Category Archives: Sports

George Will on Football’s Big Problem

Will asks: "Are you ready for some football? First, however, are you ready for some autopsies?"

As that season prepares to invade and occupy us once again — even as I type this, its bulky troops are training to the point of apoplexy in this heat — I find myself pleased to contemplate George Will’s Sunday column. After describing several recent suicides by former NFL players, two of whom shot themselves in the chest so as to preserve their damaged brains for study, he shared this thought:

Football is bigger than ever, in several senses. Bear Bryant’s 1966 undefeated Alabama team had only 19 players who weighed more than 200 pounds. The heaviest weighed 223. The linemen averaged 194. The quarterback weighed 177. Today, many high school teams are much bigger. In 1980, only three NFL players weighed 300 or more pounds. In 2011, according to pro-football-reference.com, there were 352, including three 350-pounders. Thirty-one of the NFL’s 32 offensive lines averaged more than 300.

Various unsurprising studies indicate high early mortality rates among linemen resulting from cardiovascular disease. For all players who play five or more years, life expectancy is less than 60; for linemen it is much less…

Will is so good at disdain, I particularly appreciate his taking on football.

Another good bit:

In the NFL, especially, football is increasingly a spectacle, a game surrounded by manufactured frenzy, on the grass and in the increasingly unpleasant ambiance of the fans in the stands. Football on the field is a three-hour adrenaline-and-testosterone bath. For all its occasional elegance and beauty, it is basically violence for, among other purposes, inflicting intimidating pain. (Seau said his job was “to inflict pain on my opponent and have him quit.”) The New Orleans Saints’ “bounty” system of cash payments to players who knocked opposing players out of games crossed a line distinguishing the essence of the game from the perversion of it. This is, however, an increasingly faint line.

Not that America will pay attention.

Speaking of which… an answering column — more of a rant, really — has already appeared in The Washington Times, headlined “Preserve football and cancel George Will’s column.” Conveniently, it is accompanied by this perfect illustration of what Will described as “the increasingly unpleasant ambiance of the fans in the stands.” The rant calls into question Will’s characterization of football fans as “a tribe not known for savoring nuance.” But who can look upon that photo and doubt that description?

Yes, many good and sensible people, including some I love and respect, look forward to the coming season. I just hope they will read this column and think about it. They, at least — unlike the people in that photo — are still reachable, I hope.

The Blackminton Scandal of 2012

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Not that I care about this, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to do a play on the “Black Sox Scandal.”

Beyond that, I really am sort of indignant at the creepiness of people who would deliberately lose in order to eventually win by getting to play weaker opponents. It’s just despicable on a number of levels:

Associated Press9:07 a.m. CDT, August 1, 2012

photo by Arne Nordmann

LONDON — Eight female badminton doubles players were disqualified Wednesday from the London Olympics after trying to lose matches to receive a more favorable place in the tournament.

The Badminton World Federation announced its ruling after investigating two teams from South Korea and one each from China and Indonesia. It punished them for “not using one’s best efforts to win a match” and “conducting oneself in a manner that is clearly abusive or detrimental to the sport” in matches Tuesday night….

IOC Vice President Craig Reedie, the former head of the international badminton federation, welcomed the decision.

“Sport is competitive,” Reedie told the AP. “If you lose the competitive element, then the whole thing becomes a nonsense.

“You cannot allow a player to abuse the tournament like that, and not take firm action. So good on them.”

Good on them, indeed.

It’s not that I care about whether something is detrimental to the “sport” of badminton, which seems perfectly adapted to the way most of us experience it — as a backyard mockery of sport for klutzes staggering about with racket in one hand and a beer in the other. How is this an Olympic sport to begin with? (And don’t even get me started on how I feel about having the Horse Guards Parade become a venue of beach volleyball, of all bogus sports. I imagine former members of the Horse Guards are harrumphing up and down the length of Britain. I certainly would be, were I they. What have they done with the horses while this nonsense is going on? That’s what I want to know…)

But it is indeed a violation of what sport is about.

It reminds me of my longtime nemesis in slow-pitch softball, the opposing player who deliberately tries to draw a walk. I played a lot of slow-pitch softball in my younger days, and I was usually the pitcher, because I was the only one willing to stand there lazily tossing the ball from a mound much closer to the plate than in baseball, at bruisers who were doing their best to send it back rocketing at my head.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been a slow-pitch softball pitcher, but it is next to impossible to keep throwing strikes — much, much harder than if you get to throw straight at the plate. You have to loft it up into the air just so, at a prescribed height well above the batter’s head, and then have the momentum fall away from it at precisely the right point and the right speed so that it drops toward the ground exactly through the strike zone.

The point of slow-pitch softball — as I always wanted to scream at the cretins who stood there with their bats on their shoulders, waiting for the walk — is to allow everyone to hit the ball, and get it into play. It’s not a duel between pitcher and batter. It’s a small step away from putting the ball on a tee. It’s to make the game fun, not to avoid hitting for strategic reasons. And of course, after the first guy stood there and took a walk, I got so angry that I couldn’t throw strikes for anything, and soon I was walking in runs, and had to be relieved. Which is way more humiliating than being taken out in the Major Leagues.

