TERRE HAUTE — Having glanced up from my arduous work for just a few seconds Monday night — and seeing mostly commercials as a result — I have decided to make a comeback.
If I can only limber up my aging left arm enough to be able to throw a baseball 50 or 60 feet — I noticed the guys Monday weren’t on the mound either — surely I can be hired as a Home Run Derby pitcher. I know I wouldn’t walk as many as the guys would have Monday — you’re trying to let them hit it! — and from past experience I’m sure I could get lit up like a Christmas tree.
Maybe they’d even let me wear my glove on my belt.
I enter the All-Star break having a stress-free major league season, however, which may strike some as a surprise. The Cubs have managed to stumble past the midpoint of their schedule with a .500 record, meaning they’ve essentially wasted the first three months of the season.
(Wait for it.)
Yes, and the last 101 years too.
(Rim shot.)
But I’ve known all this was coming since about February; I just wasn’t aware of the details. As soon as all the baseball experts started talking about how the Cubs merely had to show up to win their division and could spend the entire year setting themselves up for the playoffs, I wrote them off.
Many of you can probably remember the disastrous 1985 season, when the Cubs were supposed to have been shoo-ins after blowing a two-game lead in a best-of-five series to San Diego the year before, but my parallel goes back farther than that.
This team reminds me of the Cubs in about 1971 or 1972, when they were still trying to recapture the magic of 1969 (or at least its first four months) and were getting older and older without getting better. What’s worse about this team is that most of its geezers are locked into long-term contracts that make them untradeable, which could indicate that in a couple of years we’ll be looking back at 2009 as the good old days.
Tickets at Wrigley might soon become easier to get. Maybe they’ll win it when I turn 100.
(Wait for it.)
Yes JoJo, I know that time is not that far off.
(Cymbals.)
Right now my baseball hopes are wrapped up in hoping Joe Thatcher gets recalled again by the Padres, so maybe I can finagle good seats for that upcoming Padres-Nationals series that’s sure to be a hot ticket.
Yes, you won’t be hearing from me next week, because Jenny and I will be visiting our nation’s capital. We plan to fix the government, stimulate the economy (her department) and bring about world peace.
Then after lunch, we’ll probably go sight-seeing.
• • •
Couple of other things:
• Phenoms — I’m still kicking myself for not getting to Rea Park soon enough to watch Hannah McGee actually play tennis (her matches didn’t seem to last very long) in the Mary Ann Stadler Memorial last weekend, but at least I had a nice chat with her and her father.
Hannah isn’t the only up-and-comer at her school, she pointed out to me. Another girl there who still isn’t in high school yet played in the U.S. Women’s Open that weekend.
• Honor — Cheryl Weatherman is one of the members of Inspiring Women, Class of 2009, who will be honored July 30 at an Indiana Fever game.
The former Terre Haute South volleyball coach and South Vermillion principal probably still remembers me as one of the idiots who used to yell at her when she was officiating Indiana State women’s basketball back in the old gym on Seventh Street; there’s no doubt she’s one of the pioneers of girls sports in Indiana.
Others in the class include Jan Conner, who needs no introduction; Judi Warren, the first Miss Basketball and later the coach at Carmel; Cinda Brown, longtime coach at Rushville; Donna Cheatham, ditto at Scottsburg; Linda Barnett, whose Clinton Central team beat Jennifer Turner and Terre Haute North for the North Montgomery Regional championship a few years ago; and Patty Broderick, another longtime official who would probably recognize my voice.
Great job, ladies.
• Medals — Joel Whittington, preparing for his junior year at Northview right now, is back from Australia where he competed in track and field on a trip sponsored by DownUnder Sports.
He won a gold medal in the 300 hurdles, a bronze in the 110 hurdles and was a finalist in both the 200 and 400. Great job to you too, Joel.
• A volunteer no more — Former South Vermillion linebacker/running back Keith Montecillo, currently a student at South Plains Junior College at Lubbock, Tex., has moved up from summer volunteer work in its weight room to being tight ends coach for the Escatado Matadors. The Lubbock high school is the preseason top-ranked team in its class.
Andy Amey can be reached after 4 p.m. for comments or news items at (812) 231-4277 or 1-800-783-8742; by e-mail at andy.amey@tribstar.com; by mail at P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN, 47808; or by fax at (812) 231-4321.
