12 Arvada Press
LOCAL
VOICES
ALCHEMY
I Andrea Doray
September 13, 2018S
Get a kick out of this football observation
t’s football season! I’m a fan … and this past weekend did not disappoint, with a thrilling win from the Broncos (I’m always a believer), and such a heroic performance from Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers that the booth announcers could hardly contain themselves. For anyone who missed it,
(who, by the way, won back-toback Division II Championships in the mid-1990s). At the game, I noticed that one of the Rocky Mountain Showdown teams employed signs on the sidelines to alert players to the action on the field, such as
Inspiring, to say the least. This particularly struck me because it was such a contrast to something I witnessed at the recent Rocky Mountain Showdown between Colorado State University and the University of Colorado. I didn’t really have any skin in the game, because my Colorado team is the UNC Bears
34-year-old Rodgers had to leave the game with a serious knee injury right before the half, when his team was down 17-0 to the Chicago Bears in another episode of their historic rivalry. Rodgers came back in the second half, clearly hurt, hopped around mostly on one leg, and led the team to a 24-23 win.
SEE DORAY, P13
Without position players all we’re left with is grandstanding
I LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Fellman for school funding measures As a retired math teacher and administrator, former school board member, parent of two successful Jeffco graduates, and a grandmother, I’ve dreamed of the day we’d have an opportunity to increase education funding statewide. In Jefferson County, despite years of insufficient funding and difficult budget choices, our students are still blessed to have access to learning opportunities that don’t always exist in other parts of Colorado. It is our collective responsibility to ensure that all students across our state have the opportunity to reach his or her full potential! While serving on the school board and reviewing the budget during four years of continuous, detrimental cuts, I learned firsthand that Colorado’s education funding has not recovered since the recession. In the 2017-2018 school year alone, schools across the state were underfunded by nearly $830 million, plac-
A publication of
ing us (depending upon the metric used) about 39th nationally. That is unacceptable! Every student deserves the chance to succeed regardless of zip code. As a result of our woefully inadequate funding, school administrators are constrained to make educational programming decisions based on available funds – not on what is best for students. Amendment 73 addresses current funding challenges by increasing the base funding for all students. It also ensures that local control prevails – each school district (with input from their community) makes the important decision on how to spend the increased funds. My grandchildren and all Colorado children deserve the educational funding that will allow them to compete in our 21st century economy. Jill Fellman, Arvada SEE LETTERS, P13
this way, you may ask? Because somewhere, in a closet in the basement of the Oakland A’s clubhouse, some genius mathematician-nerd with a computer has a formula and a power point that says this approach to the game will produce more wins. It is called analytics; it is drilling a statistics to the point that we can n stare at the minutest minutia and a draw enormous conclusions from o next to nothing, and my friend, the s baseball guru, says that it has ruined w the position player because everyw body is trying to be Sammy Sosa. w Now, think about that for a second: studying minute informa- u tion to simplify a process so we no I t longer need to have well-rounded skills and still win. Does that sound w r at all like another arena? Do the words “silly season” mean a d anything to you? About 20 years ago Governor Bill s Owens became a national sensation because of the incredible success of m the get out the vote campaign that m he designed. And one of the main features of this successful campaign i was — wait for it — voter analytics. b Minute data. His game was, predict- p ably, stolen by Democrats and then d modified, then re-stolen by Repubt licans, and so on and so on, to the point now that both sides already know who will vote for them, who will never vote for them, and the one or two issues that people on the fence may use to make their decision. SEE ALCORN, P13
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may have mentioned before that, as Robert DeNiro once said, baseball is one of my “enthusiasms.” So, of course, the last several weeks have been wonderfully entertaining for me, as our Colorado HITTING Rockies have climbed to the top HOME of their division. Still, even with that, this has been a difficult season for me to watch. The game that I learned to play, that was still America’s Favorite Pastime in the era Michael Alcorn of Davey Lopes, Joe Morgan, and Ricky Henderson, is a very different game than the game that you will see if you make your way to Coors Field any time soon. This year’s brand of baseball is, well, boring. And a little bit fascist. The 2018 baseball season featured the first April EVER in which there were more strikeouts than base hits. Now, to the non-baseball fan, that may not sound like such a big deal, but consider that “ever” in baseball encompasses about 118 years, and secondly, that means that the average baseball game these days looks a lot more like a game of catch than it does an actual contest. Well, catch, interrupted occasionally by really long hits that the fielders don’t even bother to chase. And why has the game evolved
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