The dirt track hugs wooden bleachers angling up about 25 feet into the damp Shenandoah wind. A man in a camo gimme cap with a belly big enough to have swallowed a small child chugs by wearing a painted-on-tight t-shirt, confederate tats embroidering his hairy forearms. Gasoline fumes laced with cigarette smoke and the aroma of deep-fried grease float in the muddy breeze between the trucks parked in the grass lot. A pretty woman walks by with a Bible verse on her shirt while another woman, less pretty, curses at a man on her cell phone. Two-toned blondes in skin-tight jeans snuggle wiry thin boys next to a concession stand that is big enough for a decent wrestling match. I could tell this was going to be fun from county fair smell and the sound of rubber churning mud on the far side of the weathered grandstands.

Walking into the crowd, I look around at Jim, my doctor and friend long before that. “I’ll give you $20 to yell, ‘I love Barack Obama?’”

“I’m not taking that bet. Besides, I don’t have my medical kit with me,” he says with a straight face. He is not kidding.

Rain pounds the red clay track into a reflective ooze slicker than owl manure squishing under the tires of warped, colorful cars built by hand from pipes and fiberglass and a desire to win some spending money.

Nothing says Saturday night like wet bleachers plastering your ass to the seat of your pants while people around you yell at flimsy, dirt-plastered cars barreling around a slippery oval. The rain stops. Racecars rumble onto the slush single file. Everyone secretly waits for the wreck that eventually comes.

It takes 15 minutes. A Navy blue Mustang switches ends, grinding and sandwiching between two other Mustangs. It seems that every car on the track is a Mustang. I grin. Jim grins. The first wreck, albeit small, has occurred. Everyone feels like they got some of what they came for.

Above us, frantic bugs boil in hypnotic patterns around the lights causing Jim and me to divert our gaze from the speckled brown racing.

“Try to follow one,” says Jim, watching the bugs arc and loop in big, goofy circles.

I do for a while, before looking over at a grizzly gentleman spitting a slurry of Red Man and corn chips over the rail. It barely misses a pregnant woman eating a hotdog. You cannot purchase this kind of entertainment in New York City or Los Angeles. But it happens every Saturday night in small towns across the South.

“That guy looks just like…” A crunching sound to our left pinches off my sentence. What I see pushes the spitter from importance.

People stand and scream and point left. A bulbous man burps and yells, “Brrlook!” all in one raucous motion. Up in the tight curve of slanting earth a purple and white car collides with a lime green car spilling curled sheets of what was once purple and lime green cars onto the track. A red and blue racer swerves to miss the chunks and hits the guardrail like a paper airplane unfolding, sending wobbly slices of thin fuselage across the ground in a manner resembling tossed potato chips. The orange light glows from the tower, pissed-off drivers get out of their wrecks, and a hurried cleanup commences. The surviving cars roam and jerk back and forth around the track, anxious for the green light.

I inhale a haze of rusty air thrown up by spinning tires. Puffs from a cigarette brush my face, burning my eyes. Beside me, smoke plumes between the puckered lips of a woman chomping a mound of chili cheese nachos loaded with raw onions. Uncorking my earplugs, I look over at Jim. He looks like a man visiting either a zoo or a strip joint for the first time.

“I’m liking this,” he says.

“It’s the most fun I’ve had since I was a kid in Montgomery, Alabama,” I say. “Wish my dad was here to see this.” He loved to watch cars drive in circles.

Jim and I stand frozen between city and country, lost in a time warp that feels like 1966. For me, the aroma of blue collar summer nights mix with fading memories of Red Farmer trading paint with one of the Allison’s while two men beat each other with cowboy boots not 5 feet away. This was my youth revisiting for just a moment. I cannot speak of what Jim’s thoughts held. But he looked hypnotized by the proceedings.

“Worth every one of those ten dollars,” says Jim. He turns, looks up at the crowd and leans in nervously. “Let’s get the hell out of here before these boys get all raced up out there in the parking lot.”

We walk away and into the misty night, our ears ringing, our noses filled with wet dirt, our inner rednecks smiling. Well, at least mine.

(to be continued somewhere down the road)

I’ll get this out of the way right up front: I grew up in LA (meaning Lower Alabama). So when I speak of rednecks, it is not with disdain, but affection. I have changed a lot over the years since I used to try to out-redneck the next redneck, but right under the surface, my neck is still a little red. So it was with great anticipation that I accepted Jim’s offer to go to a dirt track Saturday night.

