National lacrosse champions!

I'd nearly given up hope of ever seeing the Terp men win a title. I was not yet a lacrosse fan when they won their last one, in 1975. They'd gotten close so often and come away empty handed in 20 final fours and 9 championship games. They were so very close last year. And when the Buckeyes pulled back within 2 goals late, it looked like even Coach Tillman was thinking, "Here we go again!" But they held strong for the victory, and the drought has finally come to an end!

This, of course, isn't my victory. I had nothing to do with it. But I still am enjoying it, along with another title by the women's team this year.

Aside from that: what a nice weekend. Good yard work - which comes with a touch of poison ivy again this year. Going to have to watch out for that the rest of the season. Nice bike ride. Honored our fallen warriors. Now just need to get into training for that triathlon and try to get my tri shorty bought. Not sure the budget is going to allow for that, but we'll see . . .

Today's pageview zip code

Gary, IN  46403, 46409 - I've definitely driven through these on my way to and from Chicago. I went through the second one on my first trip, on my way around to Oakbrook Terrace, and through the first one when my bride and I made our Chicago trip the following year. We had a great weekend in which we took in a play (Cabaret, with Teri Hatcher) and a baseball game (Orioles at White Sox), and I introduced her to both Maggiano's and Giordano's, as well as had my first Chicago style hot dog.

I just remembered that there was a third trip, too, to set up for a trade show in 1997. In fact, now that I think about the details, I'm pretty sure the trip I mentioned in last week's post actually followed that one, and that this trade show trip was when I visited both Maggiano's and Giordano's for the first time.

Dear boss,

I'll be in just a little later than usual this morning. I had to stay up late last night to watch Buck Showalter lose his mind. It hasn't happen often since he took over.

Also, please keep asking me about this training project when you've kept me fully occupied on other things.

In retrospect, though . . .

. . . my first choice today might well be lacrosse.  Sometimes I find myself lamenting a little that my dad was from Michigan (or wherever it was that he considered "home" to be; we never really had that discussion) so he had no interest in lacrosse to pass along to me. Then I realize that it likely wouldn't have mattered anyway.

A memory

I never played Little League - or any other organized youth sports, but baseball would have been my first choice, far and away - because my dad was embarrassed by my lack of athleticism.

More Thanksgiving 2013

What a great weekend, with very little thought of the dark past.

First, the relatively inconsequential stuff.  Even though the bird was more done than I was going for as a result of losing track of time when my cousin-in-law and his wife got here, it didn't get dried out because of it. I almost decided against using my frozen mincemeat from last year because I thought it looked too mushy, but changed my mind after test-tasting it. What a great decision. And I remembered from last year that even though the pie crust recipe says to roll it out to a quarter-inch thickness, that's really too thick. I rolled them that thick, then took the guide wheels off the rolling pin to roll it just a bit thinner. Turned out perfect, for both my mince pie and the two pumpkin. The decision to get an extra turkey breast also turned out great. I don't think we'd have run out of meat, but wouldn't have had much left over for soup and sandwiches. I also remembered to add a bunch of broth to the fabulous stuffing that I reprised from last year, since I don't cook it inside the bird. It was much moister as a result, and I also remembered to add an extra cup of diced apple; between the two corrections it was even more delicious this year than last!  I did forget about the strawberry applesauce I'd planned, but it isn't as if anyone lacked enough to eat.

It was fabulous having our oldest and her children with us, and our oldest grandson's girlfriend, too. I don't think that our daughter realizes that she was the main reason why dinner was so late getting to the table - we couldn't really proceed without the mashed potatoes, and she didn't get here in time to have them done at the time we specified for dinner, but that wasn't the end of the world, either, and the only complaints about dinner being late were from her kids.

After dessert and a minor panic when our oldest daughter mistook some splatters on the side of her truck for scratches in the dark - and let's spare her the speculation over where I think the roots of that might lie - we headed south to Tim and Kathie's place to hang out with them for another day. Our dog did great on the drive, and once he got used to being around the other dogs he had a nice visit, too. We got there too late to watch the entire DVR'ed Ravens' game, but I had listened to it in the car and knew the outcome. We speed watched the first half, then saved the second for Friday morning while Kathie was replacing the ingredients I'd left behind in our efforts to get out the door. The soup was better than ever, thanks to some fresh sage and Kathie's recommendation to use frozen noodles rather than dried. Oh, my, what a difference the latter made!  We finally got my wife caught up on An Unexpected Journey while I worked on the soup. Then started in on The Hunger Games while waiting for it to be time to head out to Thor, The Dark World. It was a nice piece of entertainment; they're making some nice comic-book movies lately, but let's face it: they're comic book movies. Still, we all enjoyed it, so that's more of an observation than a complaint. Then we headed home, where we finished watching The Hunger Games with a piece of pie and, for those of us so inclined, a glass of port.

