BEVERLY HILLS (MI) -– It’s Finals Week for the Dayton Flyers, meaning that we among the Faithful must take a break from UD basketball whether we want to or not. I would wish all of the fellas ‘good luck’ but according to a recent BG tweet, his guys are already pulling a 3.3 aggregate GPA, so it doesn’t really sound like they need our prayers at this time.
Let there be links:

— ‘Tis the season for a very cool music video of synched-up Christmas lights in the Ghetto:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vj82m4BalE

— Mark January 6th on your calendar if you are tracking UD recruit Brandon Spearman. That’s when Brandon and his Chicago Simeon teammates will be squaring off against Morgan Park and their stud hoopster Wayne Blackshear, according to ChicagoHoops.com.

— Speaking of ChicagoHoops.com, that site also revealed that 2011 BG recruiting target PF James Siakam of Brehm Prep is unfortunately done for his junior year due to a facial injury:

http://www.chicagohoops.com/articles1/siakaminjury.html

— A couple of potential 2011 UD recruits from Wayne HS, Travis Trice, Jr. and Markus Crider grace the cover of Miami Valley Sports:

http://www.miamivalleysports.com/?p=963

— I can always tell when something really big happens with the Boston Red Sox – -the Sons of Sam Horn website gets slower than molasses or just plain stops working altogether, due to severe server overload. It happened twice on Monday: once in the middle of the day for this move:

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2009/12/report_lackey_t.html

Me Lackey! And later on in the evening for this key free agent signing:

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2009/12/15/cameron_oks_2_year_deal/

The next SoSH server meltdown will occur when the Sawx acquire power hitting Adrian Gonzalez from the San Diego Padres and their Theo Epstein apprentice of a GM, Jed Hoyer.

— The great Peter Gammons is leaving ESPN after 20 groundbreaking years for a split time gig with MLB-TV and NESN (the Red Sox owned Cable network). Peter wants to stay closer to home and use his season tickets at Fenway more often. Here is his final column:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=gammons_peter&id=4734773

–Gammons protégé Buster Olney on the Master:

http://insider.espn.go.com/espn/blog/index?entryID=4733669&name=olney_buster&action=login&appRedirect=http%3a%2f%2finsider.espn.go.com%2fespn%2fblog%2findex%3fentryID%3d4733669%26name%3dolney_buster

Much like Buster, I savored every one of PG’s “Baseball Notes” columns in the Sunday Boston Globe. My mom used to send me the Sunday Sports sections (and only the Sports sections) a month at a time. When Borders Book Stores finally came along in the ‘80s I would peruse the “Baseball Notes” in the $5 Sunday Globe and then put it back in the rack.

— Finally, here is what Gammons’ peers have to say about him:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4734632

— There was another transition in the TV sports world, this one much more welcome, at least to my ears: annoying MLB announcer Chip Caray got the ziggy from TBS:

http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/30/chip-caray-and-tbs-part-ways/

The guy who pulled the trigger on Caray, TBS President David Levy, is a friend of mine. He was a Sports Sales Manager in NY when I was an AE for CNN here in Detroit. At one of our sales conclaves in Florida a bunch of us organized a pickup hoops game in the 90 degree heat. Levy busted a few good moves and I kept calling him “Magic” for the rest of the sales meeting, which I don’t think he appreciated. Yeah, Chip was the grandson of Harry and son of Skip, but Levy made the right move here.

— To get the full Caray effect, check out the “Fake Chip Caray Twitter Page” courtesy of Deadspin:

http://deadspin.com/5379100/the-fake-chip-caray-twitter-is-up-and-it-is-gold

— Enuf about Tiger Woods already! Of all the stuff that was said and written about el Tigre, this has to be one of the cruelest and, at the same time, the funniest bits of business out there:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgiCX_y1BW8&feature=player_embedded

— Let us all hail our new Olympic Basketball overlords:

Great Britain?

Hey, it could happen. The Wall Street Journal is there:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703514404574588181371260074.html

— Some amazing optical illusions, courtesy of our friends at YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5xtRdLOopU&feature=player_embedded#

— When the Flyers resume action on Saturday they will face the Presbyterian College Blue Hose. They’re kinda like the Red Sox, only blue. Guaranteed, sometime during the game when a Presby kid is shooting FTs someone at the Arena will yell “miss it!” and everyone will laugh, which is what Roy Williams at UNC shoulda done last week, instead of having the Presby fan ejected.

That’s it “From the Swamp.”
You can email me at: [email protected]