Let There Be Spring

BEVERLY HILLS (MI) –- It’s supposed to be in the 80s over most of the midwest this weekend. Here’s some light reading for ya while you work on your tan:

-- Very insightful profile on one of the best in the business, Red Sox TV color guy Jerry “RemDawg” Remy from the Sunday Boston Globe magazine:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ma...de_of_remdawg/

-- And from Sons of Sam Horn MB, a very funny story about Remy:

“The Sox were playing a series at the Sky Dome. One of the cameramen saw a couple in one of the hotel windows that overlook the park ... ‘getting busy.’ Remy and McDonough couldn't talk.

Cut to a series at Fenway later. During one particularly long plate appearance, the batter fouls of several pitches in a row off the windows of the old .406 Club. McDonough says to Remy, 'Have you ever seen balls bounce off the glass like that?'

Remy, without missing a beat, says, 'Well, there was that time in Toronto.'

I think they held the cough buttons on their mikes for the rest of the inning. It was gold.”

-- UD grad Jerry Blevins pitched against the Sox last week and didn’t do too well. When he left the game his ERA was 43.50. Ouch. Blevins got sent down to AAA shortly thereafter.

-- Ever wondered what your hometown looked like back in the day? This site allows you to see penny postcards of various cities and towns from the bygone era:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~us...ppcs/ppcs.html

Here’s one of the Columbia Hotel in downtown Leominster, MA where my father had his first office as Chief of Surgery for the local hospital:

http://www.usgwarchives.org/ma/worce...rds/colhot.jpg

-- My dad likes to tell the story about when we first moved to Leominster from Randolph, some 55 miles to the southeast. He took me with him to visit what would be our new hometown so I wouldn’t get in my mother’s hair while she packed. On the ride there, I asked him if he could put “Dr. Meadows and Son” on the sign at his new office and he said sure. As we drove into town on North Main Street, we passed Evergreen Cemetery. I looked out the window and wistfully said to him “Gee, dad, we could have saved them all.”

-- Evergreen Cemetery is where Joseph Palmer is buried, the man who was persecuted in nearby Fitchburg for growing a beard:

http://www.clusterflock.org/2009/01/17013.html

They wouldn’t bury him in Fitchburg, so he ended up planted in Leominster. You can see the headstone with his bearded likeness on it from North Main Street.

-- A couple of contenders in the worst logo ever department:

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/644...exlogosign.jpg

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Ba0I_aVwG-...s320/Starbucks

http://www.doubleforte.net/jaded/wp-...megaflicks.jpg

-- Screamin’ Stephen A. Smith got let go by ESPN:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/spor...ving-espn.html

He will not be missed.

-- You would think that with a name like “Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg” they would make the effort to spell it correctly on a sign. You would be wrong:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/20/na...=1&oref=slogin

It’s an old Indian name which roughly translated means “you fish on your side, I fish on mine and nobody fishes in the middle.”

Back home in Massachusetts, we just called it “Lake Webster.”

-- Let the insanity begin: the Yankees and Red Sox meet this weekend for the first time in the 2009 MLB season. Naturally, Fox (Saturday afternoon) and ESPN (Sunday night) will be there. A(nabloic)-Rod will not, as he recovers from hip surgery; Mark Teixeira is nursing a sore wrist and a .222 BA and Joba the Hutt is throwing for the New Yawkers. What’s not to hate?

-- One thing to like: the Sox will feature a 100 year old batboy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/sp...tml?ref=sports

That’s it “From the Swamp.”
You can email me at: swampy@udpride.com