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An offer I couldn’t refuse

April 17th, 2013, 10:26 am by madisontaylor

Lindsey Page called me last week with a proposition. Would I be interested, he asked, in attending a ceremony marking his induction in the North Carolina High School Athletic Association Hall of Fame?

My first thought was “why.” After all, I haven’t been a sports writer since around 1989, less than a year after Lindsey guided his Bartlett Yancey team to the state 3A title in 1988. That’s about 25 years ago, but who’s counting?

My second thought was this: “Absolutely.”

Indeed, I was stunned, flattered and ultimately honored by the invitation from a coach I had known so long ago. I was the prep sports writer for the Times-News in 1987 and ’88, when Lindsey had two of the best teams in his 34-year, 519-win career. We met before that, when I was a rookie sports writer for the Reidsville Review. Caswell was the next county over from Rockingham. Reidsville-Bartlett Yancey was a rockin’ rivalry.

But from 1986 to ’88 I covered dozens of Bucs games, first in the old gym folks called the “Crackerbox” and then the brand new and much larger facility people tabbed “The Lindsey Dome.” I also wrote features and columns about the new gym, his players and one long, in-depth profile of the coach himself. And I was at the Dean Smith Center in Chapel Hill the night Bartlett Yancey defeated North Surry for the only state title in Lindsey’s career. People like to joke that everyone in tiny Caswell County was in the Smith Center for the game. A thief could’ve made off with the entire county.

“You were my main man,” he told me last week. “People like you are part of the reason I’m (getting inducted).”

I thought that was stretching things a tad, but it made me proud anyway.

But publicity certainly didn’t hurt. Yanceyville isn’t an easy stop by an interstate. It’s not near a metropolitan area. Fact is, it’s rural and then some. Because I grew up in the country myself, it was easy to recognize the isolation folks feel out there when it comes to media coverage. But my home county (Stokes) is downright citified compared to Caswell.

“We always appreciated the writers who came out to cover us. Gary McCann over in Greensboro is a friend who did a good job,” Lindsey said. “In the early 1980s Steve (Mann) used to come over from your place. And Al Mealey in Danville did a great job covering us.”

Newspaper sports staffs also appreciate it when schools they cover meet them halfway. The truth is, it’s impossible to get to all the games, or even half. Coaches who call in who are professional, prepared and pleasant — well, that goes a long way toward building media relationships that last during good times and bad. There was never a complaint about coverage from Lindsey, or anyone else affiliated with Bartlett Yancey basketball. No snarky remarks about things in stories, either. Hey, politeness counts.

“I always believed in calling in our games,” Lindsey said, “I could never understand coaches that didn’t call in games. Do they think if they don’t call in a loss it doesn’t count? I don’t know.”

Is it any wonder I liked going there?

I was reminded just how much at the induction ceremony. It was wonderful to see Lindsey with his wife Myra, they celebrated their 53-year wedding anniversary on Wednesday by the way. Sons Barry and Steve were there as well as daughter Lesley. I watched Steve Page, a standout basketball player at Elon himself, stand with arms folded as he chatted with friends. He looked like his dad from years gone by.

Lindsey called marrying Myra “probably the best decision I ever made. We have four kids, 15 grandkids and a great-grandkid coming this summer. Our family’s not decreasing, it’s ballooning.

And I was delighted to sit at a table for the induction dinner with a Caswell County contingent of administrators or coaches past and present. They shared stories about Lindsey, or about wild times at Bartlett Yancey High School. Who knew things could get so crazy in a place so small?

It was Lindsey who summed things up best.

“I love the county. Yanceyville is a small city but we’re basically rural. I just love the people here,” he said.

Me too.

Thanks for the memories, coach.

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Rekindling bad blood in the new ACC

April 13th, 2013, 11:10 am by madisontaylor

Posting my print column a little early this week. Have some stuff going on that may make it tough to find the time later.

—-

I used to fall into that broad category of people loosely identified in the sports world around here as ABCers.

That’s ABC, as in Anybody But Carolina — meaning the state-supported university that features a well-decorated basketball team and other successful athletic programs in that mystical land known as Chapel Hill.

