Brett Favre retired today. As spectacular as his career was, as ageless as his body seemed, as magical as some of the athletic feats he performed were, I really expected something more climactic than how it played out. “Brett Favre, you’ve just won the Super Bowl! What are you going to do now?” Without hesitation he shouts, “I’m going to Disneyworld! And then I’m going to retire!”

Well, maybe not. BTW, how do you get Farve from Favre?

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Wow. It is hard being an Indiana Pacers fan these days. I’ve been largely silent on the subject since I started this blog because, well, there hasn’t been much Pacers’ good news to talk about.

I grew up a Pacers fan. I remember the great ABA championship teams with Mel Daniels, Bob Netolicky, Roger Brown, George McGinnis and Billy Keller. I remember the games at the fairgrounds coliseum in the days before the Pacers moved into Market Square Arena and joined the NBA. And I remember the great NBA Pacers teams of 10 years ago that came oh-so-close to winning a championship but not for the Michael Jordan Bulls and Kobe and Shaq Lakers.

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Today is the 10th anniversary of the death of a baseball legend. Harry Caray the former announcer for the Cardinals, White Sox and Cubs, died Feb. 18, 1998, days after suffering a heart attack.

Harry Caray is the reason that my wife Lois and I became Cubs’ fans in that summer of 1984. We had been married about a year and had just moved into a duplex on the Westside of Muncie. We took the plunge, so to speak, and got cable for the first time.

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Did anyone really think Eli Manning and the Giants were going to pull it off last night? I did not. I hearken back to Jack Buck’s famous call of the Kirk Gibson homerun for the Dodgers against the Oakland A’s, “I can’t believe what I just saw."

Actually, I do believe it. I watched a good part of the game. Not every minute but a lot.

I really don’t have much to add to what I watched last night during Super Bowl XLII. While I admit I cheered the Giants wildly for many reasons, not the least of which was the fact that the Patriots have been the Colts’ archenemies for a number of years, I did not take the delight in seeing them defeated that I thought I would.

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Consider some of the issues facing our country today. The War on Terror, Racism, AIDS, abortion, a flagging economy, the cost of a barrel of oil climbing seemingly by the minute, unrest in Pakistan and Kenya and a spiraling national debt estimated at $12 trillion dollars.

Now seems like the perfect time for Congress to appoint a committee to study steroid use in baseball.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d like to know just as much as the next guy whether or not Roger Clemens’ fastball was chemically enhanced. Or what about Rafael Palmeiro? Did steroids make him a 500-home-run hitter? Still, do we need Congress to figure this out? Well, maybe we do.

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I’ve had a love-hate sort of relationship with winter. I love Christmas, New Year, Valentine’s Day and basketball. I also love seeing my kids squeal with delight as they carom down a hill on their sled. I love flannel sheets and fires in the fireplace. I just don’t love the slip-sliding on the roads or the bone-numbing cold.

It doesn’t seem possible that 30 years have passed since the Blizzard of ’78. The anniversary sort of caught me unprepared—kind of like the storm itself.

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We learned today that little girl who attends the pre-school where a friend of ours teaches has been diagnosed in an inoperable brain tumor. Tests are being done right now to determine whether or not the tumor is malignant. Once they have that figured out, they will decide on a course of treatment.

I cannot begin to imagine the pain and trauma this family is enduring. Their little girl's name is Sammy and she is four years old.

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The problem with parenting is that they don’t give you a rubber kid to practice on. That is not my original thought. Jay Kesler, our president emeritus said it once. I’ve both remembered it and proved it over and over on my own kids. Especially in the case of our daughter.

A text message I got from her on my cell phone a few days ago started this exchange:

Daddy, can I get my nose pierced?

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All things must end sometime. I just hope the end has not come for Tony Dungy with the Indianapolis Colts. Broadcast reports yesterday stated that Dungy’s 16-year-old son had left Park Tudor High School in Indianapolis and enrolled in a high school in Tampa, Florida, where the senior Dungy first rose to prominence as a successful coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Coach Dungy neither denied nor confirmed the report—which makes me as a Colts fan very nervous. My feelings for Tony Dungy are not only selfish ones. Obviously he is a tremendously successful coach and may be on his way to guiding the Colts to a successful defense of the Super Bowl championship from 11 months ago.

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I had moment of revelation this week. It could sort of be considered a "Duh" moment. Somehow I did not realize that I could approve comments to my blog. There were some interesting ones there that have now been approved and are posted.

One writer thanked me for sharing details of my grief following the death of my aunt during the fall. Adam Wire reflected on the passing of Reds' broadcaster Joe Nuxhall. Two people commented on the water boarding post.

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