Silver Knights, local players did the city proud

The Nashua Silver Knights did the city proud this summer, taking home their third championship in the Futures Collegiate Baseball League by sweeping the Worcester Bravehearts two games to none in the best-of-three series finale.

The FCBL, for the uninitiated, is a wooden-bat summer league whose teams are populated by college students for the duration of their 50-plus games. It’s affordable family entertainment, and the players play the game the right way while they gain experience before heading back to school.

The Knights play at Holman Stadium, and a couple things stand out about their roster: First, none of the players are from schools that would be considered traditional baseball "factories." Look down the list, and you see players from the likes of Plymouth State, Franklin Pierce, SNHU, Saint Anselm, UMass-
Lowell and Amherst College, among other places.

The roster also includes more than a few local players – guys from Nashua, Hudson, Brookline, Merrimack, Windham, Londonderry and Manchester.

The Knights took their fans on a nice ride this summer and got hot at the right time. We hope they do it again next year, because they do things the right way.

And because winning championships never gets old.

A horrible story that took
a turn for the worse

It was a horrible story: Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte claimed to have been robbed in Rio while riding with friends in a taxi.

"And then the guy pulled out his gun, he cocked it, put it to my forehead and he said, ‘Get down,’ and I put my hands up, I was like ‘whatever.’ He took our money, he took my wallet – he left my cellphone, he left my credentials."

That was the account Lochte gave NBC.

A horrible story, made worse by the fact that it wasn’t true.

There is a lot of speculation about why the Americans made up the story. One popular account holds that they tried to cover up their own dispute with a Brazilian security guard over a bathroom the group allegedly vandalized.

Officials in Brazil were upset about the incident because initial reports made their country look bad.

As it turned out, Lochte and friends made America look even worse.

A few games we would like to see at the next Olympics

If we ran the Olympics, we’d expand the games to include cornhole, lawn darts and horseshoes as medal events. Those are games of skill, after all, and so what if they are played by commoners at backyard barbecues? All the better.

Don’t laugh – there are more than a few people right here in the Granite State who are known for being able to throw ringer after ringer in their weekly Thursday night horseshoe leagues.

When it comes to games that journalists might have a shot at, we think napping has potential as an Olympic contest. We could have different categories, like the speed nap (how fast can you fall asleep?) the cat nap or maybe the power nap. In the latter, a contestant would score points for being able to sleep through loud noises and would rack up extra points if, as they slept, a discernible river of drool ran down their cheek to their ear.

On second thought, we might have the field to ourselves.