Golden touch

Chico’s favorite entrepreneur/consultant/carnival barker Bob Linscheid has been named The Golden Baseball League, Presented by Safeway Inc./VONS [GBLPSI/V] “Executive of the Year.” Congrats are due Linscheid, who was instrumental in bringing the Chico Outlaws professional baseball club here to fill the local summer sports void created when the Chico Heat evaporated a few years ago. According to a press release faxed to us by “The Linscheid Companies” of which Linscheid is president, the ever-modest Linscheid noted that “the Outlaws success was far from a one-man effort.” (Indeed, it takes at least nine men to fill out a baseball roster, and that doesn’t even include relief pitchers or the designated hitter.) David Kaval, managing partner, founder and chief executive officer of the GBLPSI/V (and former summer intern for the Bush administration, working on the National Security budget) noted, “[Linscheid’s] combined knowledge of the business of baseball, the sport of baseball, and the needs of the community in Chico are unsurpassed.” Two weeks ago The New Yorker’s David Gramm, in a story about baseball’s all-time leading base-stealer (“What Makes Rickey Henderson Run?”), referred to the Golden Baseball League as the “bottom of the bottom” of the nation’s many independent and affiliated baseball leagues. Damn those New Yorkers.

Speaking of bald guys, the school’s Hurricane Relief Coalition has asked five student government officers at Chico State (males, we presume) to shave a head (one of their own, we again presume) for every $3,000 the coalition raises. University President Paul Zingg said he would shave his head if the coalition raised $20,000. That’s a brave gesture for a guy who appears to be losing his hair without any outside help.

Are people in this country (or maybe just this county) finally coming to their senses? I’ve begun to see more and more Bush/Cheney bumper stickers that look as if they’ve been partially scraped away with a razor blade. Of course, it could just mean the vehicle with the bumper sticker recently changed hands. At this point even the conservatives have to be embarrassed by the Bush administration. I’m also beginning to notice an increased number of SUVs with “For Sale” signs in their windows parked in dirt lots and other places where cars for sale gather in town.

Any reason for a party department: Some people asked that I mention the upcoming party to commemorate the rezoning of Bidwell Ranch as open space. Come join the property-zoning fun Sunday evening from 4 to 7 Sept. 25 at the ARC Park Tower Pavilion, 2030 Park Ave. The party will be hosted by the Bidwell Ranch Conservancy and The Esplanade League. Suggested donation is $5, and, according to its sponsors, there will be “good entertainment, great food, and [a] no-host bar.” There are a lot of people still grumbling about the fact that those 750 acres are still just sitting empty, doing nothing more than supporting the wildlife that lives on there. Open space for these folks has no, as Councilmember Andy Holcombe called it, “intrinsic value.” It just sits there.

I had an idea a week or so ago while watching PBS’s Nova about the history of the universe, which I learned is 13.7 billion years old. Here’s the idea: Suppose that in America, every Sunday morning families would don their best clothes, polish their shoes, climb into the family car and drive to a large building where they would sit on benches next to other nice families. There they would be addressed by men and women standing at pulpits. These men and women would be astrophysicists and physical anthropologists and climatologists and so forth and they would discuss the wonders of nature. After about 45 minutes to an hour, the families would file out of the building, climb back in their cars and drive home, all the while talking about the fabulous things they’d learned that day. Wouldn’t that be something?