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To: Wharf Rat who wrote (17546)	10/15/2002 12:41:11 PM
From: Mannie	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 104191

It had to be David Bell scoring the winning run didn't it? Rub it in, rub it in... Lots of talk up this way about the Mariners going after Dusty Baker now that Sweet Lou Pinella has walked. Pinella is so angry that the Mariners would not listen to his request at midseason. You think the Giants will actually part with Baker?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (17546)	10/15/2002 5:35:28 PM
From: Clappy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 104191

Rice is amazing. BTW, who was the Niner receiver who had a pen in his sock to sign a football after scoring a touchdown? It certainly was an original thought. Not in the best of taste. Sorta Bush League... But a pretty interesting thought. I wonder how long he was carrying around that pen waiting for a TD. -ClapOffToPractice

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (17546)	10/16/2002 5:41:54 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 104191

Here's a column by one of the sharpest in that business...=) Black Heart, White Van By MAUREEN DOWD Columnist The New York Times October 16, 2002 ROCKVILLE, Md. — Chief Moose says he's looking for "closure." I wish he'd simply look for sniper. Closure is a chimera, if not a canard. And Fussy Charlie, who hates giving out any information about what he delicately calls "the situation," even whether the shooter's van is beige or white, makes one long for Dirty Harry. Chief Moose ludicrously objected that the Virginia police revealed Monday night that the sniper's white van had a faulty left taillight. He still seems to be coming to grips with the idea that we're in the era of instant communication, Amber Alerts and police scanners. Some freak has been driving around the Washington suburbs in a van popping people for two weeks and we still don't know much of anything. We know that Virginia's governor, Mark Warner, is bucking to be the Rudy Giuliani of the crisis; Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is trying to capitalize on her personal history with tragic gun killings to save her limp gubernatorial bid; Democrats in Congress tried to capitalize by rushing to pass a small-bore gun control measure that was going to pass anyway; President Bush and the G.O.P. are still taking dictation from the N.R.A. Ari Fleischer leaped from abstruse to absurd, explaining why the president opposes an urgently needed proposal for a computerized system of tracing bullets to gun owners: "Certainly, in the case of the sniper, the real issue is values." Certainly, in the case of the president, the real issue is N.R.A. cash for the G.O.P. An asphalt media jungle of little huts, reeking of popcorn and pizza, has been set up in the parking lot of Montgomery County Police headquarters. Asked yesterday at the midday briefing who was in charge of the sprawling investigation, an Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms official replied, "This is a committee" — a response that strikes fear in the heart of anyone who knows how Washington works. The sniper has outsmarted the police. It takes just one minute for him to pull the trigger, once, and then hit the exit ramp and vanish. On Monday night it took the police 20 minutes to set up roadblocks on all the main highways in Virginia, causing gridlock for hours. But by then the sniper was probably already at home, savoring it all on TV. Now he will have to outfox Pentagon planes equipped with special sensors. The aircraft, used to chase drug lords in the jungles of Colombia, are coming to the capital. Usually, fear in this affluent grid of shopping malls and subdivisions focuses on whether the zoning regulations are strict enough and whether property taxes have been kept in check. One of the biggest fears here, pre-sniper, was getting caught in the terrible traffic jams. It is surreal that the sniper is the only one who's figured out how to navigate them. I was a reporter in Montgomery County for five years, when fracases among the fox-hunting set and sexually perverse dentists passed for big news. The most heinous case I covered was the Murder Most Fowl, when a golfer at Congressional Country Club became so infuriated by a honking goose that he bludgeoned him to death with his putter. In those days the top cop had an even more unfortunate name, Chief Crook. Americans, once insulated and carefree, are not used to being the hunted. Since 9/11 they have struggled with looking over their shoulders at unseen predators, with weapons both invisible and catastrophic, waiting for the next strike that the government assures us is coming. Celebrities had stalkers. But now average Americans have stalkers too, who might smash their lives while they are going about some mundane task like opening mail or pumping gas or shopping at Home Depot. Osama and Zawahiri still lurk, and Al Qaeda is still incinerating innocents. The anthrax killer, whose deadly letter was received by Tom Daschle's office a year ago yesterday, is still hovering. And now, running together with the fear of those invisible and diabolical fiends is the fear of a new invisible and diabolical fiend. The 11th victim, and ninth killed, was Linda Franklin, shot while loading her Home Depot purchases into her red convertible with her husband. She turned out to be a senior F.B.I. cyberterrorism analyst. That made her death an improbably tragic intersection between the foreign maniacs acting in God's name and a suburban maniac who says, "I am God." nytimes.com