Sport
Dave Shenin passed the midpoint of the Orioles season in top form: "If the Baltimore Orioles are having nightmares of late as they sleep, visited in their dreams by an army of evil monsters, devils, mothers-in-law or umpires, one can be sure the bogeymen in question have one thing in common: They are all left-handed."
Frank Herzog's rough year continued: "Five months after WJFK radio announced it was pulling the longtime play-by-play voice of the Washington Redskins from the broadcast team, WUSA (Channel 9) has informed him that he's out of a job as the station's main sports anchor when his contract expires at the end of November, according to several sources."
Herzog rented the house next to ours at the beach one year, and my brother and I collected Herzog sightings all week. Our previous experience with the anchor had been at the taping of his weekly Redskins TV show (now long off the WUSA airwaves), where Rob managed to get on camera every few minutes and I only finagled the brim of my hat into the frame. That we were sitting next to each other in the studio at the time said a lot about our respective luck with television cameos. Rob was a wiz. The Redskin guests for that show were Desmond Howard and Kelly Goodburn, and we got their autographs. That we got them out of all the possible Redskin players said a lot about our autograph luck at the time.
On the topic of football, the Post reported this week how Gonzaga is getting artificial grass (last item) on Buchanan Field. Gonzaga's site has published more details on the conversion. The switch was probably inevitable given the progress of artificial grass and the never-ending struggle to keep the field alive during constant practice and game use. The turf between the hash marks browned long before midseasons. But still, at least the dirt was real. Any turf that hosted that many great games, gym classes and pep rallies — like the bomb threat pep rally of '97 — couldn't have been too bad.
Almost by the artificial field's nature now, the strands have given a challenge to the kids at the school. Schedulers have marked the first game there as 1 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 25, against the Stags of DeMatha.