Jim is my doctor. He was a friend of mind long before I knew he was a physician. I picked up on his profession when our boys were playing little league baseball 15 years ago. People kept calling him “Doc.” After several games of me bitching about the lousy coaching I finally asked him if “Doc” was a nickname.

“No,” he said in his dry smiling manner. “I’m really a doctor.”

“I’ll be damned,” I said. “I could probably use one.” And so our long friendship began, even though it is a little tough to go eat with a man who has to check your prostate every year. I suppose it comes with the territory when one of your best friends is also your doctor.

Jim used to be the team doctor for the Florida Gators football team. Being an Alabama alumnus, I long ago forgave him this athletic indiscretion. He is also a bit of an adventurer as he loves to camp out in thunderstorms, ride 90 miles a day on his bike and swim in arctic waters. To say he may be more eccentric than me is saying a lot. But that’s what I’m saying.

Human anthropology is one of Jim’s many offbeat hobbies. Studying people and their behavior feeds his endless curiosity and he goes far and wide to feed his affliction. Dirt track racing, naturally, is something he enjoys. Under a threatening cloud, we drove the hour and a half west on I-64 from Richmond past Charlottesville and over Afton Mountain into the Shenandoah Valley. We had thirty minutes to kill before the race so we went looking for some food. We found BBQ instead.

One of our shared pastimes is eating at out of the way dive joints that serve food neither of us, at our age, should be eating. But hell, he’s a doctor, so if I go down he can either help me or pronounce me dead. I’d as soon die in a BBQ joint with Jim than alone in my office writing a script. With my medical training, however, if he goes down while choking on a chicken wing, he’s screwed. For me CPR consists of calling 911 to report the location of the victim.

Before even getting to his pork sandwich, Jim got stuck in the restroom – literally. He was yelling, twisting the flopping, rusty knob and pounding on the malfunctioning door. I thought the commotion was a fight in the kitchen over a rib or some baked beans. A woman at the cash register finally had to rescue him. After my pork sandwich, the same thing happened to me. The adventure had begun.

While we drove towards the track and flossed chunks of pork from our teeth, tablespoon-sized drops of rain fell from the pewter clouds slowly roaming in from the west. In the distance the sound of grinding gears and screaming pistons bounced off the bottom of the roiling sky.

(to be continued)

If you follow college hoops, I do not need to rehash how the upstart Rams, after placing 4^th in the regular season of their own Mid-Major conference (The CAA), shook the world of March Madness. In a run of pure grit and audacity, VCU almost won the CAA tourney beating league powerhouse George Mason and almost downing Old Dominion University. On selection Sunday, when most of the NCAA Tourney teams waited on national television for their names to be called, VCU’s team was studying or eating at Subway when their name was announced.

A cry went up from the entire country, especially from the fans of teams that did not get in, teams that were certain they were better than VCU. The Rams were quickly shuffled into what some pundits called “The Junk Bracket,” a 4-game Dayton, Ohio pre-tourney add-on of teams that barely made it into the NCAA’s. VCU pulled an 11 seed bid and faced off as the decided underdog against the University of Southern California.

Basketball experts (among them, Jay Bilas and Dick Vitale) immediately jumped on the Rams, saying they “did not belong” and their selection was a mistake so heinous, the commentators questioned if the selection committee even “knew if the ball was round.”

One sportscaster said the VCU defense was so bad they could not defend even him.

The Cinderella die was cast at the bottom of the bracket. When VCU handily beat USC, people called it luck. When they destroyed legendary basketball powerhouse, Georgetown, the experts said VCU caught some breaks. By the time the boys from Richmond massacred 3^rd seeded Purdue, the nation was either in shock or hopping on the underdog bandwagon.

VCU had won more games than any team left in the tourney. They faced Florida State, another team that had clawed their way into the game by dismantling a heavily favored Notre Dame. No one but Sports Illustrated picked VCU to win. Within minutes of the Rams victory over FSU by one point in overtime, the nay-saying continued. VCU had won four games. They were not supposed to even be in the tourney. They had made the Elite Eight by sheer determination and a blistering style that left opponents ragged and tired halfway through. Charles Barkley called VCU’s speed and 3-point barrages “Organized Mayhem.”

