• The Atlanta Braves moved their Spring Training facility to Disney’s Wide World of Sports complex in 1998 and Saturday they broke the 1 million mark in attendance. They beat the Cardinals, 4-3, in front of a packed house that was at least half Cardinals fans.
• Players Championship week will kick off with “A Tribute to Motown” March 22 at the Sawgrass Marriott Convention Center. Cocktails at 7 p.m. followed by dinner and entertainment.
• A1A in Neptune Beach is getting a serious facelift. The concrete median down the middle of the road is being replaced with 20-foot palms, shrubs and flowers.
• The City will soon begin accepting nominations for the 2006 Robert O. Johnson Good Government Award and City Council President Kevin Hyde has formed a committee that will review those nominations. The committee consists of: Council VP Michael Corrigan, Council Auditor Kirk Sherman, Tax Collector Mike Hogan, JTA External Affairs Director Mike Miller and Adam Hollingsworth, Mayor John Peyton’s chief of strategic initiatives.
• The results are in. More than 9,000 pounds of food (more than 6,000 meals worth) was collected at the Canstruction competition in the Main Library earlier this month to benefit Lutheran Social Services’ Second Harvest Food Bank. The People’s Choice award went to the Haskell Company for its design of “Winnie the Pooh”. Best use of Labels went to JSA Architects Interiors Planners for its creation of “Reading Rainbow” and Juror’s Favorite went to Gresham Smith and Partners for “We Can Bridge the Hunger Gap”. Kasper Architecture won the Structural Ingenuity award and the University of Florida’s interior design Campus Student Center won Best Meal with its creation of “Canopy of Life”.
• Mayor John Peyton is a big tennis player, but between work and fatherhood, he doesn’t get much time these days to play. That changes a little Friday when Peyton is scheduled to meet with retired tennis pro MaliVai Washington and play for a while with the kids in Washington’s Foundation.
• The Florida Gators’ inclusion in the local NCAA tournament games has sent phones ringing in university ticket offices from New Rochelle, N.Y., to College Station, Texas. Sports information directors from the other teams coming to town said they were deluged with phone calls from Florida basketball fans looking for tickets to see the Gators. C.J. Huddleston of Iona said he’d received 300 e-mails and as many phone calls from Florida by Monday afternoon. Universities of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, South Alabama and Texas A&M received similar treatment. By the way, don’t bother calling. All the schools are sold out.
• Speaking of those other schools, they’re all experiencing different degrees of March Madness. By Monday afternoon, Iona already had a countdown clock to tipoff up and running on their Web site. At football-crazy Texas A&M’s Web site, clicking on the “get tickets” link will take you to the homepage for the spring football game. No mention of the basketball tourney on the link.