OK, so it’s not exactly the same thing. But it ticks me off the same way…

So did they win those games, or didn’t they?

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Photo by Melissa Dale from Meadville, USA

First, I’d like to know whether this Penn State thing is over yet. Oh, I know it will never be over in terms of what happened to the victims of that pervert coach. May God ease their pain. I just want to know whether, now that he has been duly convicted, the bulletins will stop coming on my iPhone, and interrupting me as though war had been declared, as though what happens or doesn’t happen to a college football program in a whole other part of the country from me were of earth-shattering importance. Which it isn’t. I think it reached the height of absurdity on Saturday (or was it Sunday?) when I was awakened (I like to sleep late on weekends) by bulletins telling me that this Joe Paterno person’s statue was being taken down. Really. A statue.

As of this moment, there are four recent bulletins still available on my phone from The New York Times reaching back nine days. Two of them are about Penn State (one is about the Colorado shootings, the other about the new Yahoo CEO). I still have five WLTX bulletins, going back about two days (WLTX has a low “bulletin” threshold) . Two are about Penn State, one of them being about said statue. Another is also about college football, telling me that former Gamecock coach Jim Carlen has died. The other two are actually about things that people in the community might need to know about urgently — the standoff in Five Points on Saturday.

Now, another question…

The most recent bulletins to pester me had to do with this morning’s decision by the NCAA as to how it would punish Penn State, in the wake of last week’s finding of a long-term coverup.

First, what the NCAA did not do: It did not close down the football program. If you want to say the program was rotten because of the cover-up, it seems that would be a logical thing to do. But they didn’t. Whatever.

But what grabbed my attention was among the steps taken against the program was that “all victories from 1998-2011 have been vacated,” to which I went, “Huh?”

Excuse me: Did those players win those games or didn’t they? If they won them, they won them. If they didn’t win them, they didn’t win them. Period.

I Tweeted that out early today, and one reader immediately responded to agree with me. But others started arguing. Beth Padgett, editorial page editor of The Greenville News, explained, “Games won Wins don’t count,” which may make sense to football fans, but not to me. I replied, “You’ve lost me. Probably because I’m not fan, don’t understand the mystique. Facts are facts. Wins are wins. Not that I care…”

Garrett Epps responded to my assertion that “they either WON those football games or DIDN’T, regardless of the unrelated, horrible things some coach did,” with a one-word question: “unrelated?”

Absolutely, said I. Over here, some coach did horrible things. Over there, some kids won some games. One fact is not dependent upon to the other. He responded, “Glad we cleared that up. Sanduskywas NOT defensive coordinator for a number of years? i was confused. Thought he was.”

OK, so… is the theory that without this guy, they wouldn’t have won the games? We know that? How? All we know is what happened.

And to me, whether some kids won some games they played in is a fact that has no moral content whatsoever, good or bad. I could not care less who won those games. But I do know absurdity when I see it. And saying they didn’t win games they did win, for whatever purpose, is an absurd lie. We don’t get to say that the North lost the Civil War because (in South Carolina’s estimation, anyway), William Tecumseh Sherman was a terrorist, and Ullyses S. Grant was a drunk. They either won or they didn’t. (And they did. So, you know, time to take down that flag, boys.)

Saying Penn State didn’t win games it did win is like the NCAA deciding to “punish” the program by declaring the players took the field in yellow uniforms instead of blue. It’s just not true.

I get a clue as to the thinking behind this denial of reality from this WashPost Tweet, “Joe Paterno is no longer the winningest football coach in college football history.”

OK, so, from what little I know about college football, I’m guessing that statement would really hurt Paterno where he lives. If, you know, he lived. But he’s dead. You can’t do anything to hurt him. And as an attempt to do so, this denial of what happened is pretty lame.

I mean, as long as we’re changing history, why not wave the same magic wand and declare that all those kids were not abused by Sandusky? I’ll tell you why not: Because it would be a cruel mockery. Of course they were abused, and that pain will never go away. And it seems extremely unlikely that it would be assuaged in any way by pretending that Paterno’s team didn’t win those games.

The real problem with the U.S. Olympic uniforms

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After noting that failing to have the U.S. Olympic team’s uniforms made in this country was a serious missed opportunity, Peggy Noonan raises the other problem, which has occurred to me whenever I’ve seen photos of these ridiculous togs:

But that isn’t the biggest problem. That would be the uniforms themselves. They don’t really look all that American. Have you seen them? Do they say “America” to you? Berets with little stripes? Double breasted tuxedo-like jackets with white pants? Funny rounded collars on the shirts? Huge Polo logos? They look like some European bureaucrat’s idea of a secret militia, like Brussels’s idea of a chic new army. They’re like the international community Steven Spielberg lined up to put on the spaceship at the end of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

Americans wear baseball caps, trucker hats, cowboy hats, watch caps, Stetsons, golf caps, even Panama hats and fedoras. They wear jeans and suits and khakis and shorts and workout clothes. The Americans in the now-famous uniform picture look like something out of a Vogue spread where the models arrayed on the yacht look like perfect representatives of the new global elite.

