I have removed my very chic fedora and am scratching my rapidly balding pate wondering, among other things, why any effort was ever made to bring major league baseball to the Tampa Bay area.
Was the idea to have a team that would be a colossal failure? If so, then success has been achieved.
The Devil Rays front office -- namely, V.J. Naimoli -- is the most dismal loser known to modern times. Some great kids -- Huff, Baldelli, Crawford, Upton and others -- are on that team that is going nowhere.
Lord Lou Piniella is not to blame. He is an example of the dignity and worth of baseball. But Naimoli. There's the problem. He must go.
Wondering, too, about who was the yahoo who broke out all those old folks in Largo at midnight or so during a recent fairly heavy rain and wind storm?
Wow!
It was like a scene out of Nazi Germany (raus! raus!). Roaring through mobile home parks, where more than 20,000 Largo folks reside, officialdom was getting them out -- out into the howling wind and rain in the middle of the night.
Those residents who responded were confused, frightened, wondering what would become of them. And many of them were put on the road, going nowhere, putting themselves in great peril.
Largo, as it happened on that beknighted midnight (September 25) had no shelters open. Hear that? HAD NO SHELTERS OPEN. Now that is storm preparedness for you, isn't it? Oh, yes, they are right on the ball.
Of course, those who stayed put were fine. And that is almost always the case. Those who stay put are fine. Rule Number One, folks, is that when a storm threatens, stay put. Very few people who remain where they are get hurt or worse.
The evacuation nonsense is an excuse to give a bunch of popinjays the opportunity of playing dictator, running your life.
And then, of course, there is all the arm breaking self-congratulations about what a "great job our city staff did." This is the mantra you hear all the time, evidently given for morale reasons in lieu of money. It is nonsense. There is still tree debris lying around from a storm that occurred four weeks ago.
All the Road-E-O jockeys just don't seem to be able to get at it. And that doesn't include all the tree trimming etc. residents have done taking advantage of the recent nastiness to get the city of Largo to pick up their junk.
You can bet on it -- if there is a way to take unfair advantage, the human species will be busting butt to do so.
And as for Progress Energy, the more said the better. This outfit just did not get the job done. A horrible, distinct failure in getting power restored.
What occurred in these parts the weekend of September 25-26 was a rather moderate tropical storm. Heaven help us if an actual hurricane hit here. Thank the Almighty we just don't seem to get them.
But even so, what did happen was bad enough.
Of course, when the former Florida Power was bought by the Carolina company, things were stripped to the bone. Corporate greed ran rampant and the fallout was the suffering by Pinellas County people when the company could not keep up with the demand for repairs.
Even in one locale, where a transformer went down (not storm related) residents went 41 hours before power was restored. Progress Energy can publish all the self-congratulatory ads it wants, but the bottom line is that the company (not its dedicated workers) did not get the job done satisfactorily.
As mentioned, if we ever do get an actual hurricane here, we are ewedscrayed.
Verbum sapienti satis est.