End Of 2018-19, Day 1

As he's said before, TigerBlog is a huge fan of puzzles.

His favorite is "Boggle," which he plays on his phone. It's a scramble-word game. Two minutes. Find as many words as possible.

He's also stumbled on some on Twitter, including one he saw last Friday.

Hey, the athletic year just ended. What did you expect for today?

Anywhere, here's one of the puzzles that he saw last week, one that has something of a Princeton theme: Add two letters to TIGER, then scramble the letters to form the name of a classic film from the 1950s.

Think about that one. TB will give you the answer later.

As he said, the end of the women's track and field discus event marked the end of the 2018-19 athletic year at Princeton. So what would you like to talk about today? 

How about John Sadak? 

The former Princeton men's and women's basketball play-by-play man made his Major League debut Saturday night when he was part of the New York Mets broadcast team on WCBS radio. Sadak did the game with Howie Rose, the veteran Mets announcer.

Sadak is an outstanding announcer, one of the best. It's just that it's not really easy to make the jump into the Major Leagues.

He spent a lot of time doing Minor League games, in Wilmington and Scranton-Wilkes Barre. He's also had a lot of success of late, including doing NFL games and NBA games. 

And now he can add Major League Baseball to his resume. It couldn't happen for a better guy, just as TB has often said about another former Princeton play-by-play man, Tom McCarthy.

TB saw a tweet from Sadak about his first game for the Mets, which, by the way, was the first of 16 he'll be doing this season. TigerBlog did a lot of Princeton basketball with Sadak, and he answered the tweet with congratulations and a reminder that he has to be Sadak's all-time favorite broadcast partner.

In reality TB knows he isn't. In fact, he's not even Sadak's favorite from Princeton. That would be Noah Savage, whom TB brought in as his replacement to work with Sadak, and the two immediately clicked into a first-class team. When Sadak left, TB moved Derek Jones over from the women's side to do men's play-by-play, and he as well has created a really, really high quality team along with Savage. In fact, both of them got to do games on ESPN this past season.

So congratulations to John Sadak. TB is very happy for him. He'd love to see him get a full-time Major League position.

Still working on the puzzle, by the way? 

With the end of the academic year, TB saw the first real sign that summer is here for Princeton Athletics - the start of sports camp season. The first two, at least the first two he saw, were basketball camps, boys and then girls, in Jadwin Gym.

Pretty soon the campus will be swarming with camps across basically all of Princeton's sports. That's one of the best parts of summer, seeing the facilities swell with kids of all ages and skill levels, with coaches and athletes there with them.

As for the basketball camp, TB wandered into Jadwin Gym to the sound of balls bouncing and saw that it was the girls on the court. On the far side he saw a familiar face, one that he recognized from the pictures he's seen of her after she was hired as the head women's basketball coach at Princeton two weeks ago.

So TB introduced himself to Carla Berube, whom he'd spoken with and texted but never actually met. It was good to say hello. He's looking forward to their first podcast, coming soon.

Also coming soon will be the start of the fall season. If you looked at goprincetontigers.com at one point late last week, you saw the schedules for most of the coming fall seasons.

Yeah, that's getting ahead of things. In the meantime, it's Day 1 post-2018-19.

And oh yeah, the answer to the puzzle? If you forgot, here's the clue again:
Add two letters to TIGER, then scramble the letters to form the name of a classic film from the 1950s.

The answer?

Vertigo.

Hey, there's not another game for nearly three months. TB has to come up with something.