Luis Gets His Dream Ticket, And Football At Lehigh

Floyd Phox Video Can Be Seen Here.

As you know, TigerBlog's old car just went over 200,000 miles.

When you have a car with that many miles, some things will invariably no longer be working. In the case of that car, it's the radio.

With the odometer now past 200,000, TigerBlog is back to driving his "new" car, the one with 78,000 miles on it. At least it has a working radio though.


When TB turned the car on yesterday, he heard the group Player singing "Baby come back. Any kind of fool could see. There was something, in everything about you."

You know the song. TigerBlog has heard about a million times, probably beginning in 1977, when the song hit No. 1 on the charts.

In all the time TB has heard that song, it never dawned on him to wonder how it turned out. Clearly someone in the band wrote it for someone specific.

Did she come back to him? TigerBlog would like to think that if someone went to that much trouble to apologize and beg for another chance that she would have been swept away by the gesture. But maybe not.

You know the song "Roseanna," by the group Toto? It's about Roseanna Arquette, who was dating one of the band members at the time. TigerBlog once saw her on one of the late-night shows, and she basically said that she hates the song and can't stand to ever hear it.

Still, TigerBlog is going on the assumption that it worked out for the guy in Player. Love conquers all and such. TigerBlog is a romantic.

As for music in general, the big story in Princeton Athletics this week is that water polo coach Luis Nicolao has gotten one of the 300 tickets available to meet Bruce Springsteen in Philadelphia next week. TigerBlog is fairly sure that there exists no amount of money in the world for which Luis would sell that ticket.

TigerBlog hasn't seen someone this excited about anything in a long time. Luis, who has said he will be bringing some Princeton water polo gear for the Boss, is downright giddy. Hopefully he doesn't just wear a Speedo, which he has done to some more formal Princeton events.

Ah, but what if Springsteen is having a bad day and Luis is near the back of the line? What if Springsteen is a jerk to Luis? Or worse, what if he bails midway through and Luis never gets to see him?

TigerBlog would like to think that Springsteen is a good guy who remembers where he came from and appreciates his fans. Ah, but what if? TigerBlog can't imagine how crushed Luis will be.

It reminds TigerBlog of the Mario Soto story, from when he was a vendor at Philadelphia Phillies games in the early 1980s. He's written this before:
Mario Soto was the Cincinnati Reds' ace and the favorite player of Evan Weiss, then a vendor who used to drive TigerBlog from West Philadelphia to the stadium every day in his VW and today a doctor in Philadelphia. All season, Weiss waited for the Reds to arrive so he could get Soto's autograph, and then finally the day was there. Weiss waited for Soto to get off the bus and went up to him and asked for his autograph, only to have Soto walk by without stopping. Talk about being crushed.

Oh, and in other Luis news, he's closing in on 800 total wins as Princeton's water polo coach, between the men's and women's teams. He won't get there this weekend, when his men's team is in California.

A little closer to home, but not exactly at home, the Princeton football team - which has more than 800 wins - plays its second game of the season.

Princeton will be at Goodman Stadium at Lehigh to take on the Mountain Hawks, with kickoff tomorrow at 12:30. You can see the game on the Patriot League Network stream or hear it on WPRB FM 103.3.

Princeton is 1-0 after a 35-31 win over Lafayette a week ago. The Tigers defeated Lehigh 52-26 a year ago at Princeton.

Lehigh is 1-2 after three games. The first two were losses in which Lehigh scored 21 each time, falling to Monmouth and Villanova. The win a week ago saw Lehigh score more than it had in the first two games combined in a 49-28 win over Penn.

The football adage is that teams makes their greatest improvement from Week 1 to Week 2. Lehigh seems to have made a big jump from Week 2 to Week 3, which would be fine with Princeton, who opens the Ivy schedule next week at Columbia.

The game tomorrow is the first of three straight away games for Princeton, who is at Georgetown on Oct. 8.

Anyway, the game tomorrow will be a great test. But before kickoff, if you view nothing else at all this week on goprincetontigers.com, make sure you see the Floyd Phox video on goprincetontigers.com that TB's colleague John Bullis produced. The link is at the top of the page.

Okay, if you're too lazy to go back to the top, you can see it HERE too.