Opening Tip-Off

Were you out of sorts yesterday?

TigerBlog has a hunch why. If you were in the same distorted frame of mind yesterday that he was, then you spent all day thinking it was Monday, when it was really Wednesday.

The reason is obvious. The Fourth of July holiday was Tuesday, which led to a feeling that it was Sunday, which made yesterday feel like Monday. Now, though, it's suddenly Thursday. It's all very confusing.

It didn't help that the first three songs TigerBlog heard yesterday were "Monday, Monday" by the Mama's and the Papa's, "I Don't Like Mondays" with the Jon Bon Jovi version and "Come Monday" by Jimmy Buffett. Or was it "Rainy Days and Mondays" by the Carpenters?

Okay, he made that part up. In reality, the first song he heard yesterday was a song called "With You," from the musical "Pippin," followed by "When I Look To The Sky," by Train. Neither one of them mentions any days of the week, let alone Monday.

There are a lot of songs about Mondays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. What about the other days? Actually, TB just thought of one, on his iTunes. The song is "Friday I'm In Love" by the wildly underrated British group "The Cure," the same people who brought you "Just Like Heaven."

Okay, Friday gets top billing in the song. And yeah, it's a little harsh on Wednesday - "Wednesday you can break my heart" - and, a verse later Thursday - "Thursday I don't care about you." But hey, it's better than being ignored.

So where was TB? Oh yeah. It felt like Monday yesterday.

Monday. Wednesday. Thursday. It's July. Does it really make a difference?

Odds are really good that you know someone, or a few someones, who is on vacation. It's what people do in July.

As for today, it's a little more than four months since Princeton defeated Dartmouth to end the regular season in men's basketball.

One week from yesterday - that would be next Monday or Wednesday or something - will be exactly four months since Princeton defeated Yale in the championship game of the first Ivy tournament. That day will also be exactly four months from the opening tip-off of the 2017-18 season for the Tigers.

Princeton will enter the new season knowing that it has no chance to do better in the league than it did a year ago. The win over Dartmouth (in case you forgot, Princeton won 85-48 after leading 52-22 at halftime) left Princeton at a perfect 14-0 in the league.

The wins in the Ivy tournament pushed Princeton to 16-0, making the 2016-17 Tigers the first team ever to have to do that - and to actually do that. The 2017-18 Tigers can do no better than match that, though that would be just fine with everyone here.

The 2017-18 season starts in just over four months, as TigerBlog said. The schedule was released yesterday, and you can read about it HERE.

If you're looking for a few words to describe it, you can start with "ambitious" and throw in "exciting" and "challenging."

The first game, on Nov. 12, will be at Butler, in its famed Hinkle Fieldhouse, so Princeton isn't exactly sticking its toe in the shallow end to get started.

Not that it gets any easier for Game 2, which will be the home opener three days later, on Wednesday, Nov. 15. That would be what looks to be the second Jadwin Gym appearance of BYU.

If TigerBlog is looking at the record book right, then Princeton hosted Brigham Young in the 1981-82 season, the last game of a home stretch that saw St. John's and Duke also come to Jadwin. More recently, Princeton was at BYU a year ago, falling 82-73 in the opening game of the season.

There will also be non-league home games against Lafayette, Lehigh and Monmouth.

Princeton will also be making some pretty good trips, if you consider Hawaii at Christmas time and Miami and Southern California in December to be good trips. There are already some games confirmed on ESPN networks, including the BYU game, and full TV information is not yet available.

Princeton was already 3-0 in the league, having played three home games, before first semester exams. TigerBlog assumes the Penn games, not yet finalized, will include one before exams, but that would be it.

As you know, Princeton will be looking to replace Spencer Weisz and Steven Cook, a pair of first-team All-Ivy League picks and 1,000-point scorers who graduated recently. The Tigers do return another first-team All-Ivy selection, Ivy tournament MVP Myles Stephens, as well as Devin Cannady, Amir Bell and a bunch of other really good players.

It'll be interesting to see what the adjustment will be to losing Weisz and Cook. The last time Princeton graduated two 1,000-point scorers from the same class was 1999, by the way, when Brian Earl and Gabe Lewullis both were in the same class.

Anyway, like the release of the men's hockey schedule a week ago, the news of the coming dates for men's basketball serves as a reminder that the games of the next academic year are not that far away. In just a few months, both teams will be playing.

And with that, you can get back to your summer Tuesday. Or is it Thursday?

We're No. 48

Among today's subjects will be Gevvie Stone, James Cagney, TigerBlog's high school yearbook and the number 48.

Busy day, no? 

Let's start with Gevvie, a 2007 Princeton grad who won an Olympic silver medal in singles rowing a year ago in Rio. She's also a medical doctor and the walking, talking personification of everything that makes Princeton Athletics great.

TigerBlog wanted to post a Fourth of July message on the Princeton Athletics Twitter account yesterday, and he was looking for the right picture. He was going to go online and download a picture of an American flag, but then he decided he'd try to find a Princeton picture with a flag in it.

When he did a search on his computer for any images with the word "flag" in it, he found "Gevvie_Flag." It's the picture he tweeted. You can see it here:

Happy Fourth of July from the Princeton Tigers pic.twitter.com/lRzjylempH

— Princeton Tigers (@PUTIGERS) July 4, 2017

That picture isn't quite a year old yet. It made TB think back to how much he liked having the Olympics on last year. Working and watching the Olympics. He can do next do this this coming winter, when the Winter Games are in South Korea.

Also on the horizon is the 2018 World Cup, which will be a year from now in Russia. Actually, it'll be a little past the halfway part a year from today. TigerBlog loves the World Cup. It could be his second favorite major sporting event, after the NCAA lacrosse championships.

Anyway, the picture of Gevvie is a great one. In fact, TB would put it in the top 10 of Princeton Athletics pictures he's ever seen. And it was perfect for what he needed it for yesterday, with the American flag and the athlete with the huge smile.

If "A Christmas Story" and "It's A Wonderful Life" are staples of Christmas Eve, then there's one movie TB never wants to miss on the Fourth of July. It's "Yankee Doodle Dandy," of course.

