Steve's Trout & Tires (Week 7)

We interrupt this News blog for a bit of nostalgia. What you see above came my way from Keith. It's a business card from Steve Barenholtz' Steve's Dockside, our friend's first venture into the hospitality world as an owner/GM. As you can see it was located on West Alabama between Argonne and Revere and I have some great memories, especially of helping with painting, polishing, and prepping it for the opening. 

As for the title of this post...I'm not 100% positive of the backstory but my spotty memory tells me that a couple of us had flat tires in the driveway during that initial building prep period and the nickname arose from us changing tires there. I know it's referenced in early editions of the Hughes News. I may have to do some digging.

I can't find a picture of  Steve's Dockside but the photo below is of the building's next incarnation, The Ale House. This 2001 Houston Press article addresses the building history (it was haunted?) and the story of it giving way to 'progress' in the form of a high-class strip center. Steve's Dockside is mentioned. 

And here's the spot as it looks today. 

RIP Steve. We miss you and think of you often!

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Three close, three not... of the six games in Week 7 (can you believe we are halfway to the playoffs?) there were a few that came down to the wire. The Sticks caught and tied the Nats thanks to Michael Pittman's TD catch with under three minutes on the clock Sunday night. The 113-113 deadlock cost the Nats a share of first place in the Barenholtz Division... The Giants fell just short on Monday night in losing to the Flyers, 127-124. Rick's club came from about 70 points down after the Sunday afternoon schedule to close the gap with four primetime players. 

Let's hear it for the Heroes who posted their first win of 2021. They beat the Ridgebacks by 10 in what was the only other relatively close matchup. The Bombers drubbed the backsliding Blizzard who had one of those weeks where nearly everyone falls below expectations...and the Legends completed a four-team 'perfect' Lombardi weekend with a 61 point win over the Pirates. 

The Strawmenn lost to the Holes and fell to 2-5 despite having the second-highest PPG in the division this season. The 789 points that have been scored against them pretty much explains the issue there. It's the most in the league.

IR Hell... everyone is suffering from it, players down with injuries or COVID. And now that 'bye season' has started there will be going to be thin ice under a couple of clubs in any given week. One thing you should HAVE TO do is monitor your IR situation closely. And do it before the Thursday Night game, please. It's very easy to get caught in a situation where an IR violation you failed to fix leads to you being locked out of your Submit Lineup page. We've had multiple instances of that recently. Although my intervening is a gray area in the rules I can fix the problem. But if you don't happen to catch me before the games start on Sunday you're gonna be out of luck. Making changes or submitting lineups for owners after the fact is a can of worms I will not open, I was in a league that imploded over that sort of thing a few years ago. As I type this on Tuesday morning there are two teams with IR violations. 

I'm probably going to just do away with IR slots next year. It will make things simpler for everyone. Meanwhile, I've posted a reminder near the top of the league site and moved the module right below the helmet display.