Happy Easter! And wow, did you see that ballgame?

You see what following sports does to you? Makes you into a heathen, talking about last night’s game in the same breath as greeting people on the holiest day of the year.

Jimmy

“I’ll make it,” said Jimmy. And he meant it…

But that was quite a game. It had to be, for me, of all people, to be excited enough to want to keep talking about it. On Easter.

And I do.

If you missed it, let me set up the video above. As it starts, they’re in overtime, with a few seconds left. You see UCLA make a great play to tie it up. There are three seconds left. And then…

Watch it several times if you like. I have.

It reminded Coach Norman Dale of something. It reminded me of the same thing.

It will go down in history as Suggs’ Last Shot…

24 thoughts on “Happy Easter! And wow, did you see that ballgame?

  1. David L Carlton

    A really regrettable miss on my part. It was Holy Saturday, though, and I reserve the evening for the marvellous Berlin Philharmonic BluRay performance of the St. Matthew Passion. *That’s* not to be missed.

    1. Brad Warthen Post author

      And of course, that’s what you SHOULD have been doing.

      I’m embarrassed to be mentioning a game at this moment. But that’s just how impressive it was….

      1. Brad Warthen Post author

        If it makes me seem like less of a heathen, as I type this I’m hearing the Baptist service my Dad is watching on TV. I’m over here staying with him because my mother is out of town.

        I’ll watch Mass later. At least, I hope so. Last Easter I was in the hospital, and I tried to watch it, my iPad propped on my belly, but I kept falling asleep. I only woke up when nurses came in and bothered me about something. Then I went back to sleep.

        I think God understood. I had just had a stroke, and I was sleeping a LOT.

        I still do, actually. I don’t make it through the day without a nap. Or two. But that’s my one remaining effect, so I’m blessed. I know that when I see other people who’ve had strokes, and not fared nearly so well…

    2. Brad Warthen Post author

      Speaking of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion…

      I heard part of it Friday morning on “Performance Today.” Very fine.

      But then I heard La Pasion segun San Marcos by Osvaldo Golijov. Didn’t much like it. And as usual, I checked to see if it was modern, and of course it was. By a living composer, no less. It almost never fails. If it’s by a living composer, I almost never like it. (I’m afraid my tastes are like those of the emperor in “Amadeus.” I’m all like, “It this modern?… Do you like this?”

      I’ve been meaning to post about that sometime, but I’m afraid Phillip Bush will call me a philistine…

      1. Brad Warthen Post author

        There’s another thing that happens when I listen to that show, and it bothers me, and I’ve never acknowledged it to anyone UNTIL NOW…

        I never like any of the female composers Fred Child plays on that show. I’ll be listening to something not knowing what it is, and I’ll think, “Wow, THAT’S monotonous…” and then I find out that, once again, it’s a woman that he was pleased to try to turn us onto.

        I tell myself I’m not being a misogynist. I remind myself that I appreciate, for instance, Carole King. But pop music doesn’t count in this context.

        Then, I say, “Well, you hate ALL the modern ‘serious’ music, and you only find female composers within THAT category, so you’re OK. You’re just an anti-modernist.” Which, if you know me, is not a shocker. I seldom read books by living authors, either. At least, not fiction.

        But there was one time when he played something by the sister or wife or something to one of the greats of the 19th century — Chopin or Liszt or whatever — and I thought that was pretty lame, too. But then, if it had been a brother or uncle or male first cousin of the great man, I probably would have been equally unimpressed.

        Right? Am I right, ladies?

        1. Brad Warthen Post author

          Actually, though… back during Black History Month, on some other program that I was listening to on NPR One, somebody played some forgotten piece by a black woman from the early 20th century — something that hadn’t been played in 70 years or something — and I thought that was pretty good.

          I meant so save it, and… I think I did! I think the lady in question was Florence Price, and here’s the story I was listening to…

          https://one.npr.org/i/968291643:968291645

  2. Brad Warthen Post author

    Ruh-roh! Looks like I have something tonight I haven’t encountered in many a year — a TV scheduling conflict!

    The new Ken Burns series about Hemingway starts at 8 on PBS, and runs for two hours.

    The NCAA final is at 9.

    I’m just going to hope the Hemingway thing will be available on the PBS app (like all normal, 21st-century programming), so I can watch it tomorrow night…

    1. Bryan Caskey

      Gonzaga vs. Baylor, so it’s Catholics vs. Baptists.

      Would like to see the Zags win; would be cool to see the perfect season.

      1. Brad Warthen Post author

        Yep, and that way we win, and the Prods lose.

        We thought about settling this by refighting the Thirty Years War, but the Pope said the other day that there are too many wars going on now. He tweeted this on Sunday:

        So we’re doing this instead.

        1. Brad Warthen Post author

          Some people might not get that I was joking there.

          Seriously, I rooted for both these teams to be in it — if nothing else, it fulfills my prophesy regarding the final.

          And yes, I prefer Gonzaga tonight — partly because I picked them on my bracket, but also for the same reason you cite: They’re almost there, and I’d like to see them go undefeated.

          Also, you know, they’re Catholic… 🙂

  3. bud

    The defense attorney in the Chauvin trial is commuting professional malpractice. His questioning of the police chief did more harm than good. He’s raising hypothetical situations that have nothing to do with the case at hand. Simply astonishing.

  4. Brad Warthen Post author

    And now that Monday night has come and gone… never mind. That was a depressing show last night. Apparently, Baylor had failed to consult my bracket, and didn’t understand that Gonzaga was supposed to win. They had no respect for destiny…

    1. Bryan Caskey

      Baptists messin’ everything up.

      One of the lines from A River Runs Through It that always made me crack a wry smile:

      “The Burns family run a general store in a one store town and still managed to do badly. They were Methodists, a denomination my father referred to as Baptists who could read.”

      1. Brad Warthen Post author

        Yeah, I remember that line! Delivered by the boys’ opinionated Presbyterian pastor father, played by Tom Skerritt.

        Good flick. It was the first time I ever saw Brad Pitt, and I thought — look, Redford found a kid who could play the part he, Redford, is now too old to play.

        That was almost 30 years ago now…

        1. Brad Warthen Post author

          It’s always entertaining to see some Protestants looking down their noses at other Protestants, constantly drawing themselves off into all their little separate sects, all sure that THEY are the ones who have it figured out.

          As though God could be figured out in that kind of detail…

          1. Brad Warthen Post author

            Back when I was reading Wolf Hall — or something set in that period — I kept encountering stories of these people going to the stake (and other “Christians” being ready to set the stake ablaze) over distinctions of doctrine that fit in the category of “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”

            Stuff I can’t imagine Jesus caring about. And people (Catholics and the various flavors of Protestants) were willing to die — and to kill — over it.

            As I’m mentioned before, to a great extent what Jesus REALLY cared about was well summed up by atheist writer Douglas Adams.

            As Adams put it, Jesus was “nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change.”

            There’s much more to the faith than that (after all that’s just the second Great Commandment), but if people would just concentrate a bit more on that and less on the things so many people got burned at the stake over, I believe Jesus would be much better pleased with us…

      2. Brad Warthen Post author

        One of you Presbyterians would have LOOKED at my bracket, and gone along with it, because predestination… and we’d have had a happy ending…

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