Now that's a great movie. TigerBlog finds it amazing that he can love different movies or shows that are 180 degrees removed from each other. You know, like "Wentworth" and "Yankee Doodle Dandy." There are parts of "Wentworth" that make you need to stay up a little later to do something that gets the image of what you just saw out of your head so you don't have nightmares. You know, something peaceful and calming, for instance, like watching "Yankee Doodle Dandy."

It's hard to say if James Cagney was better in all of those gangster movies or in "Yankee Doodle Dandy." Either way, he's an A+ in both.

For wholesomeness? It's hard to beat Cagney as he sings and dances his way through one breezy show tune after another, all while reaffirming his patriotism and love of country in a time of World War.

Today is July 5, which, among other things, is the day that Miss TigerBlog has to get her high school senior picture taken. Why do they still do this? TigerBlog didn't get the one from when TigerBlog Jr. was a senior in high school. He could just take all the pictures he wants with his phone.

It's a contrast to TigerBlog's own experiences. He remembers getting his senior picture taken on a very rainy day. He also remembers having long hair. The proof is in his high school yearbook, which he glanced through to remind himself of just what it was like back when he used to own a brush.

It's not the picture itself that has TB's attention. It's the fact that MTB is going to be a senior in high school. What the heck?

Speaking of pictures with flags in them, TB, when he did the search for pictures with the word flag in them, came across this one:

That was MTB, back when she was three. And now she's a high school senior? Again, what the heck?

MTB still has a few weeks until her senior year begins. Class of 2018. Time flies.

As for the end of 2016-17, the end of each year isn't official until the final Learfield Directors' Cup standings are released. With the end of the College World Series, the final numbers have been calculated in a competition that uses NCAA championship participation and placing to determine the best overall athletic programs in the country. Again, Stanford is the winner.

Also, again, for the 21st time in the 24 years the Cup has been awarded, Princeton is the highest finishing school in the Ivy League.

Princeton comes in at 48th this year, just behind Indiana and just ahead of Mississippi State and Maryland. There are only two non-Power Conference schools ahead of Princeton: BYU (31st) and Denver (35th).

Princeton's best season in the Cup standings was the spring, when it received points in women's golf, women's lacrosse, women's rowing, women's track and field and softball.

The 48th-place finish means that Princeton has been in the top 50 in 20 of 24 years. The best finish? That would be in 2001-02, when Princeton was 21st.

Maybe most impressively, Princeton has never been lower than 63rd in any academic year.

It's not the kind of success that ever can be taken for granted, of course. And now the slate gets wiped completely clean, with every team back to zero for 2017-18.

Wait, it's 2017-18? But MTB is graduating high school in 2018. How can that be possible.

One last time. What the heck?

Guest TigerBlog: Joseph Janes On The Declaration Of Independence

Happy July 4th, everyone.

TigerBlog has a treat for you today. A guest blog, with the floor turned over to Joseph Janes, whom you know as the official brother-in-law of TigerBlog.

Joe has written a book, entitled "Documents That Changed The Way We Live." In the most rudimentary of ways, it has changed the way TigerBlog has spent the last few days, since he has done more reading of the book than watching TV.

The book is a collection of essays that reference, as the title suggests, famous documents through history. One of the essays is about the Declaration of Independence, and TigerBlog asked Joe if he could reproduced it here for the Fourth of July. It's TB's first book excerpt. 

For more information on the book, click HERE. TigerBlog is about a third of the way through it, but he can definitely recommend it. He'd even go so far as to say it has a bit of John McPhee-type storytelling to it.

TB will follow up about the book when he's done, he's sure. In the meantime, here's one of the sections of Joe's book, one that is particularly relevant today:

How do you read something that isn’t there?  Well, you can’t, unless somehow you know it used to be there.  There are lots of examples of the creative process at work in all its messy, myriad varieties – in multiple drafts of novels, plays, scientific articles and so on, showing us how works have been tweaked and pruned and sometimes taken apart and put back together again.

A good example is lawmaking, where the stakes can be very high, so in a contemporary legislature, meticulous minutes are kept recording proposed amendments, speeches made, votes taken and so on, so that the public, and future generations, can, if they care, know how it all happened and moreover who to thank or blame.

This wasn’t always the case, and one of our most cherished and fundamental documents underwent a serious of such edits and revisions from the trivial to the profound.  We are largely in the dark as to how and why, and one piece in particular, taken out in one of the most pivotal decisions in our early history, resounds, even – especially - in its absence, today.

1776 is so ingrained in the American consciousness that it sort of blots out everything else that year.  The first volume of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was published, as was the Wealth of Nations, Catherine the Great is in the middle of her reign, Louis XVI in the third year of his, and the Phi Beta Kappa society is founded at the College of William and Mary that winter.  But pride of place goes to the document drafted by Thomas Jefferson in a second-floor rented apartment on the corner of 7^th and Market Streets in Philadelphia on behalf of a committee of five members of Congress. 

There are many, many stories about the Declaration, including the early printed copy I nearly sneezed on one winter’s morning at the Library of Congress, but those will have to wait for another day.  The basics:  Jefferson was much more interested in helping to prepare Virginia’s new constitution and only somewhat reluctantly took on the task of drafting some sort of statement expressing and crystallizing the reasons why the American colonies were breaking away from the British crown and moreover stating as fact that they had; John Adams later claimed he talked him into it.  In a time when anonymous political writing was commonplace (Poor Richard, Publius, the Federalist Papers to come), his authorship wasn’t widely acknowledged at the time. Jefferson borrowed freely from numerous sources, and his initial effort went first to the rest of the committee, including Adams and Benjamin Franklin, who then made some 47 changes, mostly minor, adding several paragraphs. 

There are seven versions and fragments in Jefferson’s hand, including what’s known as the “original Rough Draft” which looks like exactly that.  It’s got crossouts, additions, boxes, even a pasted-on flap, showing how the text evolved, if not the reasons or people responsible.  For example, somehow we got from “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable” to “self-evident.”  Who did that?  Franklin, Adams, Jefferson?  We don’t know.  To this day, research goes on about the writing and editing processes, including recent sophisticated imaging studies of Jefferson’s drafts.

