Sports

While I have always been interested in sports it has been primarily as a spectator - even in my high school days my closest contact with sports was as team manager for the Orange and Black gridders of Hartwell Hi in Cincinnati. I did play a little golf and tennis in my younger days but I finally had to give them up because of poor eye sight. I have retained my interest in sports over the years but as each year goes by I have become more and more disillusioned by what goes on - the greed of owners and players alike has just about ruined big-time sports for me. However, I continue to try to maintain a sports area on my Web page for old times sake. Unfortunately time seems to be at a premium and sometimes I am a bit slow in keeping up with the sporting world.

I enjoyed watching the winter Olympics on TV but as all good things they had to come to an end. There were a couple of pretty good Web pages devoted to the winter games which, hopefully, are still in place for the moment. The official page of the Nagano Olympic committee which is maintained by IBM is a good place to start. And, since CBS was the TV network beaming the games back to us in the States they had an up-to-date Web page to supplement the official page.

The winter Olympics are over for another four years but the nostalgia still lingers and I believe the Olympic committees will be maintaining their web pages until another Olympiad is upon us. Hopefully one of these days our own Queen City of the West (Cincinnati) will be hosting their own version of the Olympics one of these summers soon - we just don't have enough snow for the winter games but we are a hotbed of gymnastics and hope to show a few more of our little stars in the Olympiads to come. And, one of our local politicians is spearheading an effort to bring the games to our fair city. Whether this is serious or just a ploy for publicity for local politics remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, at the moment, the Olympic movement is undergoing a scandal that has overshadowed the fact that the summer games in Sydney are coming relatively soon - and the winter games in Salt Lake City will be with us in 2002. The autocratic International Olympic Committee bring shame on the efforts of the world's greatest athletes. Hopefully the mess will be cleaned up and change made in the structure of the government of the games and we will again be able to enjoy the feats of the athletes without having our sports' pages marred by all the illegal stuff going on with the administration.

Steamboating not a sport? Don't tell that to the folks in Cincinnati who are still smarting from the defeat of their own Delta Queen by the Belle of Louisville in this year's Derby Steamboat Race. Steamboats and steamboat racing is in the blood of all Cincinnatians who grew up in my era - riding the Island Queen every summer to the local Coney Island amusement park - driving up I-71 to King's Island just isn't the same - was one of the joys of growing up in Cincinnati. And, later the racing of the Greene Lines boats against all comers was a premier event of the summer. When the Island Queen burned to the waterline while docked in Pittsburgh was a sad day for Cincinnati.

I have never gone anywhere on the Delta Queen but I have been aboard several times. One of the memorable summer evenings of my life goes back several years to an evening when a few of us from work were out on the Ohio River in the pleasure boat of one of our number who had traveled to New Orleans on the Delta Queen and knew the Captain of the big boat. The Queen was docked overnight in Cincinnati and was playing host to a meeting of a local organization while tied up. Carlo (our boat owning friend) got on the ship-to-shore with the Captain of the Queen who invited us all on board to see the boat. The staid business types meeting on the boat were dressed as typical business people while we were in our casuals - when we tied up on the river side of the boat and clambered up the side we must have looked like a gang of pirates taking over. But, I bet we enjoyed our moments on the boat better than any of them.

However, I digress. In 1988, as part of Cincinnati's yearlong Bicentennial celebration the first Tall Stacks celebration brought together the largest collection of river steam boats in history. The event was such a huge success that in later years (1992 and 1995) the event was repeated - each year topping the previous festival. Now in 1999 we will again play host to the largest collection of U. S. river steamboats ever assembled in recent years. This years Tall Stacks extravaganca is fast approaching and the The Greater Cincinnati Tall Stacks Commission already has plans well underway for the 1999 Tall Stacks celebration including their own official Web page. We urge you to visit it and keep up with this historic event over the coming year - Cincinnati welcomes you.