Kathie was scheduled to work on Saturday, and Tim was slated to be at the model race car track, so we headed toward home by around ten. It was a gorgeous, sunny day for a drive, and we listened to the Big Game along the way, which I watched the rest of when we got home. In our 27 years here I've successfully avoided being infected by Buckeyes' fanhood - which will pay off as Maryland joins the "B1G Ten," but it seemed unfair to me that a team could not lose a game in two years and still get shut out from a shot at the national title (even if last year was their own fault because of sanctions). The game was thrilling. I then got in a short bike ride, and after getting home watched the Iron Bowl, which turned out to have an even more exciting finish than the OSU-UM game. Wow. The Buckeyes still have business to take care of next week, and I won't be heartbroken if they should lose, but they belong in the title game if they win, and now they should be there. I can't imagine a one-loss Auburn team would beat them even with their victory over the Tide.

Now, to shower and get to mass for the first Sunday of Advent.

What *was* I thinking?

Stayed up past 2 in the morning watching the end (well, final third) of an 18-inning baseball game. I should have better sense than that.

A dark shadow looms over a great weekend

There has been too little free time to write here. It has been a really great time thus far. Two of Teri's sisters and their husbands were at the same ball game we attended on Friday night, the O's first complete game shutout (even if they did have a little umpiring help keeping things scoreless), so it was nice to see the bullpen get their first night off all season. It was also nice being in the ballpark for a Chris Davis home run, even if I did have to watch it on a monitor because I'm married to someone who gets lost easily and needed to use the ladies' room. But to share the thing with family was even better.

Yesterday we had a nice plan to ride our bikes to the family party in Glen Burnie that was our excuse for coming to town. Teri's second-oldest sister and her husband hosted an annual friends-and-family party before they moved to Florida, and this year her third-oldest sister and her husband agreed to let them host it at their parents' old house. As soon as I said I was going to ride my bike, Teri wanted to ride hers, too. Fortunately, her oldest sister and brother-in-law were willing to drive our van to the party so we'd have a way home in the dark. We tried to get started a little earlier than we thought we needed to, but actually got going a little late instead. We were expecting to see some old younger friends (if that makes sense) from Dayton at Mass today, with their four children (only one of whom was born when they left); we didn't expect to run into them yesterday at the farmer's market, too. By the time I then got back to our starting point after dropping our van back off, Teri had gone off to get a bite to munch on along the way, which she didn't think about until I was on my way back. Still, the time wasn't a major issue; it wasn't as if we needed to be there promptly at the party start time. Teri needed a lot of encouragement along the way, but when we finally got to where she recognized her surroundings she was a pretty energetic peddler for the last couple miles. Then she had a nice dip in the pool of her childhood while I went out for another fifteen miles or so, after which I also traded the aroma of perspiration sweat for that of chlorine. The we had a fabulous afternoon and night of family time: cheering the O's as they pulled out an extra-inning, come-from-behind victory; hanging out around the pool; eating wonderful food; playing corn hole; sharing stories and celebrating Teri's brother-in-law's birthday. You could say we swam in a pool of memories as well as the swimming pool..

This morning we very much enjoyed Mass at her oldest sister's parish, where we again saw the family we know from Dayton, as expected. We then went to brunch with Al and Lynne and an older couple from their choir; the creamed chipped beef and the side of scrapple were like two bites of my childhood in one meal. Later this after noon we're going to see my aunt and cousin. It has been a wonderful weekend.

The cloud: Teri's oldest sister is starting to have memory issues. She's being pretty good-natured about it, but I can tell it scares her. It scares us, too.

"A bad day golfing"

On Saturday, I found myself invoking the old saw about how a bad day at a fun hobby is better than a good day working. It turns out that I'm really glad this is going to be the last outing.

On the shotgun start, our threesome was the furthest out on the course. This made us the lead group; everyone else was behind us. I had golfed once this year. The most regular golfer on our team goes out every other week, and as a senior, has no distance to his tee shots. My friend Tom was the third, and he has also golfed very little this year. We had a good-natured debate at the outset over who was stuck with whom. We did okay (for us) on the first couple holes, though, parring them both in the increasingly heavy rain. On the third hole, we were on our third shot, about a hundred yards out from the green on a par four - very bad for a best-ball scramble to not at least reach the vicinity of the green in regulation - when the horn sounded calling us in because of the weather.

