NOVEMBER 1 UPDATE

The following are Friday night scores from the America’s Finest City Tournament:

Tulsa Eagles  /San Diego Breakers Gold (Hill) 0-0
San Diego Renegades Gold (Peronto)  /Power Surge Gold 2-0
Legacy  /Utah Crusherzz 2-0
Tulsa Eagles  /San Diego Renegades Gold (Mena) 3-0
Riptide  /Utah Crusherzz 7-0
Thunder  /Redrum 6-0
SoCal Breakers Gold (Beddow)  /Washington Triple Threat 5-0
San Diego Renegades Gold (Peronto)  /Socal Diamonds Gold 0-0
T.N.L.   /South Bay Pride 1-0
Legacy  /SD Renegades (Z) 1-0
San Diego Renegades Gold (Mena)  /California Chaos 2-0

Strikkers 6 AR. Lil Saints0
Strikkers 0 So.Cal Breakers-Beddow 0
Strikkers 6 Utah Crusherzz 0
Strikkers 6 American Pastime Gold 0
Strikkers 9 Desperados Gold 0
Strikker pitchers Jackie Hill Ashley Wright and Danielle Clark(All juniors)combined for 5 shutouts this past weekend,Hills 1 hitter and 11 k's v.s Breakers highligted the pitching.Shannon Thomas(verbal Texas) 9x14 Jessica Shiery 5 hits 5 rbi's Melissa Pura (verbal Cal Poly)5 hits 9 rbi's Lauren Flores added a homerun to cap off a very successful weekend for the Strikkers.

Florida Ultimate Gold 2 - Ohio Miami Valley Express 0
Florida Ultimate Gold 2 - Riviera Beach Spirit 1
Florida Ultimate Gold 2 - Miami Dade South CC 0
Florida Ultimate Gold 1 - PB Lady Gators Gold - Testa 0
Florida Ultimate Gold 2 - Delong Arizona Outlaws 1

Ohio Miami Valley was young but well-coached
Riviera Beach Spirit is almost all unsigned '05's
Florida Ultimate is all uncommitted 06's
PB Lady Gators is a solid team and well-coached, the wrist bands looked to
be mostly unsigned 05's
Delong Outlaws was the best team we faced, great athletes. Very powerful
hitters, especially the shortstop, #18 The firstbaseman looked like a studette also.

SPY has also been told that Christi Ecks, newly committed to South Florida, pitched Rock N Fire’s 4-0 shutout of the Miami Mini Canes.

Julie Eversgerde, the deputy communications officer at ASA/USA Softball, turned 24 today. As I sent her an electronic card, I thought of what I was doing at age 24, and what I was doing 24 years ago.

When I reached the age of 24, in 1959, Jack Kennedy was running for President. As a reporter, I tried hard to be objective, even neutral, but Jack had captured the hearts of my generation, and he was leading a crusade to remove the world from beneath the threat of thermonuclear holocaust. Many images of Kennedy are always within a second’s command in my memory – that last day in Dallas, standing under the Great Rotunda as a nation said goodbye, that incredible evening broadcast “my fellow Americans” when he let us know that Khrushchev blinked and we stepped back from war, and more. One of my favorite moments: just as he was climbing stairs to give a campaign speech from a flatbed truck on the grounds of Marist College, JFK spied a one-year old girl, borrowed her from her mother, and, ignoring the speech Pierre Salinger had just given the press, spoke from his heart about the America he envisioned for that little girl. We’re not yet at those pinnacles but every election year since, I wonder how different America might be if Oswald had missed, or the bubble top had been in place, or the agent assigned to watch Oswald had done his job. We buried Jack – and our innocence went to the grave with him.

Twenty-four years ago, I was in the Hindu Kush, the mountains which roughly form the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Soviets had invaded in December, 1989, but their force of 100,000 men, armed with Hind helicopters and sophisticated weaponry, could not defeat the mujahadin nor even find their leaders. Just as the British learned from 1919-23 in Iraq, when their military and civilians were assassinated brutally, this is a very different part of the world, where Western governments, indeed all foreign invaders are savagely resisted. Some of the methods used to torture and kill Soviet military cannot be repeated here. The various tribes and sects are just as ferocious fighting each other, and have been for centuries. I’ve been in virtually every Middle East country. Many a time I wondered why we just didn’t pack up our kit and go home; if they want a civil war, let them have it – thoughts which have recurred to me many times with reference to Iraq. Decisions made in 1919, before Bush or Kerry were born, helped create today’s problems. Oil is a factor, but the biggest problem is that we are a nation of do-gooders. We see Muslim children who never have enough to eat or adequate health care, and we see an opportunity which, unfortunately, is not the highest priority with their leaders of the moment. We’ve only been successful in exporting democracy where all the political factions are agreed on a common good – and that is not the case in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the Brer Rabbit syndrome is at work. Every President since Truman has had a brilliant plan for bringing democracy and the American way to the Middle East – and they keep putting our hand into the briar patch trying to catch the tar baby. Both presidential candidates are committed to bringing Iraq to a finish. I just wonder what that will look like, where that finish line is.

Ever sought the perfect riposte? I’m not overly fond of either of tomorrow’s choices, but I am even more perturbed by the biased reporting in the Washington Post. Not just the presidential campaign, but other matters. There is no distinction between the Post’s news stories and its editorial page, and I stopped reading all but sports and comics months ago – except for a few columnists whom I have always respected. Alas, a former winner of the Pulitzer, whom I used to brief, has succumbed to the editorialist temptation when writing about intelligence matters. So, I sent him a copy of P.B. Shelly’s epic poem, suggesting that he envision that fallen idol in the sand, and see his own image.

I MET a traveller from an antique land
Who said:—Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command	5
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:	10
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.