And I say broad category because it’s a pretty large collection of diverse people who don’t care much for what is otherwise by far the most popular sports team in the Tar Heel State. The ABC crowd features men and women; the rich and the poor, people of all races, creeds and colors. It contains people from Virginia and folks from Maryland and those who hail from Georgia and many from Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee. And, of course, there are a few from right here in North Carolina, particularly concentrated in Raleigh, Durham, Greenville, Winston-Salem . .

More than a few.

And, like I said, I used to be one of them.

Then about 30 years or so ago I reached an epiphany of sorts. I decided that perhaps the University of North Carolina wasn’t all bad and that Dean Smith might not be evil incarnate — in fact, the opposite was probably true. I began to believe that UNC didn’t always get favorable calls because the refs were on the payroll of the Rams Club, uh, Educational Foundation. Far from it. I noticed that perhaps it happened because UNC players were simply quicker, better coached and more talented than those on my team.

And I thought that perhaps the university where my mother and brother obtained degrees was in all likelihood a pretty decent place overall, it might even be outstanding and certainly deserving of respect and some grudging admiration.

Besides, my hating Carolina made my mother cry.

Yes, I finally concluded that when the Tar Heels, gulp, were in the NCAA basketball tournament, I should root for them against any and all teams from outside the state and Atlantic Coast Conference.

So I did. Right about the time Carolina toppled Georgetown on a shot by Michael Jordan, I ceased to be a hater. And while I’ll never fall fully into the Tar Heels camp of followers, I’m not someone who rejoices when they crash and burn either. In fact, it makes me a little melancholy.

From that point on, anytime an ACC team played some outside force in postseason, I sided with the conference. I rooted for N.C. State against Houston and Duke against Louisville, Nevada Las Vegas, Arkansas, Michigan, Arizona, UConn and Butler. I took Carolina’s side against Michigan, Kansas, Illinois, Michigan State, Utah and Florida. I even rooted for Maryland in 2002. Bless Gary Williams, he needed it so much more than the Hoosiers did.

Then a funny thing happened en route to middle age, a corn chip gut and relentless nodding off in my recliner — I lost interest in what teams win games inside the ACC, too. Oh, I still root for Wake Forest, desperately so — in the truest sense of the word desperate as it turns out. But, let’s face it, Wake Forest is pretty inconsequential in basketball these days and may be that way for a long time. Make that a long, long time.

And while UNC fans can work themselves into near spontaneous combustion over Duke, whose fans keep a low-burning malevolence directed at UNC, I simply can’t get that worked up over it at the moment.

League expansion can take some of the blame. The old Big Four was split into different divisions as the ACC sprawled to Boston, Blacksburg, Va. and Miami. Wake Forest stopped playing Carolina with any regularity. N.C. State isn’t even in the same division with UNC. When I look at the Demon Deacons home football schedule for next year I can’t find many games I’m interested in attending.

So yes, count me among those who have hated league expansion so far.

Lately, though, I’ve given this matter second thought. Over the next two years, the ACC is swelling again. It takes in Syracuse and Pittsburgh next year and Louisville the year after that. Notre Dame will wedge itself in here somewhere, too. This might provide an excellent opportunity to develop some unreasonable distaste and loathing for one of the newcomers and get the old bad blood boiling again.

How about Anybody But Louisville?

Call me an ABLer, then.

I’ll get my Rick Pitino dartboard ready.

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An ethical guy, that’s our Bob

April 10th, 2013, 7:59 am by madisontaylor

This is why I both like and respect our sports editor, Bob Sutton.

Bob’s a huge Syracuse fan, something not a lot of people know. He certainly doesn’t advertise it. In fact, many in our community are convinced that he harbors some great love for either Duke or Carolina. The truth is, he doesn’t give a hoot what team from around here wins or loses. He just likes covering the games.

But he bleeds Orange. And on Saturday, he drove to Atlanta in hopes of buying a ticket to see Syracuse play Michigan in the Final Four semifinal game. He did so like any other fan, not as a professional journalist. As a result, he tried to gain access to the Georgia Dome as any other fan might, by buying a ticket on his own.

