"Crossing Muddy Waters"

 This is a John Hiatt song performed in studio by I'm With Her...

"City of New Orleans"

 This is a live version of one of the great pieces of Americana songwriting. The songwriter is the late Steve Goodman ("A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request") and the song is performed by Arlo Guthrie.  The ensemble even includes the great old folkmaster Pete Seeger.  The song references Goodman's hometown, Chicago, the Illinois Central, the town of Kankakee, and the decline of the railroads.

Different but still Americana; NCAA BASEBALL

 College World Series starts today...

The college baseball world series is here, featuring four teams from the SEC and four teams from the ACC.  Really good baseball is played all over the county, yet the grand finale is just two conferences.  Good for the SEC, good for the ACC, bad for college baseball.

It can be argued, persuasively, that the NCAA baseball tournament began with 64 teams, and a brutal format that includes double-elimination pool play and best 2-of-3 super regionals yields the best eight teams in the country. But two things challenge this view.

First is the selection process.  The SEC is good, probably the premier baseball conference in the country, but it is not as good as its press (more on that later).  Eleven SEC teams were selected for the tournament.  Eleven.  No conference should have eleven teams in the playoffs.  Again, supporters may claim that is legit because of the number of SEC teams in the national rankings.  But this is a self-fulfilling argument.  The rankings and ultimately the tournament selectees are not determined by competition; they are determined by sports writers and by committee. 

Consider that five of the eleven SEC teams selected by the committee had losing records in their conference.  How can we say one of these teams can be the NCAA champion when they do not even have a winning record in their own conference.  To be sure, the eleventh-place team in the SEC, with a losing record, has not earned the right to compete for the championship.

Florida is one of those five teams with a conference record of 13-17.  They got hot, for sure, and won their way into the CWS.  But they did not earn the privilege to be there in the first place.  It would be much better for the college game if those teams with a losing record were out and five more teams from around the country had a chance to show what they’ve got.  Those teams could get hot, too, given the chance.  There are other Evansvilles out there for sure.  And the SEC would still have 6 teams in.  If it takes eleven teams to get four into the CWS, that is not brag-worthy.  The six best should be able to do the job.

Then there is the conflict-of-interest that makes everything SEC-related suspect.  ESPN owns the SEC network.  With all of the publicity spurring recruiting, and the TV money coming to the programs --- huge advantages over the other conferences --- the success of the conference is tainted.  This same conflict-of-interest should also be embarrassing to the SEC.  I now turn the sound off when I watch the baseball post-season.  Most of the announcers are SEC announcers --- perfectly fine when announcing SEC games, but, it turns out, not so much when other teams are involved.

I will say that the announcers for the final NC State-Georgia game were excellent.  They kept their partisanship in check and apparently did their homework.  But in many of the games I’ve watched, the announcers would tell these great anecdotes, and provide timely information about the SEC team as each batter came to the plate.  When the non-SEC team came to bat, they would then tell great anecdotes and provide timely information about the fielders.  You could almost see the commentators rifling through papers to find the actual names of the other team’s players.  (I will say that it’s been worse.  In years past, there would be an on-field reporter, but she would only be in the SEC team’s dugout.)  In one game this year, the announcer repeated that “the best baseball was played in the South” while noting that Virginia was pretty good, even though they were from the northeast, where the winters are cold.  Northeast, really?

Then there was the last game of the East Carolina (Greenville) regional.  There were no commentators present.  The game was being called remotely.  So wrong.

So what should be done to even the playing field, so to speak?  First, the SEC network should be spun off from ESPN, and ESPN should create a national baseball information scheme, not just a partnership with the SEC.  It would be nice if the NCAA had it together enough to re-configure the baseball conferences, to be based on regions, not money.  Eight competitive regions, with playoffs leading to 8 world series contenders, one from each region.  That is asking too much, I’m afraid, so how about a selection process that spreads the wealth, that gives colleges not in the SEC bubble a crack at Omaha.  It wouldn’t be that hard.  Limit conferences to 6 teams max, and teams that have winning conference records (and conference winners, of course - they earned it).

Having said this, there is for sure great baseball during the post-season. And as a championship format it is light years ahead of college football, where they pretend to pick a national champion based on two games.  There is no defense of that system, except to note that it brings in a lot of money to the NCAA.  Bogus.

Baseball is still God’s sport, and it would not take much to make the college game much better.  Just the will to do it.

"Switchbacks and Laurel"

Genre:  Americana

Setting: the mountains of western North Carolina

 This record features some unique talent.  It is sung by Donna Britton Bukevicz (singer/producer/owner of Molly Girl Music).  The fiddle playing is by B.E. Farrow (seen on America's Got Talent, performing with Ganstagrass;  he also tours with Dom Flemons, troubadour of ole time music).

the atheist hymnal

 Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers

A great piece of Americana --- a lament that atheists don't have music to call their own.