A weekly look at the Tampa Bay area and national politics from a conservative viewpoint – plus a helping of sports and lifestyle items. Warning: not everything printed here should be taken at face value.

Orlando makes way too much sense for baseball

Pat Williams, a heavy hitter on the Orlando sports scene, wants to bring major league baseball to Orlando – at last a Florida market that makes sense for the National Pastime. It has been calculated if somewhere around two to two and a half percent of Orlando’s visitors attended one game; an Orlando ball club would draw right at two-million before a local ever entered the park. The Marlins have drawn over two million once since their honeymoon opening year – the Rays never. Stadium? Well, the very attractive Disney Stadium was constructed so as to allow for a second deck or, believe it or not, there’s still a lot of vacant land in the Orlando area that would comfortably hold a stadium. It would take some time to bring everything together – say seven years or so – that would be 2027. There’s something familiar about that date.

Great Tampa Bay, politics and stuff:

1. One cannot measure the effect David Straz had on the Tampa Bay community. His legacy will live on for generations.

2. Good for Clearwater city councilman Bob Cundiff – the only no vote on an ill- advised and premature bond issue for Imagine Clearwater. Council members need to step back and take the pulse of their constituents before rushing ahead with the bayfront project.

3. Idle thought: Dunkin is cutting back on the use of foam cups. What most Americans need is to cut back on the use of Dunkin.

4. In related note, we are now officially in the holiday season; don’t forget to set your scales back ten pounds this week.

5. You’ve lived in the bay area (or anywhere else) a long time if you remember the rugged Marlboro Man, Joe Camel or Willie the Kool’s penguin.

Sports, media and other stuff:

6. The answer – Tim Anderson of the White Sox. The question – who lead the American League in hitting this past season? Bet you could win some wagers with that piece of information.

7. Who ya got in the FSU or USF coaching sweepstakes?

8. Folks who bemoan the stranglehold southern teams have had on the National Championship recently forget the 80s when not a team from the deep south won the championship for almost a decade. These things run in cycles.

9. Lyric of the week: With no name pitchers and local bands and mustard and relish and all the rest. (Alabama’s Cheap Seats). MLB needs to think long and hard about the proposal being floated to eliminate about 25 per cent of minor league teams and the effects that would have on mid-sized communities.

10. Idle thought as we sit approximately 75 days from pitchers and catchers – if you’re a baseball fan and haven’t been to Cooperstown, what’s holding you up? Other than attending a World Series game, it‘s our biggest baseball thrill.

A Christmas book of sorts

There is very little mention of the Jolly Old Elf, but the setting is the Christmas season of 1941. The subject is the first meeting of Roosevelt and Churchill after Pearl Harbor. The book One Christmas in Washington depicts how America and Great Britain figuratively went to war with each other before eventually uniting to defeat the Axis powers in World War II. The book depicts the super-egos of Roosevelt and Churchill along with their various functionaries laboriously pounding out a global blueprint of men, materiel and strategy to execute the war while at the White House over the holidays. Canadian authors David Bercuson and Holger Herwig do a fine job of profiling the players on both sides of the Allied conference and rightfully pointing out that is neither Roosevelt or Churchill but George Marshall, whose steady hand and, to some degree, temper brought the allies together to shape the strategy for their eventual victory.

NEXT WEEK: Kurt Browning; USF football; Not those Tornadoes      

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