasion to pass through the Akron area, and didn't miss the chance to play a few practice games at Riviera. Now, the tournament is held in Connecticut, so there's no sense of mystique or history.

On top of that, this year's final didn't really have any players I'd really go out of my way to watch. In particular, I had no desire to watch Chris Barnes. He used to be bowling's Phil Mickelson, a hard luck story. Close to greatness, but no cigar. However, after a few major victories, Barnes has been ripped by fans as being arrogant. He's no longer a sympathetic figure.

Phil Mickelson won his second Masters title earlier today. Is there any better story in golf? Here's a guy whom most people had written off as unable to win when it really counted. Not only did he break through and win a green jacket in 2004, but he's won the event twice in the last three years.

Stories like this are uplifting. It provides hope for all of us who are waiting for a big break, or some major positive life change. You wait for years, hoping your luck will change, and then it's better than you could've even imagined.

I'm sure Phil would've been happy with only one green jacket, and two in a span of three years is more than he ever could have asked for.

File this under: "We're going to pay for it, one way or the other".

Yesterday, the New York Mets released their plans for a new stadium; it will be built in Queens near Shea Stadium. Private investment will cover $550 million of the construction costs. New York City will contribute $90 million, while the state is kicking in $75 million.

I had to send in a payment when I recently completed our family's New York State tax return. We know where part of that money is going.

I'm all for private investment. If a team wants a new stadium, it should find a way to pay for that. However, I fully expect that cost would be passed onto me and others in the form of higher ticket prices.