A very dangerous port in the storm

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports If you saw the court-storming by the Wake Forest fans on Saturday — and you have; everybody has, because it came at the expense of Duke — you saw Duke star Kyle Filipowski being helped through the mass of humanity by teammates and Duke staff after he was involved in…

As in chess, Queen has the most power

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports­­ Derik Queen, 6-foot-10, 245-pound center for Montverde Academy, the No. 1 high school team in the country, made this disappointing season and the future of University of Maryland basketball far more hopeful by publicly committing to the Terps on Wednesday. A Baltimore native, Queen is an immediate impact player, not…

Sing, everyone sing!

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports Yogi Berra said, “Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.” No, we’re not into Valentine’s Day weirdness here; that was last week, which means it’s still February, which doesn’t sound like much, but when pitchers, catchers and position players have all reported,…

Rest easy, Coach; we miss you already

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports­­ I had been around Lefty Driesell before as he had come to Cumberland quite a bit during his heyday as the University of Maryland basketball coach in the 1970s — ACITs, high school sports banquets, Allegany Community College basketball games … Matter of fact, he was in Trojan Square Garden…

Tommy John is on Baltimore’s mind

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports Well, that didn’t take long. The great Bob Kirk once said that in junior college athletics, a coach doesn’t really know what he is going to have until he sees who shows up on the first day of school. That kind of ended up being the case for the Baltimore…

What matters most, the GOAT or the goat?

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports­­ We just can’t have a Super Bowl anymore unless there is a GOAT and a goat, perceived or otherwise. This is the day and age of hype and shill because the main event and everything that comes with it is about the television ratings. We can’t merely have a great…

For the loser, a show about nothing

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports Who’s the best team to lose a Super Bowl? Who cares? Nobody remembers them anyway. When you lose the Super Bowl, before the MVP of the game even says “Disneyland,” the great season it took to get there disappears. It matters not. To a lesser degree, the same holds true…

Dynasty off the air for good reason

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports­­ I happened to glance at a television the other night while I was attending one of our Mensa meetings and saw “When should Chiefs be considered a dynasty?” Fortunately, the sound was turned down because, fortunately, we were holding our meeting in a public house; and since the channel was…

No-O Maryland well beyond frustrating

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports “But Maryland plays good defense,” while accurate, is akin to saying, “Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” This isn’t a newsflash, but the Maryland men’s basketball Terps cannot score, nor can they help themselves from committing turnovers. Yes, thank goodness they do play good defense. In fact,…

O’s back from ‘No way’ to ‘Why Not?’

MIKE BURKE Allegany Communications Sports­­ The Orioles continued to own the week in Baltimore and took over the calendar as well when two days after announcing they would be sold to a group led by private equity billionaire David Rubenstein, a native of Baltimore, for $1.725 billion, they turned a blockbuster trade to put the…