This and that

There goes another piece of my childhood...
This KC Star article got buried pretty quickly and quietly, but it's worth mention. I grew up listening to Fred and Denny, and was distraught when the team fired White in 1998.

When Ryan LeFebvre made his way into the daily Royals broadcasts, I hated him. He wasn't Fred White, I reasoned, and therefore I was never going to like him. In the almost 10 years since then, my opinion on LeFebvre has shifted considerably, but sometimes I still think back on my (much!) younger days, listening to the inimitable radio duo of White and Matthews, and wishing that I could do their jobs someday too. I think other little girls wanted to be princesses, or ballerinas, or some nonsense like that; I wanted to be the Voice of The Royals.

When I was 16 I got to meet Fred White for the first time. I was really nervous, the way some people get nervous for job interviews. The plan was, Fred was going to come to the radio station at which I worked happily for my whole high school career, and by some magical coincidence, I would also appear in the meeting room. It worked swimmingly, and he even said something about being impressed with my obvious passion for the Royals. I remember being amazed at the way his voice sounded exactly the same in person as it did on the radio, because, well...mine doesn't. (Or does it? I don't know.)

Anyway, I'm sad to know I won't hear his voice carrying over the unmistakable hum of AM radio static and baseball sounds anymore. That sound was a significant chunk of my childhood, and played a huge role in making me the hopelessly devoted Royals fan I am today.

John Buck tells us everything we ever wanted to know about his junk but were afraid to ask...
...in this interview with Sam Mellinger. This interview cracked me up, almost as much as Garfield Minus Garfield does. (Hat tip to the brother for GMG.)

But I'm confused...last week in an interview with Dayton Moore, Mellinger asked the (fantastic!) question about which Royal, after Mike Sweeney's departure, is the "Guy I'd Want My Daughter To Marry". Moore's response: "Oh, boy. Gosh, I love all these guys. I’d trust my daughter with every single one of them."

But John Buck had a very different response to the same question: "Yikes. I don’t know if I’d want any of these guys to marry my daughter."

So which is it? Are they are marry-able, or are none of them proper suitors? Inquiring (read: female) minds are dying to know.

Nebrasketball holds Sooners to 12 points in 1st half
The Husker offense was absolutely horrible in the first 20 minutes of last night's home game against Oklahoma, but 1) OU's was worse, and 2) the Husker defense was beautiful.

Nebraska played a tight man defense for most of the game. Everyone held their assignments admirably, and there were several possessions in which OU didn't get a shot off until the final seconds of the shot clock, if at all. In fact, 14 minutes went by in the game before the Sooners managed a single shot within the first five seconds of a possession, and they missed it.

Once the OU players started getting frustrated, the game got pretty ugly. I think the Sooners were honestly just embarrassed at the way they were playing, but the way they vented was to beat up on Husker players at every opportunity. It was a lot more physical than such an offensively crappy game should have been, but no one was terribly hurt, save Sek Henry's punctured lip and Ryan Andersen's very dislocated pinky. (You know the angle at which your thumb protrudes from your fully-outstretched hand? That is the angle Andersen's pinky took after he dislocated it. It looked gross, but he came back after halftime and played again.)

In other Husker news, the 1-2 baseball team opens home play tomorrow. I'm elated.