VCU met number 1 seed Kansas next. You didn’t need a degree in basketball to predict the Rams would lose this one, especially after Kansas embarrassed the University of Richmond two days earlier. Everyone said it was the end of the luck train for the Rams. According to one TV hoopster doofus, the Jayhawks would “wipe the floor with VCU.” “Kansas’ second string would destroy VCU,” said another. “Kansas will send the 2^nd Richmond team home today,” smirked a sports analyst who’d mis-predicted 4 previous VCU wins. Even a Kansas player said, “I don’t even know where Richmond is, and besides, I’ll never go there anyway.”

Kansas had a 44% chance to win the national title. VCU’s odds: .09. Like Hoosiers, it did not look good for the Black & Gold from the capital of Virginia Sunday afternoon when the two took the court in San Antonio. But sometimes a good brand wins.

VCU just beat Kansas by a comfortable margin to go to the Final Four. At one point VCU lead by 18. The bad-mouthers were in the bathroom gargling. Crow was served in the cafeterias at CBS, TBS, TNT, TRU and ESPN. A lot of people lost money on this one.

What are the branding parallels here? Build a brand on a great story. VCU has one. Engage people at every touch point. VCU did. Have a colorful leader. The Rams have Shaka Smart (impossible to forget that name). It helps to be the underdog, to be sure. And then go out and play your game, not theirs. Two weeks ago, few people in America had ever heard of VCU. That changed today.

Lesson: you don’t have to read branding books to understand what makes a great brand. You just need to go to B-Dubs and watch some basketball.

NOTE: By the way, that’s my daughter up there. She is one of the three best brands I’ve ever had a part in creating.

The Big River offices are a lot like ESPN; we have cubes filled with sports freaks and die-hard fans from all over the country. I’m talking places like Philly, Chicago, Alabama, Ohio, Tennessee and Blacksburg. You like college football? Let’s talk. You want to yap about how steroids are turning baseball and cycling into pharmacies? We can fill your prescription. Want to get a Sports Center breakdown of the latest March Madness match-ups? Just yell over the half-wall.

Fred (our president) and I follow more sports than 537 guys crammed into a s B-Dubs on a Saturday during any season. Fred is a big Tennessee, Atlanta Braves and UVA fan. I’m a Crimson-Tider and VCU Rams fan (my daughter cheers at VCU). So we always have something more interesting than work to talk about.

In Fred’s blog post across the hall today, you’ll notice he is bemoaning the debacle that is USC athletics. Rightly so, Fred sees a parallel with branding. He hits it out of the park, so I won’t jump his shark here; just go read what he has to say about that.

Here is how it all started. When Lane Kiffin showed up at Tennesse with his hot wife and Charlie Sheen mouth, Fred questioned the call (well, at least the Charlie Sheen part). When Kiffin left less than a year later to go to Southern Cal, Fred coined several new Southern-accented curse words for Kiffin. You would hear them wafting around the coffee machine now and then.

“Gawdammedsumbichinmofoaisehole.”

Only Fred could create a single word for all the good curse words.

Then USC played VCU in the first round of the NCAA Basketball Tournament the other night and Fred got TMI’d by Trojan coach, Kevin O’Neil, who, with his wife, got into an elevator fight with an Arizona fan earlier in the week and got tossed for a while, but then reinstated. Memories of past Kiffin-ated antics danced in Fred’s head and he worked up another word.

“Naistyaroguntshitferbrainsprick.”

Another prize winner, right there, my friend.

So, let’s review: Fred is not fond of Southern Cal or two of its coaches. I don’t think he likes the Spartacus mascot riding his horse around the field either. While he and I are bitter SEC rivals, on this point, we are in the same huddle.

As an Alabama alumnus, I too, watched the freshly-fired Kiffin float into the Southeastern Conference from the Oakland Raiders like a turd in a punch bowl. Soon he was crossways with several players, every coach in the league and 234 reporters from South Carolina to Arkansas. But his cocksure attitude, while petulant, gave the struggling Volunteers hope – that is, until Pete Carol left the USC program and Kiffin bolted Tennessee 10 games later with no notice. His reward was an opportunity to suck up an LA Coliseum-full of NCAA sanctions left by an arrogant athletic department being hoisted on it’s own petard. Needless to say, many of those sanctions happened under Kiffin’s previous tenure as an assistant at USC. No surprise there.

