Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Boston's Jon Lester throws no-no

By Brendan Loy

Another no-hitter at Fenway. w00t!

A letter to Hillary's superdelegates

By Brendan Loy

As promised last week, I'm sending letters to Hillary Clinton's endorsers in Iowa, Maine, Nevada and Washington, urging them to insist that their candidate stop effectively disenfranchising their states' voters by making a "popular vote" argument that depends on pretending Iowa, Nevada, Maine and Washington never voted.

After the jump, I've copy & pasted one of the letters -- to DNC member, state senator, and congressional candidate Dina Titus of Nevada.

P.S. Also after the jump, a list of the people I've contacted, along with the e-mail address or URL I've used to contact them. If you have better contact info for any of these folks, or if you know of other Clinton endorsers in IA, NV, ME or WA that I should send my letter to, please let me know!

Electoral College geek alert!

By Brendan Loy

The increasingly indispensible blog FiveThirtyEight looks at the 269-269 scenarios, and what would be the likely result in such an event. (Bottom line: Obama probably becomes president.)

Clinton and Obama, together in Florida?

By Brendan Loy

Huh? Mark Halperin says, "Obama and Clinton to share Florida stage on Wednesday." Does he mean they'll literally be on the same stage, or just that they'll both be in the Sunshine State? If it's the former, that sounds very significant!

UPDATE: Halperin clarifies: "Obama and Clinton both plan to campaign in Florida on Wednesday." Oh. Nevermind.

P.S. Speaking of people whom Obama might like to "share [a] Florida stage" with... has anyone seen Al Gore? Just asking!

P.P.S. Heh:

But they got Connecticut wrong! It should be black... as should Maryland and Delaware. (Actually, if you look closely, it appears that Delaware has just been left off completely. Joe Biden's gonna be pissed!) Meanwhile, Nevada should be white, unless we're going on delegates rather than votes (in which case Texas should be black).

In any event, as Ben Smith notes, "it's a reminder that race and politics are complicated subjects when North Dakota is 'black.'" Heh. Indeed.

Steve Ludlow, class act

By Brendan Loy

Anybody who's ever had C. Stephen Ludlow as either an English teacher or a tennis coach at Newington High School knows he's a great guy and a class act. Now the Hartford Courant's readers know, too, thanks to an act of kindness toward an arch-rival last week that got written up in today's paper:

Tom Chauvin called it one of the most moving experiences he's had in 34 years of coaching the girls tennis team at Bristol Eastern.

Following what Chauvin called an intense, closely contested 5-2 victory over rival Newington on Monday, he was talking with his players as they sat on the court. The victory gave Eastern at least a share of the CCC South championship. Then he noticed Newington coach Steve Ludlow walking toward his team with his players lined up and Chauvin quickly told his team to get up.

Ludlow handed Chauvin an envelope, which contained a donation to a [scholarship] fund that Bristol Eastern started in memory of former player Holly Getler, who died last summer at 22 after a lifelong battle with kidney disease. ... More than $100 was collected. [That's roughly 5 percent of the total amount that Eastern needs to reach its fundraising goal.]

"It blew us all away," Chauvin said. "I didn't know how he even knew about it. We've been chief rivals for years now. I call them the New York Yankees of our division.

"This is what sport is supposed to be about. What those 20 kids or so learned at that moment collectively, that is the learning value that will stay with them."

It makes me proud to be a Newington alum (and a Ludlow alum!).

P.S. It should be noted that Chauvin isn't exaggerating about the rivalry -- though I prefer to think of Bristol Eastern as the evil Yankees, and Newington as the lovable Red Sox. :) Actually, Michigan-Ohio State is probably a better analogy: like the Wolverines-Buckeyes football game, the Indians-Lancers tennis match is always the last game of the season, and it's a battle for the conference championship pretty much every year. But anyway, the point is, with CCC re-alignment diminishing the Newington-Southington rivalries in several sports, the NHS-BEHS rivalry in girls tennis is probably one of the biggest and fiercest old rivalries left. So this act of good sportsmanship and kindness by Mr. Ludlow and the Indians is all the more admirable against that backdrop.