Quick Hits

Welcome to another entry of quick hits. There are a few topics I wanted to cover, but nothing necessarily big enough for its own post. Feel free to call it mindless ramblings, if you choose.

Howard Kellman

Howard Kellman is the play-by-play announcer for the Indianapolis Indians of the International League (IL), top farm team of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Howard is entering his 34th season with the Indians and continues to call high school football and basketball games for WHMB TV-40. Howard was inducted into the Indiana Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association Hall of Fame on Saturday night. I just wanted to give a shout out to Howard for his work. I have enjoyed listening to Indians broadcasts and hope to be able to enjoy hearing his voice for many more years. Congratulations, Howard!

Let's just hope that we never see Bob Kravitz's name listed here.

Indianapolis Colts' 2009 Schedule

The NFL released the 2009 season schedule last night. The Colts justifiably get five prime-time games next season. What irks me is that for the second year in a row, the fans get hosed on the number of prime-time home games. Of the five games next year, only one is at home, against our arch enemies, the New England Patriots. The Colts will have road prime-time games against the Cardinals, Dolphins, Titans and Jaguars. The Colts only played two of their five prime-time games at home last year (Bears and Patriots). I don't know what jacked up criteria the NFL uses for their scheduling, but we got hosed again, Billy!

St. Louis Cardinals Bullpen

They're still shitty! OMFG!!!! OMFGTAFPMOLYWNFB!!!!!! The Cardinals lead the Majors in '08 with 31 blown saves. In 9 games this year, they've blown 3 so far! The Cardinals parted with Jason Isringhausen and Chris Perez after last season. Ryan Franklin and Kyle McClellan were kept on, but neither one will be the Cards #1 closer. They have added Jason Motte, Josh Kinney and Trevor Miller to their roster this year. The Cards are hoping that Motte and be groomed to be their closer, but he bombed in his first save opportunity. The Cards have the offense to make a run for the playoffs, but their bullpen will be the death of them again this year. Fuck!

St. Louis Blues

Yes, I have a thing for St. Louis teams. Growing up in Indy in the 70's and early 80's, the only professional team we had were the Pacers. So I attached myself to the Cardinals in the early 80's and adopted the football Cardinals (until the third or fourth season of the Colts in Indy) and the Blues as well.

Congratulations to the Blues for making the NHL Playoffs after a three year absence. Last week, the Blues were on the outside looking in. But after winning their final four games of the regular season, they jumped all the way up to the #6 seed. The Blues will face the Vancouver Canucks in the first round. Good luck, guys!

March FotM

Reminder to everyone to get in your votes for March's Fucktard of the Month! Your nominees are Bob Kravitz, Jay Cutler and ESPN.

And finally, in the "it's never too late" category, Slut and I had intended to do some baseball predictions and analysis. We have our division results and playoff predictions, along with O'Hoolix who wanted to get into the mix, and we will present those shortly. It remains to be seen if we can actually find some time to do our division-by-division analysis. At this point it may be the All-Star break before that happens. We'll see what we can do.

As always, thank for reading.

Homer to the Extreme - D'oh!

I've been a fan of Bob Lamey, the play-by-play broadcaster for the Indianapolis Colts radio network, for quite a while. I have preferred to turn the volume down on the CBS broadcasts and turn on Bob because I knew I would hear better game calling than the 'tards on CBS. However, Bob has gotten to be a bit too much of a homer.

Granted, I want the local play-by-play broadcaster for a team to be a bit of homer. It is not like a national broadcast where you really need to be a neutral party. I want my local person to have an interest and root for my team. Yet, over the past few years, Bob's homer-ism is reaching an extreme. I mean Ron Santo homer-ism extreme. It is hard not to enjoy Bob's enthusiasm on a Colts touchdown or an excellent play. And I get a chuckle everytime Slut does his Bob Lamey "It's Good!" imitation.

Listening to the Colts-Packers game last weekend, as the game went worse and worse for the Colts, you could just hear Bob get more and more disenfranchised. Every penalty against the Colts is made out to either be a crap call or a "Jesus F-ing Christ" not another penalty call. When the Colts finally scored late in the game we got a half-assed, "Touchdown, Dominic Rhodes." I do not expect a broadcast to be a Mr. Positive in a blow-out game, but give me an honest broadcast.

Howard Kellman has been broadcasting for Indianapolis Indians for 33 years and does play-by-play broadcasting the right way, in my opinion. I can turn into the game at any time and never know if the game is tied, or a blow-out one way or the other. He just seems to be able to deliver a broadcast that will keep the listener involved in the game, regardless of the score. Although Howard just seems to have that voice and personality that I would probably enjoy hearing read Betty Crocker recipes.

Is it time for Bob Lamey to be replaced. Ehh, not quite yet. It is hard to imagine someone other than Bob broadcasting a Colts game. Yet, I would like to have the Colts or someone reign Bob in a bit.

Side note - I admit it has been fun to write for LomHenn.com. I never imagined myself writing for a blog or that it would be as fun as it has. It is funny though that you can spend five minutes writing a post and then spend ten times that amount trying to come up with an interesting or witty title for the post. A post just does not seem complete until you can come up with a good title.

I hope everyone enjoys our posts as much as we enjoy writing them.