Amey Takes Aim
Amey Takes Aim: Making a comeback as Home Run Derby pitcher while Cubs fade
- Amey Takes Aim
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Amey Takes Aim: NHL playoffs to put TVs to good use
If Jenny had known, she probably wouldn’t have bought that TV.
But four or five years ago, my Fathers Day present — for those unfamiliar with Amey family traditions, the Fathers Day one is “let’s get something we all really want and pretend it’s a gift for Dad” — was a 42-inch Vizio. It’s been used even more than the cell phone I never would have bought for myself, or the TomTom that disappeared since Jenny’s smartphone arrived.
And it came with high-def.
I’m not going to insult you by telling you how great high-def is, because to do so would be to imply that you are even farther behind the technological curve than I am. I’m guessing, however, that not all of you have yet discovered what it does for hockey. -
Amey Takes Aim: Can’t bottle the joy of Amey vacations
The first bad sign was the Gatorade bottle.
In the Bataan-Death-March drive to Orlando that got the Amey family spring break vacation off to a bad start, seeing it between lanes of I-24 — as we zipped along at a 100-miles-in-five-hours clip — filled with an ominous yellow liquid was a little bit scary. And although we didn't stop to check for sure, I'm fairly certain I knew about its contents.
And the person stuck in the same traffic jam with us, the one with the existential license plate YMIHR4, couldn’t have asked a more pertinent question.
But, after seeing a lot more of Oak Grove, Ky., than we’d planned, and after enduring more traffic slowdowns in Nashville, we were on our way. Even some rain in the dark in the Smokies didn’t slow us down much, so you would think our first-day troubles were over.
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ANDY AMEY: Farewell to basketball
I believe you’ve heard me say before — just about a year ago, perhaps — that a boys high school basketball season that ends with the Tribune-Star in Bankers Life Fieldhouse can’t be considered a bad one, which is why we have a little celebrating to do thanks to the Linton Miners.
Lover of irony that I am, I’ve also got to point out that this season was another branch sprouting from the Wabash Valley’s most legendary coaching tree, that of Joe Hart.
Joe never got much credit for his work at Dugger, but he took Brody Boyd, Clark Golish and the Bulldogs to a state championship game in 2000, and since then three of his former players — Joe Pigg, Clint Swan and now Joey Hart, his son — also have coached teams in the final game of the season.
Joe probably wishes he could take credit for Doc Nash, another down-home type who gave a banjo lesson earlier Saturday in leading Borden past a bigger, more athletic Triton team (banjo lesson is a Howard Sharpism, for you younger readers), but his lineage is still the best I can think of around here. -
AMEY TAKES AIM: Maroons, Rox final a true Classic
I don’t make predictions nearly as often as I used to, but I had one several months ago that was proven correct last week.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Nitpicking aside, West Vigo Hall of Fame selections spot on
I can’t imagine a better first class of inductees into the West Vigo High School Athletics Hall of Fame than the one that was feted Saturday night in the Jim Mann Green Dome.
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Tough bunch of people
I’m getting my warm clothes ready for a trip to Linton this week, and if a few thrills from the Miners, Casey or North Vermillion happen the next couple of weeks, I hope I get to see them.
But high school football is over in Vigo County for the season — as coach Chris Barrett of Terre Haute North said, prematurely — and I’m sadder to see it go than usual.
Walking the sidelines and doing midweek or postgame interviews enables me to meet quite a few of the guys whose names you are about to read, and haven’t been more impressed than I was this fall. What outstanding groups of young men. What a tough, tough bunch of people.
Many know that one of my favorite athletic adjectives appeared consecutively in the previous sentence. -
AMEY TAKES AIM: A weekend to remember with ISU’s ’72 football team
They’re all still pretty hale and hearty, the boys of the fall of 1972 who returned to campus over the weekend to honor their former football coach.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: ISU reunion raises more questions than answers
One of the wrestlers I used to hang out with occasionally claimed to be a pretty good second-story man — although he may have just been talking, since I never saw any of the goods — and it was with him in mind that I was able to get access to the Indiana State Wrestling Alumni Reunion late Saturday night.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Deciding not to ‘vacate’ during ‘vacation’ – & other ventures
Flaunting the law, setting a bad example for the kids in other ways, grooming and acquiring dogs … not a typical Amey family vacation, but an appreciated one just the same.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Huntsville’s Stars, Havoc take back seat to GGS
The second-best thing about the Amey family’s spring-break trip to Huntsville, Ala., is that we left a lot of things on the table to do the next time we’re down there.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Rox well represented on Amey teams
If having the state finals in town makes it a successful girls high school basketball season, then certainly having a team to follow at the state finals makes it a very successful boys high school basketball season . . .
