Blogs
By BRENDAN McGAIR
Sports writer
PAWTUCKET – Here’s what Daniel Bard had to say following his one-inning outing for the Pawtucket Red Sox Friday night:
Bard’s general reaction to the three runs he allowed on 25 pitches, 16 for strikes:
“The best thing about throwing down here (in the minors) is that you can kind of throw out the results and not worry about wins and losses too much. I’m trying some tweaks mechanically and I think they were really good on some pitches and that’s what I was looking for, to get some feel.
By BRENDAN McGAIR
Sports writer
WOONSOCKET -- In an apparent last-minute scheduling change due to a school trip at North Smithfield that's on the books for Wednesday, the North Smithfield-Woonsocket Division II baseball playoff game will now take place Tuesday afternoon at Barry Field. First pitch is scheduled for shortly after 4 p.m.
By BRENDAN McGAIR
Sports writer
PROVIDENCE – Memorial Day weekend on Brown University’s campus means one thing: Biding graduates adieu.
Come next Thursday, that same campus will roll out the welcome mat for its new men’s basketball head coach. Those same sources say that the two remaining candidates for the job include Pawtucket native and current Brown interim coach T.J. Sorrentine along with Mike Martin, who played at Brown (Class of 2004) and is presently an assistant coach at Penn.
By BRENDAN McGAIR
Sports writer
Besides talking about his childhood friend and current Red Sox third baseman Will Middlebrooks in a piece that ran in Monday’s edition (here it is in case you missed it: http://www.woonsocketcall.com/node/5302), Patriots third-string quarterback Ryan Mallett weighed in about a few pigskin-related topics.
On what Mallett’s offseason dance card consisted of leading up to the start of Organized Team Activities:
Ryan Mallett: “I’m just going to work every day and grind as hard as I can and see where it takes me.”
Let’s face facts: The fight between Gov. Lincoln Chafee and U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha is about where Jason Pleau is going to spend the rest of his life — in a federal prison or at the ACI. It is not — I repeat not — about Pleau getting the death penalty. That’s because it is extremely unlikely that Pleau is going to be executed, no matter how the current legal wrangling plays out.
The family of David Main, the Lincoln man gunned down by Pleau as he was making a deposit at a Woonsocket bank, would be spared a lot of anguish if someone would tell them that.
A 13 percent supplemental tax really stinks.
There is no way around that fact for people who live in Woonsocket, so it is best to just put it out there from the start: After you have paid all your property and automobile taxes for the year, to be hit with a bill for an extra 13 percent and get nothing for it except to balance the city’s books is the rancid cherry atop a crap sundae.
By BRENDAN McGAIR
Sports writer
On Nov. 11, 2011, Carson Desrosiers blocked eight Loyola (MD) shots, a high sum that undoubtedly warmed the heart of Wake Forest head coach Jeff Bzdelik. It was unrealistic to expect that Desrosiers would be able to swat away that many shots on a nightly basis, yet it wasn’t out of bounds to expect that the seven-footer would emerge as some sort of bruising force for the Demon Deacons down on the blocks.
By BRENDAN McGAIR
Sports writer
BOSTON - For Aaron Cook and the Red Sox, D-Day – as in Decision Day – is at hand.
With Tuesday marking May 1, the day in which Cook’s minor-league opt-out clause officially takes effect, Boston must decide whether to promote the veteran pitcher and place him on the active roster or risk losing him to free agency. Reached Monday night, Joe Bick, the agent for Cook, spelled out a step-by-step process that included all involved parties.
Folks who read this column during the whole Cranston prayer banner controversy know I am a stickler about church and state separation.
Even when a complaint may seem picayune or silly, or targets a much revered or longstanding symbol, having religious iconography on public property is wrong and impermissible under the Constitution. Public property should and must be a zone of neutrality where all faiths feel welcome to pass and roam freely, but none can plant a flag — or a cross, or a crescent or a six-pointed star.
Every presidential year, it seems, a debate starts up about the curious constitutional custom of the Electoral College.
