The Way I See It
I'M disappointed that when Aloha Stadium officials divvied up the old AstroTurf surface, I wasn't on the list to get a piece. Torn-up turf would
make for great talesYou know, I think part of the north end zone would have nicely covered my lanai.
Of course, being on the 20th floor of my building, the spring in the old carpet might have been dangerous. I could be doing jumping jacks some morning and wind up on the roof of Iolani School.
And I do remember that I stumbled just about every time I ran across the old Astro Turf to catch up to an interview subject.
Deion Sanders and Joe Igber flew over that turf, but I never could get the hang of even walking on it.
"Excuse me, coach, wait up just a sec, oops!" Splat.
Tape recorder would pop open, cassette would fall out and be crushed under a cleat. Pens and coins would fall out of my pockets, and my game notes were rendered unreadable as the ink on the pages came in contact with a wet spot.
But I still wanted some of that AstroTurf.
EVEN if I didn't use it on my lanai, I could have lined the floor of my Toyota. I could tell my passengers their feet were resting on the same spot where Neil Smith and Kevin Gogan squared off in the 1998 Pro Bowl, or where Mick Jagger dropped a bead of sweat during the Rolling Stones concert.
Would've been a pretty cool conversation piece to occupy my passengers' minds during backups on the H-1 coming from the airport into town.
I hope the schools, church groups and youth leagues that are receiving the old turf make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
It would be horrible if a chunk of the venerable surface ever was ground up and passed off as pakalolo to foreign tourists by the surf racks at Kuhio Beach.
IT'S NO BULL
Doug Semones, the former Kahuku head coach and Rainbows assistant who is now the Hawaii Hammerheads' colorful defensive coordinator, will miss this weekend's game against Texas due to a prior commitment.Guess what that commitment is.
He's in Spain getting mentally prepared to participate in the annual "Running of the Bulls" at Pamplona, which will begin on Wednesday.
Semones plans to make the high-risk 800-meter run down Santo Domingo Street from the pen to the bull ring more than once during the seven-day Fiesta of San Fermin.
A corps of ambulances is always on hand for the bizarre event immortalized in Ernest Hemingway's novel, "The Sun Also Rises."
Stabs and contusions have been on the rise in recent years as a result of pileups in the path of the bulls.
"He's crazy," said Hammerheads cornerback Niko Vitale. "But the whole defense would have gone with Doug if we could."
You might catch Semones running for his life if you tune into ESPN2 next Friday at 7:30 p.m.
CAN YOU IMAGINE?
What if the U.S. women's soccer team was to lose?Yesterday, when the U.S. women were trailing Germany, 2-1, at the half, that possibility arose.
It would be a disaster for ABC, which has invested so much in familiarizing the American public with the names and faces of the ladies in red, white and blue.
They've captured hearts in this country. They're a phenomenon right now.
Americans would find it awfully hard to drop everything to watch a final between two other teams.
Pat Bigold has covered sports for daily newspapers
in Hawaii and Massachusetts since 1978.