Thursday Night Lights

By: Bob Kellett | May 8th, 2008

How does this work again? It has been 12 days since we last saw the Portland Timbers play and I almost forget what I am supposed to do on game day. Surely it doesn’t involve performing any meaningful work. Surely it does involve spending all day alternating between looking at the clock and the Talk Timbers message board until a reasonable enough hour arrives for me to slink off to the pub unnoticed. We can start to fill the waiting hours by reading the piece on Miguel Guante in the Thursday Oregonian. Guante is the flavor of the moment thanks to his performances against Minnesota and Seattle, and he’s hoping to become the flavor of forever. It just goes to show how thin of a line there is in the soccer world. One minute it looks a player isn’t going to feature much for a club and the next he has a stranglehold on a starting position. At least for now. There are a lot of bodies in the midfield this season and a lot of them are seeking to do the same thing that Guante has done early on this year, win a starting job.

Paging Dr. Bolkan
The revamped Trib is assuaging my fears about its future coverage of the Timbers by pumping out articles like this one about Scott Bolkan. I don’t know about you, but I sure am getting tired of reading about athletes who are defenders by morning and research assistants in a behavioral neuroscience labs by afternoon. Yawn. They are a dime a dozen. Actually this is the type of story I love. There have always been some fascinating characters with interests beyond soccer playing for the Timbers. Bolkan joins the list.

UPDATE: The Trib cranks out two more articles, here and here.

And the rivalry resumes
Goal Seattle has reached the 2000s in its build up to Saturday’s game between Seattle and Portland. For me this is the decade when the rivalry is the present, not history. When I close my eyes and think of the best Sounders and Timbers games I have watched the past 8 years all I see are elbows and cards and Suzuki’s amazing goal.

Being Gavin Wilkinson
Using my telepathic powers, I am reading Gavin Wilkinson’s mind and I see him starting this unit against Rochester:

Burse
S. Thompson Knowles J. Thompson Griffin
Guante Gregor Dombrowski Little
Suzuki Brown

In his mind he is saving Poltl and Higgins for Seattle. He also knows that Rochester is still working its way into shape so he is going to throw fresh bodies in during the second half to wear the Rhinos down. Like Olum up front, Oka out wide, and maybe even Lara in the middle.

Did you know….?
The flour used to make graham crackers was first developed by Rochesterian Sylvester Graham in the 19th century and commercial marshmallows were first mass produced there in 1895 by Joseph B. Demerath. In nearby LeRoy, New York, Pearl B. Wait created the food phenomenon known as Jell-O in 1897. And the first production of prepared mustard, by the R.T. French Company, took place in Rochester in 1904.

Predict the attendance
Still an early season Thursday evening game so that will keep it from being a huge crowd, but the weather is decent, there was some pub in today’s paper, and the team in winning. I think we’re looking at 5,324 give or take a dozen.

Now back to the anxious waiting we shall go….

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