Mother Nature Is Unbeatable in Key West

Florida is the land of football. The state seems to sprout national champions by the bushel and high school stars by the truckload.

It’s a little different, though, at land’s end in Key West, reports Mike Bianchi of the Orlando Sentinel.

“This is Mile Zero, the island at the bottom of the United States, where the blue water of the Atlantic Ocean meets the green water of the Gulf of Mexico. . . .

“It is the end of the day here and everybody is waiting for nature to paint its nightly Picasso across the sky. Bodies, fatigued from the exercise and fried by the sun, loosen up, and the gentle glow soaks in and loosens the barnacles from the brain.

“‘Look, Daddy, two dolphins,’ a little girl squeals.

“And Dad finishes off the last of his draft beer and licks the foam from his mustache and points out over the mangroves where the sun, now a gigantic orange orb, is setting in all its resplendent dignity. It leaves behind more colors than the little girl has in her Crayola box, and the crowd at Mallory Square erupts in applause.

“Welcome to Key West, where the sunset gets a louder cheer than the football team.”

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Trivia time: What University of Miami and NFL quarterback played for the Key West Fighting Conchs in the late 1950s and early ‘60s?

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Grits, grunts, coconut pie! That’s the Conchs’ cheer. It ends with “V-I-C-T-O-R-Y!”

Bianchi writes about the 12-foot high replica of a Conch shell that stands in front of the high school.

“Only in Key West could you have a mollusk mascot--a critter usually found in a fritter. And only in Key West could you have half of the team suspended from the spring game because they skipped practice to attend an MTV-sponsored ‘summer vacation’ segment that culminated with a concert by the Backstreet Boys.”

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Cold showers instead: A panel of athletes rejected plans for hot tubs in the Olympic village at Salt Lake City because it could encourage late-night rowdiness.

“It is a distraction,” said the IOC’s Bob Ctvrtlik, a member of the athletes’ commission. “There are some athletes who are finished earlier than other athletes.”

Ctvrtlik, former captain of the U.S. men’s volleyball team and a veteran of three Olympics, said, “I go back to 1988 in Seoul, when Canada had a gold-medal winner next to the United States’ dorm. I was just at the beginning of my preliminary round, and I couldn’t sleep all night long ....

“You know, whatever is going to go on between men and women, or whoever, is going to go on.”

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Trivia answer: George Mira, who played for the San Francisco 49ers, the Philadelphia Eagles and the Miami Dolphins in the NFL.

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And finally: A Massachusetts state legislator is trying to end the mythical “Curse of the Bambino” that some believe has kept the Boston Red Sox from winning the World Series. Their last title was in 1918.

State Rep. Angelo Scaccia is sponsoring a resolution to officially recognize the retirement of Babe Ruth, who started his career with the Red Sox before the New York Yankees acquired him before the 1920 season.

Harvey Robbins, another planner, told the Boston Herald, “We’ve got to do this to lift the curse, and we’ve got to do this with honor.”