Bravo.

More than a few unethical journalists out there would have applied for a press credential and attended the game as a fan disguised as reporter with no intention of filing a story. I’ve known a few who would do so and not feel one bit bad about it. They are not respectable and reflect poorly on our business. The ones who make up reasons to file stories just to attend something they want to see aren’t high on my list, either.

Bob’s not like that at all.

Sadly, Bob never got inside the Georgia Dome.

“It was a disaster,” he told me on Monday.

Bob said a mob was outside the Dome trying to buy tickets on Saturday — right up to game time. Outside of one or two priced at an absurd $800, nothing was available. There simply were no tickets to be had, which is unusual. Bob wound up watching the game on a large screen in a nearby convention center. Ironically enough, people inside the Georgia Dome probably watched most of the game on big-screen TVs inside the arena because their seats were so far from the floor.

Part of the visible shortage of printed tickets was probably due to the new flashseats or flash ticketing options now available. Bob discovered that people can order tickets online then enter the game or concert venue by swiping their credit card at a gate. There is no physical ticket at all.

Bob and I are alike on this point. Bob decided not to use that option before going to the site because he simply didn’t trust not having a ticket in hand. In the digital world, though, the two of us will have to change with the times.

The good part of flashseats is that people who will actually use the tickets have access to them. Scalpers can’t simply buy up blocks of tickets then gouge customers outside arenas. The bad news? No tickets for sale at all.

And as editor of the Times-News, the best news is, our sports editor is one ethical guy.

Bob explains how the Orange got to the Final Four during a meeting last week in my office.

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Musing about the summer game

April 1st, 2013, 8:37 am by madisontaylor

Perhaps no single thing in America marks a beginning with quite the stamp that the game of baseball provides. A diversion? Sure. Merely a game? Most definitely.

And yet . . .

The renewal promised by spring and the passing of Easter comes to full fruition when professional baseball teams take the field in earnest and folks yawn, stretch and head outdoors en masse. Baseball’s Opening Day is the gateway to what will flower as the “Summer Game.” Just as football defines fall, baseball sets the course for spring and lounges forward at a pace constructed for leisure.

American poet Walt Whitman learned the value of baseball while working as a journalist in Brooklyn, saying, “Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our close rooms … The game of ball is glorious.”

Indeed, today, we’ll also note the words of others about what was once known as the National Pastime.

“People ask me what I do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” — Rogers Hornsby, late Hall of Fame second baseman for the St. Louis Cardinals

“The one constant through all the years … has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past … . It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again.” — Terrance Mann, “Field of Dreams”

The Ball once struck off,
Away flies the Boy
To the next destin’d Post
And then Home with Joy.

— The poem “Base-Ball,” from “A Little Pretty Pocket Book, 1744

There’s a man in Mobile who remembers that Honus Wagner hit a triple in Pittsburgh 46 years ago. That’s baseball.” — Ernie Harwell, former baseball radio announcer

“There’s no crying in baseball.” — Jimmy Dugan, “A League of their Own”

“They contained precisely the same rubbery, indigestible pseudo-sausages that millions of Americans now eat, and they leaked the same flabby puerile mustard.” — Journalist H.L. Mencken on the ballpark hot dog in 1880

We’re talkin’ baseball!
Kluszewski, Campanella.
Talkin’ baseball!
The Man and Bobby Feller.
The Scooter, the Barber, and the Newc,
They knew ‘em all from Boston to Dubuque.
Especially Willie, Mickey, and the Duke.

— Talkin’ Baseball (“Mickey, Willie and the Duke”), Terry Cashman

There was ease in Casey’s manner as he stepped into his place;
There was pride in Casey’s bearing and a smile on Casey’s face.
And when, responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt ‘twas Casey at the bat.

— “Casey at the Bat,” Ernest Thayer

“A good friend of mine used to say, ‘This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains.’ Think about that for a while.” — Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh, “Bull Durham”

“I see great things in baseball; it’s our game — the American game. It will take our people out of doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous dyspeptic set, repair those losses and be a blessing to us.” — Walt Whitman

“How ‘bout that?” — Mel Allen, former baseball radio announcer

Play ball!