Our athletes aren’t supposed to look like people who’d march under a flag with statues and harps and musical notes. Also, the women’s uniforms make them look like stewardesses from the 777 fleet on Singapore Airlines.

The failure of the uniforms is that they don’t communicate: “Here comes America.”

They communicate: “Chic global Martians coming your way.”

Amen to that, Peggy.

I saw a photo in the WSJ the other day showing the uniforms, and at first I thought sure they were on male fashion models — you know, the kind who are distinguishable from the female models only by slightly larger jaws, with neither gender looking entirely like normal, healthy humans? The effect was heightened by the fact that they were wearing clothing no normal person would wear.

I was shocked to learn they were actual American athletes. I’m still not sure the cutline was right. So maybe it was entirely the uniforms that made them look so unreal.

So is fishin’. And eatin’. And watchin’ TV…

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This morning, I saw something that made me feel good, in advance, about any tag lines or campaign themes I might come up with for ADCO this week.

“Huntin’ is good!” it insisted. Not just hunting, but huntin’, which I suppose is meant to convey a certain deep and informal intimacy with this particular activity.

What really grabbed me was the registered trademark symbol, which seemed to assume that this phrase was just so darned clever that it was inevitable that some unscrupulous varmint would be tempted to try to steal it…

But I declare, I don’t believe I’ve ever run across anything as vanilla as that in my life. There was no indication why huntin’ was good, or why anyone might think it wasn’t. It didn’t say it was particularly good in this or that locality, or at any particular time. Nor did it bother to reach for any adjective more descriptive or precise or evocative than good.

It was a marvel, and I had to look it up on my phone during the morning meeting at work. That’s where I found this website, huntinisgood.com, which offers all sorts of merchandise, such as the very decal I had seen.

The website seems dedicated to perpetuating the art or hobby or whatever of hunting at a time when the number of hunters is dwindling in our once rugged, intrepid nation of pioneers. I had known that. I had read before about how the industry was worried about how few children of hunters were taking up their forefathers’ outdoorsiness, and how marketers were trying to entice the kids, as well as women, to the pasttime with such innovations as pink rifles.

But I had never seen such a full litany of threats to hunting as what were detailed on this site:

Hunting Industry Under Attack

Tracking Down An Industry-Wide Problem. Across the United States, and for well over three decades, the population of hunters in our country has been on the decline. Since 1975 alone, the number of hunters in the field has been reduced by over one third.

Since the issue of attrition within the hunting community has only recently become a cause for serious concern, usable research is still limited. But just as writers, industry experts and retailers all speculate on the causes, we have developed our own list of suspects which have created a negative impact on the hunting culture.

Erosion Of The Family Unit. With divorce rates and single parent families on the rise, the number of Dads and Grandfathers in a position to mentor our youth, and pass on an appreciation for the hunting culture, are dwindling fast.

The Anti-Hunting Community. Highly organized, with seemingly unlimited budgets, their goal, simply put, is the elimination of the hunting industry.

The Lure Of Technology. These days, our children are “jacked-in” to video games, hunting only in Cyber Space. They’ve become masters of Wi-Fi and pixels, not the way of the woods.

Industry Fragmentation. We have evolved into a highly fragmented industry… bow hunters, turkey hunters, rifle hunters, safari hunters, duck hunters, muzzle-loaders, gator hunters, low-fence, no-fence, high-fence… it’s all become a lot of nonsense!

One thing we can all agree on 100% is that:
Huntin’ Is Good!®

The day is fast approaching when we all must decide a course of action, or face the reality that our industry, and the way of life it represents, may become extinct.

It’s time we draw the line! The Hunting Tradition, and its’ Way of Life, needs your help! Please wear your HIG gear soon and often. This will let other’s know, what you already know, Huntin’ Is Good!

Whoa. Huntin’ may or may not be good — I’m neutral on that point — but it certainly seems endangered. Either that, or paranoid. (Of course, if some outfit as ominously named as the Anti-Hunting Community got after you, you’d be paranoid, too!)

I’ve never gotten into it myself. I like to go out shooting now and then with my uncle in Bennettsville, who does hunt, but I prefer to shoot at tin cans and pine cones to living things. On account of the fact that pine cones don’t have to be skinned and dressed and butchered and put up in some freezer bigger than the one I have at home. They’re just a lot less trouble.

Something else women would never think of

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This week, we’re going to be celebrating the particular genius of the human male — why he is special and essential, as wonderful as women may be. I mean, as wonderful as they are.

I’ll explain why later.

Here’s something else (in addition to the subject of this earlier post) a woman would never think of.