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AMEY TAKES AIM: A feeling of pride, not disappointment, comes from watching Rox play
It’s not going to come as a startling admission that I — once the rest of the local opposition has been eliminated from consideration — am an unabashed fan of whatever team the Wabash Valley sends onward in postseason high school sports competition.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: This private school plays basketball the right way
Any girls high school basketball season that ends with state championship games in Hulman Center is a pretty good one — even though I wished I’d seen Riverton Parke and Seeger knock off a couple of private schools the week before to even the public school-private school battle a little bit.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Even 2 of state’s best once had doubts
Look at them now.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Getting ready for the dance
Terre Haute North got the good news Sunday night — or did it?
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Harrowing path for state hopefuls
The bad news is that the winner of Class 4A Sectional 13 in boys basketball heads northeast instead of southeast for regional play in March — to Hinkle Fieldhouse instead of Seymour as a result of Indiana High School Athletic Association’s changes.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: A superior all-star arrangement
I don’t work on Wednesdays, so I wasn’t able to attend the first Wabash Valley Football Coaches Association draft last week to set up the annual all-star game that will be June 23 this year.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: The biggest & baddest of a holiday classic
There are more things to love about the Pizza Hut Wabash Valley Classic than could fit in this newspaper, but one of this year’s best things was that for an hour or so on Wednesday, it was Justin Paddock’s world and we were just living in it.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Taking note of ISU’s latest football win
The biggest difference I’ve noticed, as I transition from the high school football beat to quasi-official status as the Indiana State football beat writer for a few weeks, is the length of the games.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: IHSAA playoff draw not as bad as it could have been
First reaction to the Indiana sectional football pairings drawn late Sunday by the Indiana High School Athletic Association? It could have been a lot worse.
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ANDY AMEY: Between the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & a hard place
Just in case any of you noticed — with some anticipation — the recent lack of my bylines, I can tell you that your wish (and mine) did come true. It was vacation week for the Amey family.
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Amey Takes Aim: UFC fighter’s bloodines traced back to ISU brothers
As a mild-mannered reporter from a great metropolitan newspaper — or thereabouts — I admit I haven’t paid much attention to the burgeoning mixed martial arts scene.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Predators’ win is music to new fan’s ears
For many, many years, the number of live games televised on WGN has been cited as perhaps the main reason for the popularity of the Chicago Cubs (it’s got to be something besides masochism, right?).
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AMEY TAKES AIM: You’ll be having a good ol’ time on vacation with the Ameys
When one of the first people you meet is Tammy Wynette’s stepdaughter, when you’ve stepped on the feet of people you haven’t met while trying to navigate Ernest Tubbs’ old Silver Eagle tour bus, and when the activities director of your resort is, well, Elvis, you might be vacationing in Nashville.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: The Annual All-Amey basketball teams close out the prep season
The most encouraging boys high school basketball event I’ve attended so far in 2011 has been the Lafayette Semistate a couple of weeks ago.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Family remembers Cheryl Weatherman as caring grandmother
As far as Riley and Keely Davis are concerned, Cheryl Weatherman was simply their grandmother, and a pretty darn good one at that.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Honor to see Turkey Run girls close out memorable career
I don’t know if anyone in this part of the state could actually say they enjoy going to Fort Wayne and back, but I was glad to see the Turkey Run Warriors play one last time during the girls basketball state finals Saturday.
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So many matches, so many favorites
Go ahead, ask me anything about the 224 wrestlers who competed last week at the Indiana state finals — or at least about the 112 wrestlers who survived Saturday’s first round.
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ANDY TAKES AIM: A sportwriters’s lament: Oh, the games we missed
I was already tired of winter by the time that first bitterly cold snap passed through in mid-December, so it’s safe to say the season hasn’t grown on me.
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AMEY TAKES AIM: Time of the season for teams to tough it out
In the last month or so I figure I’ve seen at least four boys high school basketball teams with legitimate state-championship dreams as the season heads into its dog days.
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