Now to your regularly scheduled attempt at humor: These should look pretty sharp in person, but on the Web, San Antonio's new sweaters look like someone flipped the switch from color to black and white...

So thank you all for making it worthwhile... And for tolerating it when I got roadgeeky and point-for-the-referencey.

(To actually provide content -- what a concept -- Captain Eddie is off to Utah.)

This year, I went away in August... and all I got was this lousy windburn. (Not even this Irish skin was gonna get sunburned in this absence-of-light.)

We bought some cheap gas, outran Ernesto's leftovers home, shipped TLP back to Illinois, and now... well, technically, now, I'm still off. It's nice. But since this is Post 300, I figured I'd make it back-slappingly self-referential and self-aggrandizing, just for the heck of it, while finishing up the autos agate. (Who's off?) After all, our occasional Arrested Development references appear to make us the best writer's blog in the AHL's East Division. (I'd question both the criteria and the ranking, Jason.) In that spirit, this Mr. F asks: Just who is this Hermano guy, anyway?

While away, the power button on my laptop somehow got jammed under the frame; couldn't push it at all. So Compy stayed on throughout. Got home, and CompUSA wanted money to fix it. So I brought it back home, grabbed a fingernail clipper and somehow pulled it back into position. Why it worked, why it went wrong in the first place? No idea. But it works now, so who cares? (They want money to fix that 'E' key, too. I think I can deal.)

Everyone ready for the new TV season? (Me neither.) Caught up with the Deadwood, Entourage and Rescue Me finales tonight. Some good stuff. Also caught up with last Monday's Prison Break. That show is awesome... unless you stop for a moment to think rationally about anything going on. So I turn my brain off for an hour*, and it's awesome, man, awesome.

The daily search for Bridgeport references in the papers turned up this the other day. I guess any Steve Regier reference is a good Steve Regier reference, but when I saw that link, I guess I was hoping for more. (This is easy for me to say, not having written a substantial word for print about hockey in two and a half weeks.)

Speaking of Edmonton the city, Edmonton the organization will send one player to every team in the minor leagues, or so it seemed at first glance, with all the press releases cascading in about Team X affiliating with the Oilers. It's actually five AHL teams and an ECHL team, including Iowa and Hamilton again, and Wilkes-Barre, as that non-Arrested-Development-referencing blog had a long time ago. Bridgeport wasn't in that running; no room, allegedly, at the inn.

Closest thing to a Sound Tigers reference on the Eurohockey.net list of recent transactions: Yuri Butsayev switching teams, to Lada Togliatti. Butsayev was nice enough to score two minutes before final deadline on June 3, 2002. What I learned that day: Always pack before the game, just in case it runs into the night.

Drove Friday night down George Street. Got choked up at Orange. Had a tear by State. If I wasn't driving, forget about it; I'd have lost it. If this makes me a sissy, I'll deal with it.

One idea I had, and I don't know if it'll take, is to throw a "Line of the Moment" up in the right margin. (It was mostly hatched because of the Line of the Moment of this moment.) During the season, it might even be hockey-related. I'll see if it goes anywhere, but if you've got strong feelings pro or con, let me know.

A minor technomalogical update may follow soon...

And speaking of magic numbers.... aw, some other time.

*-No jokes.

Yep. Yusaku Miyazato aced two holes in one round this week; the PGA had said that was the first time it happened, but apparently someone did it 50 years ago in the GHO, when it was the Insurance City Open. (And right, it isn't even the GHO anymore.)

Who called out the oversight? None other than Bruce Berlet, Hartford Wolf Pack beat writer for that paper upstate. (He's also the golf writer, which should remove any surprise you might have.)

(Hat tip to JB)
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The Brakettes finish up their first pro season today, and win or lose, it was a pretty good one. For a team with that much old-school support and that much tradition, adding in the gimmicks and promotions and loud music is a delicate thing. They seemed to strike a good balance for a first try this year.