It would be about two hours before we could resume. Things didn't get any better. I think we had only one double bogey, scrambled to "save" a couple of bogeys, and made par about a third of the time. The best team posted 12 under par, but was eliminated for failing to sign their scorecard, so the winning score was 9 under. We finished 22 strokes behind the winners, 25 behind the best score. Still, I wasn't too concerned, and was having fun.

Except apparently my fun, or our combined incompetence, was interfering with others' enjoyment of the day. The sun came out about two hours after we resumed, we were drying out, and it was becoming an enjoyable day.  We had to go over to an adjacent green to pick up two errant shots that the double-hitter on that hole (in a best ball threesome, to keep things fair with the other groups, group members rotate playing an extra ball on each hole) had knocked astray. At that point, the youngest brother of the deceased for whose son the educational fund-raising tournament has been held each year told us that we needed to speed things up.

Well, here was the problem: we weren't playing slowly. We didn't spend a lot of time looking for errant balls we'd hit; if we didn't find them quickly, we just let them go, and sometimes we didn't bother looking at all. Also, we didn't spend much time standing over our shots, taking a bunch of practice swings. We were just playing very poorly. On the two "longest drive" holes, we were hitting our third shot from the marker where both the men's and women's longest drives had been hit. We took over 33% more strokes to complete the course than the best scoring teams did, including 42% (!) more than the disqualified team. Taking that many more strokes simply takes way more time. The only way to speed things up would have been to quit mid-round. So I attempted to explain this to John, who merely became insistent that, since we'd already had a two-hour rain delay and we now were slowing things down even further, we should do whatever it took to speed things up. As if just by him saying so we could start playing better.

Well, we did the best we could without quitting, which was really no better than before.

After dinner - which was originally going to be lunch - when we were waiting to say goodbye to Jeff (the deceased) and John's dad, who is my good friend, one of the other regular golfers was still chewing on his ear about what he needed to do to keep the problem from happening in the future. Well, this was already the last year for the outing - they've hit their fundraising goal - so I think they've fixed the issue already. But just in case they change their minds, they will never have this problem with me again.

"The only thing I care about is winning"

- Tom Brady

You have to take this statement in context, I guess. He was being asked about Aaron Hernandez.  Still, I sincerely hope for his own sake that he's not speaking truth with that statement.

It's fun again!

As a boy growing up between Baltimore and Annapolis in the sixties and seventies, it seems like I had a baseball glove with me everywhere I went. It was far and away my favorite sport, though I never played on an organized team. Somehow I developed a love for it despite my dad's frustration over my lack of athletic talent. Mom later told me how her heart broke for me when he would play with the neighborhood kids in the Sun Valley neighboorhood we lived in - that never happened when we moved to the Mountain Road house, which was more rural than suburban at that point - while I looked on, too small and young to join in. Oddly, I never really felt left out; though I did long to be big enough one day to join them, in those early days I attributed it more to my age than my dad's impatience with me. Now, once I got older I realized how he felt about me, how disappointed he was that I wasn't more of an athlete. But by high school he had permanently removed himself from our lives . . .

I suppose that I picked up my love for baseball from him anyway. It was more, I think, than just wanting to share an interest with him. It was more a matter of wanting to matter, as I felt I didn't, or wanting to be a hero. I fantasized about being a baseball star, of snagging a ball just before it went over the outfield fence, or of hitting the game-winning home run in the bottom of the ninth. I know my dreams were shared by many young boys of that era. Of course, I was an Orioles fan through-and-through. I remember how we rooted for Paul Blair - who was never the same hitter after taking that fastball to his face - and Boog Powell, Mark Belanger - who flirted with the Mendoza line every season, it seemed, but man, that guy could field the shortstop position! I see from his career stats that he did manage a couple of decent years with the bat, too - and Davey Johnson; that array of pitchers: Dave McNally, Miguel Cuellar, Jim Palmer, Pete Richert and Eddie Watt and, later, Doyle Alexander and Pat Dobson; Frank and Brooks Robinson, of course. Brooks was my hero.

