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| Friday, October 14, 2005 | (No comments posted.)
dan mcneil
times columnist
Years from now, I wonder how we will refer to the controversial play in the ninth inning of Game 2 of the American League Championship Series.
What will we call the bizarre sequence that enabled the Chicago White Sox of Bridgeport to pull even with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim at one game apiece?
"The Whiff Heard 'Round The World" has a nice ring to it.
"The Trap."
"The Con."
Today, I'm calling it "talked out." Allow me to produce a fresh script for water cooler debate. Nothing like grist for the mill.
If the White Sox advance to the World Series, your friendly neighborhood sports yakker will be in a pickle. Good intentions appear to be headed toward a messy result.
Two months ago, Mark Spain, proprietor of Traditions, where I've been spotted occasionally sipping the Champagne of Beers, asked if I could assist with a charity event he was hosting for fellow Regionite Paul Hubbard. Paul is an ardent Sox fan, who is battling cancer.
In the 20 years I've known Spain, he had never asked me for a favor and I am in a position in which requests are made sometimes on a daily basis. I donated two of my four personal seats for Game 1 of the ALCS and Game 2 of the World Series.
Brian Gordon, a Cubs fan, won the ALCS tickets and Gordo did the right thing. He took his brother, a Sox enthusiast, to Tuesday's series opener.
The guy who copped the World Series tickets in a raffle, however, has me seeing double.
A Cubs fan, he intends to sell the tickets at a not-so-modest mark-up.
While he's sniffing that precious legal tender before he has tickets in hand, I wonder if it has occurred to him Hubbard, whom he knows, might like to have a ticket.
I'm going on a limb and suggesting it might be cathartic for a guy whose future is uncertain to forget about the cancer that has ravaged his body and root, root, root for the White Sox.
It begs the question, dear readers, what do I do? I have pared my options to these:
A) Give the winner the tickets, realizing there always will be greedy, selfish people in the world.
B) Give the guy the tickets if he promises to take Hubbard.
C) Give the tickets to Hubbard directly and take my lumps before a judge.
E-mail me what you would do at mackeyfish@aol.com. Majority opinion will serve as my guide. Good luck, Paul.
Highland's Dan McNeil is host of ESPN Radio 1000's afternoon show weekdays at 3 p.m. His column appears Fridays in The Times.
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