Goliard on Hiatus - The Goliard staff has designated themselves as worthy of taking a well deserved break from the scratching out of doggerel in order to do a little research for future issues. In the mean time, if it is true about pictures being worth words, perhaps we're not even missing a beat. 

Baseball

When some of the Goliard staff first moved up to Seattle back in the early 90's, we did so as die hard, tried and true Boston Red Sox fans. Having grown up in Vermont we didn't have much of a choice in the beginning seeing as how it was in our New England blood and one of our first enduring memories of early life was the 1975 World Series when Yaz, Dewey, Chub Fiske and the boys lost a heart breaker to the Big Red Machine of Rose, Bench, Griffey and Foster. Once we left New England for more exotic climes we followed the Sox religiously from afar, suffering through all the ups and downs as we traveled about, never missing a chance to check the box scores in local papers from Minnetonka to Maui and catch them on game of the week when we had access to a television. Tried and true as we said and the thought of ever being a fan of another baseball team never once crossed our minds. 

One of the many things that made Seattle attractive in those days, just before it's reputation for good music, good beer, good coffee, and good software came exploding onto the scene dragging the resistant and rainy city onto the national map and making it a destination for the nations hip, was the fact that it was a major league baseball town but relatively few people in town cared much about the major league team that played there. The Mariners had never made it to the playoffs, rarely even mustering a winning record and, as a result, the fans mostly stayed away. "This is a football town!", people said when we first got there, even though the Seahawks weren't actually all that much better than the Mariners. Go Seahawks. Go U-Dub Huskies baby. Perennial contenders in college football.

For a fan of baseball and the Red Sox however, what this lack of enthusiasm meant was that, 81 times a year, a person could easily attend a major league baseball game. All it took was to head down to the park, grab a cheap scalped ticket and catch a couple innings with almost no hassle at all. And roughly six times a year, we could expect to enter the old Grey lady that was the Kingdome, order a draft Redhook or Hefeweisen way before they were available at any other park in the nation, and sit basically wherever we wanted to watch the Red Sox beating up on the Mariners during yet another playoff run that they would ultimately bobble away in some mind boggling and gut wrenching fashion. We found that we could feel good about rooting for the Mariners the rest of the time since they were never a threat to the Sox chances and often playing a team that was. They were perpetual underdogs that managed to pull out a feel good upset victory here and there and the players were a bunch of play hard, likeable guys with a couple rising superstars in their midst. Baseballs would fly around the yard to a smattering from the half full stands and the concrete roof kept the rain off as you lolled in the outfield bleachers, often with a whole section to yourself. Life was good up until that summer of 1995. And then something totally unexpected happened. The Mariners began to win. 

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Staff Lists

Shite List 
Jay Kernis - Public Shite Head # One
Offense - Replacing Bob Edwards on Morning Edition


Shite list is a new feature of the Goliard where staff members and readers alike may post names of people who have either committed some egregious act against them personally which is deserving of public mention, or are public figures which have fallen out of favor to the point where a feature story cataloging their offenses is in the works but is not yet complete and a brief preview is needed. It can be seen both as a public forum for publishing names (and pictures if available) of offenders and a preview of more in depth vitriolic writings to come. Offenses can range from being the guy who drives too fast in a school zone to being George Bush. We'll see how it goes.

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