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Bracket breakdown, emphasizing breakdown

March 21st, 2013, 6:26 am by madisontaylor

The days of the news office NCAA Tournament pool appear to be over, a victim of smaller staffs, fewer disposable dollars and the dastardly internet. Online pools are too easy to enter, rendering the office version of a Las Vegas oddsmaker a thing of the past. Gone are the pick sheets, haphazardly ripped from newspapers, the scratched out picks and the trash talk among entrants that made it all so much fun before.

The internet, it seems, is consuming everything in its path. It’s like the Borg from “Star Trek: Next Generation.”

Still, I stand on tradition. Pool or not, I picked a bracket this year anyway. Why? Beats the hell out of me. I have a spotless record in NCAA Tournament pools. No wins against 30 losses. Futility, thy name is Madison, or Mad-dog as the case may be.

So this year, with absolutely nothing on the line, I decided to throw caution to the wind. I elected to erase everything I’ve ever known about the intricacies of the zone press, dribble drive penetration, inbounds plays and cross-court passes. Forget that I’ve watched ACC basketball for 46 years and remember George Karl when he had hair, played at UNC and my cousin Mary Margaret had a crush on him. Didn’t even consider the fact that I used to cover this stuff for a living and was on the baseline at Greensboro Coliseum in 1986 when UNC’s Kenny Smith was knocked to the floor en route to a layup by Maryland’s Derrick Lewis who looked at Smith laying there and said in a sportsmanlike fashion, ‘Don’t be bringing that weak s— in here again m—-rf—-r!” Which, of course, touched off a minor imbroglio at that ACC Tournament first round game.

So I took on the bracket with fresh vision and a plan of action. I never had a system before. Usually I scoured written analysis via a variety of sources from around the nation, watched games until my vision blurred and brain cells atrophied then mindlessly listened to the ESPN-perts, a group largely comprised of fired coaches and other chronically unemployable types from the basketball world.

So this year I discarded all that stuff and developed a few few simple rules for picking my bracket.

1. Never under any circumstances, pick Louisville — unless it’s a No. 1 vs. No. 64 game involving N.C. A&T. Sorry A&T, you fall under the “Sentiment Clause, see below).

2. Sentiment gets you nowhere. Leave the heart out of all selections.

3. Avoid choosing a hated team. Call this the Louisville / Kentucky Clause.

4. Pick no ACC team simply because it’s an ACC team.

5. Always remember, the PAC-12 conference sucks.

6. Don’t pick a future ACC team just because it’s a future ACC team.

7/ Teams under NCAA investigation are wise to avoid.

8. If I hate your uniform, I hate your team.

9. Mascot, same rule.

10. And mainly, if in doubt, pick the team I have some personal connection to, no matter how vague or nebulous it might be. In fact, the more vague and nebulous the better. See Sentiment Clause.

Here’s how some of the picks proceeded.

UNC vs. Villanova: I took Villanova because my nephew is a student there. Half my family went to UNC, which also brings in the previously mentioned Sentiment Clause. Sorry mom.

I took Missouri to knock off Louisville in round 2 because I first met Tigers coach Frank Haith when he was in high school. Hey, the man’s from Alamance County. And besides,I hate Louisville.

I have Saint Louis in the Elite Eight since St. Louis is my favorite city in America.

Michigan State makes the Sweet 16 because my friend Paul Trap, the cartoonist who draws Thatababy, went to school there, is a member of the Jud Heathcote Fan Club and still roots or the Elon Fightin’ Phoenix from afar.

I have Gonzaga in the Sweet 16 because my friend Wayne Sutton used to call the school “Gazongas,” which sounds vaguely risque.

Temple vs. N.C. State: I took Temple because my college friend Julie Parrish Prince’s daughter Everett goes to school there. Several of my favorite people in the world are N.C. State alums, which also brings in the dreaded Sentiment Clause. Sorry Owen, Brent, Bill and Von. Love you guys but don’t trust C.J. Leslie.

VCU makes the Elite Eight because you could hold an alumni party with the number of people I know who went to school there.

