Memories

I had lunch with baseball writer Jim Kaplan a while ago, who is working on a book about Warren Spahn and Juan Marichal. I mentioned in passing that it must be tough to make sure when working on a book that people's memories are accurate years and years after the fact.

Let me present an excellent example of that.

Mike Harrington and I were talking about the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame inductions earlier this week. He said he had read a story about Phil Housley's wife, who was delivering a baby in Buffalo during a famous Duke basketball game in the NCAA basketball tournament. Then Mike sent me a link to Karin's story, which you can find here.

If you don't want to read the whole thing, Karin Housley was dropped off by Phil while he was on his way to playing Pittsburgh at the Aud for a key afternoon game. Karin was waiting to have the baby and was in enough pain to wish bad things for Christian Laettner, whose game was on television in the hospital. She suffered to the point where the baby was nicknamed "Duke," even though it was a girl. And the Housleys ran into Laettner on the way to the Hall of Fame dinner in Buffalo years later.

We all know about the 1992 NCAA game between Duke and Kentucky, in which Laettner hit a shot at the buzzer after a long pass from Grant Hill to win one of the greatest games in history. I read Karin's story, which is connected in folklore by some to the Duke-Kentucky game. I thought, something doesn't add up here.

For starters, Housley was traded by the Sabres to Winnipeg in the summer of 1990. So Karin couldn't have been giving birth in Buffalo in 1992 -- at least with Phil as a Sabre.

And, just to add to the confusion, Pittsburgh never played in Buffalo in March during Laettner's career at Duke.

Hmmm. Well, Laettner had one other very famous moment in the NCAAs at Duke. He hit a shot off an out-of-bounds play against UConn to move the Blue Devils into the final four. That was an overtime game too. It was on March 24, 1990.

Except, the Sabres were off that day. Duke did play the first two games of the tournament on days when the Sabres were home -- including a Sunday game on March 18 against Winnipeg. That could have been an afternoon game, although I can't prove it right now. Duke beat St. John's by four points.

Duke also made it to the Final Four in 1989, albeit in less exciting circumstances. There is a match for one tournament game by Duke with a Sabre home games, but it was a Friday night -- no chance of an afternoon game there.

I'd guess that the Winnipeg game was the one in question -- even if it wasn't a crucial game in determining a playoff spot (the Sabres had wrapped up a berth early that year). There's an obviously a way to figure this out for sure -- ask Housley's daughter for her birthdate.

But this is why we have fact-checkers ... and why books can take years to write.

Tilting at windmills

There has been plenty of conversation around Western New York about converting our constant wind into energy, and how Wyoming County is actually doing that. That doesn't mean I had actually seen it happen.

Until Sunday.

I was driving home Route 20A near Varysburg when suddenly these big machines started to appear in the distance, looking like something from "War of the Worlds." We took a side trip down one road and took the picture above; you can get a bit of a perspective how big they are by comparing them to the farm house. We went a few miles down the road that goes along the top of the hill, and must have run into 50 or so windmills.

I'm not sure I'd want to live next door to one for some reason, but we'll probably be seeing more of them in the future.

Literacy test

It was a rare Sunday afternoon off in the Bailey household, so my wife and I had the chance to visit Letchworth State Park along the mighty Genesee. I'd never been in the fall, and even though the colors were a little past peak they were still beautiful.

Sure, I could show you a picture of the gorge and impress you, but I have a travel site for that. Instead, take a look at the photo above. (You can click on it to make it bigger.) I took it by the parking lot above the Upper Falls of the park. Consider it a literacy test. What does the sign say? And what are the people behind the sign doing?

The path goes up to the railroad track, which goes on a bridge over the gorge. The bridge is not designed for pedestrians, so there's no guardrail. One slip on a surface hit by a fall rain the day before and you are part of the river a few hundred feet below. It's also a working railroad track (I saw a train go on a few minutes before this). In other words, danger, Will Robinson.

If that's you in the picture, I hope the picture was worth it. Because you are so busted.

Around the dial

You might be familiar with the Bruce Springsteen lyric, "Fifty-seven channels and nothing on." You might have even said it.

Every time I think about getting digital cable, I consider how many channels I don't watch on television as it is. And then forget about spending the extra money. (I also still have a VCR and use video tapes instead of a DVR, which makes me something of a dinosaur as well as a limited TV-watcher.) I get the news and sports I want as it is.

