His nickname isn't 'Milquetoast': Keith McShea of The Buffalo News launched the paper's high school sports blog Tuesday with something way beyond the "Hello, I'm happy to be here" approach. Instead, he opened with what he called an "Outright Plea" to Orchard Park, assembling five reasons that school should schedule a Catholic school in a non-league football game next year.

   The short summary:

• St. Francis has first crack at No. 1 following its non-league rout of North Tonawanda, so No. 2 OP can't ascend to the top without help.
• Imagining how one team would do against another gets tiresome.
• OP's lacrosse team plays Catholic schools, so why shouldn't the football team?
• You become the best by playing the best in order to prepare. Orchard Park has won seven Section 6 titles since the start of state playoffs, but has followed each with a loss to Section 5 in the NYSPHSAA quarterfinals.
• Catholic schools will never be allowed into Section 6, so non-leaguers are the only way we're going to see the best matchups possible.

   As always, I agree with McShea on all aspects of this topic except for his view that the Monsignor Martin Association schools should never be admitted into Section 6 as members.

   In print on Tuesday, he mentioned St. Francis' 42-13 victory against North Tonawanda over the weekend. It was the first game since 2003 between large schools from Section 6 and the Monsignor Martin Association.

   As he noted, North Tonawanda will get better in the next month and a half and will likely reach the Section 6 playoffs.

   "That’s one of the reasons we said we’d play them -— we want to play the best competition we can," North Tonawanda coach Eric Jantzi told the newspaper. "We weren’t at their level yet. So, hopefully we can get there."

   'NYDN' swings, misses: The New York Daily News ran an editorial Tuesday opposing the new law aganst metal bats in high school baseball games, terming it "a notable triumph of good intentions over common sense."

   It's the paper's position that the evidence regarding the relative safety of wooden bats is thin and that the law "solves a problem that didn't actually exist while creating some new ones."

   But isn't that true of many laws? The 'NYDN' says switching over to wood will cost the PSAL $250,000 this year and about $61,000 a year after that for replacement bats. That's dwarfed by what schools spent on

AEDs when their presence was made mandatory state-wide a few years back.

   Don't get me wrong; AEDs can and do save lives, restoring heartbeats to victims experiencing cardiac arrest. But their use in schools is indeed rare and doesn't guarantee that the victim will live.

   Still, I'll give the editorial writer the benefit of the doubt on cost. What I can't let slide, though is the last paragraph:

   "There is a measurable element of risk in all sports. The key word is "measurable." Coaches, umpires and administrators are the ones who measure those risks on a day-to-day basis. They are the people who can best decide what level of risk -- and what kind of baseball bat -- is acceptable, not the members of the City Council.

   If you take that line of reasoning to the extreme, police officers could impose the death penalty on the spot since they are the men and women on the front line and best understand "what level of risk . . . is acceptable."

   Yeah, I know, That one might be out there a little bit. But what's wrong with the New York City Council perhaps erring on the side of caution?

   Exodus continues: Will the last player leaving the CHSAA kindly turn out the lights? If New Orleans had half as good an evacuation plan as New York's best basketball league apparently does, FEMA would never have become the butt of jokes on late-night television.

   The next guy to go appears to be Lamont Jones, a seventh-team all-state pick as a junior at Rice last season. The New York Post reported last week that the guard was planning on taking an admissions test at American Christian Academy. That's the private Philadelphia school coached by Tony Bergeron, who left Wings Academy in The Bronx after the 2005-06 season.

   If Jones leaves, Rice will have a big hole to full. Still, the situation is worse elsewhere. Xaverian's attendance officer may have up to five fewer bodies to keep track of beginning this week. Among them is potential Big East recruit Patrick Jackson, who will attend Boys and Girls. The newspaper also reported that Danny Jennings of Bishop Loughlin might find his way to Oak Hill Academy in Virginia this week -- with the blessing of coach Khalid Green.

   Extra points: I missed it the first time around, but The Saratogian did a nice takeout on Shenendehowa football icon Brent Steuerwald, No. 4 on the state's career victories list for coaches. . . . Fayetteville-Manlius won its girls tennis opener last week over Baldwinsville, 5-2, pushing its 14-year winning streak to 228 matches.

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