Then USC’s basketball coach and his wife get into a verbal “altercation” with an Arizona fan in an elevator. Nice touch. Guess he’s just trying to hold up his end with a guy like Kiffin hanging out in the building.

Sorry, Fred, USC’s athletic department is not looking like the Oakland Raiders. It looks like “Jersey Shore.”

You got Lane “The Situation” Kiffin running a football program that imitates the effects of Viagra.  There’s Kevin “Ronnie” O’Neil who just might get in a fight faster than he can lose a game by giving up.  I’m sure there is a Snooki and a Jennie “JJWOW” roaming somewhere in the mix. When it’s all played and investigated, however, I just want to turn the channel.

If you haven’t heard the story, last week a former Texas state trooper, Harvey Updyke, under the guise of being an Alabama fan, admitted to poisoning two 130 year-old oaks at Toomer’s Corner, a legendary celebration point next to the Auburn campus. The trees will likely die.

Toilet paper always hangs from the branches of those two big old trees after Auburn gets a big win, like the one against Alabama this past season. We yell “Roll Tide!” and they just cuss real loud (“War Damn Eagle”) and roll trees. Traditions are like that. In a “Dumb Asses Gone Wild” moment, however, this particular Toomer’s Corner’s celebration seems to have pissed off “Al from Daleville,” according to his own admission, when he called Paul Finebaum’s popular Birmingham radio program and said this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hm8AqL9FV-o

I’ll be damned. I’m not sure which is worse, killing two ancient and respected trees or being stupid enough to admit to it on the radio. The man was a Texas state trooper for a while, so perhaps that explains some of it. Needless to say, “Al” was picked up and faces one to ten years in a prison, where, no doubt, he will run crossways with some of those Auburn graduates he arrested for speeding on their way to Canada back in the day.

See, that’s sort of an inside Auburn joke right there. Alabama fans tell jokes like that. In case the punch line was lost on you, only Auburn graduates would drive through Texas to get to Canada. You tell jokes like that because Auburn fans put a Cam Newton jersey on Bear Bryant’s statue on the Tuscaloosa campus this past season. See, this Auburn/Alabama hatred can be both subtle and obvious all at once. But with this ridiculously bone-headed tree-killing incident, it has taken a national turn. Hey y’all, our underwear is showing to everyone on this one.

“This is just the beginning of hostilities,” said an Auburn friend I talked with on Friday. “We might just have to break into y’all’s library and leave a book.”

I’ve seen Auburn fans bolt a toilet to the roof of an Alabama student’s car and paint these words on the side: “Roll Tide Roll! Around the bowl and down the hole! Roll Tide Roll!” It can get worse than that. Stories circulate about people being shot, knifed, beat up and fired over their loyalties to one team or the other. Houses, cars and boats have been defaced, burned, stolen, and repainted in a rival’s colors. This is not Harvard and Princeton we are talking about here, people. Those rivals steal each other’s Porsches. This is a diehard situation that makes Lee Corso sweat bullets when he pulls on the Elephant or Tiger mascot head on GameDay visits to the respective campuses. It’s a dangerous job, being a fan of Auburn or Alabama. Always has been.

I have many friends and family who went to both schools. In the years since I left the University of Alabama, my feelings have mellowed from the days when a loss to Auburn would give a boy the “loser’s flu” for a couple of days. When I read about this oak poisoning incident at Auburn, however, I felt pretty bad as well. Then again, I remember the Alabama fan hating her Auburn neighbor so bad, she seduced the neighbor’s husband – a Notre Dame fan.

Let me tell you something about Alabama: if you want to get even with your Auburn neighbor so bad you’ll sleep with a Notre Dame fan, you just might poison a whole forest.

Every Saturday in the fall, we feel the need to identify with a football team and we’re either deliriously happy or ridiculously depressed, depending on the play of our team. The outcome changes our lives in no way, win or lose, but we still get all balled up about which mascot head Lee Corso will choose to wear. That is possibly the best definition of stupidity I have ever seen. And I am the worst offender. I act like the weekly performance of a bunch of kids in a state I haven’t lived in for 28 years really matters.