Seriously. First of all, it’s hard to get most of them even to care about video games. You may have noticed this. But to think of inserting Bo Jackson into Super Mario Brothers to run the board? That is something that only the male of the species, with his uncanny willingness to sit and think about stuff like this for hours on end, could possible conceive. And to actually spend the time turning the idea into reality? Well, you have to have that extra bone in your head that the male is blessed with to achieve it.

Watch the video, and bask in the brilliance of the concept, even if the execution is a bit lacking (obviously, Bo should have been bigger, so you could see him better — but that leaves room for the next generation of guys to improve the concept, so it’s all good).

Boogity, Boogity, Boogity, Amen (the cover)

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This post is a ripoff of a post by Burl Burlingame over at his Honolulu Agonizer blog, headlined “Great Songs Are Inevitably Covered.”

I owe him a debt of gratitude because, while I had heard of the “Greatest NASCAR prayer ever,” I had never bothered to listen to it. It’s… remarkable. That is to say, it’s remarkable to me as a Catholic. Maybe you protestants pray like this all the time. But I doubt it. I went to my cousin Jason’s church for Easter Vigil this year, and there was nothing like this.

The original prayer was actually like this. The version above has been “songified” by The Gregory Brothers. I don’t know who they are, but they definitely rendered the pastor’s effort more awesome.

Here is some bare-bones explanation of the prayer, posted on HuffPost last July:

Prior to Saturday night’s Nascar Nationwide Series race in Nashville, Tenn., Pastor Joe Nelms was tasked with delivering the invocation. What happened next plays like a scene straight out of Will Ferrell’s “Talladega Nights.”

And here is a followup at The Christian Post:

A Tennessee pastor claims he was emulating the apostle Paul when he was called on to deliver the opening prayer at a NASCAR event in which he thanked God for his “smokin’ hot wife,” among other things. Some fans have called it the “best prayer ever” while critics are calling it disrespectful and possibly blasphemous.

Joe Nelms, pastor of Family Baptist Church in Lebanon, Tenn., insists that he was just trying to be like the first-century apostle, but some wonder how far Paul would go in his effort to become “all things to all men.”…

Although the prayer might have offended some people, Nelms said the prayer was not really for Christian audiences. He was more trying to reach out to the unsaved or those turned off by church.

“Our whole goal was to open doors that would not otherwise be open. There are a lot of folks who think churches are all [full of] serious people who never enjoy life and [who have] just a list of rules.”

His invocation was all about showing the world what Christian joy looks like, he said, sharing a bit of his testimony. “We who have been saved by Christ, we know that living has just begun. When I accepted Christ, that’s when I really learned what joy was.”

Despite criticism, Nelms’ evangelism effort has apparently paid off; several people have contacted him expressing a desire to give church a try.

The cover is by some kid named Roomie, who posts a lot of music videos on YouTube.

And that’s all I know.

Santorum could beat Obama — at bowling. Can Romney say the same?

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Mitt Romney has, from the start, based his candidacy for the nomination on the claim that he’s the guy who could beat Obama, if anyone can.

But now we have proof that Santorum could easily beat the president at one thing — bowling.

The ex-senator has been putting in time in some bowling alleys lately. The only actual score I’ve f0und was a 152, which Bloomberg calls “respectable.” Which it is. That’s all it is, but it is that. A guy who can’t go out and roll a 150 basically shouldn’t bowl in front of cameras. That’s about what my average was when I was in a league in high school in Tampa.

“Respectable” is not a term anyone would use to describe the president’s skills at this game. So Santorum should have really played this up from the start.

Here’s video of him rolling a turkey. And if you don’t know what a turkey is, you shouldn’t bowl for money against Santorum. Or me, even though I haven’t bowled seriously in more than 40 years.

According to The New York Times, Santorum even managed to work in a communitarian theme while at the alley:

In an interview about his bowling background, Mr. Santorum referred to the famous book about bowling as a thread in the fabric of small-town America, “Bowling Alone,” by Robert D. Putnam, a professor of history at Harvard.

“ ‘Bowling Alone’ is about the breakdown of social capital in this country,” he said. “People used to come together in leagues and groups. Bowling is a social sport. You talk and eat and drink and are together. It’s a commitment to go every week. My dad bowled in a league, and I went with him. He was a lefty. We went on league night, it was part of my childhood.”

I had to laugh at this site, though, which breathlessly stated that “He even has his own bowling ball.” Oh, yeah? So do I. Doesn’t everybody? And in my younger days I had my own two-piece pool cue. Didn’t make me Minnesota Fats.

He can’t spell the name, but we’ll claim him

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First, I was impressed when I saw this video of a third-grader making a half-court shot at the buzzer.

Then I heard his name. Austin Worthen may not spell it right, but he’s obviously one of us…

As first reported by the KOBI and KOTI NBC affiliates in Medford and Klamath Falls, Okla., Austin Worthen nailed a trey from just beyond midcourt during his team’s victory in an elementary school basketball tournament on Saturday.