I ride Syracuse for a round because my wife is an alum, but bounce them in round 2 because of the NCAA inquiry clause (see above). And besides, coach Jim Boeheim said nasty things about Greensboro. Only people from here can say nasty things about Greensboro.

So, my Final Four shakes out like this:

Duke: I went to high school with a Duke player by the name of Kenny Dennard. We share nicknames that involve canines. And besides, I have no sentiment regarding Duke one way or another.

Wisconsin: One of my friends, Ruth Sheehan went there but it’ss also located in Madison. Gotta love that.

Indiana: One of my friends, Frank Maley, went there. And then, well, there’s the movie “Hoosiers.”

And Georgetown because … it just worked out that way. I neither like nor loathe them and they’re a Big East team that won’t be coming to the ACC.

Let the games begin …

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Disgusted Deacons fans kick it up a notch

March 14th, 2013, 9:40 am by madisontaylor

Times-News sports writer Conor O’Neill made sure this morning to point out the front of the Greensboro News & Record sports section to me, especially the advertisement at the bottom of the page.

Gadzooks, was my response.

Usually the front page ads, a rather recent addition to cash-strapped newspapers, are for cars or jewelry. This one, though, was a little different and had a specific target audience of, well, one.

The black and white ad was purchased by a group identified as a website, www.firebz.com. The main headline was a hashtag, #BuzzOut. Then it listed its primary goal, to bring attention to one of the reasons some believe Wake Forest should fire Jeff Bzdelik, its basketball coach for the past three years.

The target audience? Wake Forest Athletic Director Ron Wellman.

Well, that’s probably not exactly accurate. The target was much larger. The people behind the ad wanted as many ACC basketball fans and league power players to see it as possible and bring embarrassment to Wellman, who hired Bzdelik after firing Dino Gaudio in 2009. The buyers certainly wanted to create talk at the tournament and did so by purchasing premium space in the main newspaper at the tournament’s home city of Greensboro this year.

Quite a statement, and a costly one as well. A friend of mine who works at the Times-News told me he knows someone involved with buying the ad. He was informed that it would run all four days of the tournament in the sports section, but not necessarily the front page. The total cost was $2,500, my friend said.

That’s a huge chunk of change for someone to shell out just because they think a college basketball coach sucks.

As a longtime Wake Forest fan I’ve watched the last few years of decline in the basketball program with a mixture of horror, disgust and resignation. When things are at their worst — think being down to previously winless in the league Georgia Tech by 20 points in the first half — I’m with the BuzzOut crowd. When my rational and thinking mind returns, I understand that it takes some time to gauge the ultimate success or failure of a coach in any sport. Could Bzdelik use another year? Probably.

But I also shake my head when it comes to how Wellman hired Bzdelik in the first place. After all, Bzdelik had a career losing record as a college coach and seemed more like the kind of basketball nerd who is great as an NBA assistant coach. The word is, the two were friends prior to the hire, something both deny, but do admit they were acquainted.

But after hearing Bzdelk answer questions, monitoring his clashes with the media, watching him on the sideline, and learning that he ended the phone-in segment of his phone-in radio show I often wonder what his original job interview with Wellman was like. I interview people for jobs and have for more than 20 years. I’m still trying to figure out at what point during the Bzdelik-Wellman interview that Wellman said to himself, “Hot damn, this is the guy we have to hire!”

I’m still puzzled.

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The ACC Tournament: A Tar Heel state tradition like no other

March 14th, 2013, 8:41 am by madisontaylor

Like it or not, we’re traditionalists. We like antique desks, hardwood floors, classic Coke, the occasional Moonpie, Cheerwine with a hot dog, pizza with cheese (no pineapple, please) and our news accurate, right off the press and tossed into our driveway every morning. That designated hitter thing? Forget it.

So when it comes to ACC basketball, we’re old school, more so than blackboards and erasers.

