Nine things on my mind as the major league playoffs open: I can’t ever find myself rooting for the New York Mets. But I’m a big Buck Showalter admirer, and it’s hard to root against him. I appreciated him as a player, well back in his Double-A days in Nashville, and am grateful for his … Continue reading Nine thoughts as the playoffs begin

“The soundtrack of our lives” has become a well-worn cliché. But, forgive me, here I think it’s appropriate to dust it off another time. If you are a college basketball fan of the past four decades, the soundtrack includes the loud hyperbole, relentless enthusiasm, name-dropping, non sequiturs, cogent analysis and chain-saw voice of Dick Vitale. … Continue reading At courtside with Dickie V., and hoping he can be a Prime Time Player this spring

Any Southern sportswriter on the north side of 60 years of age will attest the greatest of all annual events didn’t have a scoreboard and didn’t have fans. It was the Southeastern Conference Basketball Media Days. We’d have all bought a ticket to attend, maybe paid our own way, in the late 1980s and early … Continue reading The ‘scoop’ that Dale Brown was going to give me

One of those polite, “so where you from?” sort of conversations went this way: “I used to be a heroin addict.” Not the sort of line to make a morning drive with a complete stranger very comfortable. And even if it makes no difference intellectually, and I was making no judgment, there is an inevitable … Continue reading A stranger’s confession: ‘I used to be a heroin addict’

Ushered into his office, the first time I met the legendary coach he was knee-deep in film. Literally. Bobby Bowden was studying an opponent in those ancient pre-video days, with a projector beaming the action from his desk to a screen on the wall. He opted not to use the take-up reel at the opposite … Continue reading That crazy kid who ran off to elope in Rising Fawn, Ga.: Remembering the great Bobby Bowden

It may not have been an original quote, but it goes into history in Edwin Edwards’ obituary, so we’ll give him credit for creating it. The only way he’d lose the 1983 gubernatorial election in Louisiana, Edwards said, if he were caught “in bed with a dead girl or a live boy.” He also said … Continue reading No tipping: The day we inherited a Louisiana governor’s table

At a break during an NCAA basketball regional years ago, I introduced myself to one of the best-known leaders in college athletics. “Your name is so familiar,” he said. Then, finally, he added this: “It’s the damn scrapbooks.” Indeed, a couple of decades earlier, in many stories under my byline, his wife’s name appeared. She … Continue reading A deserving honor for some great practitioners of ‘Scrapbook Journalism’

There is a fascinating baseball season unfolding. The NHL playoffs, which offer some of the best post-season drama in sport, are in full-force. Ditto the Lebron-less playoffs of the NBA. The finals of one of tennis’s Grand Slams is this weekend, and the U.S Open golf tournament starts this week. Photo by Juan Salamanca on … Continue reading Get off my lawn with this 12-team college football playoff business

This was, what, maybe 30 minor league opening days for me, counting all those times I was traveling with teams and saw two openers a year. So, for those for asked, and even for those who didn’t ask, here’s what I thought of the milestone evening of May 11, 2021, when professional baseball returned to … Continue reading Worth the wait: Trash Pandas finally make their home debut

In 1978, Dale Earnhardt and I came to a Talladega race for the first time. Dale finished 12th. I finished a 12-pack. Earnhardt raced 44 times at Talladega, winning 10 times. (To show the capriciousness of this place, he had 11 DNFs.) This is somewhere in the high 60s or low 70s for me, either … Continue reading Dale Earnhardt was an unknown — and unnoticed — when he first came to Talladega