I'd go to games at Memorial Stadium sometimes with my dad, who had a Sunday plan season-ticket package. I'd have probably gone to more if mom could have trusted him to stay sober. I remember, in fact, at least one occasion when the first stop we made after leaving the house was the packaged goods store a block away. Dad had the bottle of Old Granddad open before we hit the highway. On another occasion - shoot, I guess it could have been the same one, come to think of it - I asked him why there were crowds of people lining the bridges. He explained that the train carrying Bobby Kennedy's casket was supposed to be passing through. I probably still have pictures somewhere of a photo day that he took me to, when we were allowed down on the field before the game to take pictures of the players.

The team was consistently good back then. I was too young to have much awareness of the '66 world championship, though I do seem to recall an air of excitement about it. I still have a scrapbook that my mom put together that year, and sets of glassware that she ordered after the team won the pennant and the World Series.  By '69 I was more aware, and just knew that the Mets were cheating to beat them in the Series. '70 was magical, and it's funny to hear the local Reds' fans reminisce about it from the opposite perspective. Clemente, Stargell and the rest of the Pirates crew broke my heart in '71, but it seemed like we'd go to the World Series every year by then. It turned out that there were a couple more division championships, but with ALCS losses to the A's.  The final year I really remember well was the '79 loss to the Pirates (again) in the Series. By the time they won it all again in '83 I was living in Mississippi, and didn't feel so connected to them, though my uncle made sure to share a couple of commemorative Coke bottles with me on my next trip home. I finally opened them and drank them at some point, and don't have the bottles anymore.

That '83 team featured a rising star at shortstop who ended up being the team's high point for much of the next two decades. There was the wOful '87 team that lost 109 games, which the Capitol Steps lampooned when I saw them as part of Wright State's Artist Series while I was getting my engineering degree. (I took Christina to her first concert there, too: Dizzy Gillespie.)  The '89 team kept me entertained during my first few months at Shemya, losing the division to the Jays the last weekend of the year. The thing is, it was hard to really follow your team from a distance in those years. In '95 I was in town - and in the stadium - the day before Cal tied Gehrig's consecutive games record. There was pretty much no chance of me getting tickets for the day he tied or broke the record, but I remember seeing him hit a home run in that game, as he did each of the following two nights, too.

That was the end of my life for a while. It was right after we got home from that trip that we learned what "dealing with things" was going to mean for us. During the '96 and '97 playoff runs I was occupied trying to get myself and my life back together, so didn't follow much baseball. After that, there were the fourteen consecutive losing seasons. Fourteen. The Pirates' longer - and still current - streak was no comfort whatsoever.  I'd still go to a game when we were in town, but that was more to enjoy the atmosphere of Oriole Park at Camden Yard, which is still a great place to catch a game.  We also went to a couple of games in other stadiums: one at U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago and another at The Jake in Cleveland.

Last year I had one good chance to take in a game, but my back was killing me after the drive from Ocracoke and I just didn't feel up to driving anymore. It looks like we may go back up to Cleveland on Labor Day, which will be especially fun if they're still in the hunt. And if they make the playoffs again this year, I'm going home for a game.

But it has been so much fun to follow them again! I'm excited for their core of players, and enjoy how they play the game. And it's way easier to keep in touch with the team in the Twenty-teens than it was in the Nineteen-eighties and -nineties!

It's a good thing . . .

. . . that we don't live close enough to have O's season tickets.  I'd gain ten pounds!

Another HOF, and more

Yesterday we (yes, it was we!  It was an unexpected pleasure, when I was expecting to be on my own for this experience, to be surprised with the company of the dear friends whom I'm visiting this weekend.  I so love this family, and am so grateful that we got to do this together!) went to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  I've always dreamed of visiting the Hall, and it was a real fulfillment of my baseball fandom to be able to do so at last.  There were many memories stirred, and while they were not necessarily all pleasant, many of them were a really fundamental part of who I am.

• There was one mysterious moment of, "hmm, I should remember that.  Why don't I remember that?" which was quickly solved when I noticed the date, and realized what my family was going through at that time.
• There was another moment I remembered well that was poignant for its contrast with what ended up happening in my life just the following week, related to the previous memory.  This memory also has the sweet recollection of having spent it with my oldest daughter and best friend from high school, and of being associated with an event that truly made sports history that most people are aware of.  The juxtaposition with what came after is striking, and in a way, even more precious because of it.
• For each of these, there were many, many mementos associated with far happier memories.  
• The Orioles' most successful era coincided with my childhood, so I experienced many nostalgic feelings as I saw the displays associated with these players and events.  
• There were also a couple of items associated with the most recent season, in which we long-term fans so reveled.

