The new team is called the Richmond Flying Squirrels. That name came after a contest and some heated debate from people who thought it was a terrible name. I have no deep personal feelings either way. I have always assumed it was the purpose of minor league baseball to have odd monikers. Besides, Nutzy, the mascot, is eerily cool and does some gymnastic aerobatics. There is flying squirrel imagery everywhere; more squirrels than in my backyard, and that’s a hell of a lot or rodentry.

In reading some of the information about the team, I came across an interesting and ironic sentence: NO ANIMALS ALLOWED INSIDE THE BALLPARK.

I guess Nutzy did not get the memo.

By now, SI is getting angry letters from people demanding to cancel their subscription because the entire issue is filled with porn, smut and half naked women – as this issue has been since I was old enough to sneak one between the mattresses of my bed. This is not exactly a new event. It’s a swimsuit issue. Not sure what backwoods mailbox just got access to the 21st century, but Sports Illustrated has been publishing it since 1964. I was 7 years old.

Where the hell have these people been? When it started Lyndon Johnson was president, for God’s sake. The Beatles were still singing “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Are some people just now getting around to the biological fact that women have breasts, legs and men have cameras and this combination sells a lot of magazines?

The complaints will be in the next issue, probably. And I look forward to those letters as much as I do the Swimsuit Issue itself. Prudishness is humorous. When it is antique prudishness, it is even funnier. Let the wailing and gnashing of teeth begin. Go ahead and cancel your subscription and you’ll miss some of the best writing in America in the other 364 issues.

While some moan about morals and values, there is not one man who was alive in the mid 1970’s and had access to the SI cover with Cheryl Tiegs (in a see-through white one-piece) who will say with any honesty that the image is not permanently burned into his brain. If he denies it, he is a deep fried liar and should not be sold season tickets to any legitimate sporting event.

To many guys, especially beer-drinking sports fans, a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue model ranks up there with Giada on the Food Network or one of those hot female curlers in the Vancouver games. Come to think of it, a Giada Swimsuit Cookbook would sell a lot of tortellini. Paula Deen, not so much. And sorry, ladies, no one would go for a Mario Batali Swimsuit Cookbook, not even Ted Allen.

People will continue to complain about the skimpy SI apparel and act like this has never happened before. Then they will load up the family and go to the beach for vacation – where their daughter will wear less than Lindsey Vonn on page 86 and 87.

Sabol is 67 now. He became famous by turning football into art (according to Joe Posnanski in Sports Illustrated his week). It is a great story if you haven’t read it in the Scorecard section.

Sabol put cameras at every angle, shot super slo-mo, put microphones on coaches, hired John Facenda to be “the voice of God,” and hired former music school teacher, Sam Spence, to create music that made the sport feel like a noble act of war.

Joe Namath jogging off the field pointing to the sky claiming a championship. Sabol shot it. Dick Butkus’s muddy hands. Sabol shot it. Steam coming from Ray Nitschke’s mouth. Sabol shot it. Franco Harris’s Immaculate Reception. Yep, Sabol.

Every famous moment we remember from the NFL is in our memories because Sabol put them there. ESPN may be in business because Sabol created the genre. So when you watch the Saints and the Colts and the Who on Sunday, think about Steve Sabol and NFL Films.

Then, for just a few moments, remember Tom Brookshire, who died last week at 78 from cancer. The former Philadelphia Eagle All-Pro became even more famous for his insights as he sat in a TV booth for hundreds of games with partner Pat Summerall telling us about this game we have come to treat like royalty. In case you are under 35 years old, John Madden replaced Brookshire in 1981. Some of us remember those days. But it is a game, after all. Sabol and Brookshire just made it seem a hell of a lot more important.

The 1970’s era icon used to be $42 million. Now if you want to ride the rocket (or rather just sit in it in your backyard) the price has been reduced to $28.8 million. 

This fall, the old orbital workhorses will go on sale once they quit flying. So far the space agency has gotten 20 responses. That was before they went on sale. The Smithsonian will get Discovery, but you can still pick up the Atlantis and Endeavour for nearly half off. I went to my bank and asked about a loan. They said I didn’t qualify.

I can see what a museum would do with the shuttle – duh – but what would, say, a Wall Streeter who made out like a bandit (literally) do with one of these things?

I can see one renovated into a yacht or an RV. I guess the RV would be a little big for the highway, but hell, that’s half the fun. Sink about 30 big V-10’s in the belly, crank it up and head to the Grand Canyon with the family.

Perhaps you could plant it at the end of a cul-de-sac and put shutters on the shuttle and have a space party every week. It’s a shame it takes so much power to make it actually fly. It would be so much cooler to see the shuttle cruising over a stadium, painted with the Goodyear logo than a blimp.

Me? Being from Alabama? I’d slap some big, knobby tires on it and turn that beast into a monster truck and hit the circuit. The shuttle would bury Gravedigger, crush Big Dawg, flatten Bigfoot and bite Black Widow simultaneously. Can you see King Crunch or Goliath looking in the rearview mirror at the space shuttle bearing down with thrusters redlining?

If Jan Gabriel, the man who’s voice made the echoed phrase, “Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!” so popular, had not died on January 12^th, imagine what he could have done announcing ads for the shuttle?

If the Food Network producers had cut her hair and put her in a Florida State shirt, Paula Dean could have coached the Seminoles to victory over West Virginia and no one would have been the wiser. Same with Paula Dean’s cooking show. Put Bowden in a smock with a wig and he could sauté up something tastier than an opposing team – like salt pork surprise with meatloaf pudding balls.

After mentioning my observation to several people, they all agreed that the two were the same person. Have you ever seen Bobby and Paula in the same room? No. And you never will.

I love college football. Always have. But there are parts of it that chew at me. This is one of them:

Orange and yellow leaves can fall through a biting new breeze below a porcelain sky after a torrid summer, and that simple change can make me feel human and warm and good, no matter what evil I have done. Watching 93,000 crimson clad people circling turf  and chanting “Rammer Jammer, Yellowhammer, give ‘em hell, Alabama!” can cure shingles, cold sores, lockjaw and athlete’s foot, but it is not a good remedy for high blood pressure.

Watching Game Day and wondering which mascot head Lee Corso will don sets the stage for a season of perfect ulcers. The subsequent fall foliage weaves us together into the false hope of being better people for just a few months. It feels that way when your team is winning. If your team loses, it feels like you stepped on a nail. It hurts for a while.

Perhaps this manufactured, emotional illness is all we need until basketball season begins after the glee and excitement and curses and declarations of wronged heroism and ignored success in the face of blatant commercialism during a 60-minute football game stretched over 4 hours of advertising.

At the end of the fourth quarter, 2nd and 2 on the 3 yard line, in the red zone, going in for the winning score on a play that hasn’t worked four times already, we faintly hear the sweet chaaching of dollars falling through our pockets into the coffers of the gods that rule the fall in helmets and pads and shoes with cleats as they beat each other into lifelong injuries inside a constructed bowl of fanaticism. Damn, I love it.

What did we use before aluminum? We did wood.

Butts rudding against raw wood means splinters. This small detail makes the invention of aluminum one of the most amazing moments in sports history, right up there with the forward pass, facemasks and GatorAde. Recent plastic seats attached to aluminum have added a small modicum of comfort during a four-hour game. But if you are a real sports fan, you like your aluminum naked, straight up and broiling in the sun.

I love the smell of aluminum in the fall. It smells like – aluminum.