The Maryland GreenHawks latest new coach, Otis Hailey, died early Saturday. The team attributed Hailey's death to kidney failure. He had been with the squad for only two games.

Adam Dantus, general manager of the Premier Basketball League squad, says Hailey had a chronic kidney condition and received regular dialysis treatments. He had a dialysis session scheduled for Friday, but put it off for a day to be with the team as it traveled home from a loss Thursday in Rochester. He never made the rescheduled appointment.

"He ran practice here from 9 to 11 on Friday night," Dantus says. "He thought he was coming down with a cold, but went back to the hotel. I started getting calls at 9 in the morning. I only knew him a week, but, man, he was a great guy. Devoted."

So, after just seven games in their first season, the GreenHawks will now be hiring their fourth head coach. Ryan Krueger, who was the first coach hired by the expansion franchise, left during the preseason for a college job. Rob Spon, a minor league basketball veteran, replaced Kreuger but was dumped after going 1-4 to start the year. Enter Hailey, another well-traveled minor leaguer with short stints -- every minor league coaching stint is short -- all over the place. Among the teams you never heard of formerly coached by Hailey: the Montreal Dragons, Saskatchewan Hawks,Vancouver Nighthawks, Niagara DareDevils, Tijuana Diablos, Calgary Drillers and Los Angeles Push.

Hailey, who as a teenager set the national prep high jump record at 7' 1" in 1968, went 1-1 in his last coaching gig.

Hours after Hailey's death, the GreenHawks were scheduled to host the Vermont FrostHeaves, a squad made famous by founder/author Alexander Wolff. But that game was postponed, officially because of snow.

The next new coach of the now 2-5 team has not yet been announced. "I'm talking to three people today," says Dantus. "I'll make a decision by three o'clock."

***

I was so wowed by a UDC men's room that I went back with a camera so I could share its majesty with the world.

Shortly after I posted my wows, I learned that I'm hardly the first person to walk away dazed after hitting the head at the Harvard of the West Side of the Middle of the 4200 Block of Connecticut Avenue NW.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Who first blew the lid off the UDC bathroom story? More Potomac swimming? Isn't that where you find intersexual smallmouth bass? DeMatha plays the wrong St. Anthony's? How much would you pay for the Pontiac Silverdome? Wasn't that where King Kong Bundy broke Little Beaver's back? How much would you not pay for a Dan Snyder autograph?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Maryland GreenHawks Coach Dies" »

For this week's despised-by-visionaries print edition of Washington City Paper, I took a shot at my first charticle. Couple things I came away with:

1)Henry Allen really is a cocksucker. Charticles are hard as balls.

2)Charticles don't work real well in the pro-visionary online format. See for yourself! But charticles are grand in print. So pick up an analog copy of City Paper now. Patronize the advertisers therein! You'll not only be helping save this newspaper, you'll be giving the charticle a future!

This particular charticle deals with how Redskins fans can spend all that money they save by giving up season tickets. Sure, season tickets used to be harder to get around here than a legitimate invitation to a state dinner. But from everything I've heard and read and felt and tasted lately, I'd bet there's going to be a waiting list to get rid of Skins tickets after this season.

I'm still suffering from sticker shock after reporting this charticle -- and, yes, I'm going to use "charticle" as often as possible henceforth, because it's the greatest word I've learned since "jism." Thousands of families in this area have given Dan Snyder tens of thousands of dollars a year for years just to attend Redskins games. I mean, I guess I always knew that. But seeing these figures in print left me stunned: Using essentially the same template as Team Marketing Report, the godfather of fan-expenditure surveys, I calculated that a family of four spends about $24,190 per season to sit in the Loge section of FedExField.

Depression? What depression?

The biggest rush I got out of reporting the charticle(!) was the chance to talk to Gerry Bessell.

Redskins fans might not know Bessell's name, but they sure know his work. He's the guy who kickstarted Joe Jacoby's acting career by hiring the biggest Hog to be the spokesmodel for TheaterVision, the Rockville-based big-screen TV retailer that Bessell owned.