Congress debated the committee’s submission over three days, making a further 39 edits, which seriously annoyed Jefferson who by now was feeling more than a little protective of the prose, later calling his colleagues “pusillanimous” in trying not to offend the British people too grievously.  It was adopted, as amended, on July 4.  The original resolution on declaring independence was passed on the 2^nd, but nobody remembers that.  How important were these words?  Just note that the adoption of the Declaration on the 4^th is celebrated as the American national holiday of independence rather than, as John Adams had predicted, the 2^nd, when the decision was actually made.

Anyway, adopted it was, and the committee took it that night to John Dunlap, their official printer, to have copies made.  26 of these “Dunlap broadsides” are known to survive; one discovered hidden in a flea market picture frame in 1991 fetched $2.5 million at auction.  The handwritten engrossed version was signed, first by John Hancock, beginning on August 2.  That has had a journey of its own, being moved at least 20 times, including sitting in the sun for about 35 years in the Patent Office, in a State Department library room with an open fireplace for another 17, and a trip to Fort Knox to wait out World War II.  It has resided since 1952 in the National Archives, now in the rotunda, protected by a monitoring system designed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and not at all susceptible to being stolen and rolled up like wallpaper like you saw in National Treasure which I can’t believe they sell the DVD of in the Archives’ gift shop.  Seriously.

The Declaration has been inspirational, not only for its words and ideas, but as an idea unto itself.   Visit the Alamo in San Antonio, and you’re treated to considerable discussions about the Declaration of Independence – of Texas – signed in 1836.  It’s explicitly referenced in South Carolina’s 1860 declaration of secession as well.  In 1777, only a few months on, a “Petition for Freedom” from “A Great Number of Blackes” was submitted to the Massachusetts legislature.  Declarations of independence have been composed over the decades by labor groups, farmers, women, socialists, and others.  Frederick Douglass asked pointedly, in an 1852 speech to the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” 

One of the most consequential amendments removed a section of some 168 words, laying out one of the litany of charges and accusations against George III, piling up the indictments and thus justifying the quite novel idea of colonies breaking away.  It’s typically known by its opening words as the “He has waged cruel war” passage, and it accuses the king of perpetuating the slave trade and by inference slavery itself.  Adams said in 1822 he never thought it would get through unscathed, though his otherwise comprehensive diaries of the relevant days are silent on what happened.  Jefferson also was sanguine if a bit snippy about it, saying it was “struck out in complaisance to South Carolina & Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves…Our Northern brethren also I believe felt a little tender…for tho’ their people have very few slaves themselves yet they had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others.”

The rudimentary congressional journal is of no help on what actually happened; it simply records that there was discussion and debate, as a committee of the whole, and approval, but that’s it.  The next order of business concerned the hiring of a boat from a Mr. Walker.

Much has been written about Jefferson’s deeply conflicted position as slaveholder and as defender of individual rights.  At the time of the Declaration’s drafting, he owned 180 slaves, rising to 267 by 1822.  He had six children by Sally Hemmings, who was his slave and also his dead wife’s half-sister, and he did not, as was often the practice, free his slaves upon his death.  There are few clean hands here; at least a third of the signers were slaveowners, and even in northern states abolition was gradual; New York didn’t outlaw slavery until 1827, the 1840 census lists seven slaves in Rhode Island, and in at least a few Union states full abolition wasn’t achieved until 1865.  And lest we get too smug about all this, estimates put the current number of people in forced labor or human trafficking worldwide today at between 20 and 35 million.

This edit can be seen as the result of ordinary and unremarkable deliberative mechanics:  provisions are drafted, revised, taken out, added, re-revised, and so on, all part of the process of discussion and coming to agreement.  That original draft was eventually subjected to no less than 86 edits in all, eventually reducing its length by roughly a quarter of its words.

For many, though, this is the American national mark of Cain; the proverbial can that has been kicked down our proverbial road for nearly a quarter of a millenium.  Yes, it’s true, as well as cliché, to say that progress has been made – including the Fourteenth and Nineteenth Amendments (to a Constitution that countenances slavery without ever soiling its hands by using the word outright).  You could also point to civil rights legislation, Supreme Court decisions from Brown to Obergefell, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and so on.  And yet, well, you know.

Any writer will tell you that less can be more.  Sometimes, however, more is more, more words, more ideas, more voices, more people.  Alloys are stronger for a reason. 

This decision has been second-guessed, criticized and defended since, it seems, day one if not even before; many believe the Declaration and the new nation would never have worked otherwise.  Quite possibly – though that doesn’t remove the inherent sting.  It’s hard not to think of this as a missed turning, an opportunity lost. 

So, we finish where we started:  how do you read something that isn’t there?  There’s a difference between something that just isn’t there and never was, and something that’s been removed, intentionally, purposefully.  Perhaps knowing how that happened and why and by whom would be useful, or make a difference, perhaps not; without a more comprehensive record, we shall never know. Ultimately, this is a story about grand and noble language and ideas, which have stirred souls for generations, and, within, a silence, which nonetheless speaks volumes, still.

Hockey Season

TigerBlog had a busy June.

After all, Netflix released the new seasons of "House of Cards," "Orange Is The New Black" and "Wentworth" in June (technically, "House of Cards" was released on the last day of May, but TB didn't watch it until a few days later).

