October 12, 2011
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The Daily News1 Two great stories coming down the pike from the San Francisco Giants: Bryan Stow, the Giants’ fan who was attacked in Los Angeles and went into a severe coma last season, was released from San Francisco General hospital yesterday and placed into a rehab facility.
2 He has recently been learning to talk, and to communicate with family members.
3 I think most anybody who has followed that story is praying for a successful recovery.
4 And folks, don’t know if you know, but Buster Posey has already started catching and taking batting practice in the Giants’ instructional league.
5 He was supposed to start on November 1, the one-year anniversary of the Giants’ World Series clinch.
6 So pitchers and catchers report in February. I’m smiling.
7 The Phillies quick demise made what happened last year pretty authentic. With utterly no hitting this year, the Giants were absolutely in the race all the way up to their last two series.
8 It’s almost scary to think of what might have happened if their bats came around like they did at the end of the season.
9 I had absolutely given up on them in mid-August because I saw that one faction of the team was carrying the other faction. I still feel that way. You don’t slump for an entire season. You get too old, or you give up trying and believing.
10 The pitchers never stopped. And a lot of the guys who weren’t getting the job done are probably going to take a slow boat out of here.
11 With all due respect, it’s a youth movement right now, so they should ride that wave.
12 The nice thing is that we’re still the World Champs. Not for much longer, but it’s nice that even though we didn’t get there, AND that we didn’t deserve to get there, the team can look back at how close they came.
13 They were around twenty homeruns from taking it all.
14 And about a thousand double-plays.
15 The bottom line: we have two of our guys in rehab working their ways back: Bryan Stow and Buster Posey.
16 The formula seems to be in place.
17 That’s nice news, no matter who you are.
18 Moving on, Part the First: Amusing bit in this morning’s Merc News: Jon Wilner reports from the Stanford area an interview he had with Quarterback Andrew Luck and his roommate of the past three years, receiver Griff Whalen.
19 I’ll allow Wilner to take over.
“It doesn’t take long to understand why Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck and receiver Griff Whalen have lived together for three years.
It takes a few sentences.
What is Whalen like as a roommate?
“He’d say I stay up too late–and don’t clean up enough,” Whalen said.
And Luck: “I go to bed too early and don’t clean up enough.”20 That might help explain Stanford’s 48-7 shallacking of Colorado on Saturday. Whalen and luck connected for 92 yards and a touchdown.
21 They do most of their cleaning up on the football field.
22 Moving on, Part Two: At the end of the day Monday I was reasonably exhausted as always when the final bell rang, ending the day. That’s usually an eternal moment for anybody looking at the second hand that ends any Monday.
23 My class disappeared out the door rather swiftly, and I relaxed my shoulders. One student and his friend remained, gathering their things, so I started straightening the room and all.
24 The guy’s friend approached me. He seemed a little nervous.
25 “M-M-Mr. Harrington?”
26 I turned professorily and gave a short, “Yes?”
27 He hesitated. I honestly felt like an old professor. I felt like saying, “Out with it, lad! I haven’t all day!” But I stood and said nothing.
28 “Ummm…Justin spilled syrup on his homework and he can’t turn it in.”
29
30 I thought I’d heard everything. I walked over to Justin, who seemed to be trying to hide his work.
31 There, on his desk, was a sticky, gooey mess with “Journal Entry 3″ written at the top of the page.
32 I almost laughed. How was a guy managing to eat pancakes in class AFTER lunch, and during the last class of the day? And how was I going to read, or even collect that paper?
33 The beauty of being a teacher is finding the humor in things like that. I knew the poor guy was embarrassed and just wanted to disappear. I thought swiftly, reached into my pocket, pulled out my iPhone, took a picture of the guy’s homework, and said, “I’ll read this at home. Clean that up as quickly as possible; I have Windex and paper towels, should do the trick.”
34 They both smiled, cleaned it up, and that desk never looked more pristine. I told him to throw the homework into the garbage.
35 Somewhere, somehow I’m pretty sure Steve Jobs is smiling.
36 Moving on, Part the Third: I’d post the picture, but I’m pretty sure that a few students are getting onto the DN these days, and I would hate to embarrass the guy.
37 The DN was originally for students in it’s Wild West days. And I kept it for the students even at YB, but as I moved on to EV, I decided to keep things somewhat in the family. I thought it would be better. The students have plenty of access to me as is, as do their parents.
38 So I’ll keep the DN for the amusement and bemusement of alumni, and now my entire extended family. I always figured my cousins and nieces and nephews and friends would probably get bored reading about esoteric memories and references to old shows, but they seem to enjoy the DN.
39 I also post on Facebook, so anyone walking around could read this stuff, not that they’d want to.
40 Anyway, I think I’m pretty much done for the day. As I said, I don’t want to embarrass the guy. I think it’s great that he somehow managed to sneak pancakes into my class. Never saw it. He must have been scared to death. I just laughed.
41 Never a dull moment.
42 Have a great day.
43 Peace.
~H~
