Don't look ahead...

When the National Football League season was announced last spring, there was much sadness among fans of the Buffalo Bills. Fans looked over the week-by-week lineup and said the Bills looked like a candidate to capture the first overall draft choice for the spring of 2008.

Then a funny thing happened. Teams started to play games.

Here we are at the midpoint of the season in Buffalo, and the Bills are 4-4. They aren't going to the Super Bowl, but they are on the fringes of playoff contention. So what happened?

People used the 2006 as a way of predicting what would happen in 2007. And that never works. Teams go up and down the ladder quickly these days, what with injuries, free agent movement, etc.

In the Bills' case, Buffalo has beaten the Jets twice. New York was a playoff team last year and looked too strong for the Bills in April. Now the Jets don't look too strong for anyone, except for maybe the Dolphins and Rams. The Bills also beat a weakened Ravens team, playing without its starting quarterback and some other key people, and a Bengals team that seems to have an arrest every few days (I exaggerate, but not much). That puts Buffalo at 4-4, and it hasn't even played the Dolphins yet.

I know football fans need something to do in the spring -- witness the popularity of the run-up to the NFL draft, even though one trade can change the entire mock draft order -- but let's keep the ups and downs of teams from year-to-year in mind before writing off a season.

Growing pains...

A man named Joseph was working at Iowa State University in the late 1800's. He was considered the leading horticulturist in the country, having practically invented the science. In fact, something like 75 percent of the nation's horticulture chairmen at universities of the time either studied under him or were said to be inspired by him. The government fsent him to Russia at one point to study plants there and to see if any could be brought to grow in the harsher climates of the U.S.

Joseph had a daughter, Etta, who taught art at Simpson College in Iowa. Etta ran into a student who was a young black man, the son of slaves. He loved to paint but also loved gardening, and Etta got him gardening jobs in the area. Etta told the man that he couldn't make a living at art, that gardening was a much better option, and that he should head to Iowa State to study under her dad.

The man did that. However, he was unhappy the day Etta dropped in to see him. The problem was that, as the only black student on campus, he had to eat alone in the kitchen while the white students all ate in the dining hall. So Etta simply took the man into the dining room, and started eating with him, day after day, until the man was accepted by the rest of the student body.
The man graduated from Iowa State, went to grad school there, and became the first black teacher in Iowa State history before moving on to another job.

It's funny what happens when you plug in names from your family tree into Google. The original teacher was Joseph Lancaster Budd, a relatively distant relative. His daughter was Etta May Budd. And the student was George Washington Carver.

You can't be Sirius

Here's the latest reason why sometime it is difficult to take radio talk show hosts seriously.

When the New York Mets failed to qualify for the playoffs in uproarious fashion, SportsNet New York's Daily News Live program devoted plenty of post-mortems on it. When one of the panelists was asked how that compared to Boston's 1978 collapse, he responded by saying that there's no way he'd ever say anything was worse than the Red Sox loss, because it involved Boston. Scott Ferrell was identified as working on Sirius radio.

Fast forward a few days later to a different show -- same guy is interviewed. Ferrell is asked how the Mets' collapse ranked. He said it was the worst ever.

How's that for insight? Give different answers to the same question. Good going, Scott. Way to put a match to your own credibility.

Listing in a new direction

A short note on the life of someone who is about to become a co-author of a book:

Rob Ray and I teamed up for a short autobiography -- more of a memoir, even if I don't understand the difference -- that is coming out in November. I've been checking the Amazon.com boards for the past few weeks to see how it looks. Amazon doesn't have the right cover picture up, but the title is right and the price is right (Check it out at http://sportsbooks.homestead.com/Rayzor.html.).

The fun part is that Amazon.com has a best seller list, broken down to great extremes. The book popped up a while ago around #75 on the best seller list for hockey, which was pretty exciting in of itself. Then the other night, it went up and up by the hour, it seemed. It peaked at #10 for hockey and #23 for winter sports books, which isn't bad for a book that isn't due out until mid-November.

