…Continued from the previous post.

There we were with 70 or 80 of our closest friends, on a night that a dog wouldn’t have sent us out into.

I was with old friend and hoops aficionado Doc, and we were making the best of a bad situation. Ice-stormed out of an originally scheduled pilgrimage to see Doc’s beloved Syracuse Orangemen play against Connecticut, we had opted for a somewhat less glamorous Division I basketball contest – an Ivy League game.

We were at Brown University’s Pizzitola Center, where the Bears were playing host to the Columbia Lions. Somewhere in there was a joke about tigers just begging to be cracked, but we were still a little despondent about the weather having forced us to stay close to Doc’s Pawtucket, RI home.
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My friend Doc has worked for the Syracuse University Athletic Department for each one of the 34 years I’ve known him. But if you were to contact SU, they’d tell you they’ve never met him. They really should make the effort, for Doc has been the best unpaid PR agent the Orangemen have ever had.

Many years ago Doc relocated to New England for reasons of love and money, but that hasn’t deterred him from his appointed rounds as Diehard. Should anyone doubt his passion, consider the following…

Immediately upon moving to Rhode Island, Doc applied for and was delighted to receive license plates that read “ORANGE”. When the time inevitably came for him to get a new car, he did his research and negotiated a sweet deal on a leased vehicle. Except for one tiny thing. Almost as an afterthought, he was told that he wouldn’t be able to transfer his existing plates to the leased car.

Houston, we have a problem.

A team of diplomats worked through the night to find common ground, before the dealer finally caved in and agreed to tackle the administrative red tape necessary to keep Doc and his ORANGE plates together.

Hearing this story didn’t faze me (or anyone else who knows Doc) in the least.
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…Continued from the previous post.

It was a brisk 18 degrees outside, but inside Springfield College’s Blake Arena, I was sweating bullets.

Halfway through a highly entertaining gymnastics meet, Ithaca College was clinging to a lead of less than one point over their host, Springfield College. And the outcome of this Alma Mater Battle Royale would impact my life for the next month. Should The Bird’s Springfield Pride come back to win, I was staring at some hard time on the business end of a bag of Tidy Cat. If my Bombers were to hold on though, my nightly kitchen clean-up routine would be a thing of the past – well, for 30 days, anyway.

And no matter the outcome, this whole thing had to be over in less than an hour, or I would miss the end of the January Thaw skeedskating event taking place across the state line in Hartford. Which, according to the strict bylaws of the “It’s Game Time Somewhere” Tour, would prohibit me from claiming it as an official Tour event.

Many would crumble under this kind of pressure. Then again, many more would think the whole thing pretty silly. The IGTS Tour has that kind of polarizing effect on people.   
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…Continued from the previous post.

You have to understand. This was not just another sporting event. And I’m not just saying that because I arrived screaming into the parking lot on two wheels, trying to extricate myself from a double-booking fiasco.

No, this event had other, more critical consequences.

“What could possibly be so important about a women’s gymnastics meet between two Division III colleges?” you may ask.

It’s quite simple. The meet in question matched the Springfield College Pride against the Ithaca College Bombers. I am an Ithaca alum. The Bird has a sheepskin from Springfield. This was epic mano a (wo)mano stuff. But it was not just for bragging rights – chores were on the line.

If Ithaca were to win, it would mean no dishwashing duties for a month for yours truly. If Springfield won, I would inherit litter box detail. See what I mean? Big. HUGE.
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As far as I know, never in the annals of misguided sports odysseys has this been done before. I refer, of course, to chronicling two sporting events at once.

Not two events in one day. That’s child’s play. Not two events in one day in two separate cities. Yawn…did it.

I’m talking two separate events in two different states. Simultaneously. You tell me one other person doing a sports walkabout that has pulled that off. I’ll wait…
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