Published: July 13, 2008 12:19 am            

HUTSELL: The return of me, and my picture

There’s been a running joke throughout the newsroom that Mike Hutsell has retired from column writing. In fact, general readers in the paper have even started to ask questions about where my picture (which people politely usually refer to as handsome) has disappeared to at the top of every paper section.

True, I’ve gone on a bit of a column-writing sabbatical in recent weeks — for no good reason other than simple vacation time.

But if J.D. Drew can stay off the disabled list long enough to be the Boston Red Sox first-half most valuable player this season (no seriously, look up the stats — it happened, honest), then Mike Hutsell can return to pollute your Sunday morning sports page.

So simple musings about things that happened while I was away.

• Gas prices continued to rise to extremely high levels. I’m not a politico nor do I ever pretend to be, so I’ll leave gas tax and oil refinery discussions to the pros.

I just know that on Thursday $50 put precisely half a tank of fuel in the Explorer. To fill up may have rung up a $100 tab.

Why’s that sports related?

I’m not sure it is.

But in The Evening News newsroom, we have slang for $100. We call that a Chad Gilbert haircut around here.

• The Tampa Bay Rays are good, so good that the townspeople in South Florida can’t hide their excitement.

Made a stop at Tropicana Field (home of the Rays) more than a week ago during vacation to take in the middle game of Tampa’s three-game sweep of Boston.

Tampa, a team which drew and estimated 534 fans to home games last season while compiling the worst record in the majors, is now home to the most die-hard fan base in the bigs.

In my section alone, you could fill the checklist of great bandwagon fandom for Rays fans.

There was artificial noisemaker guy (who brought a cowbell, an airhorn, a megaphone, spoons, a banjo and the car horn from “The General Lee”), the drunken blowhard who questions the sexual orientation of every opposing player loudly, the guy who spent the first six innings referring to Rays start Matt Garza as Mark and his girlfriend who’s convinced third baseman Evan Longoria is related to “Desperate Housewives” star Eva Longoria, and the old guy who has been living in Florida so long he rode shotgun with Ponce de León on his search for the Fountain of Youth.

Good times.

• Finally I just hope that someone out there takes care of us all and sees to it that NBC brings back a third season of “American Gladiators” next fall. If you’ve been watching, I really don’t feel like I should have to explain my reasons why.

Contact Mike Hutsell at mike.hutsell@newsandtribune.com.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.