Yes, we remember back when the games involved only UNC, N.C. State, Duke, Wake Forest, Maryland, Clemson, Virginia andSouth Carolina. And we miss those Saturdays when C.D. Chesley produced a slew of ACC games for local TV, with the marquee contest featuring the announcing team of Thacker and Packer (but we don’t miss Packer all that much). And we watched Thursday afternoon ACC Tournament games during the school day on little black and white TVs supplied by teachers more interested in the outcomes than we were. We all “sailed with the Pilot” during the commercial breaks.

And the tournament in those halcyon days was almost always in the venerable Greensboro Coliseum.

With all of that history it will come as no surprise that we find ourselves in agreement with the winningest college basketball coach of all time who, earlier this week, put his stamp of approval on neighboring Greensboro and its longtime role as ACC Tournament host.

“I would like to see the tournament always be in Greensboro,” Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski said via radio on the Blue Devils’ in-house radio broadcast.

We second that.

Yes, in the annual basketball battle among ACC teams, we take no sides. We respect every team, every administration, every coach and every player. No favorites here. Let the fans sort those issues out for themselves when the tournament starts today. But in the matter of where the ACC Tournament should be played, well, we like right next door just fine.

The Greensboro Coliseum is almost the ancestral home for the college basketball conference postseason tournament that sparked all the others that would follow. It’s still the champion-crowning jewel at the end of a long basketball regular season. It’s still the way a team is completely assured of a bid to the NCAA Tournament and the only route for the league’s cellar-dwelling teams to get there at all.

And Greensboro remains the home of the Atlantic Coast Conference offices, even though the league has sprawled a long way since its 1950s beginnings. The ACC has now expanded into New York, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Kentucky, Florida, Massachusetts and Georgia.

The announcement that Notre Dame would be allowed to join the ACC next basketball season arrived just in time this week to serve as a reminder of how much things change. In 2013-14, the Irish will be joined by Syracuse and Pittsburgh as the ACC’s newest entries. A year later, Louisville will jump on board. In the meantime, charter member Maryland will depart.

Sigh.

Over the years, the league has tried venues outside Greensboro. The list includes nearby sites in Charlotte and Raleigh and more far flung places like Atlanta; Tampa, Fla.; Maryland and Washington. But 23 times, the Greensboro Coliseum has been where the league champion cut down the nets.

From Krzyzewski’s perspective, it’s the best site.

“During my 33 years in the conference, nobody does it any better — it’s not even close — than the people in Greensboro,” Krzyzewski said. “They put their arms around all the teams. … They set an atmosphere that’s ‘Final Four-ish.’”

Greensboro has the contract to host the tournament in 2014 and 2015. After that, though, the forces that created league expansion may try to guide the event elsewhere, perhaps even New York or Boston.

Say it ain’t so.

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No time for head games

February 2nd, 2013, 11:00 am by madisontaylor

My print column this week was sparked by a Facebook status of about 40 words. Mining my past for fool’s gold.

———-

Growing up, the only youth sport in which I was even marginally competent was football — and I emphasize the word “marginally.”

I was on the small side. Wore glasses thick enough to repel the space shuttle. Had the speed of a junked car. When other kids accurately pointed out that I was “Blind in one eye and can’t see out of the other,” I laughed with the joke. Starting fights to correct statements that are abundantly true didn’t make much sense — then or now. Explains why I’m not in politics, probably.

But I was tough, because I had to be. I couldn’t back down about anything. I had to prove I could play with everyone else. And because I was already a splendid disaster at baseball and basketball, well, making it in football was everything.

So I played in one of those Pop Warner youth leagues when the little town next to mine started one. I joined the Walnut Cove Lions.

My football career began inauspiciously — as an undersized member of a team for older kids. Because there was no junior pee wee division the first year Walnut Cove had a team, I suited up for the pee wees. My playing time was limited to those occasions in which the team was so far behind our opponents would have to surrender like Lee at Appomattox in order for us to win. On the occasion I actually got into a game that year, I recall a runner escaping my attention and scampering past my clueless defense for two straight scores. At this point, alert coaches decided that free safety wasn’t the place to put the half-blind kid.

