Bill Valentine at Bat

Bill Valentine was supposed to have a press conference at 2 this afternoon, but that got scrubbed. He has been in negotiation with North Little Rock city government for 7 months now and it would appear that things are not going well.

Valentine was on my WAI Radio program (linked on the left column) and the steam was obviously pouring out of his ears. You can hear if in the archives. He was on in the 10 and 11 o’clock hours. Apparently broadcasting is not the only industry beset with a plague of ignorant consultants. Some wise guy from a distant city somehow projected average Travs attendance at the as-yet-to-be-built NLR stadium as 4,000 on average per game. This same Einstein saw a ball team profit of $900,000. Now, while some might take that as a good thing, it put Bill Valentine on a rampage.

The Trav’s manager thinks those numbers are way too high and he also thinks Pat Hays and the NLR crowd may have bought into them. Valentine plans to use any “profits” for park maintenance and to buy things the team might need, such as uniforms and buses.

Here is an opinion. It looks like things have gotten a bit personal.

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Greyhound Takes New Direction

Story linked fron the Dallas Morning News

It is, perhaps, appropriate that the first entry in this journal is not about a particularly romantic form of transportation. It takes a special kind of person to enjoy a Greyhound bus trip. To be most specific, it takes a skinny person – which I am not.

More than 20 years ago, I had the brilliant idea of riding the grey dog from Spokane, Washington to Oklahoma City. It was exhausting and I got a mild case of laryngitis from being exposed to the winter weather changing buses somewhere near Billings.

While I lived in Clinton, Oklahoma, I often caught an early morning run to the big city where my brother lived. It took about 2 ours, which is about all a young healthy person can endure.

Greyhound provides an absolutely essential part of the national transportation service available to small towns, but it has been working hard to cut off as many of those little communities as possible. It hurts the poor and also small businesses that depend on the intercity buses for package express service.

It sucks to be poor and it sucks to be Greyhound, which has been bleeding money for some time. It may be a great idea to add some amenities in larger towns, but that will be small comfort to those stranded by service cutbacks.

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