The thing is, for all I have enjoyed my HOF experiences this weekend, the best part of it has been the time with these friends.  Today at brunch, the boys were playing a game I'd never heard before, in which they were naming off elements (etc.) which truly impressed me that they would know - including one or two that I didn't (or had forgotten.  yeah, that's it.  forgotten in my old age.)   I commented that there is no way for these parents to deny these children, who are clearly and undeniably theirs! 

HOF

Had a wonderful visit at the Pro Football Hall of Fame yesterday, where I saw a relic of one of my earliest sports memories: Tom Matte's wristband. There was lots of other cool stuff, too, including Ray Lewis's last uniform - champagne stains and all.  Some neat Johnny Unitas stuff, too, and I had to snap a photo or two of Jim Thorpe stuff in honor of my dad, who had a great respect for both of these athletes, but probably for Thorpe more than for anyone else ever.

Reflecting on the otherwise unimportant

Boy, that was some ride last night.  What a day, what an evening, and what a day!  Now to shop for cool stuff!

My feelings are a bit weird.  The role of faith is a fascinating topic.  I don't think, as Ray Lewis seems to, that the Ravens won because God wanted them to and it was his plan.  I do believe, though, that God is glorified when those who endeavor to do big things do so in his name.  I'm gladder for a lot of the Ravens other than Ray than I am for him, as if his faith is as authentic as it seems God was going to be working through him anyway, win or lose, and if he's a fraud I'd have rather he fell short.  But to hear John Harbaugh acknowledge the role of Ray's faith in driving him was also very nice.  Still, I am convinced that it was not so much a matter of it being God's will that the Ravens would win as of it being God's will that he should be glorified whoever won.  

This has been a way fun year.  As I've posted elsewhere, the last time I rooted for both my MLB and my NFL team in the postseason of the same year, I was only 11 years old!  But far more important is to not get too caught up in all of that, and enjoy the blessings God gives while serving according to his

"Ancient" history reminder (edited)

(I've reviewed some of the historical facts online, but the basic memories are still vibrant.)

I still remember the night that made clear for me whose side I was on in their relationship.

The 1973 Sugar Bowl was held on New Year's Eve.  It hadn't moved to New Year's Day as of yet, when the Cotton, Orange, and Rose Bowl games were contested.  This year, the tilt would basically be a national title game between Bear Bryant's undefeated Crimson Tide and Ara Parseghian's Fighting Irish, who'd also completed their regular season with a clean slate.  Alabama finished the year ranked #1 in the coaches' poll, which at that point didn't vote again after the bowls.

In our home, while mom may not have been the typical Catholic in many ways, she was very much rooting for Notre Dame in this contest.  Dad was convinced that Alabama was the better team, and was pulling for them to complete their undefeated season. Each of them openly relished the debate over the game.

By then, Dad's too-brief period of sobriety - prompted by our family doctor's well-intended misleading regarding the negative effect that drinking might have on the recovery of control of his left eye following his auto accident in the autumn of 1972 - was long since over.  His relationship with mom, and with pretty much everyone else, had deteriorated drastically in the booze.  The two of them were usually civil to each other, though by no means "always," and it was clear by now that they no longer had a loving relationship.  Mom had figured out that she couldn't stop him from drinking but also didn't have to be a part of his entire dynamic anymore.  She'd returned to working nights at the bank, which usually allowed her to leave after my sister and I had gone to bed for the night and be home before we were up for school in the morning.  So in the midst of this dynamic, a friendly - well, socially acceptable - area of unwavering disagreement between them was this football game that had the nation's attention.

I'm sure I'd never cared about either team before, but that on that night when dad's Alabama team took on mom's Irish for the first time, I was definitely a Notre Dame fan.

In retrospect, I recognize how much that bothered him.  I think he concluded that mom was turning us kids against him; he'd yell as much at her in the midst of an argument one night in the coming months, when we were in bed and the two of them thought we were asleep.  He couldn't understand that it was his own dysfunction that was making it impossible for him to love us as we needed and would be able to respond to.  In the fog of his alcoholism, he lacked the foggiest notion of how unstable he was making our home, how we feared his drunkenness even though he never physically abused us in the midst of it.  In fact, during the only directly abusive action I remember from him, which had happened at least the summer before and perhaps as much as three and a half years earlier, I am certain that he was completely sober.

