I am guilty… so guilty… but since my recent spate of professionalism, they’ve hung unused in the closet. And that’s sad.

Wait. Ben Moser, you and I have countered this with jersey theory, which should one day be defined in one of our blogs.

As many of you know, I was for many years a season ticket holder for the Carolina Hurricanes. This year, with grad school and the DSI Comedy Theater open, it didn’t make so much sense to renew my season tickets.

We went to the disappointingly toothless Avalanche/Canucks game when Todd Bertuzzi first set foot on the ice in Colorado after the Steve Moore incident. The Denver fans managed to boo every time that Bertuzzi set skate on the ice or touched the puck, and there were weak one- and two-person chants of “coward” in the upper bowl. But otherwise, completely lame. Scott Stevens received much harsher treatment for far less each time he came to Carolina. (Proof that crowds are thinner, but the fans are superb in Carolina.)

Still, this experience has prompted me to pursue a career as a hockey player. So, to that end, I have enrolled myself at hockey academy. Can anyone ship me a guitar to Denver?

Am I the only person in America who has given the MLB steroids issue, and has come to the conclusion that he just doesn’t care? Because I don’t. I did– I wrote in March that I didn’t believe that steroid users should be eligible for the Hall of Fame. But now, I don’t care. Yes, it’s cheating, but so is using a corked bat or scuffing the ball. And if you get caught, you suffer the penalties. That should be it.

Just because cheating doesn’t keep you out of the Hall automatically, doesn’t mean that you have to get voted in. If, five years after your retirement, the baseball world hasn’t figured out that you are an undeserving wretch, you probably were good enough to go in. McGwire will be voted in. Hell, McGwire should not have even had to testify before Congress, because he wasn’t even active when the Congressional hearings took place.

My faith in the game isn’t diminished because a couple of guys hit a lot of home runs while injecting steroids any more than it would be if I found out that Greg Maddux was scuffing his baseballs. Taking steroids alone won’t make you a great hitter, or everyone in the sport would have taken them. (This guy took them… see where it got him?) So, sports writers, quit the bluster. This isn’t as big an issue as you want it to be. It’s horrible that those guys, who a lot of us view as heroes, have cheated. It’s terrible that role models engage in dangerous behavior with a nation watching. But in the end, there are still a lot of guys who play the game the right way. And maybe we’re lucky that the whole steroids thing happened, because if it weren’t for 1998, a lot of fans still might not be seeing them.

Ryan sent me a link to an eBay auction for the chance to play in a minor league baseball game. And seriously, if I were a rich man, I would pay well more than the $7,100 that the auction is currently fetching to suit up and play pro baseball for a day.

Though, once this one is successful, more teams will do it, and it won’t mean as much. And seriously, I would have to tell the manager that I didn’t really need the one at-bat. Start me in right field for a home game, let me play for one out, and then sit me down. Just an appearance. Let the team have a chance to win the ballgame. Heh.

Pretty sad that my fantasy day on a minor-league baseball team includes being benched for a real baseball player almost immediately. But would you really want to be the chump who paid to be on the team and hamstrung the manager for a full at-bat? Well, maybe if you were a little person.

Seriously, doesn’t Ben Wallace of the Detroit Pistons look like a video game character?

(AP Photo/Gerry Broome)

Badass.

I was in there.

This link won’t be so cool in a couple of days, but check it now: http://news.search.yahoo.com/search/news/?ei=ISO-8859-1&c=news_photos&p=chapel+hill

Ladybug and TFP celebratin’ with a "WHOOO!"

More photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosswhite/

Well, North Carolina is the national champion that I thought they would be from the get-go (never mind what I said after the Santa Clara game). Roy Williams got a well-earned championship, and thank heavens, he will never have to hear all that crap about “most wins without blah blah blah.”

We watched the game at Chez McFee, completing a wonderful run of games that began with the first Friday of the ACC tournament and was interrupted only by the weekend in Boone. Usual suspects were in attendance tonight– Michael, Belinda, Mary and her husband Joe, Tara, and the Whites. Joined by Mary and Joe’s son William, who just last week was causing Mary sleeplessness by being sick in Ireland.

Tara, Ladybug and I ventured to Franklin St. for a while, where we were party to fireworks, bonfires, lots of shirtless guys, tons of cell phones and digital cameras, and bodies so thick in places you could hardly move.

I was 18 the last time the Heels won it all, in the spring of ‘93 (I started at UNC that fall), and Jon Ingram and I, who had watched the game in his basement, came very close to heading out to Franklin back then. We were convinced they’d win it again while we were at Carolina.

And I stayed convinced during those years, picking UNC in Dan’s basketball pool every year. Carolina basketball, in the years that I was actually enrolled, came to mean so much more than the outcomes of the games. I truly looked forward to the weekend games when Ant, Mike and I (or Ant, Fuzz, and I) would have Lisa, Dan, Alia, Claire, and– despite the fact that he would sometimes root against UNC– Leo over to sit on the crappy couches at Carolina Apts. We had all kinds of people wander in for games: Ken, Charlie, Marshall, Kara, Sharon, Zach, Corey, the GFt, Caroline, even whassername who broke Mike’s heart. We had the wonderful traditions, like Lisa having to take a poop at halftime. (Lisa Bowers, we do still blame you for Carolina’s loss in the Final Four when you went up to Indianapolis to see the game. We did use the cut-out photo of your head, put it on your chair during the game and even took it into the bathroom at halftime. But there is no substituting for having your friends with you at the big game.)

We saw amazing wins, a bunch of them against Duke. They can show the Jeff Capel shot all they want but what not many people remember is that UNC won that game. We saw some heartbreaking losses, a bunch of them against Duke, and one against Harold Arcineaux and Alcorn St.

Watching Carolina win a national championship again tonight, and heading to Franklin St. with Ladybug and Tara tonight, I was thrilled to be out celebrating, but old enough to think that my best years of celebrating were spent on those couches at the old apartment. I was ecstatic about Sean May and Raymond Felton and Marvin Williams and Rashad McCants and Jawad Williams and Melvin Scott and David Noel, and yes, even you, Jackie Manuel. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish that you, Anthony King and Dan Kois and Alia Smith and Mike Garrigan and Fuzz Al-Shibli and Lisa Bowers, and yes, even you, Leo DiNapoli, were there on Franklin St. celebrating with me.

I will admit to being dead wrong in just about every prediction I made last night. I was pacing by the end of the game, afriad the Heels would make me a REAL internet embarassment by dropping the game to villanova after Raymond Felton fouled out.

So, NC State, I am sorry my prognosticating was so horribly, horribly wrong, and you’re headed home.

But at least Duke let it slip to Michigan State, and the quote of the day resulted:

Whew, kinda hung over today, after a hella good night of karaoke. We’re about to go to Chez McFee to watch both the State and Carolina games, and we’ll be cheering loudly for North Carolina basketball this evening.

My prediction: NC State squeaks by on an absolutely amazing game from Julius Hodge. Carolina thoroughly trounces Villanova after a tight first half. Marvin Williams grows wings and flies back to the heavens, as he is truly an angel.