It’s not cheap either. Some Southerners buy giant RV’s and spend half of their paychecks following their school. At least I don’t do that, so I guess I still have a few rungs to go on the dumb ass ladder. I do, however, get all stressed out watching the Crimson Tide stink up a 100,000-seat stadium like they are doing today.

Does it really matter if my team wins or loses? No. Does it affect my job? No. Will it affect my income or our family’s lives? No. Does it affect my health? Probably.

Southerners give religious meaning to a game. A damned game played by kids. Besides fighting for the worst cause in human history, you really want to know why the South lost the Civil War? Turn on ESPN. It’s playing in HD.

On a beautiful Friday night in Richmond, a NASCAR race drew a crowd so paltry the stands looked like a Detroit suburb. One entire side was completely empty; the other housed just a scattering of fans. Conversely, a mud-tracked crash fest with junkers trying to destroy each other drew probably 10,000 people in Hillsboro, Ohio at the Highland County Fair – on a Wednesday night. I saw both events, one on TV, the other in person. The crowd in Ohio was connected to the action. The spectators in Richmond seemed like leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner. What can we learn from this?

Authenticity matters.

For decades now NASCAR has homogenized their brand into an over-organized vanilla non-sport filled with cookie-cutter cars and drivers whose personalities have been ironed out of them by the corporate mantra. For a while, it worked. No more. The fans don’t want it. The drivers don’t want it. Hell, not even the sponsors want it. So who is left holding the uninteresting corporate bag? Management.

Racing left its grass roots and built a plastic toy that few people want to play with anymore. Besides, it costs a small fortune to watch people drive in circles. Even the NASCAR Hall Of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina is suffering, either from the economy or a lack of interest. Since pro and college football still connect with fans at a deeper level, I say the latter.

On that Ohio field of mud, regular guys – driving old cars that they hammered together in their yards and painted with house paint – slammed into each other in an exhibition of recklessly joyous entertainment. Sounds like what regular old stock car racing used to be back when people bored out the engine of an everyday car, drove it to a track, strapped on a helmet and went at it. The people were authentic. The event was authentic. The experience was authentic. It was viscerally real and unadorned with hype and polish. This reality is what so many brands try to create and often kill by product over-management. NASCAR, unfortunately, seems like a textbook example, but they are not alone. Go to websites, watch TV, listen to radio, flip through a deadly brochure, try to read a billboard with more crap stuck on it than three racecars. We have confused dissemination of information with making a connection to a real human being.

Advertising and marketing has suffered from the same corporate disease of over-management until the brand has no, blood, no guts, no life. We like our heroes flawed, not pristine. Branding wants to please everyone, so we please no one. Into this dull world came the rough and tumble, bad boys and girls of branding: social media. And with them came transparent authenticity.

Social media is down on the dirt track with a wrench and a screwdriver, delivering an experience so personal and unpolished, everyone, even old people who can’t do anything but sign on to their Facebook page are intrigued. Want to do more than just watch the Old Spice dude? With social media you can have a conversation with him.

When Brad Paisley sang, “let’s get a little mud on the tires,” was he talking about life or business?

Perhaps branding will eventually realize where the people actually are and start racing a car like you can buy down at the local dealer – doing it not in front of customers and fans, but with them. Millions of people want to ride in the car. Most want to drive it themselves. That’s the new paradigm of authenticity.

In the meantime, in Hillsboro, Ohio, a guy is painting crude numbers on the side of a 1979 station wagon and itching to ram it into another guy driving a 1982 Ford salvaged from a junkyard two months ago and chicken-wired into a semi-drivable vehicle built to last four or five minutes. That’s authentic spontaneity. That’s what social media delivers. And that’s what advertising, PR and marketing needs more of.

By the way, you got a little mud right there on the side of your face. Looks pretty cool.

James Madison just beat the Hokies 21-16 today. JMU is a Football Championship Subdivision team. That’s like the Packers playing Clemson. It should have been a default win. It wasn’t. This is not a ringing endorsement of Boise State’s prowess.

Meanwhile back on Game Day, Chris Fowler gets into it and sides with Boise State, pointing to a game a few years ago when Alabama overlooked Utah and got pasted 31-17 in the Sugar Bowl. Desmond Howard claims Boise State can play one-on-one with any team in the country. Corso mocks the premise of the conversation, “Sure, yeah, they beat Virginia Tech by THREE! Wow!” In hindsight, Corso may be right.