While Worthen’s shot came from a fairly typical buzzer-beater distance, it wasn’t delivered in a traditional way at all, thanks to Worthen’s diminutive size. Rather, the third-grader put his entire body into his baseball-style heave, which then banked in through the net to close out the third quarter of his team’s 25-4 victory.

As is the case with many buzzer-beaters, the hysteria set off by Worthen’s bucket was at least as entertaining as the shot itself. The shooter himself went racing around the court in near delirium while his coach exploded on the sideline as if he had just won the lottery himself.

Something weird in the world of sports…

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Apparently, someone out there has decreed that all football-related news this week involve someone named “Peyton,” whether spelled that way or with a slight variation, such as “Payton.”

I don’t know why. I don’t even know why we are subjected to any football-related news when this is so clearly not the season for it. The only sports we should be hearing about should be NCAA basketball, and the impending baseball season.

Maybe we could get a meme going about Jay Payton, left-fielder for the Rockies. It’s worth a try…

Even more LINsane in Chinese

Not only South Carolinians subordinate the law to games

Somebody explain this bowl thing to me…

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Normally, I don’t think much about this sort of thing, which is probably why I’m puzzled. Perhaps y’all can explain it to me.

This morning, it was reported that Gamecocks are going to the Capital One Bowl. OK, sounds par for the course. In recent years, they have gone to one bowl or another named after some corporation.

But the Clemson Tigers are going to the Orange Bowl.

Now here’s what puzzles me. “Orange Bowl” is something I’ve heard of. It seems to imply a certain prestige. I mean, there’s the Rose Bowl, and the Sugar Bowl, and the Orange Bowl, and that pretty much sums up all the bowl games that I’ve been hearing about (admittedly, without actually trying) since my youth. Which in my mind confers a certain legitimacy, rightly or wrongly.

Meanwhile, these bowls named for sponsors — well, I have to wonder about the value of such naming rights. It seems that if you’re the sponsor of the Rose Bowl, that confers something on your brand. But if you rename it for your company — say, the ABC Corporation Bowl — do you thereby lose some of the cachet that you were trying to buy? (Vizio seems to agree.)

I don’t know. Not my particular marketing specialty. But it does seem to me that invitations to bowls named for commodities, rather than companies, carry greater prestige. Just inferring.

In any case, Wikipedia confirms my rough impression. The Rose Bowl dates back to 1902, and is the biggie. The Sugar Bowl and Orange Bowl both date to 1935. Something called the Tangerine Bowl was played from 1947-1982, after which it was called the Florida Citrus Bowl from 1983 to 2002, after which it became the Capital One Citrus Bowl before dropping the “citrus.”

Anyway, fully acknowledging my gross ignorance on this subject, I nevertheless have the impression that being invited to the Orange Bowl is a bigger deal.

Given that, I have trouble squaring that with something else that I just sort of barely, halfway know — that the Gamecocks have had a better year.

I would never ask you to go by me, but I see that the AP sportwriters, or whoever does that weekly poll, have USC ranked 10th, and Clemson ranked 14th. (I glanced through other polls, and USC was always 9th or 10th, and Clemson was always 14th or 15th, so it seems we have something like consensus.) And I’m also aware that the Gamecocks pretty much cleaned Clemson’s clock just over a week ago.

So what gives? How does stuff like this happen? Is it random? Is it who you know?

What ad whiz came up with this nightmare?

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Have I mentioned that I’m participating in the Riley Institute’s Diversity Leaders Initiative down in Charleston? No, I haven’t… Well, there’s a lot I can tell you about that — the banner ad at the top of this page is involved — but I’ll do that later.

Right now, I want to show you something we discussed as a sort of mini-case study Monday in the class.

See the above, short-lived, Intel print ad.

See if you can find, without Googling the controversy, how many ways the ad is racially offensive.

No, there’s no right answer, but I came up with three. With more time, I’d have come with more. I just thought I’d get y’all to talking about what I spent part of my day talking about.

The amazing thing was that it ever actually found its way into print. I don’t think any newspaper I’ve ever worked at would have fouled up to this extent, been this clueless — although I’ve been party to a number of mistakes. It astounds me that something that was not produced on a daily deadline was this ill-considered. But it was, and appeared in a Dell catalog in 2007 before being withdrawn. Intel apologized.

‘… No! He is RISING!…’ Remembering Smokin’ Joe Frazier

At least the fries were French

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This isn’t Proust. In fact, I’ve never read Proust. And the descriptions I’ve read of Remembrance of Things Past never seem to recommend it, because they always note how amazingly long it is. In any event, I don’t read French, and it seems a waste to spend that much time on something and not know at the end whether it bore any resemblance to what the author intended.

But today, under the most mundane circumstances, I experienced something like the episode of the madeleine. Really. It was way literary.