Baseball has been considered our national game for a long, long time but I am not so sure that is true any more. It is no longer leads in number of participants (if it ever did) nor in attendance. But it does remain one of the truly American games even though it has gained a certain amount of popularity in other countries of the world - I understand there are even baseball teams in Russia. I find that I often keep my Netscape set on the up-to-date baseball scores to keep track of the progress of our Cincinnati Reds while I work in other parts of my computer.

Or, better yet, I can hear Marty (Brennaman) and Joe (Nuxhall) on the radio via a connection on the Cincinnati Reds' Web page.

The Official Cincinnati Reds page which was inaugurated on April 15, 1997 looks good as it goes into its second year on the Web. Sometimes while I listen to Marty and Joe I am bothered by blanks as the data stream is interrupted by blanks due to congestion on the Net. However, for you Cincinnati Reds fans out of the range of any of the radio stations on the Reds' Network I highly recommend this as a means to keep current on our Reds.

Hopefully the stadium issue has been settled as the voters resoundedly turned back an effort by a few interested in moving the stadium uptown to a site known as Broadway Commons - work towards a new stadium on the riverfront can now go forward. In the meanwhile, will the Reds be around to use the new stadium when it is finished and what does the proposed realignment that continues to rear its ugly head hold for our city? Personally, I don't like the idea of the Reds becoming a part of the American League - the designated hitter is enough to turn me off of that type of baseball - but then when did what I want ever have anything to do with what Baseball does? Well, the continuing saga of the commissioner's efforts to oust Marge Schott has finally ended as the Reds acquire new owners who will presumably be able to keep the club in our fair city. Mr. Selig is not the most popular person around here and the fact that he is now the permanent commissioner and still the real owner of the rival Milwaukee Brewers does not enhance his following here - looks like a conflict of interest to many of us.

The season is approaching its half way point and to the delight of the baseball fans in this city the Reds are in the thick of the hunt for the Central Division title. Bret Boone is, unfortunately, gone but the Boone name remains as brother Aaron seems to have the third base job sewed up. And, Pokey Reese is surprising many of us in his performance at second base - his fielding makes even die-hard fans forget Bret's golden glove performance at that position - and his batting average still hovers around the .300 mark to the surprise to most of us. Sean Casey looks to be the first baseman for many years to come as he is in the thick of the battle for the league batting crown. And, Barry Larkin seemed more optimistic coming out of spring training than he seemed at the end of last season and will hopefully stay healthy for an entire season. The only starting outfielder remaining from last season is Dmitri Young who has moved from left field to right field. Unfortunately the popular Dmitri seems to have gone into one of those slumps that hitters sometimes encounter and has lost the right field job for the time being. Newcomer Cameron, obtained from the White Sox, appears to have his name penciled in the lineup card in center field, Of course, the left fielder is the Reds' new power hitter Greg Vaughn. Only time will tell whether or not fans' optimism can be maintained with the team getting off to a fast start in the race for the National League Central Division title. Good luck Redlegs!

I originally started to list a number of baseball related Web pages here but my son, who is such a dedicated baseball fan that he is a Pirate season ticket holder, has pointed me to John Skilton's Baseball Links which is a far more complete list than I think I could ever assemble. I highly recommend it if you have any interest in any aspect of the game.

I used to have a link to the Baseball Encyclopedia on the Web but that is apparently no longer available to the general public. However, I have found another similar site that should provide diehard baseball fans with a wealth of information on individual players since professional baseball came into existence.

Major League Baseball has finally awakened to the opportunities presented by the World Web and have their own Web page . Yessiree! Major League Baseball is finally moving into the Information Age - will wonders never cease! I don't remember whether or not John's list points to this page but it is so amazing to find the bigwigs of the game so up-to-date as to have a Web page that I feel that I have to point it out myself. Here in the latter stages of the 1998 season a very interesting feature has been added to the page which many baseball fans who travel and get out of the range of their home team's broadcasts will find extremely useful. If you have RealAudio Player and have the hardware necessary to use it you have a wide choice of games you can listen to while away for home - or even at home if you want. I often have the game going via the Internet in the background while I work on my computer. And, if you don't have the RealAudio Player it can be easily downloaded from a link on the major league baseball web site.

