Fri.-Mon., July 7-10, 2023
My 76th birthday, or as one friend put it, my fifth Quinceañera +1, occurred on Friday.
As has been the Wednesday-Friday routine for the past seven months, my birthday started with a trip to Pasadena to visit my Mother preceded by a solid lunch.
A fine BBQ spot in Eagle Rock to
celebrate my latest trip around the Sun
Young Laurie joined me on this
trip to the Dominoes Tournament
My Mother couldn't have cared less about having given birth to me, she destroyed me both in Dominoes games won, 18-15, and points, 247-192.
The victories on my birthday seemed to bring her greater joy than usual.
In the evening, Laurie and I attended a baseball game.
No, we did not attend the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers game at Dodger Stadium.
Instead, we stayed in Pasadena and walked into Brookside Park's Jackie Robinson Memorial Field to watch . . .
. . . a California Collegiate League
game using only wooden bats
The CCL is made up of 11 teams divided into a five team Northern Division and a six club Southern Division.
I must warn you before you read any farther that the CCL's Northern Division has some of the best nicknames in all of sports.
The Northern Division is made up of the Healdsburg Prune Packers, the Lincoln Potters, the Solano Mudcats, the Sonoma Stompers and the Walnut Creek Crawdads.
The Southern Division of the CCL has more mundane and/or boring team monickers.
The Southern Division is composed of the Arroyo Seco Saints, the Conejo Oaks, the MLB Academy Barons, the Orange County Riptide, the San Luis Obispo Blues and the Santa Barbara Foresters.
The reason that I wanted to go here to celebrate was because of the players involved in the game and their playing for the love of the game.
The 87 players on the two teams that we would watch competing hailed from 15 different states. Although 54 of them were Californians, we saw collegiate players from as far away as Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.
The two rosters had players that competed for 53 college baseball programs this past spring. We had players who had spent the recently concluded collegiate season for schools as far away as the University of Hawaii, Washington's Gonzaga University, the University of Connecticut and the University of North Carolina.
Let's take a look at our two participants last Friday night.
The Orange County Riptide
Second Place in the Southern Division
12 Wins - 7 Losses
The Arroyo Seco Saints
Third Place in the Southern Division
11 Wins - 8 Losses
It was a balmy evening for
our National Pastime
The 20-30 fans in attendance
were having a good time
This was our section of the stadium
It was fun game to watch with some players who quickly showed us why they were not drafted in the recent Major League Baseball draft but were willing to keep grinding while following their dream.
There were also some players who showed high levels of skill. It all made for a good night for me.
A BIG thanks to Laurie for going to the game with me. I think that she was really happy for our quick exit out of the parking lot and on to the Freeway.
It was MUCH easier than exiting Dodger Stadium after any and all games.
On to the American football scene . . .
TRUE!
We'll start in Italy where the DIII Nine Bowl and DII Silver Bowl Championship Games were fought.
Brescia Bengals (8-0)
vs.
Catania Elephants (7-1)
I was pulling for the Elephants as they were the first EuroBall team that I coached back in 2008 and 2009.
The ageless Enrico Lombardo was
still running the rock after all
of these years for Catania
DAMN!
The complete DIII Playoff Bracket
The Bengals will be moving back
up to DII in 2024, I suspect
The DII Silver Bowl
was a close one too
The complete DII Playoff Bracket
The Lions were THE DI team during
the period from 1993 to 2008
They won 12 Italian Super Bowl championships during that era.
I surmise that they will be returning to DI competition in 2024.
There were more National Championships decided over the weekend.
Polish Bowl XVIII
was on tap
The Lowlanders won a wild one!
The 33rd Swedish National Title Game
The Stockholm Mean Machine took
home their 14th Superserien Championship
In Serbian Bowl XVIII, it was
the Wild Boars in a rout, 48-7
The win gave the Kragujevac squad their tenth Serbian Bowl Championship, one more than the Vukovi's nine Serbian titles.
Egypt Bowl IX
GUC Eagles vs. Cairo Hell Hounds
The Eagles represent the German University of Cairo.
The Hell Hounds represent the mystic Egyptian underworld.
The Hell Hounds won their fourth
Egyptian Bowl Championship
As opposed to the other National Championship games we've reviewed, this was a defensive battle with the Hell Hounds outlasting the Eagles, 7-3.
The Hell Hounds would be a GREAT
new nickname for the CCL's
Arroyo Seco franchise
Just saying . . .
