AUSTIN, Texas. New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton raised the bar by which her opponent for the Democratic presidential nomination should be judged in a speech to supporters last night, saying Illinois Senator Barack Obama needed to score a "triple double"--a three-state victory by at least ten percentage points--in the four primaries being held today.
Barack Obama, in "Hoop Dreams" phase.
"My opponent likes people to think 'he got game'," the former First Lady said in a speech that drew heavily on street slang she picked up Maine East High School in Park Ridge, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. "Let me tell you something--he's gonna get a schoolin', and I ain't foolin'!"
Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.
The term "triple double" is derived from basketball, where it refers to a game in which a player accumulates double-digit totals in any three of these categories--points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocked shots. It became widely popular during the mid-1980's, when Larry Bird and Magic Johnson would routinely achieve "quadruple doubles", a triple double followed by ten Bud Lights for Bird and ten women for Johnson.
Clinton and Magic Johnson: "When she sets up in the low post, you can't move her!"
The four states that will hold primaries today are Texas, Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont. Clinton and Obama were both campaigning in Texas today, the biggest prize with 193 delegates and a two-day/one-night Family Pack Special at Six Flags Over Texas, an amusement park, at stake. The candidates engaged in a friendly game of "21" organized by the Democratic National Committee at an elementary school playground here, where an Associated Press reporter picked up a bit of "trash talking" before the candidates threw "rock-paper-scissors" to decide who would get the ball first:
OBAMA: We had a back porch when I was growing up in Kansas, but it wasn't anywhere near as big as that!
Playground hoops: "Yo, Hillary--take a chill-pillary."
CLINTON: Are those your ears, or missile defense radar dishes that are draining money away from America's social ills?
Is this a sports blog? Who gives a fu(k about Clinton anyway? Thats why Im at the computer--To get away from all that sheeet! Please pardon my language! If it offended you, sorry. Its been a long day......
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