And, finally, there are a couple of sites on the Web that baseball fans will find useful as they argue with their buddies about the game. First there is the Total Baseball site which has individual player lifetime stats clear back into the late 1880s with which to settle that argument as to who did what when. The second site of interest even during the season is the Rules of Baseball - maybe that explains the infield fly rule so we can all understand it.

In years past the Cincinnati area has played host to several events on the PGA tour and the LPGA tour but currently the only annual event making a stop here is the Kroger Senior Classic which takes place in September on the Nicklaus designed course at Kings Island several miles north of Cincinnati.

But Cincinnati now has its own golf page on the Web - Cincygolf - which seems slated to grow into the ultimate in golf information for those interested in golf in the Queen City. Records of local events, course layouts, and other information of interest locally are beginning to appear and seem destined to grow.

In the meanwhile, golfers can keep track of golf on the world-wide scene with the GolfWeb which will follow the PGA tour through the remainder of the 1998 season as well as covering the rest of the world of golf.

Finally, golf is a game governed by an extensive set of rules - many of which the average golfers tend to overlook but they are important in tournament golf and it behooves all golfers to be familiar with them. For the most part the rules as agreed upon by the USGA and the Royal and Ancient of St. Andrews (the governing body of golf in the British Isles) are the rules followed by most tournaments - amended, of course, by any local rules found necessary.

The Jack Nicklaus complex at King's Island also annually hosts one of the more important tournaments on the ATP Tour. The ATP tennis tournament in our area has their own page on the WWW. Fans can check out the daily results and much, much more.

For awhile Pro football in Cincinnati seemed more concerned with one-upmanship over their local baseball rivals in the matter of who gets their stadium where and when but now that the site of the future Paul Brown Stadium has been settled and construction has actually started fans can keep up with the progress of their favorite NFL teams on the Web. It has been a disappointment that the Bengals have not seen fit to sponsor their own page on the World Wide Web as have many other NFL teams. Of course, they would probably goof it up much as they have managed to goof up the once good team assembled and run by Paul Brown - unfortunately his son Mike does not seem to have inherited the father's football sense.

And, on any Saturday afternoon (or whenever college football is being played) fans can keep track of the scores of all the college football games taking place. If you have a sound card on your system you can even HEAR the local broadcasts of a wide variety of college games via AudioNet - the Internet's radio network using RealAudio programming which is widely available for downloading around the 'Net.

Competing with football for sports interest in Cincinnati when the leaves begin to turn color is basketball. While we do not have a professional team the Queen City is blessed with two of the finest college basketball teams in the country. Both are represented on the Web - the University of Cincinnati Bearcats under coach Huggins can be followed on the University of Cincinnati Sports News page and the Xavier University Musketeers under coach Prosser on the Xavier mens basketball page. Now if they can concentrate on what goes on on the court instead of making headlines for their off-court activities perhaps Cincinnati can once again entertain hopes of another national collegiate champion in the hoops game.

And the Ohio State Buckeyes, the Kentucky Wildcats and the Indiana Hoosiers have more than a few fans in the Cincinnati area. Basketball is a thriving sport in the Queen City even without an NBA team.

Last but not least the Raleigh News and Observer has come up with what may be the ultimate in WWW sports oriented pages. Every user can generate his/her own WWW page built around the amazing amount of information available from the NandO files customized to his/her own preferences. This was too good an opportunity for me to pass up - so here is what I have put together. Anyone interested in constructing their own sports hotlist can do so just the way I did - you can access the NandO SCORE project from my page where construction of your own page is made easy and painless for you - and they even have allotted you disk space for storing your page.

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