A year later, the junior pee wees were born, and I flourished, to a fashion. Moved to either the offensive or defensive lines I managed to start all but one game the remainder of my four-year youth football career. The only blemish on my record came the following season — after I had grown into the pee wee division — when I was benched for a game as noseguard by the coach who noticed that my play on defense in practice scrimmages against the offense was not to my usual standard. He suspected me of “lollygagging.” He somehow overlooked the fact that his son, the regular center, was sick that week and someone who was 100 percent more ferocious replaced him and knocked me in the dirt play after play.

Yes, college has nothing on youth sports when it comes to grooming people for life in the American workplace.

Still, I have fond memories of those days. I was generally coached by good men, family men, men who thanklessly volunteered in order to make sure that kids in rural Stokes County had the opportunity to play organized football with uniforms and everything. Of them all, only one coach was a sadistic maniac. He arrived for every practice with a Sun-Drop bottle filled with a brownish substance. We weren’t allowed to touch the bottle. He got crazier as the afternoon wore into the early evening. Go figure.

But every single coach liked to see us 9- to 12-year-olds knock the total snot out of each other. We were screamed at to hit low, smash each other in the helmet and be tough. If we failed to do so, we were usually compared to girls. Pretty horrifying thing for a 10-year-old boy back then.

Yes, in sports — and the military — such observations are seen as motivational tools. Can’t say it didn’t work like gangbusters.

So we ran headlong into each other for what seemed like hours. The players with the most scars on their helmets got vigorous pats on the back and calls of “attaboy!”

The one drill we all dreaded involved the “chicken coop.” It was an open-ended contraption with a height of about three feet, the top covered by chicken wire. Players were told to line up facing each other underneath the wire and then fire into one another — clashing helmets — repeatedly. This was supposed to teach us to hit low. What I learned, mainly, was about the exceptional capabilities of BC Powder and Excedrin.

By the wisdom of the day, those drills were fine. And as a lineman, I was marginally competent at all of it. No better, no worse. A passable piece of the interchangeable puzzle parts that make up the machinery of a working football team.

I left football after that because I felt I was too small to play on the line in high school and this getting beat up and going home with headaches at nightfall seemed patently ridiculous. I became more of a fan of the game. I loved high school and college football. Still do. I like the strategy behind a well-timed offensive play or how the blocking or defensive schemes come together.

And, sadly, I like to see people knock the snot out of each other.

Today I’ll probably watch some of the Super Bowl. I’ll acknowledge that pro football’s move to improve safety for its players is wise and long overdue. Helmet on helmet hitting is a serious problem. All levels of football need to look at it carefully. Concussions are nothing to fool around with.

I also want the game to continue. People should have the choice about whether they wish to play or not. But it should be made as safe as is humanly possible. It’s a contact sport after all.

Still, if I had a kid today the last thing he or she would be doing is playing football.

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Goodbye Stan the Man

January 21st, 2013, 2:51 pm by madisontaylor

Most people who read my posts regularly know I’m a huge fan of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. That said, I never had the chance to watch the greatest figure in team history, Stan Musial, play. He retired following the 1963 season after 22 remarkable years in the Major Leagues — all with the Redbirds. I was 4 years old at the time. Baseball wasn’t on my radar screen yet.

Musial, known widely as Stan the Man, meant a lot to St. Louis and its crazed baseball fans. In larger sense, though, he’s perhaps the most overlooked superstar of all time. His records are, frankly, not to be believed. He was perhaps the best all-around hitter in National League history and only rivals Ted Williams on that score. He made a record 24 all-star games, was a three-time MVP, had more than 3,600 hits and 400 homers. He was married to the same woman for 71 years and lived after retirement in the city where he played, spreading good cheer and joy to Cardianls fans each and every season.

And now he’s gone. The Man died Saturday at the age of 92. I can safely say there are no players like him today and perhaps never will be again.

Thanks.

And thanks to John Darkow of the Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri for this splendid editorial cartoon about the passing of Stan the Man.

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Nothing to celebrate

January 12th, 2013, 11:56 pm by madisontaylor

I’m not usually one for sending — or receiving — text messages. Place me among those old-timers, throwbacks and quasi-Neanderthals who believe that conversation still has some function in the modern world.

