From the Sports Page

When I think of the sports announcers I grew up watching on TV, my mind goes to men like Curt Gowdy, Keith Jackson, Chris Schenkel, and of course Jim McKay. Maybe it is a trick of time and a youthful perspective, but it seems that in that era when many fewer sporting events were televised, the announcers were more competent and more professional. While Chris and Curt might have had occasional lapses of foot-in-mouth disease, I don't ever recall an instance when Jim McKay failed to get it right, and to say what needed to be said with calm assurance and a total sense that he knew what he was talking about. Whether it was covering a lumberjack competition for Wide World of Sports or the terrible tragedy of the 1972 Munich Olympics, McKay was always the right man with the right words in the right place at the right time. McKay died Saturday at age 86. Though Wide World of Sports and the Olympics on ABC are distant memories, it will be a long time before another sportscaster lives up to the mark McKay set.

University of Alabama football coach Nick Saban received a lot of unfavorable press coverage when he became the highest paid college coach in history in January, 2007. Many of those media sources probably won't bother to cover the news that he and his wife have donated a million dollars to fund scholarships for first-in-their-family-to-go-to-college students at the university. It is nice to see someone who makes very well in his profession give back a generous portion for a worthy cause. I was the first in my family to go to college, but I had been brought up with an appreciation for the value of education. There was always an automatic assumption that I would continue my education after high school. Unfortunately that family encouragement is not given to all young people who would benefit throughout the rest of their lives from a college education. Having scholarship money available to make the cost of that education more affordable is a definite hand up -- instead of a hand-out -- to lots of young men and women in my home state of Alabama.

Here in the Northwest, the Seattle Mariners are having a terrific year -- if the aim is to lose more games than anyone else. The M's now enjoy a two-game lead over the Colorado Rockies as Major League Baseball's best losers. They are on pace for a record-setting year in the losers' standings . . . and can expect to be rewarded by being able to go home at the end of September as they get a head start on the off-season while those teams like the Angels, Red Sox, and Cubs (who fare much more poorly as losers) have to continue playing in October playoffs. It's no secret that people here in the Northwest think differently than folks in the rest of the country -- so the Mariners are just showing how well they fit in.