There were 13 episodes of the first two and only 12 of "Wentworth," or a total of 38 episodes for the month. Here, then, would be his mini-reviews of each, with no spoilers, so don't worry if you haven't seen them yet:

* "House of Cards" - Netflix has a really successful series with some great characters. That's the plus side. The downside? It seemed to have drifted just a little too far away from what made those characters great (and hence the show great). The Underwoods, especially Frank, went from wonderfully manipulative and cunning to simply evil. Grade - C

* "Orange Is The New Black" - The first episode was really good. The last episode was great, but it should have been the second episode. The 11 in between were too obvious. Also, the show now has far too many characters. It also isn't sure if it's trying to be funny at any point. Grade - C+

* "Wentworth" - this is the best show on TV right now. If you haven't seen it, make sure you do. Start from Season 1. This is the Australian equivalent of "Orange Is The New Black" in that it is set in a women's prison, but whereas "OITNB" has plateaued or even regressed, this show just keeps gettinb better. The character development has been extraordinary. So too has the risk taking by the writers. Also, the end of the last episode of this season is up there with anything you'll ever see on TV, excluding, maybe, the third-to-last episode of "Breaking Bad." Hurry up and finish it. Grade - A+

Another note - TB will still watch each episode of the first two next season. Shows reach a breaking point where you give up on them; those two aren't anywhere close to that - yet.

Anyway, that's those three shows and June. Now it's on to July.

This of course is July 3. On this day back in 1776, the act of declaring independence from the British had already happened (one day earlier) but the Declaration of Independence had not yet been adopted (that would be the next day).

Fast forward to the present day, and most people aren't sure whether or not today is a work day, what with the holiday tomorrow. Princeton University is open for business today, though TB is guessing today won't be the busiest day of the year.

If you think about it, July is the only month of the year that doesn't have any Princeton Athletic events. June has the NCAA track and field championships. August has the first event of the year - a women's soccer game on Aug. 25.

July? It's all about vacations, summer camps, beaches, planning for the coming year. And heat. Lots of it.

The temps of late around here have touched the 90s. So what sport is TB talking about today?

Hockey, of course.

He'll start with Mike Condon. The former Princeton goalie has had a great start to his NHL career after being tossed into a starting role in Montreal two years ago and Ottawa this past season, each time by circumstances that he couldn't have anticipated, replacing two of the best goalies in the league.

He's responded with some big-time performances and has established himself as a legitimate NHL goalie, one who clearly belongs. Ottawa didn't want to lose him, and so Condon signed a three-year, $7.2 million dollar contract last week as free agency started.

Condon doesn't figure to be the starter in Ottawa just yet. Craig Anderson is the starter, but he just turned 36. Condon appears to have found a really good situation with the Senators.

Taylor Fedun also resigned with his current team, the Buffalo Sabres. From the story on Fedun on goprincetontigers.com:
Fedun played in 27 games with the Sabres in 2016-17 and had seven assists and a team-best +3 on-ice rating. He led the Sabres defensemen in assists per game with 1.16 and was 5-for-5 on shot attempts percentage (53.7) which ranked 23rd among all NHL defensemen with more than five games played in 2016-17. Fedun also appeared in 29 games for AHL affiliate Rochester Americans, where he had 23 points on 18 assists and five goals. His .79 points per game were the most by Amerks defenders and ranked him fifth among all AHL defenders with at least five games played.

Speaking of Princeton hockey, the schedule for the 2017-18 season was announced last week as well. You can see it HERE.

Among the highlights are visits to Hobey Baker Rink by Bemidji State and St. Cloud State and two games at, of all places, Arizona State.

Princeton won 15 games between the 2013-14 and 2015-16 seasons. The Tigers wet 15-16-3 a year ago, including 15-10-2 after an 0-6-1 start, and hosted an ECAC playoff series, in which the team defeated Colgate.

There are some holes to fill - four-year starting goalie Colton Phinney among others has graduated. The Tigers do bring back an army of young players, and this should be a fascinating season of men's hockey at Princeton.

And guess what? It starts in little more than three months. How nuts is that?

In the meantime, enjoy the summer. And have a happy and safe Fourth of July.

Who Do You Love

Who do you love?

TigerBlog had his car radio on the other day, and that was the first song that came on.

As TB listened, he wondered if when Bo Diddley wrote the song way back in 1956, he knew/cared/considered that he was using the wrong case. It should be "whom do you love?"

Maybe there was a conversation that went like this:

"Hey, you know that it should be 'whom' in your new song?"
"Yeah. Of course. It should be objective case. It's the direct object. But nominative case sounds better, don't you think?"

Ah, the things that go through one's mind on long drives. TB was on Interstate 91, on his way back from New Hampshire, and he heard the song on a station in Springfield, Mass. It called itself "Springfield's Oldies."

The version that TigerBlog heard was not Bo's original one. It was a remake by George Thorogood, which he released in 1979.

How in the world can that version be an "oldie?" That's classic rock, Springfield. It's from 1979.

Then TB heard a bunch of other songs on that station that all would be considered classic rock. They couldn't be oldies, because they were from when TB was already in middle school or high school, and if they're oldies, well, then that would make TigerBlog, uh, hmmm.

Anyway, who do you love? Or, whom do you love?

If you're a Princeton fan, odds are good you love Chris Young.

TigerBlog has said this before. The most universally beloved Princeton athlete of the last 20 or so years is Chris Young.

There have certainly been others. There are a lot of athletes around here who are easy to like.

Young had it all, though. He played basketball and baseball. He was a superstar in both from Day 1. He was tall. He was approachable. He was great around little kids (including a certain then-little kid named TigerBlog Jr., whom Young once lifted up on so he could dunk on the side court of Jadwin).

Not one person who ever came in contact with him ever had anything bad to say about him.

And of course, there was the element of "what-if" for Young. As in, what if he had been born a week or two later and not been eligible for the baseball draft after his sophomore year at Princeton. As in, what if he had played three or four years of basketball. As in, what if he had gone to the NBA instead of Major League Baseball.

Sticking with the four-years of basketball theme, TB thinks Young would have finished his career first or second at Princeton in scoring, rebounds, assists and blocks. He would have joined Bill Bradley as the only players in school history to reach 2,000 points.

Instead, Young was drafted by the Pirates in the 2000 baseball draft, after his sophomore year. He was eligible only because he'd turned 21 by June 1 of that year.

Now, as he is 38, he can look back on a long, lucrative, highly successful career as a Major League pitcher. His resume includes five teams and 13 years in the big leagues. He was an All-Star and the Comeback Player of the Year.

More than anything else, he was a World Series champion, with the Kansas City Royals in 2015. In fact, he was a major reason why the Royals won that World Series, with an incredible hitless, four-strikeout performance over the final three innings as the Royals won Game 1 in 14 innings.