So yeah, OK, I’m old school to the point that I still take recess every day at 10 a.m. no matter what.

But this past summer I was compelled to not only send a text, but also attach a photo.

First time, I swear.

I did so while visiting Cooperstown, N.Y. It was also my first time there. As I was entering the main tourist attraction in that small town nestled among upstate New York’s rolling hills and metallic blue Finger Lakes, I saw something I wanted to photograph and send to a friend who is a huge fan of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team.

It was a banner with the image of Barry Larkin, a retired shortstop for that franchise, who was among those to be enshrined in the baseball Hall of Fame later in the summer. The banner flapped in the breeze outside Cooperstown’s National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum.

I sent the image, while my spouse supervised since, as I said before, I was a rookie. I got back a response almost immediately. This texting thing might be pretty useful after all, I said to myself — but only to myself.

My friend Eileen wrote in return: “Yeah, where’s Pete’s banner?” in reference to former Reds great Pete Rose, a player of renown who was banned from baseball for gambling on the game and subsequently not enshrined in the storied Hall of Fame.

I was glad she asked. It was like a hanging curve waiting to be crushed into the cheap seats.

“Here’s Pete!” I texted back, with an attached photo of a Pete Rose jersey hanging in a display about the championship Cincinnati teams from the 1970s. Later I sent her another photo of the bat Rose used to break Ty Cobb’s record for most hits by a Major League player. It was amid items about players who have broken baseball’s most hallowed records.

“Who says Pete Rose is not in the Hall of Fame,” I asked dryly in my text. “He’s everywhere.”

Everywhere, except in the actual Hall of Fame itself.

THE NAME IS, officially, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, but a lot of people simply refer to it as “the Baseball Hall of Fame.”

It’s a subtle difference, but a big one.

The huge brick structure on Cooperstown’s Main Street, is home to a wealth of baseball artifacts, photographs, films, paintings, sculptures and souvenirs. It’s a full-service museum and monument to all things baseball.

Visitors can follow a weaving path that occupies three floors of seemingly endless space. The history of baseball occupies the first floor with a comprehensive timeline of events that shaped the game. There is everything from Honus Wagner’s glove — about the size of a work glove — to Stan Musial’s locker, Jackie Robinson’s jersey and an area noting the betting scandal that embroiled the 1919 Chicago White Sox, known today as the Black Sox.

And there is, of course, Pete Rose’s shirt.

Nothing, it seems, is left out.

There is a room noting the accomplishments of Babe Ruth and a room detailing the Negro Leagues and the integration of the game. There is a section about women in baseball and another about the emergence of Latino stars. Upstairs where records are highlighted, a wall is dedicated to Hank Aaron as the “Home Run King.” Other sections celebrate records by players from Cy Young to Roger Clemens. Yeah, that Roger Clemens. And under records for home runs and other achievements is Barry Bonds. Yeah, that Barry Bonds.

They are all part of the museum, which also houses the Hall of Fame.

THE HALL OF FAME section of the museum, known as the Plaque Gallery, is a cavernous room within the building, but away from where the artifacts are displayed. Its walls are lined with images of famous players, managers and owners cast in bronze so each resembles “Star Wars” hero Han Solo after he was encased in carbonite by Jabba the Hut.

Not sure they had that goal in mind originally, though.

It’s a solemn place. Those fortunate enough to be noted with plaques had to receive enough votes to get there. It’s reserved for truly special accomplishments and a place of celebration. They call it being “enshrined.”

This year, the Baseball Writers Association of America, who cast ballots on new Hall of Fame members annually, failed to vote in a single player. Clemens and Bonds, among the game’s presumed immortals, were on the ballot for the first time. They and others are tainted by the cheating period attributed to widespread use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.

Without that on their resumes, both would surely be “enshrined.”

There are those who say omission of cheating or gambling ballplayers from the Hall of Fame is somehow erasing the game’s history. But the museum itself preserves the history of the game. The Hall of Fame fetes those who made it great, not those who besmirched it.

Perhaps one day, when the Steroid Era of baseball fades into history, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum will create a room in which the issue is addressed in detail.

That would be appropriate.