Another night of winners and losers – and more of the same ahead
We’re to Wednesday already? Wow. The time flies thing is right, alhough Tuesday night wasn’t all that fun unless you’re a high school sports fan in North Idaho.
• Winning and losing is something in which sports aficionados are well-versed. Everything is a horse race – including horse races. Elections? Well, they do come down to who wins and who loses. In Tuesday’s case, the fans in the Lakeland and Coeur d’Alene school districts were part of the winning teams.
The levies that supply about a quarter of the districts’ budgets passed muster with the voters, after both districts saw them fail in March. If they hadn’t passed? No high school sports next year, at least as far as Coeur d’Alene was concerned. The district made that clear before re-running the levy and it probably wasn’t a scare tactic. If you lost 25% of your income overnight, do you think going to a Washington State football game or a Gonzaga basketball game would be high on your agenda? More than likely you would save your dollars for, you know, food and rent and gas. The essentials.
Thankfully for the kids playing football at Lake City or hoops at Lakeland, more than 50% of the voters in the districts decided not to shave the budget – and the teams.
• If you were asking yourself Wednesday morning what the heck is going on with Luis Castillo, you probably have one other person in your camp – the Mariners right-hander himself.
His past five starts haven’t been good. Not up to Castillo standards, at least. He gave up three home runs to the Red Sox Tuesday night in five innings, doubling his season total. Although Castillo wasn’t helped much by the M’s defense – Kolton Wong and Julio Rodriguez each failed to make plays that would have limited the Boston rally, with Wong’s error and Rodriguez’s poor tracking of a line drive – this is on him.
Seattle has a great starting rotation. There are explosive young arms. A crafty left-handed veteran. And a horse. Right now, though, Castillo is pitching like an old plow horse, not the thoroughbred he is. It’s time to get back on track.
• You may have missed it, because it’s happened incrementally. But if you look at the picture of the area around the Spokane Arena as the new football/soccer stadium takes shape, you’ll notice something. There is a sports complex feel to the north bank area.
You know, a miniversion of areas you find in metropolises. Maybe even in Metropolis, though the Superman comics didn’t really cover sports much, other than that time the Krypton fireballer no-hit the Yankees.
Anyhow, the Arena has become the centerpiece of a three-facility complex. Directly east is the Podium, the indoor facility that can host track and basketball and wrestling and the like. In the fall the new stadium will open, giving the city a place to highlight high school football and soccer and a home for any pro soccer team that wants to represent Spokane.
Another level of the women’s game is coming next year, with franchises spread throughout the nation, including Spokane.
We’re not going to gloss over the problems our community has, including issues with the central core, but moving forward with a complex that can revitalize and expand downtown offerings can’t be a bad thing. At least it shouldn’t be.
When King Cole and his supporters supplied the impetus to rebuild the riverbank by hosting a world’s fair some 50 years ago, Spokane changed for the better. Another change occurred when the Arena replaced the Coliseum, albeit on a smaller scale. Adding the Podium and stadium within a few years of each other gives the city one more boost.
We may not be Metropolis, or even a metropolis, but as midsized American cities go, there are times we punch well above our weight class.
• Want to know a great exercise for people of our advanced years? Wrestling the green recycling bin from the backyard to the street in the spring. Two cuts of the grass last week left the thing overflowing and, well, way too heavy. But we got it through the wet grass, down the ramp to the driveway and up the driveway to the street. It took awhile and left us sore Wednesday morning. Luckily, writing only takes two fingers to get done. Everything else is pretty much out of commission.