Young was released by the Royals this past week. It's possible his baseball career is over. If it is, he can look back on it knowing that there wasn't much else that he could have done on the field.

The day after the Royals won the World Series, TigerBlog texted Young that he was hoping to get a chance to speak with him for an entry here at some point in the near future. He called back in less than an hour. That's just how he is.

What would be next for him?

TigerBlog thinks he would great at pretty much anything he wanted to try. Here's a guy who finished his senior thesis while riding on buses on minor league trips to graduate with his class.

TigerBlog was the men's basketball contact during Young's two seasons with the Tigers. It was obvious from the first day TB met him that there was something really special about him, and not just his size and athletic ability.

In an athletic program that regularly churns out impressive young people, Chris Young is right at the top of the list of anyone TB has seen come through here. And he's not the only one who thinks that way.

He's seen it for a long time, anytime anyone has dealt with him.

When you meet Chris Young, you can't help but be amazed.

#savepurnell

TigerBlog got an email the other day out of the blue from his old friend Randy Neeff.

Do you remember when TB first wrote about her? It was back in 2014, after Princeton hosted Harvard in men's basketball.

You can read it HERE.

If you don't want to read it, TigerBlog will sum it up for you. Randy Neeff, back when she was 19 or so, had it all. Beauty. Brains (though she was going to Harvard, so maybe not). Zest for life. Everything.

These days, she sees the world from her wheelchair, the result first of a car accident and then later a fall while mountain climbing. Her body has betrayed her; that spirit will remain unbroken forever.

She's a marvel, Randy. When TB saw her for the first time in years, decades really, she had the same smile she did back when she was 19. She struggles to speak, but she's still sharp, funny, at times biting. She can't walk, and yet she is constantly looking for the next fun thing to do.

That was the context of her email. Get together. Find something interesting to do this summer.

Her vitality is inspirational. It also serves as a reminder of life's inherent unfairness.

Princeton Athletics is filled with wonderful stories of current athletes and alums who do incredible things, on fields and off of them. They win championships. They build enduring relationships. They serve the community. They achieve insane things in classrooms, writing thesis topics whose titles alone often confuse TigerBlog. They sing in shows. They dance in theater groups.

When they leave Princeton, they stay close, no matter where on this planet they are. They give back. They stay loyal. Wherever they are, they make Princeton Athletics proud, and they leave the people they meet awed that Princeton Athletics produces these kinds of alums.

TigerBlog has spent his career chronicling these achievements. He's followed many of them after they leave, and it's always great to hear their stories of how everything is going, with their careers and kids and all.

But as TB also knows, and as he sees in his friend Randy, there's an inherent unfairness to the world. All of the stories aren't always happy.

He's seen it in a lot of ways. From his mother. From Ann Bates. Bob Callahan. From friends who have similar stories to tell.

From his friend Digger, whose son Derek has battled a hideous life-threatening disease for most of his nearly 20 years that he's been alive. Every day becomes a battle.

And so it is now for two more Princeton athletic alums, women's soccer player Taylor Numann (Class of 2009) and her husband, former men's hockey player Sam Sabky (Class of 2011).

Taylor babysat for Miss TigerBlog once, a long time ago. MTB asked for about a year when Taylor would come and play with her again.

On the field, Taylor Numann was a first-team All-Ivy player. She also scored both goals - including one four minutes away from the end of the second overtime - in her last regular season game, a 2-1 win over Penn that gave Princeton the 2008 Ivy League championship.

Had the game ended in a tie, Princeton would not have won the league or advanced to the NCAA tournament. As the minutes wore down, it seemed like it would be a day of utter frustration - until she headed in Sarah Peteraf's corner kick.

These days, the Sabky's have a different opponent to worry about than the time on the clock in a soccer game. This time, it's another extremely rare disease, another one that TB has never before heard of like the one that attacked Derek, this one called Niemann-Pick Type A.

It has gone after the Sabky's baby son Purnell, with the diagnosis just before Mothers' Day. It's a horrific disease with an even more horrible deadline - life expectancy is no more than three years.

HERE is the Facebook page with more information. 

Not surprisingly, both the soccer and hockey alumni groups are rallying to help. It's what Princeton teammates do for each other.

HERE is the link to the gofundme page. You can see that there's already been a lot of people who have stepped up.

As TB understands it, there is a cure on the horizon. It's a race for Purnell and the Sabky's. They don't have a lot of time to wait for it.

Again, as TB said before, here is another example of life's unfairness. You never know where it's going to come from and where it's going to go next.

Or why. You can drive yourself nuts trying to figure that out.

Or you can do everything you can to try to help. That's the lesson that Digger and his family learned a long time ago.

The other lesson that they learned is that they could count completely on the Princeton Athletics family, who has been there with them the whole time. And now they're there with Purnell as well.

Every day is a battle.

Inside the unfairness, though, there can be some victories.

Opening Kickoff

Story on the 150th anniversary of college football celebration committee, including Mollie Marcoux Samaan.

As far as sports and MotherBlog went, she had two favorites.

One was St. John's men's basketball. She could actually care less about the Johnnies, other than the fact that she was once on a flight with the team and then-head coach Lou Carnesecca chastised one of his players for not helping her with her bag in the overhead bin before he got his own down.

From that day on, she was a fan of St. John's, and its legendary coach.

MB's favorite team by far, though, was the Washington Redskins. Her favorite player, by even further, was John Riggins.

As an aside, she would be proud that her son has come to root for her 'Skins. For starters, the Giants have become really, really hard to root for. Plus, TB likes Kirk Cousins. 

A favorite team in another league? She'd watch games, but she'd never really go out of her way to do so. Maybe the Atlanta Braves, once she moved to Atlanta, but baseball wasn't her game.

Politics. That was her favorite sport.

And football.

TigerBlog can't remember when his mother ever cared about any other teams. She didn't like the Oakland Raiders, Kansas City Chiefs and Dallas Cowboys - the reasons are somewhat murky - but she definitely hated all three.

She moved to Chevy Chase, one block away from the D.C. line, in the early 1980s. It wasn't long after that when she adopted the Redskins, and she was a loyal fan until she passed away more than a decade later.

What was it about the Redskins that made her latch on so strongly? The team was good, and the team is huge in the D.C. area.

Maybe the answer is a bit more simplistic. Maybe it's just the fact that football is, and has long been, so woven into the national fabric more than any other team sport.

Baseball has been called the "National Pastime," and maybe it was at one point. There were baseball heroes earlier than football ones, with players like Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Ty Cobb and Walter Johnson, with a major head start over the professional football league.

At some point, football zoomed ahead. It's probably tied in to the rise of television in the 1960s, but there's no questioning what football has become in this country.

And guess where it all started? Actually, you don't have to guess. You already know.

It started with Princeton and Rutgers, back on Nov. 6, 1869.

Princeton Athletics began five years earlier, during the Civil War, with a baseball game against Williams. Princeton celebrated the 150th anniversary of that game three years ago, in conjunction with the first TAGD day.

The 150th anniversary of the first football game is two football seasons away. There will be no shortage of celebrating.

The formation of a committee to celebrate the occasion was announced yesterday. The committee features representatives from various FCS conferences, from the College Football Playoff and from the two original schools to play the sport, including Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan.

The purpose of the committee is to simply celebrate the sport of college football, on all levels and for all Divisions.

Princeton's place in the history of college football is secure. It obviously goes back to that first game, back in 1869.

From everything that TigerBlog has read, it was more full contact soccer than it was football as it is known today. It also was played 25 against 25. According to the Rutgers Targum recap, these were the first points in Princeton football history:
"Princeton's first goal was by a well directed kick, from a gentleman whose name we don't know, but who did the best kicking on the Princeton side."

According to the Princeton Companion, which is the encyclopedia of all things Princeton, says that football on campus informally dated to the 1840s. There were games featuring students against students or students against townspeople, and interest developed to the point where the Princeton team and Rutgers team challenged each other. They'd play twice that year, the first time at Rutgers and then a week later here in Princeton.

Every major milestone in the evolution of the sport has Princeton's fingerprints on it. The changes of the rules, including having 11 players on a side and things like a line of scrimmage and the current lining of the field. When the sport needed to reigned in for safety reasons, Princeton was in the White House with Teddy Roosevelt for the formation of the national college governing board in 1906, which is now called the NCAA. Even cheerleaders and tailgating trace their roots to Princeton.

Princeton has produced 28 national championship teams and one Heisman Trophy winner, Dick Kazmaier in 1951. There have been nationally ranked teams, huge crowds - and a venerable concrete stadium that was unfortunately built just before the impact of freezing and thawing on concrete was fully understood.

If the stadium couldn't quite last forever - it had a good run at 83 years - the loyalty that was formed among those who played here certainly will. And, failing Reunions and Commencement, there isn't anything else that can draw the number of people to the campus that a big football game can.

The modern day Princeton Tigers are a considerable source of pride to the athletic program and University. The most recent Ivy League championship was won a year ago, when the Tigers led the conference in offense and defense. It was the second Ivy title for Princeton in four years.

The man at the forefront of the program now is Bob Surace, the head coach who is a perfect fit for the team and the school it represents. An All-Ivy center and Ivy champion himself at Princeton (and the first Princeton athlete TigerBlog ever wrote about), Surace is innovative, putting unique, exciting teams on the field, and a rock of a foundation off it. His teams are successful academically and spend a lot of time volunteering in the local community.

Surace also understands that football does not drive Princeton University. He doesn't feel that as the head football coach he is above everyone and everything. Quite the contrary actually. You will see him at almost every other team's games, as his usual approachable self. It's refreshing, actually.

Princeton will be featured prominently as college football begins the celebration of its 150th anniversary. It's grown from simple roots, with 25 Princeton guys and 25 Rutgers guys, with a handful of fans in attendance, to a sport that nationally will pack stadiums that have more than 100,000 seats in them. Millions will watch on TV.

It all started with the Tigers.

And those Tigers - the Princeton football ones - are still looking pretty good as they turn 150.

Rooting For Robby Andrews and Gavin McBride

TigerBlog has let his daughter know that she needs to get a job this summer. Period.

Her car - technically it's TigerBlog's car - needed new brakes even before she got her first career flat tire the other day. Oh, and that pesky car also seems to need gas every now and then.

In addition, she's talking about going to India next summer with her friend Sonali. And of course she's heading off to college in a year.

Money? What's that, compared to knowing that you can watch all 64 episodes of "Breaking Bad," as Miss TigerBlog just did.

Okay, the summer just started. She'll find a job. Probably. Hopefully. Definitely.

In the meantime, she did have some really interesting points about the show. She referred to Walter White, for instance, as being an "interesting problem solver."

And if you've seen the show, then you know all about Hank and the third-to-last episode of the series, which is up there with any episode of any TV show that's ever been produced. MTB was definitely struck by what happened in those 45 minutes.

TigerBlog mentioned to his daughter that he had seen back-to-back all 64 episodes of "Breaking Bad" and all 153 episodes of "Gilmore Girls." Granted, this took a little time to do.

TB isn't sure what people are thinking when he mentions how much he loves "Gilmore Girls." After all, he's not the normal demographic for the show.

Still, he and MTB - who also seen both - had an interesting conversation about the two and the character development in each show. Miss TigerBlog, as your average nearly 17 year old, of course thought "Breaking Bad" had much better characters because of how they evolved, as opposed to the way she felt the characters on "Gilmore Girls" did not. They stayed flat, she said.

And she had possibly a little too much respect for the evil genius of Walter White, to the point that when the conversation was over, TB wasn't 100 percent sure whether he should be humored, scared or something in between. Either way, it was one of the highlights of the weekend.

There were some Princeton Athletic highlights this weekend as well.

One of them came Saturday night, when TigerBlog got a text message from the remarkable Thayer Patterson. If you don't know Thayer, he's sort of a walking, talking search engine of Princeton Athletics. There's nothing or no one he doesn't seem to know.