Lanier and I were having lunch at the Mousetrap, and I had ordered the hamburger steak with fries. We had told the waitress Lanier had a pressing appointment, and our orders came out quickly, and hot. Something about the look of the fries put my mind on the verge of something. They were perfectly ordinary crinkle-cuts, but there was something about the color, the apparent consistency. When I tasted one, everything — flavor, moisture, temperature, mixture of crispness and tenderness, the grease, the feeling against my teeth — brought back a very specific memory from 43 years ago. That was when I had tasted fries that were exactly like these.

Initially, the memory that came to me was visual. In my mind’s eye, I could see that I was in a diner. From the center of the field of vision running off to the right was a counter, with high stools, behind it one of those windows to the kitchen. Starting at the center and running toward the left was a window with blinds — it was dark outside — and then a doorway out to a sidewalk. I couldn’t see where I was sitting — a booth, a table? — only what I could see, looking up, from that vantage point. There were people moving about, but they were indistinct, ghostly. I couldn’t fix on them. Then came the sounds of the place, the clanking dishes, the hiss of the grill, the rowdy sounds of boys’ voices.

I knew where I was. The junior varsity basketball team of Bennettsville High School — 1967-68 school year — was on the road. We were having dinner after a game in a small town in the Pee Dee, before getting back on the bus to head back to B’ville. I was 14 and this was an adventure, one of many like it.

I was part of the team and not on the team — sort of like Ollie, the team manager, at the start of “Hoosiers.” After the grueling tryouts (one gets a taste of eternity in windsprints up and down the court), the coach looked down at me and told me I had almost made it. He was sure I’d be ready next year. If I’d be the manager, I could work out with the team and play against Robin Frye in practices. Robin was the only guy as short as I was who had made the team. I was in the 9th grade, and wouldn’t get my height for a couple of years.

Most of my duties were pretty simple — gathering up the balls after practice and such. But I had one that I regarded as core, one that made me feel important beyond my years. I was the official scorekeeper for the team. I sat at the folding table along the sidelines with the other team’s scorekeeper on my left, and the guy with the scoreboard controls and buzzer on my right. My supreme moment of the season was in a late home game. One of our guys was fouled, and he took his free throw and made it. The referee was giving to the ball to the other team to take out when I told the guy next to me to hit the buzzer. The ref came over and I told him our player was entitled to a second shot because it was a one-and-one situation. The ref said he didn’t think it was. I told him I was sure, and showed him the fouls on my sheet — I remembered each one. The other scorekeeper said no; there hadn’t been that many fouls.

The ref said that since I was the home scorekeeper, my record was official. He went back out and gave our guy another shot.

I’m surprised I didn’t fall off my folding chair, I was so drunk with power. I couldn’t believe it — I had given a signal, and that whole packed gym had stopped everything to hear what I had to say. And then, my word being law, I had pronounced my ruling, and the ref and all those other adults had obeyed.

It’s good to be the scorekeeper.

But I kept my face impassive, and acted like this was the way things were supposed to be.

In the late 80s, I attended my cousin’s graduation. His was the final class to graduate as Green Gremlins. The graduation was held in the football stadium of the new, consolidated Marlboro High School, which everyone would attend the next year. But then a storm came up. Those in charge decided everyone would repair across town to the old school, and we’d complete the ceremonies in the auditorium there. So we did.

The place was packed, and steaming hot. There wasn’t enough room for everyone to sit in the auditorium, so people were distributed anywhere they could get a vantage point of the stage. I found myself in the wings of the stage itself, watching the kids come up for their diplomas. I remembered that one of the backstage doors opened onto the gym, and slipped away to go check it out.

Speaking of “Hoosiers” — remember the end, with the camera panning slowly through an almost-empty gym, obviously years after the miraculous championship? There’s a small boy dribbling and taking shots, alone, at one end of the court, and every time the ball hits the court surface, the echoes resound, as the camera gradually swings up and zooms in on the portrait of The Team. It was like that. It felt like that; my every step sounded like that.

I went over and stood in the spot from which I had issued The Ruling. Odd, it strikes me now, that a movie hasn’t been made about that great moment in sports history. Hollywood doesn’t know what’s good, I guess.

Those are the things I thought of when I bit into that one fry. No, it’s not great literature, but the same principle of involuntary memory applied…

Why I’m cheering for the Cardinals tonight

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Back on tonight’s Virtual Front Page, Herb said he couldn’t join me in cheering for St. Louis tonight, as he is from Texas.

Well, I have no choice in the matter. The Rangers mean nothing to me. I have this rule: I can’t get interested in a baseball team that didn’t exist when I was a kid.

And while I tend more toward the Braves these days (a matter of proximity, I suppose), I was a Cardinals fan before the Texas Rangers existed.

I was cheering the Cardinals in 1968, when they lost to the Tigers. Lou Brock, Curt Flood, Bob Gibson, Orlando Cepeda, Tim McCarver.

And I couldn’t stand that Denny McLain.