(AFTER THE JUMP: How come we don't have TheaterVision commercials anymore? DeMatha and Montrose Christian just plain don't like each other? Mike Jones and Stu Vetter are the latter day Morgan Wootten and John Thompson? Who's going to punk who?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Could Henry ‘Cocksucker’ Allen Work Up a Charticle?" »

Yesterday's John Thompson Show on WTEM was amazing. Thompson devoted much of the program to talk about Elgin Baylor, who turned 75 years old Wednesday.

Thompson told listeners he phoned Baylor in Southern California on his birthday just to say thanks for inspiring him and so many other DC kids in the 1950s when he went off to college to play ball. Baylor's style of play was a revelation to players from anywhere and everywhere. But around here, Baylor's influence transcended the court. Before Baylor, Thompson said, kids on the city's playgrounds never thought of going off to college. He made the world a bigger place for a whole generation.

Thompson, now 68, recalled being at the playground one day when Baylor, already a legend here after carrying the University of Seattle to the NCAA Final Four, showed up with a big friend: Wilt Chamberlain. Thompson, then a skinny and awestruck teenager sitting courtside, was the last guy picked for the game. "Elgin remembered it!" Thompson said, as if he never played in a game that mattered more.

The story led to all sorts of calls from other aging children to talk about Baylor's greatness and other boyhood heroes.

Because the mainstream media pretended black schoolboy athletes didn't matter, Baylor never got talked up enough when he lived here.

(AFTER THE JUMP: How come Baylor doesn't have a statue? Tamir Goodman retires? From what? If Linda McMahon comes back to DC, will Vince follow?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: If Nobody Else Does, John Thompson Gives Elgin Baylor His Due" »

I wrote a column this week about one of the bizarrest happenings in local prep ball history, and a game I'd been hearing about for years: The 1970 summer league matchup between John Thompson's St. Anthony's squad and the Morgan Wootten-coached DeMatha.

They were the two best teams in the city back then, and played before a huge crowd on a little outdoor court at Jelleff.

Well, they sort of played. Thompson made the evening memorable, though for wholly unsporting reasons. He kept his star-stocked lineup, full of future NCAA Division 1 players, on the bench, and instead sent in a ringer squad of non-basketball players to face DeMatha. The Stags took no pity on the replacements, crushing the kids in St. Anthony's uniforms, 108-26.

DeMatha players and the hoop-crazy fans who believed the hype and took the trouble that hot summer night to get to Jelleff, a boys club off Wisconsin Avenue, are still peeved at Thompson for making a mockery of the matchup.

But at the time the future Georgetown legend was anything but contrite.

(AFTER THE JUMP: Thompson ducked Wootten for Ducking Thompson? Nats win a video replay battle, lose the war? Larry Weisman practices the real new journalism? Michael Vick is the new Justin Timberlake? Greyhounds have friends?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Michael Vick Is the New Justin Timberlake?" »

"THERE WILL BE A GAME 7 AT VERIZON CENTER!"

That's how Caps' play-by-play man Steve Kolbe ended his awesome call of David Steckel's game winner last night from Pittsburgh.

Nothing like OT playoff hockey on the radio.

The game started lousy for the eventual winners. At the end of the 1st period, with the Caps down 1-0 and trailing the Penguins in shots on goal 18-5, the Kolbe and, particularly, his booth partner Ken Sabourin, sounded resigned to a bad ending.

"The Penguins got help from the official on that one. Check's in the mail!" said Sabourin after Kris Letang's goal gave Pittsburgh a 3-2 lead early in the third period. His point was that a referee had deflected the puck right to Letang, and was clearly on the take.

"Check's in the mail!" is what you want from the home crew!

The Caps scored twice over the next 88 seconds.

Steckel's shot snapped the franchise's long losing streak in playoff overtime games and kept 'em alive to tighten up the 1-7 record in playoff series with Pittsburgh.

But, that's the past. Once again: Doesn't this year just feel different?

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: Caps and Zimmerman Live Another Day" »