Mike Burke
Cumberland Times-News
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Hope you didn’t miss the 2010 Moorefield Yellow Jackets high school football preview, which was included in Saturday’s Times-News; and today inside of your Sunday paper you will find the preview for the Hampshire Trojans.
Summer’s been over for the Times-News sports staff for a couple of weeks now as we’ve been working with area high school football coaches to get as much information as possible to you about the area’s teams and the upcoming season. Moorefield’s season opener is Saturday, Aug. 28 at Bishop Walsh. Hampshire will open Friday, Aug. 27 at Preston.
The schedule for upcoming preview books, which will continue to run in the Times-News through Sept. 5, follows, with each team’s season opener (in parenthesis):
• Tuesday, Aug. 24, Petersburg Vikings (Friday, Aug. 27, home, Clay-Battelle)
• Wednesday, Aug. 25, Frankfort Falcons (Friday, Sept. 3, home, Moorefield)
• Thursday, Aug. 26, Keyser Golden Tornado (Friday, Aug. 27, home, Wayne)
• Friday, Aug. 27, Bishop Walsh Spartans (Saturday, Aug. 28, home, Moorefield)
• Tuesday, Aug. 31, Southern Rams (Saturday, Sept. 4, at Allegany)
• Wednesday, Sept. 1, Northern Huskies (Friday, Sept. 3, at Smithsburg)
• Thursday, Sept. 2, Mountain Ridge Miners (Friday, Sept. 3, home, Jefferson)
• Friday, Sept. 3, Fort Hill Sentinels (Friday, Sept. 3, home, Surrattsville)
• Saturday, Sept. 4, Allegany Campers (Friday, Sept. 4, home, Southern)
• Sunday, Sept. 5, 22 To Watch
For a lot of fans Saturday’s Queen City Quad at Greenway Avenue Stadium provided them with their first taste of high school football for the coming season — those fans who don’t attend practice every day anyway — and also gave them an idea of what to expect at the stadium until construction of the home side is completed, which should occur sometime this season.
In the meantime, we’re all expecting another exciting year, and we hope you enjoy the season previews we have prepared for our area’s teams.
Suddenly darlings of
the small screen
I’m not naive enough to believe it didn’t have more to do with their opponents on the respective weeks, the Tampa Bay Rays and the Texas Rangers, but yesterday marked the second week in a row the Orioles were on the FOX Game of the Week. This after the Birds went the first four-plus months without getting so much as a sniff from FOX.
That’s not correct, actually, as FOX gave the Orioles much more than a sniff on July 10 — FOX gave the Orioles a giant P.U. as the network informed the club it would not be carrying its home game with the Minnesota Twins as scheduled after all, so they might as well reschedule it to 7 p.m. so they could at least get the TV money a MASN broadcast would bring them.
While the Rays are in a hot race in the AL East with the New York Yankees and the Rangers look to be running away in the AL West, I do believe the Twins were in a tussle in the Central at the time before opening a four-game lead on the White Sox. The bottom line is there wasn’t a network in the free world other than MASN (which, oh, by the way, the Orioles own) that wanted to get stuck with the Orioles on its for-sale air.
But now since Buck Showalter rode into town and turned the Orioles into a fairly snappy outfit, the wins have come with some regularity, attendance at Camden Yards has begun to inch up, with the crowds becoming noticeably more enthusiastic and, what do you know, the Orioles can even be found nightly on highlights on SportsCenter and Baseball Tonight, which, until Showalter took over, wasn’t an easy thing to do. Matter of fact, the guys on Baseball Tonight can’t stop raving about the Orioles and talking up their old buddy Buck on most nights.
It’s as John Wayne said to Christopher George in “El Dorado,” call it professional courtesy. Of course, not long after, Duke shot George from beneath a wagon, but nonetheless ...
The Orioles, of course, are not going to win the pennant, or even avoid finishing last in their division, but for the first time in over a decade, the organization has caught some form of lightning in a bottle. Just check out SportsCenter if you don’t believe me. You’ll find them there. And this offseason it’s now a matter of Peter Angelos allowing Andy MacPhail to keep them there.
Just call it professional courtesy.
Mike Burke is sports editor of the Cumberland Times-News. Write to him at mburke@times-news.com