(disgustingly detailed memory omitted)

Notre Dame would win the AP national title that night by hanging onto a one-point victory in a hard fought game.  Dad was pretty pissed (in both senses, actually) at the end.

And grown-up me wonders whether concluding on that night that he'd lost my sister and me to mom - as I'm sure he thought of it - contributed to this being the last Sugar Bowl he'd ever see. By the following New Year's he was dead by his own hand.

Remembering this, as Notre Dame and Alabama prepare to contest for the national title once again, feels oddly calm.  As I finished recounting the memory, I expected to check in with myself to find my stomach in knots and my fingers and toes cold from the stress of the recollection, from the pain of our dysfunctional home and the brokenness that just kept pouring forth in my life for so long thereafter. Instead I'm just grateful for the memories, and missing my mom just a little, and praying for her and my dad and sister.

An O'de to teamship

"There's no 'i' in 'team'."  "A true team is greater than the sum of its parts."

There has been much written about the roles of personality and chemistry and other intangibles in forging an effective team.  Looking subjectively and generally, the quality of "teamship" should probably be judged by how a team meets or exceeds its goals and expectations, or by how its synergies have coalesced to make its performance greater than it had any right to expect.  By any combination of those standards, the Baltimore Orioles - probably along with the Oakland Athletics, whose season ended last night (and, incidentally, two teams known to go by their first initial) - were probably the best teams in Major League Baseball this year.  Such an outrageous assertion could not hope to stand on its own, of course, though both teams should be commended for a year of success beyond almost everyone's foresight except their own.

One of the beautiful and maddening things about sports, and baseball in particular, is how teams with seemingly lesser talent can pleasantly surprise against all odds, while those with superior skills and resumés (not to mention payrolls, and I'm not referring to the Yankees here, at least this year) can cruelly disappoint.  When it comes right down to it, there is only one measuring stick that determines the most effective baseball team.  It isn't the team batting average, home runs, nor ERA.  It isn't BABIP, OPS+, VAR, run differential, nor any other modern metric, no matter what the analysts say to justify getting paid full-time to tell us what they think.  Nor is it the degree of success that the individual players have had during the year, nor throughout their careers.  It isn't their record in tense games, though we're getting warmer.  It is simply wins and losses.  At the end of the year, it is these head-to-head match-ups in the playoffs that decide which team is better, which will advance while the other goes home for the off-season, which is left standing at the end as the world champion of baseball.

Still and all, at the end of tonight's game, while we O's fans may potentially feel great disappointment in the outcome of this game and this series - and mostly that this wonderful bolt of success from the blue has finally spent the last glorious attojoule of its energy - the utterly unforeseen thrill ride we've experienced will make it impossible for us to feel disappointed in our team.

Thanks for a wonderful year, Orioles!    Let's keep it going a while longer, okay?

Smaug, minus an "a"

"I was certain, in a way that most people will find smug, that the Yankees wouldn't lose to the Orioles. They're our little brother. They can't win." - Shane Ryan, Grantland columnist

"smug - highly self-satisfied" - Merriam-Webster

Yes, most people will find it smug because it's the very definition smug. But the most revealing part is how the author uses the word "our," which is kind of sad when one is being so completely condescending on the basis of other people's athletic performance.

Olympics

I've really been enjoying the Games of the XXX Olympiad.  I think I'm going to find an opportunity to watch something more obscure, though, than what has been covered.  That said, I'm still a little uncomfortable with idea of pursuing the pinnacle for its own sake that the Olympics often celebrate.  No wonder the athlete's village has developed the reputation it has.  

On a peripherally related note, I read a quote from an athlete this morning that I think I need to examine in the context of my own life: Talent is one step away from laziness. 

I should consider whether/how this applies to me (without the dynamic of being harsh with myself).

Not over yet, cont. . . .

Oh, and regarding the statue: I think the university found a reasonable middle ground here.  This statue was going to be a slap in the face of every abuse victim who - as all do - had some other adult in their life the enabled the environment in which the abuse occurred.  Leave the Paternos' name on the library: it is unlikely to feature prominently in any sports coverage even if the football team should eventually return to national prominence.  But taking down the tribute to the man in whose house (i.e. under whose watch) Sandusky perpetrated his crimes with impunity for so long, regardless of how knowledgeable he may have been or whether he helped sweep anything under the rug, seems an appropriate response for a school that really wants to help put and end to the culture of silence in which abuse thrives, and to help keep the survivors of sexual abuse from being reminded so frequently.