Random nuggets of information

Andy Pettitte, in my opinion should be in the Hall Of Fame. If your baseball team has one game to win, he was the guy you wanted pitching. Pettitte may not have the greatest numbers, but 19 playoff wins is the all time mark. Clemens and Randy Johnson may have been better regular season pitchers, but with one game to win it all, no one in baseball was as clutch as Pettitte.


That being said, Pettitte most likely wont be inducted. There is a clear anti-Yankee bias in large parts of the media, and that will contribute to it. The confessed HGH use will also hurt. Too much for him to overcome, but he is deserving.

Everyone’s mad at Amy Chua. Her book, “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” is stirring debate and getting people angry because of her take no prisoners approach to raising her kids. Ms. Chua, who is Chinese American, a Yale University educated lawyer and mother of two, has even pissed off Chinese parents (!) with her scorched earth mindset. The online zine The Root has an article about it here.
I wonder what her critics would say if a West Indian parent ever wrote a similar book and ‘exposed’ the secrets to the success of people from the Caribbean? (Hint it generally starts with a sturdy belt at an early age…) You will notice in her recent Wall Street Journal article that Ms. Chua mentioned Jamaican parents-this woman knows of which she speaks!



While I may be in the minority here, I am more disgusted by the allegations against Roethlisberger than I am the crimes committed by Michael Vick. I say that not to trivialize what Vick did, but because I strongly feel that Ben got off lightly. I also think that his alleged crimes are infinitely more damaging to society as a whole than anything Vick did. I cannot root for a team led by Roethlisberger to succeed. For that reason alone I’m supporting the Green Bay Packers to win the Super Bowl.

The Middle East is still ablaze, and there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. I hope the fight for progress and democracy spreads to Iran and I hope no more blood is shed, God willing.

The final thought on the NY Jets season: They were a better team than the Steelers, but they greatest strength was their biggest undoing-the emotional approach to the game. They rode that emotion to victory over New England, and rightly so. They couldn’t summon the needed intensity for the Steelers and came out flat and got steamrolled. And even with that, there wasn’t a soul watching the closing minutes of that game vs. Pittsburgh that didn’t feel they were going to come back and win…they blew an opportunity to get to the Super Bowl because they were up and down in the game, and up and down all season. That’s what emotion does, takes you on a roller coaster ride. If they ever channel that energy into a consistent pattern of play game after game, year after year, they will be winners.

And they would be the Patriots…