Boise State has a great team. The Virginia Tech first quarter showed just how well they execute. The Broncos trick-played Oklahoma a few years ago into one of the best football games I have ever seen, period. Last year Boise State ran the table to 14-0 and used a fake punt to beat an undefeated TCU in the Fiesta Bowl 17-10. There are those who said neither TCU nor Boise State should have been ranked 3 and 6 considering their schedules. Perhaps. Perhaps not. For comparison’s sake, let’s look at schedules, numbers and competition.

This season Boise State plays Virginia Tech, Wyoming, Oregon State, New Mexico State, Toledo, San Jose State, Louisiana Tech, Hawaii, Idaho, Fresno State, Nevada and Utah State. Boise State only plays two BCS level teams: VT and Oregon State. VT is the only ranked opponent. They have never had to play two preseason-ranked teams in one season. Since 1996, BS has played 20 BCS level schools. Their record against those schools is 7-13, but they currently have a five game winning streak against those teams, so they have the chops. They looked good most of the night against the Hokies. But they blew a crushing lead and Tech was ahead with 1:47 to play. There were two ref calls that many people are still arguing about. There is good and there is luck. In the end, “I’d rather be lucky than good.” said Tom Landry.

But let’s put those numbers against a team like Florida, for instance. In 3 years, the Gators have played 33 BCS level schools and are 27-6. They have played 13 ranked opponents and beat 10 of them. In their 2008 national championship season, Florida beat #4 LSU, #8 Georgia, #24 South Carolina, #23 Florida State, #1 Alabama and #2 Oklahoma. That’s a very different type of consistent competition than Toledo and New Mexico State, etc.

This season, Alabama plays San Jose State (a common BS opponent whom they beat 48-3), Penn State, Duke, Arkansas, Florida, South Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, LSU, Mississippi State, Georgia State and Auburn. Six of those teams are ranked.

Many people say if you give Boise State Alabama’s schedule, would they be undefeated? If my grandmother had balls, would she be my grandpaw? Who knows?

Boise State will have to keep answering this question on the field against tougher teams. To stop getting asked, they need to beef up that schedule and win like Alabama and Florida. If you only play one or two tough games a year and others schools get beat up playing seven or eight slugfests, should you be ranked in the top five? That’s the question.

POST NOTE: Boise State loses ranking points after Virginia Tech loses to JMU: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=5564490

High school football is now on ESPN. I saw three games last weekend. This does not resemble the high school game I played back in the day when I spent most of my time pissing off one of the best coaches in Alabama high school football history. The players on my 55” Samsung last Saturday could have played for the Crimson Tide in the 1970’s. They were that big and fast and strong. I think one of them already had a shoe deal with Nike.

Which brings me to the reason I started writing this post 200 words ago: millionaires playing a game most guys would love to play for free, or did.

Go to B-Dubs on Sunday afternoon and look into the faces of any guy who has just spent two hours sucking down two-dozen Asian Zinged wings chased by 24-oz’s of Bud Light while watching his favorite team get beat. He would pay a month’s salary for the chance to suit up and get beat like that on any pro football field in the world – just for the privilege of saying he did it.

There is no shortage of millionaires playing pro sports. The minimum salary of an NFL benchwarmer is $325,000 a year. Try to pull down that much at the welding supply or plumbing company or climbing electrical poles in a hurricane trying to fix a broken power line. Few guys who own their own successful companies make anywhere near that much. And even fewer have as much fun as the kicker who just missed that 20-yard chip shot. Yet the average family of four will pay over $415 to attend a single NFL game (tickets, parking, food, etc.).

When it is time for kickoff, I still don’t care. I’m right there, spread out in my recliner, remote in hand, watching millionaires hit each other so hard they will look like extras in “Cocoon” by the time they are fifty. If they are honest, every guy in every sports bar in the country would trade his bass boat for just three hours between the sidelines wearing a helmet of his favorite team; and that is how athletes and owners become millionaires in the first place. Guys like me are willing to give them and their teams our hardest earned dollars for just a few minutes of wishing we were them. And sadly, on an orange-leafed autumn day under a porcelain blue sky, it is worth every penny.

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.