Now, there's a scene in the Tom Hanks-directed movie, "That Thing You Do!", when a band comes out with a single and its members hear the song on the radio for the first time. And they start screaming.

That's exactly how I felt when I saw #10. For at hour at least, I had a "best-selling hockey book." I didn't scream, but it would have been worth it.

Hopefully, more thrills are coming in the weeks ahead.

(P.S. It went as high as #2 on the hockey list around the end of September, but soon sunk off the top 100 several days later. Guess we'll actually have to publish a book to keep sales going.)

Flash of insight

Sometimes perspective comes when you least expect it.

The other day I was walking around the local supermarket, doing the week's food shopping. Along the way I passed a man in his mid-20's, at least. He was wearing a baseball uniform top of a major league team and a hat of the same team.

And the thought struck me: Boy, does that guy look stupid.

Should you really be wearing half of a major league uniform in a market if you are over the age of, say, 12? Is your life that empty? Do you expect the big league to sign you for tomorrow's game, and you don't want to pack?

I've got nothing against the shirts themselves -- they are very appropriate at games, in sports bars, and other sports-related activities. And I've got nothing against baseball caps; I wear one all the time ... except when I'm in my tuxedo.

But for the most part, here's a reminder to keep those shirts in the closet. And the same applies to other sports gear as well. Sports fans have enough trouble with non-fans thinking they need to get a life without that sort of apparel in the supermarket.

Another note from the late shift...

Here's a story with a rather cruel twist.

When you get home at 1 a.m. from work, it's always fun to see what's on the television dial at that hour. One of the small local stations in town often runs an informercial from Dr. Gene Scott. Dr. Scott usually speaks of some issue of religious significance. A younger woman, Melissa, often is on as well.

I'd usually speed right through that sort of programming, but I have found myself stopping for a look because Dr. Scott often appears to be very sickly. Tonight, I visited the web site, drgenescott.com, and took a look around.

There was a surprise waiting for me under his biography. Dr. Scott was born in 1929, and died in 2005. So he passed away more than two years ago. Pastor Melissa Scott is his widow.

There's a moral in there somewhere, probably about me not jumping to conclusions. Because they probably are wrong.

The Colonel

Allow me to tell you about Arthur Budd, my great-grand-uncle.

Budd grew up in Connecticut and joined the armed forces for World War I. He led a group of soldiers who practically liberated a town in France (Tannay) by themselves. The grateful town put up a statue to honor him, and named a street after him. Budd ended the war as the second-most decorated soldier on the American side, behind some guy named Pershing.

Returning home, he married the widow of a doctor and eventually retired to an estate east of Pittsfield. He apparently lived happily ever after, dying in 1965 and leaving his property to a land conservancy.

The fun part came when we paid a visit to the estate, Notchview. The place is now mostly used for cross-country skiing, and we found the Arthur Budd Visitor Center. The caretaker took good care of us, impressed that we were related and had come to see the place. We were given a book on the history of the estate, which included a lengthy biography of Budd. We read about the 24-room mansion that had been on the grounds (later torn down; too expensive to keep up), and how Arthur had left an estate of more than $2 million, including thousands of shares of Kodak stock.

After walking around, we were given instructions to the nearby cemetery. It didn't look like it had received a visitor lately, as the gate was rusted shut. So we hopped the fence and said hello to Arthur and Helen. The funny part was, Arthur had this small little headstone that reflected his military background. Helen, meanwhile, had a headstone the size of a small house. OK, I exaggerate, but not much. Helen also was 17 years older than Arthur, which might explain the lack of children.

My mother said the family used to brag about "The Colonel," but she wondered if everyone was blowing his accomplishments out of proportion. Apparently not. The best part of the genealogy stuff is finding out interesting stories about interesting people, and this was a good one.

Guess I'll have to go to Tanney now.