In fact, it's fun to go through the list of channels and figure out what stations I never, ever watch -- stations that could go away without a peep from me. I'm not saying they all are without merit, as they fill a variety of niches. It's a matter of personal preference. Let's see ...

MyTV and CW: My wife would miss the 10 o'clock version of the local news, though.

QVC, HSN, Shop NBC: Don't shop on TV.

CTVTO: It's often blacked out locally on cable because of duplication the programming of Buffalo stations.

Discovery: Once in a great while, it shows a special like "Blue Planet." Otherwise, every time I visit the channel there's a picture taken from the front of a taxicab.

Ion: There must be some rhyme or reason to its show lineup.

WNYB/EWTN: God probably will get me, Walter, for not watching.

Lifetime, Hallmark: At least the TV movies keep actresses like Meredith Baxter Birney employed.

Nik, Animal Planet, Toon, Disney: Sorry, no kids in the house.

Syfy: A Twilight Zone episode might make stop dial-hopping for a minute.

BET, Food, Style, Oxygen, HGTV, TLC: Never seen anything that kept me interested for more than a split-second. I'm still wondering how Jon and Kate became so well-known while appearing on TLC.

Univision, Telemundo: My high school Spanish does me little good here.

Spike TV: I'm just not tough enough.

CMT: No thanks.

A&E: This used to be interesting, but it's now just re-runs of network shows -- mostly on crime.

CNN Headline News: If I'm careful, I can avoid Nancy Grace.

TruTV: What happened to Court TV anyway?

History: For a guy who loves history, this rarely has anything watchable.

USA: Ah, no.

MTV, VH1: Where did the music videos go?

E!: Lowest common denominator at its finest.

The Muppets do the Boss

Just stumbled upon the video, featuring the song "Born to Add" done on Sesame Street:



I used to have a 45 of a cover band, featuring a Springsteen-like version of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and "Meet the Flintstones." More on that here.

Falling from the tree

It was easy to guess that Acorn's time in the public spotlight would have some major bumps in the road. Still, the organization's latest problems raise a troubling new issue that has little to do with inner-city politics.

If you weren't paying attention last fall, Acorn came under scrutiny during the Presidential election. Barack Obama had done some work for the group, which specializes in inner-city matters such as housing and voter registration. The organization has done some really good work right here in Buffalo, for what it's worth. Acorn came under fire because it hired people to sign up potential voters, and those people -- who usually are unemployed and often homeless -- made up names to submit to a city's Board of Elections. I believe the Chicago Bears defense all signed up to vote. The Board of Elections threw out the names -- that's its job -- and life moved on.

Except, the matter became something of a campaign issue among some conservative circles. Inner-city residents tend to vote Democratic, so some Republicans were quick to discredit Acorn -- and thus Obama. It was all a bit silly to most, but election season is silly season.

Lately, though, matters took a more serious turn. Filmmaker James O'Keefe staged some meetings with Acorn representatives, as he asked for (and received) advice on how to skirt the law in setting up a sex smuggling operation. O'Keefe filmed the results and gave them to Andrew Breitbart, who rolled them out on Fox News and his own Web site.

"This plan wasn't just a means to defend against the media's desire to attack the messenger," Mr. Breitbart says in the article. "It was also a means to attack the media and to expose them ... for the partisan hacks that they are."

The dominoes started falling from there. Acorn fired some employees, and federal legislators and agencies started sprinting to get away from Acorn's suddenly toxic fumes. Can't say the Democrats showed a whole lot of political courage in this one. In today's Wall St. Journal, Breitbart essentially brags about how smart he was to get the story out and harm Acorn, even if the ethics of the matter were a bit on the, um, shady side. As in, ever hear of entrapment?

One of the appealing parts of journalism to me is the chance to practice standards of professionalism and ethics. Even the WSJ's article author, James Taranto, admits that no "legitimate" newsgathering organization would have used such techniques.

Yet, when the story did come out through the Internet and a probably sympathetic news source in Fox News (Probably? Who am I kidding?), it became a issue that attracted attention -- just as the perpetrators planned. It took a while, at least in part because of the methods used. Do the ends justify the means? For Breitbart and O'Keefe, apparently.

I'm not sure what the rules are in cases like this, and the journalism business will have to deal with such matters in the months and years to come. I'm only sure of one point. If I ever do happen to meet Breitbart in person, I'll feel like taking a shower as soon as I can in order to wash him off me.

He shoots, he scores

Me thinks the Sabres should sign this nine-year-old for duty the next time there is a shootout: