EUGENE, Ore. -- Kent State's run to the College World Series has been a two-week highlight reel, which included riding into the postseason with a 21-game winning streak and playing a 21-inning thriller that set the tone for two weekends of superlatives. There were five one-run games in six playoff contests, with the Golden Flashes coming out on top in four.
"Nail-biters are more fun when you pull them out," said KSU shortstop Jimmy Rider, who had the game-winning hit in Kent's deciding victory Monday afternoon over Oregon. "Every pitch, every swing means that much more."
Monday night's 3-2 clincher epitomized the Golden Flashes' resolve to make history and become the first Kent team to advance to the CWS in Omaha, Neb.
Freshman pitcher Brian Clark from Munroe Falls worked the final two innings, first giving up the hit that allowed Oregon to tie the game at 2-2 in the eighth, then shutting down the Ducks the rest of the way. After a 1-2-3 ninth inning that included Clark's lone strikeout, head coach Scott Stricklin said his team ran off the diamond and into the dugout with someone screaming, "Let's go to Omaha."
But none of it might have happened with a loss to Kentucky in the opening game of the NCAA Tournament on June 1, instead of 21-inning, 7-6 win that happened, in part, because a Wildcat player failed to touch first base in the 12th and was called out, instead of starting the inning with a ringing double off the wall in left.
Kent won the Gary Regional, 3-2, on a three-run homer by Evan Campbell that hit the outfield railing and bounced back onto the field, and should have been ruled a double. In Saturday's 7-6 win over Oregon in the super regional opener, the Flashes needed a diving catch by Campbell in center to keep the Ducks from scoring the winning run in the bottom on the ninth.
Kent lost, 3-2, to Oregon on Sunday. But the Flashes bounced back on Monday as Rider delivered his 103rd hit of the season and 350th of his career, both school records.
"I can't describe it," Stricklin said. "I can't put it into words. To do this on national TV, everyone saw we could play with the No. 5 team in the country. We were just as good."
The Flashes defeated Kentucky out of the SEC, which was ranked No. 1 in the country during the season, Big Ten champion Purdue and Pac-12 champion Oregon in its postseason run, going 5-1 in the process.
Playing his part was the flawless catching performance of David Lyon, handling his pitchers deftly and picking off base-runners seemingly every night. There were a pair of pitching gems -- Ryan Bores from Strongsville pitched Kent's lone complete game of the season in KSU's 7-3 victory over Purdue in Gary. This came immediately following the 21-inning marathon when the Flashes needed relief for its exhausted bullpen.
The second came Monday night in a combined four-hitter against the Ducks. Sophomore Tyler Skulina from Strongsville gave up two hits in 5.2 innings, Casey Wilson from Sagamore Hills allowed one hit in 1.1 innings, and Clark -- who gave up a two-run single in the eighth before closing the door.
"The biggest key was Brian Clark," Stricklin said. "He gave up the hit and could have folded, but he didn't. He got better."
Stricklin is the fifth KSU alum on the Flashes coaching roster to take a team to an NCAA championship tournament.
"For some reason a lot of places seem to frown on hiring alums," Kent associate athletic director Cathy O'Donnell said Monday. "But for us it seems to work very well. Our most successful coaches seem to be our alums and assistants [who] seem to understand the chemistry of Kent State."
Stricklin joins KSU alums Herb Page (men's golf), Mike Morrow (women's golf), Brice Biggan (gymnastics) and Jim Andrassy (wrestling) who have taken teams and/or players to NCAA title events. Afterward, Stricklin tried to put the accomplishment into words.
"To be at my alma mater, to be the head coach, to take a team to Omaha, I wish I could find the words for you, but I can't," Stricklin said. "It's indescribable how I feel and how proud I am."
Derek Toadvine talks about scoring the winning run
On the final play, Stricklin thought Derek Toadvine, who had retreated to second base to tag up on Rider's bloop, had too far to go to score on the play. He wasn't sure Rider's ball would fall in. Yet, Stricklin was still set to celebrate.
"I was playing defense in the dugout, because I was thinking, 'we can't run out of the dugout on a hit,'" Stricklin said. "We can't be out with the ball in play. I was on the top step, holding guys back. But I have to admit, I started running out prematurely. I haven't been in the middle of a dog pile since 1993 [as a player]. But I got in the middle of that one. ... It was a lot of fun ... and a great feeling."
Kent plays its first College World Series game at 5 p.m. Saturday against Arkansas.
Source: www.cleveland.com
Marital discord a ‘Western bane’ - bangaloremirror.com
by chandru mani iyer, cmaniiyer@yahoo.com
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
11:23:42 AM
Article:
Bedi calls PM a blind king, Cong hits back (News - Nation)
Source: www.bangaloremirror.com
The marriage of church and state is anything but gay - The Guardian
The relationship was never on. The two of them hated each other and bickered from the start. There have been rows, bust-ups, trial separations and expensive lawyers, but they are irreconcilable. It is time to call a halt. The marriage of England's church and state is anything but gay.
Henry VIII's leadership of the church made sense at the time. It freed England from the religious bonds of Rome. But 1535 is not 2012. This week's Home Office document on gay marriage proposes that same-sex civil partnerships be called marriages, like the others. We can ask why, at these of all times, David Cameron should want to stir this episcopal hornets' nest. He apparently has debts to pay the gay community. But he is adamant for change, insisting at the same time that "no religious organisation will be forced to conduct same-sex marriages". They will be legally exempt.
If any proof were needed for church disestablishment, it is the capacity of canon lawyers to find quarrels in straws. What consenting adults do in private should be of no concern to governments, and that applies to worship as much as sex. If grownups want to dress in Tudor costume, douse babies in water, intone over the dead and do strange things with wine and wafers, it is a free country. But for a Christian sect to claim ownership of the legal definition of a human relationship is way out of order.
The church has a dreadful record on marriage. Rome placed chastity and celibacy as the highest state of man (and woman), while marriage was for the fallen. As Milton said, the church regarded matrimony as a state of disgrace, "a work of the flesh, almost a defilement". Only when medieval bishops saw where the money was did they declare marriage "so sacramental that no adultery or desertion could dissolve it".
Throughout the middle ages the church struggled to gain control of what had been an essentially secular contract between men and women. It was not until the 13th century that weddings had to be hallowed by a priest, even if this meant little more than an exchange of vows in a porch. Churches tried to bribe couples to the altar, as by giving them sides of bacon (hence "bringing home the bacon"). Common law marriage in England was not outlawed until 1753.
The current argument over gay marriage is near incomprehensible, except in terms of Anglican conservatism. All sexes can now be legally wed in registered premises and call themselves married. The word has changed its usage to embrace them. Gay people are now demanding the social status of "marrieds" and, more controversially, that the church be allowed to marry under licence.
The first demand is for lexicographers and seems harmless. The second is a matter between gay people and the church authorities. The government is not insisting on anything. It is specifically providing for churches to be exempt from any requirement of access for gay people. Yet the church seems desperate for a fight. It behaves like an elephant bitten by a gnat.
Given that only a quarter of weddings take place in Anglican churches, the number of gay couples wanting such a service must be small. Some churches already "bless" gay civil partnerships, as they do divorcees. Yet the church's lawyers claim that any exemption "could be challenged" by some litigious and theologically apostate homosexual under the European convention on human rights.
Anything these days can be challenged, but such a case is unlikely to prevail, given the convention's defence of religious freedom. The church has long refused to marry divorcees, and a local church can deny marriage to those with no parochial connection. I am not aware of any being dragged to a European court by irate suitors.
Canon lawyers protest that, even so, exemption would create a conflict between "separate categories" of civil and religious marriage. That is a difference, not a conflict, and hardly more terrible, as "senior church figures" tell the Daily Telegraph, than "any rift since the reign of Henry VIII".
This difference arises only because the Anglican church has long enjoyed a peculiar legal privilege of being able to register weddings in its own buildings. But such ritualising of a legal contract can now can take place in most stately homes. The church may moan about an offence to family tradition, but given its casual readiness to marry the absurdly young, it is hardly an ideal matrimonial counsellor. As for its complaint that gay marriage "raises the sort of problems that no one has had to address before", it should try joining the 21st century.
The church has been on the reactionary side in almost every political and social reform of the past two centuries. It opposed popular enfranchisement, secular schooling, easier divorce and legalised homosexuality. It continues to defy the law on gender equality in respect of bishops. This may be lovably fuddy-duddy to some, but the claim to parliamentary and legal privilege is an anachronism.
The government is proposing no more than to remove what in secular and civil terms is a terminological distinction between men and women. If the church wants to make this a Thomas Becket issue, that is its affair. The issue should not condition the action of government.
The Anglican church emerges from this row as absurdly pedantic. It wants to sustain an antique religious bond to a modern democratic state, with the outrageous claim that this should be a partnership of equals. The days when bishops could deny the franchise to Irish Catholics or demand a veto over the 1944 Education Act are over.
The government has honestly tried to meet theological objections to "marrying" gay couples through exemption. The church may fear a quarrel with the human rights lobby, but that is not the state's business. The only alternative is to strip the church of its special licence to register weddings altogether, and have done with "by law established".
The church has kept its 16th-century status for years by ducking and weaving whenever the going gets rough. It will presumably do so again. The government should take at face value the bishops' claim that gay marriage "snips the thread" between church and state, and toss establishment into the bin.
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Source: www.guardian.co.uk
10 Things Divorce Attorneys Won't Say - Smart Money
1. You'll pay more than the advertised rate -- way more.
The U.S. divorce rate has nearly doubled since 1960, according to the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, and the number of divorce lawyers has grown apace. Though divorce rates leveled off during the recession, competition among divorce lawyers has increased -- and billboards flashing "Quick and Easy Divorce for $299" reveal how desperate for business they've become. Those teaser prices aren't a scam, says Randy Kessler, chair of the American Bar Association's family law section, but they usually apply only to parties who have already agreed on the terms and just need the lawyer to fill in the forms. It's clients who don't fall into that category who are likely to pay more. Of course, such come-ons are partly "just to get you in the door," warns Sari Friedman, a New York City matrimonial lawyer. The fine print, she says, will often reveal extra costs -- from initial court fees to eventual asset-divvying lawyer fees. A more realistic final price tag? Anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000, with hourly rates typically running from $150 to $1,000.
Source: www.smartmoney.com
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