The next spring, I attended a Cards-Tigers matchup at the training ballpark in St. Pete. Spent the whole game trying to get autographs from Cardinals.

The autograph I never got.

Near the start, Tim McCarver was coming out of the locker room, through a chain-link corridor with fans on both sides. He stopped to give some autographs to kids on the other side, while my nose was about six inches from the letters across his back. Then he moved on without having turned around.

Later that day, after the game, my little brother and I were trying to catch players coming out of the locker room. There was a lanky young guy in street clothes standing around, and we were sure he was a player. My brother went up and asked him for his signature. He said, “Aw you don’t want mine. I’m not anybody you want.” But we insisted, and he signed.

We walked away, looked at the program and said to each other, “He was right. Never heard of him.” He had written, “Steve Carlton.”

Years later, I was dating the girl who would be my wife. She had taken it upon herself to organize family photos in an album. I was rooting around in the box and she was telling me about the people I saw there, when I came across something that didn’t seem to belong. It was a small publicity photo of Tim McCarver. I pointed out that something extraneous had gotten into the box.

No, she said. That was her cousin Tim. First cousin. I was blown away… I mean, I was put off that he was wearing an Expos cap in the picture, which didn’t seem natural (he had just played with them one year, and was at this point back with the Cards), but still. Turns out his mother, Alice, was my future father-in-law’s sister.

See? I told ya he was once with the Red Sox. Dig that mid-70s look.

Two years later, my bride and I were visiting my family in Orlando, and we drove over to Winterhaven to catch a Red Sox game. Sure, Carlton Fisk was the star catcher, but we thought there was a chance Tim would get in. (Often, when I tell this story, people insist that Tim was never with the Sox — they think of him as first a Cardinal, then a Phillie — but he was). As it happened, Pudge hurt his wrist in the first inning, and Tim went in for him. He didn’t have a great game, but at least I got to see him play again.

At one point, after getting out at first, he was turning back toward the dugout when we caught his eye, and surprised to see J (he didn’t know me from Adam), he came over to chat. Either then, or after the game, he asked us to give him a ride back to the house he and his family were renting during spring training. Sure. No problem.

As we were pulling away, he asked me to pull over and rolled down the window to chat with another player. Tim asked, “Think you’re gonna make it?” The guy wasn’t sure. He looked familiar. As we pulled away, Tim explained: “Tony Conigliaro.” (He was trying to come back as a DH, but his damaged eyesight forced him to retire not long after.) For those who don’t remember, Conigliaro is the reason ballplayers today wear helmets with protective flaps on their exposed side.

I thought this was AWESOME! I was hanging out with legendary Major Leaguers!

At the house, he sat back, stiff, and took a muscle relaxer. Coming off the bench like that had been hard on his knees. He explained to me that taking such a pill was very unusual for him. He offered me a beer. I turned it down, since I had to drive back to Orlando. Yes, I did. I turned it down. Like my wife couldn’t drive. What a dork I was! For 36 years now, I have NOT been able to say, Yeah, one time I was kicking back having a brewski with Tim McCarver at spring training. He was moanin’ about his knees, and I was sayin’ quitcher bellyachin’! You know me, Al…

Now that we were buds — kin, even — I decided I could fling accusations. I told him that when I had been 15, he had not turned around to give me an autograph, even though I had kept calling his name, inches away: “Mr. McCarver!” You know, for my kid brother. Stuff like that matters to little kids.

“Aw,” he said, “I wasn’t playing ball when you were 15…” He couldn’t have said anything better. He was including me among the old guys who had been around, and couldn’t possibly have been a kid so recently.

But I had been. The Cards had signed Tim McCarver right out of Christian Brothers High School in 1959, and brought him up to The Show when he was just 17. And I wasn’t quite yet 6.

And tonight, he’s calling the World Series, as he’s now done many times. And I’m listening, while writing this.

Let’s talk downtown Walmart

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Meant to blog about this yesterday. Let’s do it now instead.

I don’t want all our fine downtown merchants to think less of me, or think that I think less of them, but my first thought when I heard we might have a Walmart (although a little one) on Assembly Street was to be very pleased.

Actually, it was my second thought. My first was to lament the loss of the ballpark, and to once again feel great regret that when USC was building its superlative venue down by the river, then didn’t do a deal to share it with the AAA team out of Jackson, TN, that really wanted to come here. And then to rend my garments at the thought that there will be NO professional or semipro ball in our capital city for the foreseeable future.

But my second thought was that it would be awesome to be able to get the items that I always save up to buy at Walmart during the working day when I need them. I’m talking little things, like if my allergies act up, I can get some of those little, generic antihistamine/decongestant pills that are so much cheaper there. Now, I have to plan trips to Walmart for weekends or at the end of a long, hard day, on my way home. I therefore loved the idea of the convenience.

But now downtown merchants are up in arms:

Neighbors, environmentalists and owners of small businesses aired their worries Tuesday about the possibility that Capital City Stadium could be converted into downtown Columbia’s first Wal-Mart.

