Thank you all

... for your kind words here. We appreciate them very much.

Sue's mother was transported to the hospital early Saturday morning (as Sue prepared to depart for Miami and her father's funeral) and remains in ICU with congestive heart failure and possibly pneumonia. Sue's sister -- undergoing her own chemotherapy for lymphoma -- collapsed yesterday in the hospital and was taken a few steps over to the emergency room, where she was diagnosed with dehydration and a fever (she went home last night).

This is all the family she has left, and they are having a rough go of it right now. Please keep a warm thought for them in your heart.

Approaching Bracketville

Scroll on if you don't want to read about the NCAA tournament this week.

Sixty-five teams, three weeks, endless empty brackets and countless hours watching all the action. So you need a primer.

Here are the Sweet 16 things you need to know as the NCAA tournament gets set to tip off.

1. Repeat Gators

Since the John Wooden era ended at UCLA in the mid-1970s, only once has a team repeated as national champions – Duke in 1992 and 1993. There have been some close calls – Georgetown reached the finals in 1985, Arkansas in 1995 and Kentucky even went to overtime in the title game in 1997.

But for the most part, college basketball has been the land of the no-peat. And with the trend of top college players making immediate leaps to the NBA, there was a school of thought that it might never happen again.

Enter the Florida Gators, the defending champions with all five starters back and, after bulldozing the SEC tournament, the No. 1 seed overall. They even have, in the Midwest Region, what appears to be a favorable bracket. ...

2. The four most important players in the tournament

(There may be better players out there, but none are so valuable to their team's fortunes.)

Kevin Durant, Texas -- (more on all four)

Greg Oden, Ohio State

A.J. Graves, Butler

Darren Collison, UCLA

3. Cinderellas (13 seed or worse that are capable of an upset)

Wright State (vs. Pitt) – The Raiders finished the season 23-9, but they started 3-5 as they adjusted to new coach Brad Brownell. Since Christmas, this has been one of the hottest teams in the country. Wright State finished by winning 12 of its final 13 games, including two over Butler, and both the Horizon League regular season and tournament championships. This team is much better than a No. 14 seed.

Davidson (vs. Maryland)

Holy Cross (vs. Southern Illinois)

Oral Roberts (vs. Washington State)

And the other thirteen things you need to know are also here.

Sunday Funnies

Everybody still needs a giggle, right?





and three from Tom Toles:

Israel Behar-Ojalvo, 1929 - 2007

My father-in-law's suffering ended this morning about 1:30 a.m.



His family emigrated from Turkey to Cuba sometime after the turn of the century, and he and his wife left Cuba in 1962, carrying only my future wife and a bag of diapers. He left behind a comfortable life -- manager of a rayon plant, a large home with domestic help, sizable assets -- and went initially to Brooklyn, where his double doctorate in chemistry and pharmacology was at first only good enough for a janitorial position in a small pharmacy. By the time he retired in 1982, he was a manager of a chemical plant in Orange, TX and even after, his old employer Allied Signal (now Honeywell) sought his consultative services at the rate of $1,000 a day.



He leaves behind his loving wife, Nilda (they celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last month) and two daughters, Nilda Hassell and Sue Dorrell. He will be interred in Miami, Florida.

Vaya con Dios, Papi. Te quiero mucho. Hasta luego.

Duty, honor, and curveballs

(I liked the story so much I plagiarized the title.)

Brannan had enlisted in the Marine Corps right after high school, learned honor and courage and commitment and Semper Fi, heard bullets whiz by his head, seen friends die, lost his left pinky to a flash-bang grenade. He had lived "in the Bible times," as he liked to say, so for a moment he allowed himself to appreciate the fortuity of this, him, here, sun and grass, in the uniform of a completely different kind.

"You still remember how to put that stuff on?" said Grady Fuson, the Padres' vice president of scouting.

Brannan nodded. He was weaning himself off "yes, sir" and "no, sir," learning to address his superiors by their first names and nicknames.

The last piece of the uniform was his hat. Brannan, 22, slipped it on nice and snug so it would cover his high-and-tight haircut. Officially, he is still a Marine until he receives his honorable discharge on May 31, so he'll stay clean-shaven and hang dog tags in his locker. The Corps is allowing him to complete his duty with the Padres as an ambassador of sorts, proof that there can be success after war.

"This is about the military," said San Diego CEO Sandy Alderson, a former first lieutenant in the Marines and the man responsible for Brannan being a Padre. "This is about all Iraq veterans. This is about people who are wounded. This is a story that makes everybody feel good.

And it's predicated on the fact that he can actually throw the baseball."

You may have to move past the fact that Cpl. Brannan is being used as a propaganda tool by the military and just appreciate the determination of a proud young man; a patriot, a pitcher.

That is what spring, the time of renewal, is all about. This is the season of Purim, and of Lent. Even as the buds and blooms begin to show their little heads, the cold winter just past (still with some of you, I recognize) reminds us that out of the bare dark nothing comes the beauty of hope, the excitement of unbridled possibility.

Wait a minute; are we still talking baseball?