It was late Saturday when Thayer texted TB that it wasn't every day that a Princeton assistant track and field coach won a title at the USATF championships. In this case, it was assistant cross country coach Robby Andrews.

If you spent a lot of time watching the Olympics last summer, like TB did, you had to feel for Andrews, who had an amazing kick in the men's 1,500 semifinals, only to be disqualified on the minorest of infractions - one that was pretty debatable. Instead of being in the final, he saw teammate Matthew Centrowitz become the first American since 1908 to win Olympic gold in the 1,500.

Andrews is still in his prime, obviously, and it's not that long until 2020. Is he the American to beat? Well, at the national championships Saturday in Sacramento, nobody was able to beat him.

Andrews, whose biggest claim to fame is either his Olympic spot or the fact that he and TigerBlog went to the same high school, was in fifth place with one lap to go before he went into another gear. Among those he passed on the final lap was Centrowitz.

THIS STORY has a ton of detail on the event.

One of the best things about Princeton is that there are so many people here who are easy to root for, and Andrews is definitely one of them. And not just because he went to Manalapan High School.

So is Gavin McBride, as you may know if you've been reading anything TB has written about the 2017 men's lacrosse team.

TigerBlog got an email from the NCAA the other day congratulating Princeton on having had McBride lead Division I in goals per game this past season. In case you forgot, McBride scored 54 goals in 15 games, or 3.6 per game. Only one player in Division I - Albany's Connor Fields - had more goals, with 55, and he played three more games than McBride.

McBride's 54 goals set a Princeton single-season record, bettering the 21-year-old record set by U.S. Lacrosse Hall-of-Famer Jesse Hubbard. What did it get McBride? Honorable mention All-Ivy League and nothing, not even honorable mention, from the USILA All-America committee.

McBride was a sixth-round pick of the Denver Outlaws in the Major League Lacrosse draft, and he played in his first professional game this past weekend. How'd it go?

More of the same, actually.

McBride scored three goals, all in the fourth quarter, as Denver rallied from seven goals back to beat the New York Lizards 17-14. Zach Currier, McBride's Princeton teammate, had a goal, three assists and six ground balls in the game, by the way.

McBride's three-goal performance in clutch time earned him Major League Lacrosse Rookie of the Week honors. 

As he has been all year, TigerBlog was happy that McBride continues to do well. He had such a monster season - scoring five or more goals six times and three or more goals 11 times - and he got so little credit for it.

Now he's in Major League Lacrosse. It's only for the best of the best.

You know. For players like Gavin McBride.

Lehigh Redux

The rain that came after midnight Friday, technically Saturday morning, was heavy enough and loud enough to wake TigerBlog.

There, in the darkness, TigerBlog listened as it fell - and as his mind filled with thoughts.

Among them - is his office flooding again? And how will this affect Miss TigerBlog's upcoming lacrosse tournament?

Ah yes. Another weekend, another club lacrosse event. As TigerBlog said last weekend, this is the 10th and final summer of club lacrosse between his two kids, and he'll be missing it when it's final over.

This past weekend was spent at Lehigh University. It's the perfect place for one of these events, with a lot of parking and a ton of grass field space.

TigerBlog has been there a million times, or so it seems, for such tournaments, with both of his kids.

Lehigh is an interesting place. The athletic fields are in their own contained area, and for all the times that TigerBlog has been there, he doesn't think he's ever seen the actual campus.

On the other hand, TigerBlog has been to so many Princeton games at Lehigh that he's pretty sure it's the non-Ivy campus he's been to the most with the Tigers - unless he's never been to the campus. The only school that's close is Rutgers. No, it's Lehigh.

When TB was there this weekend, he first drove past the parking lot where he parked back on April 11, when he was there for a Princeton men's lacrosse game, one that the Tigers would lose 15-10. That was one of the nicer nights of the spring, though a warm, no-jacket night - and quite a contrast to the time he'd been there two years earlier, 

MTB's games this weekend - there were four of them - were played on fields that were set up on either side of the football stadium.

TigerBlog is a big fan of Lehigh's football field, called Goodman Stadium. It has a nice grass area in one end zone where fans can sit - and kids can run around - and the concourse is packed with different food vendors.

At various times this weekend, TB found himself inside the stadium. It was essentially empty, and it wasn't lined for football at all.

Still, it's hard to stand in there without thinking about all the times he's been there for Princeton-Lehigh football games. All of them have been very early in the season, usually on hot days. They're always competitive.

As great as it is to watch a game from the hill or the stands, the best place is from the sidelines. TigerBlog has done radio from the press box, which is pretty high up, and simply watched from the sideline. He always likes to watch games from the sidelines, though he rarely gets the chance, but for some reason they seem to be better at Lehigh. Maybe it's because of the weather, and the fact that at that time of year, there's still a lot of green in the hills that are behind the stadium.

Ah, but TB can never talk about Lehigh without having one event leap to the front. You know what it is, right?

It happened a little more than 21 years ago. Does TB really have to tell you?

It was the 1996 Princeton-Penn men's basketball playoff game. TB wrote this back on March 9, 2016, the 20th anniversary of the game, just in case you don't remember or weren't paying as close attention back then:

Of all of the great little anecdotes TigerBlog has from his nearly 30 years at Princeton, perhaps his favorite is the one where Pete Carril was being badgered by a sportswriter after a Penn game at the Palestra.
The writer, by the way, was Brian Dohn, then of the Trentonian. TigerBlog was a big Brian Dohn fan, though he lost touch with him years ago, after Dohn left to go cover the Dodgers.
Anyway, Princeton had just lost to Penn in the final game of the regular season for its eighth straight loss to the Quakers. The outcome of that game left the teams in a tie for the league title and set up a playoff game for the NCAA bid five days later.
It also led to this exchange:
Dohn: "Do you think Penn has your number?"
Carril: "I don't believe in that."
Dohn: "But sometimes a team just has another team's number."
Carril: "Yeah, I don't believe in that."
Dohn: "Yeah, but maybe they just have your number."
Carril: "I'm telling you I don't believe in that."
At that point, another question was asked. This was from Jerry Henry, then of New Jersey Network.
Henry: "Coach, what can you do differently to beat them in the playoff game?"
Carril (looking at Dohn): "Nothing ... if they have our number."
That's a great one. So was the game itself. Princeton 63, Penn 56, in overtime. 

