Slam dunks: Wollenweber wins; Macomb move loses

'Tis the season for making predictions, so here are mine:

The Tigers will win the AL Central, the University of Michigan will win the Big Ten football title - and I'll go broke buyng tickets for the World Series, Michigan season seats and the BCS Championship game.

My other predictions are a pair of slam dunks. Mark Wollenweber, who's working on either his third or fourth pension - I'm not sure which - will be appointed full-time City Manager in Grosse Pointe Shores on Aug. 21. And GP Shores will not be tacked onto Macomb County until Kwame Kilpatrick is elevated to sainthood by the Vatican.

Mark Wollenweber is the odds-on favorite to become permanent city manager in the Shores because he's the smartest choice.

And I'm not just backing him because he's a dyed in the wool Maize and Blue fan. Or that he's a major money-raiser for the University of Detroit athletic programs.

I worked with the guy for four years when he was city manager in Grosse Pointe Woods and I was a council member there. Prior to that, I covered Macomb County politics as a Detroit News columnist when he and Ted Wahby ran St. Clair Shores like a business.

Mark and I had our run-ins, but when we disagreed, well, we agree to disagree. He knows his stuff, particularly in this little corner of Wayne County. With pensions already locked in, he works cheap. And he doesn't have to smooch too many egotists' dupas to get the job done.

As for Grosse Pointe Shores moving into Macomb County, well, I have no specific knowledge that they won't. But for 28 years my family and I have resided in Grosse Pointe Woods, just over a tall fence from the Shores' glitz and grandeur. And I can tell you from personal experience that the Shores has about as much in common with Macomb County as it does with Hamtramck or Highland Park.

Incidentally, when visitors ask who erected the tall wooden fence at the east end of my deadend street, along the line that defines the boundry between Grosse Pointe Woods and  Grosse Pointe Shores, I jokingly tell 'em that I did - "to keep the riff raff out of my neighborhood."

As for 2012 sports pricing, U-M football has really gone way over the top. Some season ticket holders who had enough "points" earned by many years of paying through the nose for seat "licenses" were allowed to buy tickets for the showdown with defending National Champion Alabama in the Cowboy Classic at Arlington, TX, on Sept. 1.

The price per seat: $250, $175 or $125. Of course, that made U-M's $75 home games against Air Force, U. of Massachusetts, Illinois, Northwestern and Iowa look like a steal. Oh ya. I almost forgot.

Tickets for the traditional rivalry game vs. Michigan State at Ann Arbor on Oct. 20 are $95 each.

Recession? What recession?