A cadre of detractors complained to a City Council committee Tuesday that allowing the international retail giant into the city would destroy mom-and-pop shops, threaten to increase water pollution in tributaries that feed the already polluted Congaree River and that the project was done in a hush-hush manner by City Council.

“Small business owners are in a panic,” said Leslie Minerd, owner of Five Points retail shop Hip Wa Zee. “A big-box store will help destroy the diversity we have in Columbia. And we don’t have a lot of diversity.”…

And that gets me thinking about the cost of my convenience to friends and neighbors. I haven’t reached any conclusions.

What are y’all’s thoughts?

Here’s a place for you to talk about Spurrier, Morris, Garcia, etc.

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A reader Tweeted, as I was headed to a late lunch (1:46 p.m. EST), “Eager to read your thoughts on Spurrier v. Morris.” I had not the slightest idea what he was talking about, but now I do. I’ve seen the video and everything. (Interestingly, I could not find anything about it on the mobile version of thestate.com, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t on the browser version at the time.)

Of course, by that time, the news that the coach, or Eric Hyman, or somebody, had thrown Stephen Garcia off the team — apparently for real, this time. Hyman explained, “For Stephen to return to and remain with the football squad this fall, we agreed on several established guidelines. Unfortunately, he has not been able to abide by those guidelines and has therefore forfeited his position on the roster.”

I don’t know what the guidelines were, as I don’t follow this stuff. But I did see the Auburn game, and a reasonable guess would be that one of his guidelines involved throwing the football straight. Yes, I’m joking. Sort of.

But Micah apparently wanted to know what I thought about the Ron Morris thing. Gee, I don’t know.

I’m not Ron’s editor; never was. If I were, right now I’d be saying, “What the hell, Ron?” Or perhaps I’d use some other, saltier, newsroom expression. And Ron would tell me what was going on as well as he could, from his perspective. Although, based on the performance I saw on the video, it might not be altogether clear to him what it’s all about (apart from the usual animus that, from what I’ve seen, Ron is accustomed to engendering). Anyway, assuming he had the information available, I would have Ron lay out for me his version of the story. Then, I would check it out as well as I could.

If Coach Spurrier had an ounce of professionalism in him, of course, he would already have communicated to me (as Ron’s theoretical editor) what his beef was. Let’s assume he does, and he did. In that case, I would already have had it out with Ron about it and, given the way Spurrier acted today, probably would have told him I’d decided to back Ron. Hence the public tantrum.

Of course, if the coach did NOT try the normal, civil route first, then his performance today was inexcusable. Perhaps understandable on some level given that his QB was just canned after letting him down, but still not excusable in a man paid $2.8 million a year by a public institution to represent that institution.

Speaking of which, if I were Eric Hyman or Harris Pastides, I’d right now be having a serious talk with the coach about his performance — a sort of mirror of the one I’d be having with Ron as his editor. We’d start by watching his game film. Some of the things I’d be asking him:

What’s this really about, Steve? And don’t give me that nonsense about some column last spring. That was last spring; you blew up today. What’s really going on? (Oh, wait: Maybe THIS is the column Spurrier is referring to, in which Morris wrote, “Spurrier poached Horn’s program.”)
What exactly do you mean when you say it’s “my right as a head coach” not to talk to Ron Morris? Is that some special right we don’t know about? Do assistant coaches, or ordinary mortals walking the streets, not have that right? Because one would think that they do; that any human being walking the planet would have the right not to talk to Ron Morris if they chose not to. (Unless, of course, they were working for us, and we were paying them $2.8 million a year, and we told them to talk to him…) So what’s this imperious “as a head coach” stuff? Have we really made you feel that important?

And so on. That would just be for starters. And I’d be doing that in between fielding phone calls from people over at the newspaper asking me, “What the heck?” Because they use language like that in talking to the public.

So, as I say, if I were charged with taking a position on this, I’d be in fact-finding mode now before making a decision. But if you held the proverbial gun to my head (and I’d much prefer that to a literal one), I’d have to choose Ron on this one. And I might get embarrassed doing so — I might later have to run a full retraction on the challenged column last spring or something if it turned out Ron was wrong. But if you forced me, I’d go with him on this, because I know him. Or at least, I know him better than I do Spurrier, whom I’ve never met.

That means I used to run into Ron in the hallway sometimes, and stop to chat. I never actually worked with him. I don’t think he was in the newsroom when I was (pre-1994), and even if he had been, we’d have had little occasion to deal with each other. But he has always struck me as a pretty thoughtful, careful guy.

I knew people hated him — people of the “Cocky is God” persuasion. And I used to wonder about that, but I’ve often had occasion to wonder about really serious football fans. Sometimes, when one of Ron’s columns caused a splash of some sort, I’d actually turn to the sports pages and read it. And it usually read OK to me — of course, I was judging it outside the context of having any particular knowledge of the subject matter.

So Micah, that’s what I think.

bradwarthen.com

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