Sometimes it happens to my teams, sometimes it don't

First of all, the don't:



KISSIMMEE, Fla. -- The Atlanta Braves have suspended a minor league pitcher who was charged with two prostitution-related misdemeanors after a sting conducted not far from the team's spring training facility.
Right-hander Deunte Heath bonded out of jail Friday. Kissimmee police spokeswoman Stacie Miller says the 24-year-old ballplayer was arrested Thursday night when he allegedly responded to Internet prostitution ads and agreed to pay $75 for a sex act.
The Braves say Heath has been suspended indefinitely and sent home to Decatur, Ga., while the club gathers details of his arrest. The team says it will have no further comment.
Heath, 24, pitched in 32 games last season with Triple-A Gwinnett and Double-A Mississippi. He went 2-6 with a 5.20 ERA.

Now, having spent some time near Kissimmee, I realize that it sits near enough to Orlando to be a service center for all the Disneyworld sin spillover. Apparently the Bravos are a bit lax on the "stay away from" lectures that should be an annual spring discussion by now. Either that, or one must wonder about a "prospect" who fails to be attentive to coaches and staff despite the fact that he's not exactly torn it up in his career . Anyone want to lay odds on Decatur, Ga., getting a call back from the Braves?

Now, my team:

ATLANTA -- A police report shows Miami Dolphins running back Ronnie Brown had a blood alcohol level that was nearly twice the legal limit when he was arrested on a DUI charge in suburban Atlanta over the weekend.
The report, obtained by the Associated Press through an open records request, says Brown failed a field sobriety test and had a blood alcohol level of .158 when given a breath test. The limit to legally drive in Georgia is 0.08.
The report says a Marietta police officer pulled Brown over at 4:29 a.m. Saturday after seeing the 28-year-old driving fast and drifting into other lanes.
Brown did not immediately return a message seeking comment Thursday on his home phone. A man who answered the phone at Brown's mother's house said Brown and his mother were in Maryland.

Ronnie, Ronnie, Ronnie...

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Now, on to the strange case of the S91 cushion. This appeared on a Country Casual (or 'casualty', as I call them) order a few days back. Nobody but nobody knew what it was, though we had a pair of recent special orders with similar nomenclatures and we assumed it was a special order that we were still awaiting an e-mail from corporate about. Two days later, our new engineer Jeff comes out with a cut sheet (which shows us what we need to make). I stopped him and said (after looking at the thing) that since it was topped with a 35 1/2" radius, I needed him to print me a pattern on his blueprint printer. He came back out a bit later and said that it was the same as a H54 pattern, which we already had. Move forward to the next morning (yesterday) when I tried to make the fool thing. Order called for it to be made of L217 fabric, which is basically a dirty sky blue with hints of green. As I began to lay out the fabric, I noticed the cut sheet said that the fabric that wraps around the welt cord around the edges was to be "contrasting", i.e. a different yet complementary color. Checking our C.C. cheat sheet, we had no standard complementary color for L217, so I went to our super, Rhonda, to see if this was correct. About five minutes later, our lead, Victor, told me that the system (which now the S91 was a part of apparently) claimed the "complementary color" was L330, which made everyone recoil in horror, as this is well named as "nutmeg brick". Rhonda contacted our plant manager Lisa, who looked at the situation, took a picture of the 2 fabrics to e-mail corporate with the statement, "Oh, really?" (Her words, not mine.) Move ahead about 3 hours to Rhonda coming out and saying, "That's what the customer wants, go ahead."
Now, I've seen many odd combos and much lack of taste at Arden over the years. I can't even truthfully say for sure its the worst thing I've ever saw- but it's got to be way up there. But the story isn't done yet. I made everything exactly according to the cut sheet I was given. Minutes later, Wanda showed me that, for some reason, the sewn bands I cut for the zipper didn't match the size (width -wise) of the main band. We called over Monica, our expert on things like this. She took one look at the cut sheet and said that the zipper bands should have been 2" wide rather than the 1 3/4" the sheet called for. While she marched into the engineering office to chew buttocks, I decided to examine the situation. The pattern for the H54 was made about 3 years ago by myself, and I was putting all the band sizes and such right on the cardboard. Looking at the pattern, it said 1 3/4- but it was crossed out. Sure enough, look at the H54 cut sheet and the 1 3/4 had been crossed out and replaced with a 2", and at this point I remembered going through all this way back then. At that time, the engineering department was supposed to change the band size in the system and print us new cut sheets. Neither of those things happened, because the engineering department is "just so busy" and must have forgotten. Enter poor Jeff, who gets told by his bumbling boss Bob (who claims he didn't get his degree at Purdue but I don't believe him) that an S91 is an H54 and so he prints out a cut sheet with only the name changed- and thus still containing the too-narrow zipper bands. In comes Monica with her mad on and with Bob comfortably wasting time in yet another conference call, here stands poor Jeff, who has no idea not only that the cut sheet was wrong, but no idea of the dynamics of how a zipper band gets folded over to be sewn, etc., etc., and thus does'nt know how to tell when a zipper band doesn't match the main band. Believe me, he knows now.
Wrapping up, the fool things finally got sewn and look just as ugly as we imagined. We closed the situation speculating that the cushions were either a mother's day or wedding anniversary gift for a mother or wife who is a close likeness to Nancy Pelosi.

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And today's playoff games: Salavat Yulaev beats Neftekhimik 2-1 on a Mika Hamula goal 9:19 into OT. This after Neftekhimik goalie Ivan Kasutin had already stopped 48 of 49 shots. This series has now seen two 2-1 OT games and two 1-0 games, and the difference is that 6-2 Salavat win in game one. Salavat will have a chance to take the series Sunday. Also, Ak Bars went on a 3 goals in 11 1/2 minutes tear in the second period, and held on, against a withering (this is sarcasm) 17 shot attack to down Metallurg 3-1 and take a 3-2 lead into Sunday's games. Tommorow, Lokomotiv gets its first shot at eliminating Spartak and movng on to face MVD.