Short Takes................................

Alex Gordon has started well in Wichita AA ball as he has a .341 avg., 19 runs, 5 HRs, 10 RBIs, and 5SB. He may advance quickly with players in KC struggling. Drew Anderson is batting .239 with the Brewers AA club. He has good speed and a lot of talent. His season should improve. Shane Komine is at the Athletics AAA club. He is 1-1 with a 3.80 ERA.

Albert Pujols is big in my fantasy baseball team. He has a record 14 HRs in April. Ken Griffey Jr and Luis Gonzalez previously had the record.

Lance Thorell of Loomis broke the 110 high hurdle record held by Ross Ridenour, also of Loomis. Lance had run a 14.4 with a hand held watch but broke the record last week with a 14.79 which was electronically timed. Lance is an athlete the Nebraska football team should look at recruiting in some fashion. He will be a senior this fall. He also has an excellent time in the 300 low hurdles. His cousin, Drew Billeter, plays basketball at Chadron State. Another cousin, Matt Hill, is headed to Texas this fall to play basketball.

Tom Shatel was out of line saying Nebraska basketball is going down the tubes today in his column in the Omaha World-Herald. The loss of Spinelli is not good. We wish we had him. This writer is sure that Collier and Boehm will put all their efforts into finding a very good replacement. Novsek is an excellent assistant coach along with the rest of the staff.

This writer will be surprised is Alex Maric would be a Round 1 or 2 NBA draft pick at this time. Definitely the potential is there with one or two more years of college.

Best TV shows right now are 1) Boston Legal 2) The Office 3) The King of Queens 4) House. On Boston Legal, Robert Wagner will star as an LA clone of DENNY CRANE.

Jake Gdowski of Grand Island will go Division 1 in football. I hope Nebraska is the school he goes to. His dad, Tom Gdowski, played at NU.

The book "The World is Flat" is a great book. It is written by Thomas l. Freidman. Here is a paragraph from Chapter 7 of the book

"Sports writer John Feinstein could have been referring to either American engineering skills or American basketball skills when he wrote in an August 26, 2004, AOL essay on Olympic basketball that the performance of the U.S. basketball team is a result of "the rise of the international player" and "the decline and fall of the U.S. game". And the rise and fall of the U.S. game, argued Feinstein, is a result of two long-term trends. The first is a steady decline "in basketball skills,"with American kids just wanting to shoot either three-point shots or dunks-....And there is the ugly problem of ambition. The world changes. In the case of American basketball, it hasn't changed for the better."