Fist bump or handshake?
July 22, 2008
The fist bump is slowly but surely making its way to the office.
I had my first fist bump experience in the office this past Thursday. Business Reporter Andy Rosen walked over to my desk with his usual smile and an outstretched arm. Before the conversation ensued, we “bumped”.
As a newcomer in the office, this was a bump of approval - or as Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon calls it, “a mode of acceptance.”
Whether you choose to “make it sparkle” after you connect (like ESPN’s Stuart Scott) or keep your hand steady as a rock — It’s here.
What started out as athletes–only is becoming more widespread. It was recently used (to the media’s delight) on the campaign trail between presidential hopeful Barack Obama and his wife Michelle (video below).
Some people aren’t gung-ho about it just yet. In the USA Today, Dr. Grace Keenan, medical director of Nova Medical and Urgent Care Center in Ashburn, Va., said:
I have not encountered a fist bump and would judge anyone who tried it as a total redneck. I hope that it never is seen as a replacement for a handshake in the business community.
Keenan may be getting ahead of herself, but what are your thoughts? Do you prefer the traditional handshake or are you eager to try something new?
RICHARD SIMON, Multimedia Reporter
1983 World Series commemoration
July 8, 2008
Pull out your leg warmers and hair teasers and get ready to party like it’s 1983 at Camden Yards. Complete with ’80s music, video and Orioles and Blue Jays wearing the old school 1983 jerseys for the occasion, the Orioles are commemorating the 25th anniversary of their last World Series championship.
(Hey, at least it’s a quarter-century and not a century-long drought like a certain Chicago team.)
And just in case the lure of bad fashion and big hair isn’t enticing enough, the team is hosting about 20 players from that 1983 world champion team for the July 23 game.
Cal Ripken Jr., Rick Dempsey, John Shelby, Jim Palmer and others are expected to attend. The players will greet fans for half an hour after the gates open, and the first 25,000 fans will receive a World Series 25th anniversary pennant, and 500 of those fans will get theirs autographed by a member of the ’83 team.
I’m curious to see how many people are lulled out of their usual routine on a Wednesday evening to come out for the game just to see and celebrate these guys and what they represent. Attendance for the last two Wednesday games was about 18,000 (against Kansas City) and 21,100 (against Houston), but this is a pretty neat thing to have all of these guys in one place.
Plus the freebies aren’t too bad either — even if you don’t get your autographed pennant, I’m sure you’ll be able to bid for one on eBay after the game.
Anyone think Camden Yards can pull off a near-sellout crowd with this promotion?
LIZ FARMER, Business Writer
Sphere: Related ContentShould high school athletes be drug tested?
December 17, 2007
With all the hubbub lately over steroid use in professional athletes, isn’t it a little surprising that random drug testing is so very rare in high school sports?
States including Texas and New Jersey have legislated the issue, but the programs are very expensive and difficult to implement, said Maryland Del. William J. Frank, a Baltimore County Republican.
Frank, who heads up Powered by ME!, a Towson-based nonprofit focused on steroid awareness in youth sports, said that for those reasons, he won’t bring the issue before his fellow lawmakers.
“You can get away with using substances and no one will catch you,” said Mike Gimbel, a substance abuse expert and consultant to Powered by ME!
Tell us what you think: Should Maryland require drug testing in high school sports?
KAREN BUCKELEW, Business Writer
Sphere: Related ContentA night at the (Keys) ballpark
September 7, 2007
It was THE perfect night for baseball… temperatures dropping through the 80s, a light breeze, the warm setting sun yielding to a light panoply of stars, and $11 seats three rows back from the field in my favorite stadium.
It’s sure not Oriole Park.
We’re maybe an hour’s drive west, at Frederick’s Harry Grove Stadium, a ninth the size of Baltimore’s purported baseball palace (which I have long bemoaned as grossly overrated, despite my masochistic love for the team in black and orange that plays there). Thursday night, the team that plays in Baltimore was losing 7-6 to the Red Sox in a game devoid of meaning, save for the Boston fans who find tickets easier to get for Oriole Park than for their own Fenway Park But I was in Frederick, with my daughter and son-in-law, for a game that mattered – though you’re unlikely to read much about it in big-city newspapers.
Just try to find news about the lowly Class-A Frederick Keys, who were seeking to sweep the equally lowly Wilmington Blue Rocks in their best-of-three Carolina League Northern Division Championship Series.
Now why blog about this game for THIS newspaper’s Web site? Well, a lot of people say baseball is a business, and we cover business. And the owner of that team down in Baltimore, he’s a lawyer (albeit, an increasingly unpopular lawyer), and we cover lawyers. And that team in Frederick – it’s an Oriole system farm team.
So it makes sense, sort of, to share a few insights gleaned from a starry night in Frederick, where a Keys pitcher with the unlikely name of Chorye Spoone took a no-hitter two outs into the ninth inning before giving up a solo home run. And then he was carried off the field by the team, which took the division championship in a 3-1 victory before an enthralled crowd of some 1,726 fans.
Yup, the stadium was just about one-third filled (or two-thirds empty).
Mary, a 50-something fan sitting with her husband in the second row, explained: “It’s a school night.”
I couldn’t tell you, offhand, who hit the Keys’ decisive two-run homer earlier in the game, or which of the Blue Rocks spoiled Spoone’s no-hitter. The bottom half of the scoreboard that used to have such information went on the fritz last year, according to our new friends in the second row. The field was refurbished this year, and the scoreboard is next year’s project, they said.
But it didn’t much matter. I’m sure it’ll show up on the Keys’ Web site, and in the hometown Frederick newspaper, maybe with pictures of the young ballplayers doing the champagne thing just outside the cinderblock entranceway to their locker room.
(Actually, as I passed by the celebration on my way to the free parking lot, it smelled a little too yeasty to be real champagne… and some of the players looked too young to do more than bathe in it.) They were having the time of their lives.
I had a pretty nice time, too. I was the guy with the loud kazoo, playing the theme “da-da-da-da-da-tah-da!” that leads up to the fans screaming “Charge!” (though what that has to do with baseball has long eluded me). In any case, my cheap kazoo seemed louder than the stadium P.A. system’s version. It was also a keen instrument for playing a funereal theme as the Blue Rocks pitcher was replaced late in the game.
The kazoo notes carried better in the night air than the whizzzzzz sound of the little plastic whistle I used for the Blue Rocks’ swinging strikeouts.
Shame it was a school night out there, in semi-small-town America, where the National Pastime was alive and well and nobody was getting rich.
Just enriched in spirit, the way it ought to be.
-DAVID ETTLIN, Special Correspondent
(Note: The Keys advanced to the Carolina League’s Mills Cup Champion Series, with the first two games scheduled this weekend in Frederick - at 7 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. Ticket information here).
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