Matthew

Why would Lebron stay with the Cavs? they had the best player for eleven-years and had such an incompetent front office, that they only won one championship. Why stay with a team that has no chance of ever beating the Warriors? (and I say that as a Lakers fan). Cleveland got their banner, the debt has be paid, time to move on

Howard McGhee: West Coast 1945-1947

Way Out Wardell: Wardell Gray

I hear everyone about the pro-Strasburg stats and everything, I get the love, but maybe it's that I perpetually think the Nationals are going to win it all, and then they bomb out of the playoffs -- sort of like the Braves all those years. I still don't get how you have three Hall of Fame pitchers on your staff, and only one World Series win.

Strasburg's never reached the heights that I though he could coming out of San Diego State. Pitching, the most unnatural action in sports.

Even in Our Darkness: A Story of Beauty in a Broken Life by Jack Deere. Deere is famous in the charismatic world, at one point in his life working with John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard Church movement in Anaheim, CA. Not your typical memoir that goes from "glory to glory"; well written, but one of the saddest accounts I've read. Comes from a family background where his father committed suicide, and his mother had a difficult personality. Deere marries a woman, who turns out to have serious emotional issues stemming from being sexually abuse by her father (he did not find this out until later in the marriage, after she tried to commit suicide a number of times), and to top that all off, his son committed suicide at the age of 23. Numerous times in his life, he tells us, he put himself first, and everyone else second, and comments he used "proclaiming the gospel" as an excuse to hide the damage he was doing to family and friends by his actions from himself. His account of his relationship with Wimber is heartbreaking in this regard. He writes of coming to be aware of all this, and I get a heavy sense of sadness and regret as he looks over his life. "Knowing yourself," it turns out, is not as easy as it sounds.

Stan Kenton: Sophisticated Approach

Shorty Rogers & Bill Perkins: Live at the Royal Palms Inn

I loved those Pirates teams of the 1970s, so many interesting personalities. I think that's what I miss most, the personalities from the days gone by, nowadays, there seems to be only the cookie cutter mold of no emotion while playing, unwritten rules galore -- strangely enough, some those old-time managers like Danny Murtaugh seemed to be pretty chill about things, unlike today's over controlling managers. Edit: Yeah, I know, the above is really old geezer talk, but really, get off my lawn!

Shorty Rogers and His Giants: Echoes of Harlem

I was on the old BN board, as JuJu. Hard to image that many years...

For some reason, I looked at the join date on my profile, and I cannot believe it's been 15 years?!?! Where does the time go?

So, I'm sitting down for dinner with someone from the East Coast across from me, and he puts salt on his watermelon. Deal with it!

Chihei Hatakeyama: Mirror

Josh Garrels: Love and War and the Sea in Between: