Larkin's role as Brazil WBC manager raises question from reader

I received a good, sport-related e-mail from a member of the reading audience earlier this week in which he asked a question about the ongoing World Baseball Classic. Here’s what he had to say.

“I saw in last week’s paper where you talked about the WBC,” his e-mail said. “On Saturday, I saw where Barry Larkin is managing the team from Brazil. I thought Larkin was an American. What gives?”

Larkin, 48, is actually a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, but last year the Brazil Baseball Federation invited him to manage their national team. Larkin led them to an upset win over Panama, which allowed the Brazil team to qualify for the WBC for the first time. So far, the Brazil team isn’t doing so hot. They’ve lost both their games so far, falling to Japan, 5-3, and Cuba, 5-2, on Saturday.

Most people will remember Larkin from his playing days with the Cincinnati Reds. He played shortstop there from 1986 to 2004 and was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame last year. A 12-time all-star, he now lives in Orlando, Fla.

Team USA will play its first game tomorrow (Friday) when they take on Mexico in Phoenix. The U.S. team is in Pool D of the tournament bracket along with teams from Canada, Italy and Mexico. Joe Toree, who won four World Series titles between 1996 and 2007 with the New York Yankees, is the manager of Team USA.

----- 0 -----

High school baseball and softball is now in full swing in Conecuh County. The season is still young, so only time will tell as to how competitive our local teams will be this year. I look for all four teams to be more competitive than they were last year, and I won’t be surprised when more than a few of them qualify for the playoffs.

This is not only a testament to the hard work the players are putting in, but it also indicates that the efforts of our local coaches are paying off too. Good luck to all of our local teams as they advance through their respective schedules.

----- 0 -----

From the weird news file this week, I saw in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! on Wednesday of last week that 12-year-old Tom Schaar of Malibu, Calif. recently landed skateboarding’s first-ever 1,080-degree spin.

Schaar, who is now sponsored by Red Bull, pulled off this feat in only his fifth attempt. Most professional skateboarders can’t even pull off a 900-degree spin, and skateboarding legend Tony Hawk was even impressed by Schaar’s spin.

If you’d like to see it for yourself, you can look it up on YouTube. For someone like me, who can’t travel 10 feet on a skateboard without risk of severe bodily injury, his three complete aerial spins are very impressive.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not! also had an item on Saturday that talked about a guy named Tim “Eater X” Janus of New York City who ate two gallons of chili in just six minutes to win Ben’s Chili Bowl’s World Chili Eating Championship in October. I like chili just as much as the next person, but I don’t know if I want to watch anyone eat that much chili in six minutes.