If football is a sport of quick hits and flashy uniforms, baseball is the sport of slow shifts and tradition. What other sport features so many teams who still wear uniforms from the early 20th century, and they're not throwbacks? Part of the tradition is also in the voices that call the games. For most Oklahomans, that meant Jack Buck and the Cardinals on KMOX at night and to a lesser degree Eric Nadel and the Texas Rangers. For me, though, it's been Skip Caray and the Braves on TBS. Sunday afternoon, all that comes to an end. TBS, once the network of brash boat captain and soon-to-be-Jane-Fonda-ex-husband Ted Turner, is now the property of Time-Warner-AOL-whatever with no room for tradition or Skip. It is fitting that the last broadcast will be a meaningless game with the Braves out of contention, even as they were for most of my youth in the '80s. Then it was Dale Murphy, now it is Chipper Jones. Then it was Claudell Washington, now it is Andruw Jones. Then it was Skip and Pete, now it is, well, Skip and Chip. So much for tradition. The baseball gods must be weeping.

We've been hearing and reading a lot about merit pay for teachers in Oklahoma. Sounds like a good idea, but isn't it a little ironic that in a self-determination, bootstraps state like Oklahoma, we want to blame teachers instead of parents for poor school performance? Who wants to bet that teachers in schools from hardscrabble areas will be feeling the wrath of performance evaluations, while teachers in high-income districts will be pulling down handsome merit-paychecks? I have an idea. What about merit pay for parents? A thousand dollars for each 'A' at the end of the year and an extra grand for scoring above average on standardized tests? What do you want to bet we'd see a bunch of crackhead (and methhead) parents making their kids crack the books instead of their gangsta breathren's heads?

I'm stuck at my computer trying to listen to the Ike, Lawton game and the link is not connecting me to the game's stream. What gives? I understand Ike is working on a big upset, storming back from 14-0 to go to 24-14.

As we speak, rains from Tropical Depression Erin are targeting our area for the weekend, meaning a break (and probably a permanent break) in the 100 degree days. But that's not the main story. The big story is Hurricane Dean, that looks to be a Category 4 or 5 juggernaut that should skip through Yucatan into northern Mexico. Check out Frank Strait's Accuweather blog at www.accuweather.com/news-blogs.asp. He notes that Dean looks an awful lot like Hurricane Gilbert in 1988. For those of you old enough, on Sept. 18, 1988, the remnants of Gilbert dumped better than 8 inches of rain on the Wildlife Refuge and caused flooding, especially in Cache. Strait also says this year's weather reminds him of '88 and '83. In 1983 a Pacific Hurricane named Tico came up here and caused flooding, especially in Chickasha and Sulphur. Hmmm.