I-95 sports franchises “just a bit” overrated

Contrary to what the Keith Olbermanns, Jeremy Schaaps and Tony Kornheisers of the world would have you think, I-95 is not the center of the sports universe. Some casual research will tell you that I-95 teams have a total of nine championships to their credit in the four major sports over the past ten years - in other words, nine championships over a cumulative forty professional seasons. Take away Boston and the numbers are even worse. There have been no NBA championships despite having the Knicks, Celtics, Wizards etc. shoved down our throats. Only one hockey championship – hmm, that backwater Tampa Bay has that many. Baseball and football do a little better but again one community, San Francisco, has just one fewer pennant than the I-95 core combined and the city of Pittsburgh has half as many Super Bowl wins as I-95 inclusive. Then, of course, there are Indianapolis, Green Bay, Seattle and all those other unimportant cities. The point the ESPN and other talking heads don’t get is the ’27 Yanks are dead, so is Red Auerbach and it’s rumored that Broadway Joe has retired. And there are about a couple dozen other states where they play the sport – and win.

Around the bay:

1. Lot of turmoil in Hillsborough County about privatizing misdemeanor probations – bad idea. Pinellas was just as misguided in pulling their program away from a non-profit (Salvation Army) and trying to turn it into a county profit center on the backs of people they are impoverishing. Not sure which is worst, but neither is even close to good.

2. Sometimes you wonder what the founding fathers of certain institutions would think if they saw their corporate children today. For instance, what would Walt Disney think about 2015’s Disney World? Or George Jenkins about today’s Publix? Or Henry Ford about the Focus, the Mustang and the Taurus - just wondering.

3. Item: former Tampa police chief Jane Castor has changed party affiliations from Republican to Democratic. Are we the only ones who were surprised Castor was not already a “D”?

4. Hard to realize that summer officially began last week. Seems like it started the day we filed our taxes.

5. You’ve lived in Pinellas County a long time if you remember when they actually had packing houses in Largo – giving rise to its sport team’s nickname.

The diamond, the media and other stuff:

6. Hmm…just checking. Last we looked, Ray’s shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera was one point below the Mendoza line while the man he replaced, Yunel Escobar, was hitting a robust .316 for the Washington Nationals.

7. Remember how old you felt when there were no longer any major league ballplayers older than you? How about when there are no major league managers older than you?

8. David Ortiz recently pulled even with Stan Musial and Willie Stargell for career home runs. Difference is “The Man” and “Pops” were complete players patrolling the field virtually every day of their career as opposed to Ortiz’ four hacks then back to the clubhouse regimen.

9. Just thinking with the auto racing season at full throttle, has there ever been a greater race car driver than A. J. Foyt?

10. San Francisco is moving towards requiring some sort of warning on all print soda ads in the city - dangers of sugar, etc. They follow New York with its try at limiting the size of a soda you could buy in Gotham. Both these cities have far, far more pressing problems to deal with than sugary drinks.

When the media was a proud profession

Your humble blogger used to be proud of the fact that he held a degree in Mass Communications. As a young man, he looked up to people like David Brinkley and Vin Scully and Earl Nightingale. Today, you wonder what happened to that once proud profession. The airwaves are jammed with Rush Limbaugh, Rachel Maddow and Al Sharpton to name only three of the worst. On the print side, you have the spin doctors of St. Pete, the Washington Post and the once proud New York Times. Then there’s the laughable “PoliticaFact”, or whatever they call it, which only proves the old adage that figures don’t lie, but liars figure. So, for the rest of my life, let me just say I majored in junk bond manipulation in college. It seems a much nobler profession.