Our 2012 squad, the Thun Tigers,
made it to the Swiss Bowl for the
first time in history with this win
over the Zurich Renegades
Swiss Bowl XXXVII is set
#1 seeded, 10-1 Calanda Broncos
vs.
#3 seeded, 8-3 Thun Tigers
While this will be Thun's first Swiss Bowl appearance, the Calanda Broncos have played in every Swiss Bowl since 2009, winning ten of them.
It will be a tall order for Coach Stephan Pulver's Tigers but strange things can happen in sports. Stephan was our excellent Center back in 2012 and coached many of the current Tigers on the Junior team that year.
The Arab American Football League?
Who knew?
On to the the latest from the European League of Football . . .
The Vienna Vikings had an easy time
with their Austrian rival Tirol Raiders
winning 34-13
The Helvetic Guards won their franchise's first ELF victory at the expense of our beloved Barcelona Dragons by a score of 22-19 in overtime.
The Leipzig Kings forfeit loss to the Prague Lions and the Hungarian Fehérvár Enthroners 60-6 loss to the Berlin Thunder were both troubling for the ELF.
I must give the Enthroners some moxie points though. Down 60-0 with under two minutes left in their game against the Thunder, they scored a TD to close the gap to 60-6. On the PAT, the Hungarian team went for two!
Fehérvár's two point pass fell incomplete but what the hell, GO FOR IT!
ELF Standings after Week #6
The Rhein Fire and Frankfurt Galaxy
are the Best in the West
A two team race as well,
the Stuttgart Surge and the
Tirol Raiders are the Class of
the Central
The Eastern Conference still has three
clubs in contention, the Vienna Vikings,
Berlin Thunder and Wroclaw Panthers
On Monday the Hammer fell
Just as we all believed, the Leipzig Kings ELF season is KAPUT!
Just like their California Collegiate League baseball brothers, all of these American football players playing on teams in EuroBall, Egypt and the Arabian League are playing for the sheer love of the game. I really enjoy what they are all doing, whether as native players or imports. It is sport in its purest form I think.
The high school football season in
Southern California is about to start
Venturas County's Marmonte and Canyon Leagues are highly regarded. There are over 90 high school football leagues in California's Southern Section.
A Varese Skorpion following his dream
In June of 2019, our friend Bart Iaccarino organized the Venom Camp in Varese. The Chicago Bears coaching staff plus Kansas City Chiefs Defensive Coortdinator, Steve Spagnuolo, were the headliners. The two-day camp attracted players from all over Europe who, once again, love the game and just wanted to get better.
I had the chance to work with the Bears Shane Toub as we coached the Offensive Linemen that long ago weekend. It was great fun.
The Bears Receivers Coach at the time was Mike Furrey who impressed all of us at the camp with his high energy.
One of the WRs that he coached was the Varese Skorpions own Filippo Petrillo. Coach Furrey was so impressed with Filippo that he invited him to come to Chicago and play football for an American high school.
Filippo and his family were all for it, then Covid-19 got in the way.
Instead, Filippo has spent the last two years living in the UK going to school and playing a lot of American football at London's NFL Academy.
Coach Furrey is now the Head Coach at South Carolina's DII Limestone University. That bond, first created on a field in far away northern Italy, is still strong as Coach Furrey has given Filippo a spot on the Saints 2023 roster.
For the love of the game . . .
Gentle Giant Levi Brock
I first met Levi in 2017 when he represented Britain as an Offensive Lineman on our Europe Warriors U19 team that played against the Mexican National U19 team in a game held at the University Autónoma Chapingo outside of Mexico City.
He was a joy to coach and now, six years later he continues to follow his dream.
For the love of the game . . .
I passed by our local elementary school
that sons Andrew and Michael attended
Grandson Jacob also "attended" Las Posas on-line during his Covid-19 year.
Go Leopards!
On Sunday night, Laurie and I opted for a cerebral evening at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.
The 26th Annual Kingsmen
Shakespeare Festival was in full swing
CLU's men's athletic teams are the Kingsmen, the women's teams are the Regals.
CLU puts on two of the Bard's plays
every Summer
On Sunday night it was the comedy, The Two Gentlemen of Verona.
Shakespeare's drama, King Lear, will be on the CLU stage later this month through the first weekend of August.
Did I mention that the plays are all
performed al fresco in Kingsmen Park?
The curtain rises at 8:00 p.m., so it can get a tad chilly during the Second Act.
We have had great fun every Summer at these plays.
News from the net . . .
We knew that and have for years
Bacon . . .
Hmmm . . .
Is there a better way to end
a long blog post?
For the love of chocolate cannoli . . .