The league they're in has some work to do. The difficulties of travel and weather are obvious, but the league has to get teams to make up missed games whenever possible. I'm not expecting Chicago to jet two hours to make up two rainouts in Stratford, but those four games New England and the Brakettes lost here at the very beginning of the season had to be made up. That they would be scheduled and then abandoned at the end of the season is a shame.

That leaves teams battling for playoff position while playing different numbers of games; the playoff teams ranged between 41 and 46 games played out of a scheduled 48, with some teams playing additional exhibitions that may or may not count. And when Chicago plays the Michigan Ice eight times and the Brakettes play no one worse than Taiwan in a championship-season game, there's discrepancies.

On the other hand, once teams got into the playoffs, seedings only set the matchups; the teams flip a coin to determine the home team in the playoff games. There's backhanded justice in that, I guess, though it allowed the fourth-seeded Riptide to leave the first-place Bandits on the field Saturday in the ninth inning. And while the the one-and-done playoff format is understandable, it makes a couple of 1-0, extra-inning, one-bad-break semifinal games a really tough way for two good teams to go out.

But worst of all Saturday was hearing PA announcer Hal Baird accosted by a league official Saturday night over some kind of discrepancy in the script, when if an error was made at all it came from the league office, not him. A bummer. Baird, for those too young to remember Camelot on Orange Avenue or too averse to softball to show up at DeLuca, is a pro's pro and a good man who deserved better Saturday night.

It's a start, though. Crowds were good Saturday; the Brakettes reported more than 1,200 tickets sold for their game Saturday night.
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Now if you'll excuse me, The Little Punk's in town. And he dyed his hair a little. Gotta call him names.

Trying to think of locals while we're here... Jaime Sifers of Stratford signed with the Toronto Maple Leafs earlier this summer... Not sure about Scott Horvath of Redding, who played in the UHL last year... If I remember anybody else between innings, I'll come back.

You want hockey? The Providence Bruins have been sold. In a summer in which the New York Islanders had raced headlong away from the conventional, they have hired a French Canadian goaltending coach to replace a Trinidad native. (Good luck to Sudsie Maharaj.) West Haven's own Eric Boguniecki is a Columbus Blue Jacket, and let's hope it stays so, because if he becomes a Syracuse Crunch, he'll be a rumor like the rest of the West. The Detroit Freep says Nick Lidstrom is to be the next Red Wings captain, and jeez, really? We were expecting Josh Langfeld. As well-called by Jonathan Bombulie in the blog, Dan Bylsma gets to coach against Jack Capuano eight times this year; he's the new assistant in Wilkes-Barre. Well-travelled Alex Westlund is back on this side of the earth, signing an AHL deal to complicate the Rangers'/Wolf Pack's goaltending situation a little more. Not joining the European exodus is Thomas Pock, who re-signed with the Rangers. "Islanders fire GM Smith, hire Snow" is on the TSN.ca poll for "most intriguing offseason story," which is really only a (granted, large) piece of the intrigue in this organization this summer, isn't it? A quick pop through Google and Eurohockey.net (sparing you and me the links; seek 'em out if you want) shows the brothers Omicioli to HC Bolzano in Italy; Harlan Pratt unter einen Jahresvertrag with Augsburger Panther (joining Sturmer Travis Brigley and Verteidiger Kevin Bolibruck)*; Jeff Miles back to Columbia (not that one); T.J. Kemp back to Reading; and back to the Beast days, Mike "...and I've been developing for many years now" Fountain to Lada Togliatti (along with Maxim Kondratiev).

I could have done that all earlier, but dang it, I'm a softball and tennis writer.

Meanwhile, back in New Haven... The WTA is testing a rule this year that lets players request a conference with their coaches during changeovers. The coach sits next to them and, no doubt, imparts some deep advice. My guess: "Join the Nintendo Fun Club today, Mac."**

Good laugh through the press room today when the day attendance was announced: 5,589, an increase over last year's Thursday day session. An increase of three. The night session was a huge increase of 45.

Unrelated: You know it's a once-in-a-generation season when even the Braves fans are building hilarious Mets references into landmark Flash toons.

And entirely unrelated***: I understand the mess that could come of the alternative definition proposed last week, but there has to be some kind of grandfather clause to keep Pluto a planet.

*-Neunundneunzig Luftballons/Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont...
**-Remember where Little Mac was from?
***-Not quite entirely: league member Lowell, Mass., is named for a member of the family of Pluto postulator Percival Lowell, is it not?

(just waiting out the crowd reaction)

...after a day at the Pilot Pen Tennis tournament. My tennis knowledge is pretty much limited to ninth-grade intramurals, when I was doubles-paired with Yevgeny Bendersky, and if the other side was making bad line calls, I started shooting for the fences instead of the service court.

Cool things from the day:

--Someone had to have planned this: The night-session stadium-court matches were Justine Henin-Hardenne vs. Anabel Medina Garrigues, and Xavier Malisse vs. Ruben Ramirez Hidalgo. Both those matches were Belgium vs. Spain.

--Marcos Baghdatis of Cyprus played in the afternoon, the first of two matches I sorta covered. Baghdatis had a cheering section -- not quite last year's J-Block, but still -- with a banner that read "MARCOS" in Roman letters and "CYPRUS" -- or more accurately, "KYPROS" -- in Greek. Pretty neat. Didn't help, though: He got beat.

Actual hockey news coming eventually...

Especially at the plate Saturday night, Colorado Rockies pitcher Jeff Francis reminded me just a little of Bruno Gervais....

(The configuration of DeLuca Field is a tad unusual: The bottom of the backstop is chain-link, a couple of feet high, which puts the top of that portion even with the walkway at the bottom of the stands. Above that also used to be chain-link, but earlier this season, the chain-link came down; a new mesh screen, like you'd see above a Major League backstop, was installed in its place**. The screen also happens to be pretty tight still.)

So we left Hunter's wild pitch somewhere above Fairchild's mitt. As it reaches the backstop, Canada's Angela Lichty takes off from third base. But the pitch misses the chain-link and hits off the screen, caroming back toward the plate almost as fast as Lichty barrels toward the plate.

And here's where it gets weird. Third baseman Stephanie Hill was playing in tight, very tight, to begin with, and is now barreling toward the plate as well, ahead of Lichty. Fairchild gets to the ball and flips to the plate, where Hill catches it and slaps down a tag between her legs just as Lichty gets there. Umpire Tony Candido calls Lichty out to end the inning.

Here's how strange this looked: We convinced ourselves up in the press box that it HAD to be a set play.

Not set, Stratton said, just fortuitous: Knowing the screen could create a carom like that, Hill was playing in tight just in case it happened.

It happened. Just another night at the ballpark***.

*-Whose father, just to make this topical, was a sixth-round pick of the Los Angeles Kings in the 1974 amateur draft, and an 11th-round pick of the Oilers in the WHA draft that same year.
**-Accomodates a TV camera above the press box; easier to shoot through the screen than the chain-link.
***-A night that happened to feature seven Brakettes errors. To welcome their Canadian visitors, at least one went five-hole...

"May the road rise to meet you" and all that.

In other news, isn't Swedish just one of those languages you look at and think you should be able to read? Like Dutch, and sometimes German.

*-Was in Albany with New Jersey's affiliation last year.
(Tom Rowe goes with Carolina's affiliation to Albany. Roy Sommer goes with San Jose's affiliation to Worcester.)
Italics: Former Bridgeport Sound Tigers coach.
Bold underline: Former New Haven Nighthawks among incoming coaches, joining Scott Gordon, Pat Conacher and of course John Anderson.

From the blast-from-the-past file, I got a kick out of one of the players Pat Bingham brought to Fort Wayne today.