If you want to read the whole post, it's HERE.

If you want TB to sum it up for you, he can tell you that it was an extraordinary game, one that the players have often said to him means as much or more to them as the win five days later over UCLA in the NCAA tournament.

It also was the nigh that Pete Carril announced his retirement, something that TB saw before anyone else, when he came into the locker room and saw the solitary coach, holding the chalk that he had just used to scribble the words to his team on the blackboard there. TigerBlog knew his night was taking a dramatic turn at that point.

All these years later, it remains in the top three or so of nights TB has had at Princeton. And it was part of the most dramatic, and busiest, week he's had in all his time here.

When TB made a right turn past the lacrosse field this weekend to head back to the main parking lot, he drove right past the front of the building where it all happened on that frozen March night. Stabler Arena.

As he saw the words on the facade of the building, he was taken back in time to that night. And it made him smile, in a way that few of his memories can match.

Bowling And Walking

TigerBlog can tell you the exact last time he went bowling.

It was back in the three-month period between when his friend Corey had his driver's license and TigerBlog did not. In other words, it's been a long time.

Corey drove, in the big old brown Olds 88 he used to have. His house was exactly four miles from TB's (he knows this because he used to ride his bike over there, even though he had to cross Route 9 at the end), and his driveway looked like it had valet parking service, with all the cars that were parked there most times.

Anyway, they went bowling, at Howell Lanes. TigerBlog had to drive the big 88 back, even though he only had his permit. You can figure out why. Yeah. You're smart. Corey and TB? They remain close friends to this day and will forever.

Why mention bowling today? TigerBlog would like to say it's because he was watching an old Foghorn Leghorn cartoon, the one where Foghorn says about the little chicken that "the boy's about as sharp as a bowling ball." But hey, TB hasn't watched cartoons like that in, well, not this week at least.

And then there was the time recently when someone in the athletic department mentioned bowling, and Kim Meszaros, the assistant to Ford Family Director of Athletics Mollie Marcoux Samaan, cringed at the thought of TB's renting shoes and, egads, putting his fingers into the holes on the bowling ball that someone else might just have used without dousing it with hand sanitizer first. That was funny.

Actually, it has nothing to do with either of those. Nope, it has to do a little bit with how bad TigerBlog's eyes are getting.

TigerBlog's two favorite Division I athletic conferences are, obviously, the Ivy League and the Northeast Conference. The Ivy League has Princeton. The Northeast Conference has TigerBlog Jr.

Yesterday afternoon, TigerBlog saw a tweet about how the NEC had released its institutional team academic awards.

Basically, the league recognizes the school whose athletes have the highest average GPA and then the team from each sport in the league that has the highest GPA. For the record, Sacred Heart, TBJ's school, won both the men's lacrosse award and the overall institutional award, while 24 men's lacrosse players - including TBJ - won the individual academic award for having at least a 3.3 GPA.

In fact, it was quite a year for Sacred Heart men's lacrosse. The team had a seven-win improvement from 2016 and made the conference tournament, and the Pioneers also won the academic award while also maintaining a strong commitment to service. There's a lot to like in that program.

The overall Sacred Heart athletic GPA was 3.381, which is the all-time NEC record for a school over the course of an entire school year. It's quite a tribute to Bobby Valentine, the SHU athletic director, and the entire athletic department.

Oh, and bowling?

When TB first looked at the list, he thought that LIU Brooklyn's women's bowling team had the best overall GPA, and an incredibly high one at that, at 3.864 for the team. In fact, it's just TB's eyes that are failing him. When he looked closer, he found out that it was really 3.664, which is still extraordinary.

It's not the best in the league, though. The team with the highest overall GPA is Robert Morris women's basketball at 3.724. That's unbelievably high.

The Ivy League doesn't have such an award, though maybe it would be something the league would consider at some point. The league does do Academic All-Ivy League, which honors five male athletes and five female athletes per school per season for excellence academically and athletically. Doing the math, that brings you to 15 men and 15 women per year per school.

The spring 2017 group was announced yesterday. You can read about them HERE.

The list includes two of the greatest all-around combined athletes/students Princeton has ever known, really. One is Julia Ratcliffe, the three-time first-team All-America hammer thrower. The other is Olivia Hompe, the all-time leading scorer in Princeton lacrosse history.

All 10 athletes in the spring group, and all the athletes across the league each season who win this honor, have done incredibly impressive things on their campuses.

And while TB is talking about incredibly impressive things that people have done, how about Derek DiGregorio?

TigerBlog has written about Derek a lot through the years. He's the middle son of Steve and Nadia DeGregorio, the one who has been battling Ataxia Telangiectasia for years. It's a disease that has left him in a wheelchair for the last few years, but there he was the other day, graduating from Princeton High School and walking across the stage (with the help of an exoskeleton) to get his diploma.

Out of the chair. Walking across the stage.

You can read the story about Derek HERE.

Here are a few quotes from his parents (his father, Digger, was a longtime Princeton football assistant coach):

"He is the toughest individual I know," Steve said. "True grit is what he has, compassion and perseverance, that's what he has, that's Derek."

"We don't have the word 'no' in our vocabulary," said Nadia DeGregorio, Derek's mother.

Yeah, they're pretty tough individuals themselves.

Congratulations to Derek. It would have been easy, so easy, for him to give up at any number of points. And, it would have been easier still to not walk across that stage.

Then again, these people never do what's easy. The DeGregorios - the parents, their other two sons Zack and Aaron (who also graduated from PHS this week) and their close circle of friends - deal every day with issues that most people couldn't fathom or handle for a few hours.

They deserve to celebrate a little. For Derek, and for themselves. There aren't too many high school diplomas that mean more anywhere this month than in their house.

Again, congrats to Derek and his family.

They are the most courageous people TigerBlog has ever met.