Thoughts of the Day, Mother’s Day edition

Good morning, Gator Nation:
Happy Mother’s Day to all you Gator Mothers out there. There aren’t enough flowers and candy out there to truly express our heartfelt love and grand respect for everything you’ve done for us.

1. SUPER CONFERENCES, SUPER GAMES: If Division I schools and conferences embark on another period of expansion (or cherry-picking of other conferences), wouldn’t it be great if some unbiased college football fan and computer (do either exist?) could set up a weekend slate of games you just would love to see played but aren’t because the paranoia of what losing such a game would do to one’s national championship hopes. As long as schools could be encouraged to play these dream matchups, I’d say they should be played early in the season (perhaps as the opener) and shouldn’t count in any formula or ranking that determines who ultimately plays for the national title. Oh, and the games are home-and-home over a two-year period.

2. THAT SAID, WHAT ARE YOUR DREAM MATCHUPS? Well, I’d like to see Florida play my alma mater, Notre Dame, in a home-and-home. Next, despite the fact that He coaches at Southern California, a Gators-Trojans matchup has interesting possibilities. So does Florida and Texas. How about Michigan and Florida? I’ve never been to the Bay Area, so a Florida-Stanford matchup would intrigue me – and also give me a chance to finally play Pebble Beach. And wouldn’t a Florida-Penn State matchup be great? You’d have to give the Gators enough time to get to State College, Pa., because as we used to say in South Bend, you can’t get there from here or anywhere.

3. A BEAUTIFUL TRIBUTE: Fox Sports paid tribute to the passing of Ernie Harwell and Robin Roberts during Saturday’s telecast of the Yankees-Red Sox game from Fenway. Joe Buck and Tim McCarver went silent in the booth and allowed us to hear the sounds of the game, something Harwell, the long-time voice of the Detroit Tigers, often did on his broadcasts. And as much as I like Buck and McCarver, I loved hearing the home-plate umpire call balls and strikes, the sounds coming from the stands and the crack of the bat and the smack a baseball makes hitting off the Green Monster. Clearly, both Harwell and Roberts, a brilliant right-hander who finished almost half the games he started during a long career, enjoyed those moments – as do I.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vGEcx4RSZU

4. I’VE GOT YOUR ASTERISK RIGHT HERE: Roger Maris didn’t deserve it in 1961, and who knows if baseball is going to use them or not to acknowledge those records set during the steroid era. But I’d like to use one to designate Mark Teixeira’s third home run Saturday in the New York Yankees’ 14-3 victory over the Boston Red Sox. It came off Red Sox outfielder Jonathan Van Every, who served up a batting-practice pitch even I could have hit. “You play the percentages,” Van Every said afterward. “In baseball, you’re a great hitter if you get a hit 30 percent of the time, and I was playing the 70 percent scenario and, unfortunately, he got a pitch up in the zone and took advantage of it.”

5. LOVE WATCHING BASEBALL ON MOTHER’S DAY: For all the times we criticize Major League Baseball (and justifiably so), a tip of the cap to whoever came up with the idea to have players use pink baseball bats on Mother’s Day to bring an awareness to cancer. I saw a piece narrated by Jim Thome about it on “This Week in Baseball” and his eyes were watering as he remembered his own mother, who died of lung cancer, and how he honored her with a home run on Mother’s Day with the pink bat. When Thome crossed home plate, he pointed to Heaven, where we know all good mothers go.

6. GOOD MOTHERS … : Mary, Elisabeth, yours, mine, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Leigh Anne Tuohy, Clara Barton, Rosa Parks, Nancy Lopez Knight, Aurora Greenway, Clair Huxtable, Marie Barone.

7. … AND NOT-SO-GOOD MOTHERS: Livia Soprano, Ma Barker, Norma Bates, John Shaft.

8. FAVORITE MEMORY OF MOM: Her name was Florence Riley Fineran and that dreaded Alzheimer’s was partly responsible for her death on Dec. 19, 2004. The irony of it all? Flo or Flossie (that’s what her friends and children called her with love) was the life of the party. Her son’s high school teammates still remember her not as some crazy woman but as Livingston’s biggest fan (and not because she was appetite challenged) because she rooted for all her “Greenies” (not the pep pills; we were the Livingston Lancers and our colors were green and white). Sometimes you just shook you head and laughed, like the time her son, a catcher, took one in the nether regions, despite the fact he was well protected in the area. When she saw the coach and his teammates gathered around her suffering son, she grew more concerned. When her son didn’t get up, she asked her husband why the coach and teammates were laughing. “Florence?” her husband replied in a manner that caused her to think. “Oh,” was her short, soprano voice that allowed her friends to enjoy the moment, too.

9. FAVORITE MEMORY OF MOM II: Same guy, different mom. These last couple of years haven’t been so easy for Lynette Marie Fineran here in our little corner of paradise which has bitten her family pretty well. But she has handled the trials and tribulations with quiet dignity that is sometimes not appreciated enough by her husband. This summer, the youngest of her two children joins the oldest in the student body at South Florida, and the trips home from North Port will be filled by tears of realization that her greatest task in life has been completed with flying colors and now it’s just her and the two dogs in her life – the five-pound furry Maltese Lucy McGillicuddy Ricardo Fineran and her St. Bernard of a husband – her love giving her little kissies. The reminders of what “Pooh” (her youngest brother pronounced Lynnie as “Winnie” so hence “Pooh”) has meant to her loved ones are in a little basket in her van – her son’s Little League picture on a lapel button and her daughter’s numerous golf scorecards on which she kept score. And you wonder how this same guy could have been so fortunate to have two such Mothers in his life.

And you wonder how this same guy could be so fortunate to have two such mothers in his life.

Happy Mother’s Day, Pooh.

Happy Mother’s Day, Flossie.

Hopefully, all of you will take the time to sit and ponder the blessings the mothers in your life have given to you. If you have a few, share them with your friends here in Gator Country. And if you can’t come up with a memory that doesn’t make you laugh, cry and/or smile, then go root for (fill in your most despised team here).

10. ROAD WARRIORS: And here’s to the Tampa Bay Rays, whose best Mother’s Day gift would be to break their one-game losing streak today in Oakland.

THE WORLD, ACCORDING TO NIPPER: Gator fan and good friend Nipper, when asked about his favorite thing about Mother’s Day: “Outback opens early.”

Get that man (and me) a Bloomin’ Onion.

Later Gators,

John Fineran