"What Tickles Pace"

By Waldo Jaquith

This is going to be a somewhat less cohesive article than the last couple, because I have a couple things to talk about instead of just one. The major thing I want to talk about, however, is how incredible the baseball season has been and how utterly tickled I am that Sosa and McGwire have totally obscured the entire start of the NFL season. It's not that I don't like football - well yes it is. I think I finally got to that point last week when I was trying to watch a football game between the Redskins and some other team not called the Redskins. I had to turn it off, it was so ridiculous - and I'm not even talking about the relative play of the teams. My major problem with football, and it's escalated to a point where I can't really watch it anymore, is that every action in football can be revoked by a set of officials who more often than not are totally incompetent. I mean, baseball umpires miss a call every once in a great while, but most of the time, at least you can see their point of view on a call and accept it. In this game I was watching, three straight flags were thrown, all penalizing mysterious calls made by uniform numbers that did not exist on either team. Based on my 22 years of watching football, I know this to not be terribly unusual. My point is, how can we take seriously a sport where every single action is revocable, either for cause, or just on a goof? In football, whenever something of note happens, we look for a flag. In baseball, the acts of the players stand forever. You will never see someone call back a Sammy Sosa home run on a penalty.

I have other reasons why baseball is a vastly superior pastime to football, but you'll have to email me on them. For now, I'm beside myself with uncontrollable fits of ecstasy (well, almost) when I turn on SportsCenter or a contemporary and find that on Sunday afternoon, the top story isn't whether Steve Young threw for 4 TDs or 5 INTs. It's whether McGwire or Sosa homered that day, and how the Cubs are doing in the wild card race. In a season where my Orioles have decided they're going to stink up the joint for most of the year - and yes, I called it at the beginning of the year, no team with Joe Carter, Doug Drabek, Ozzie Guillen, and Norm Charlton as their offseason pickups can be all that successful - it's nice to still have big-time reasons to watch baseball other than whose tukas the Yankees beat up on next.

This probably wasn't what you had in mind when you went to nancies.org, but as I said in my first article, anything goes.

My next topic is Agents of Good Roots. I haven't seen them in awhile, and they have a couple of tour dates that I thought I'd clue my adoring public in on. First, this Friday 9/18 they're at the Bayou in Georgetown (DC). I'll be there. More curiously, on Saturday, October 17, they're playing at the Greek Theatre at my alma mater, the University of Richmond. The Greek Theatre is a model of an ancient, well, Greek theatre from the height of Ancient Greek civilization 2-3000 years ago. It's outdoors, and it's beautiful. Go see em there if you can make it, it'll be worth your while.

Next comes my random music CD recommendation of the week - this time it's Marc Cohn's self titled debut album. Y'all will know it because of the "Walking In Memphis" song that's been a breakthrough hit for him, but the entire album is stellar. If anyone can tell me where Willie Dixon's "29 Ways" appeared originally on album, either by Willie or by whomever Willie originally wrote it for, I would be grateful. I'm interested, but that interest is counteracted by my laziness.

Finally, I'm officially placing a preliminary call for an additional roommate come January (February is possible as well). It appears that fellow Nancie - I still hate the way that sounds - administrator Ryan "shakeyobootyshakeitshakeitniceandslow" Shepard and I will be roommates come January. We haven't decided exactly where we are going to live yet, other that it will surely be in the Northern Virginia area. Annandale, Chantilly, Centreville, Fairfax, Reston, Vienna, Oakton, and Herndon are just a few of the options. It would be nice to have a third roommate, partially to defray the substantial expense of living in Northern Virginia, and partially to have someone to hold Shep down so that I can whup his butt when he does stupid stuff like hit on every human within a 10 mile radius who has or has ever had a cooch. I didn't just write that, did I? No, of course not. Anyway, if anyone is interested, write me.