Category: Sports

Twitter Me Blue

I learned a very valuable lesson yesterday. If you’re going to be using an iPhone in subfreezing temperatures, make sure it’s fully charged. You might even want to wrap it up in a heated, insulated blanket between uses while you’re at it.

I barely had time to snap a photo or two of the Duke University campus when it completely flatlined. Can you believe that? Sure you can! It’s an iPhone! My itty-bitty blue United States map was lit up and everything, and then it just up and disappeared like the lost continent of Atlantis.

Guess I can’t blame that one on AT&T since it was a hardware issue.… Read the rest

Signs and Wonders Never Cease

CameronThe first time I saw Cameron Indoor Stadium, I walked right past it without even trying to go in. I figured anything that storied and sacred was probably locked. I was seventeen years old and too wet behind the ears to realize that in order to gain entry to the places you wanted to go in life, sometimes all you have to do is walk up to the door and knock.

Instead, I walked over to the tennis courts and watched the men’s team practice. It was September 1979, and my father was having coronary bypass surgery at Duke Medical Center on the other end of the quad. … Read the rest

UNC’s Williams Arrests Cameron Crazies

Roy WilliamsUniversity of North Carolina-Chapel Hill security officers and local police S.W.A.T teams descended on Duke University early this morning in a daring “snatch and grab” raid to round up all Cameron Crazies who have ever said, or who in the future will ever say, anything negative regarding Roy William’s Tarheel men’s basketball squad.

The Crazies, sans wigs and facepaint since they were arrested while sleeping, are currently incarcerated in a barbwire-enclosed, gulag-style holding area outside the Dean Dome while Judge, Jury and Executioner Coach Williams decides between firing squad, gas chamber or lethal injection as the method of mass execution.

This preemptive strike at the heart of his archrival’s fan base comes on the heels of the ejection of a “drunk” and “abusive” Presbyterian College fan (who admitted to having a grand total of TWO beers prior to the game) from the Dean Dome by coliseum security at the behest of Coach Williams.… Read the rest

Too Big For His Britches

TebowGQLast year this time, I was hoping that he would be long gone by now, but the boy just couldn’t take a hint. You know, that boy: Captain America, Jim Thorpe and Billy Graham all rolled into one.

I was hoping that he would be safely tucked away on the sideline of some 2nd tier NFL team, doing whatever it is that former triple option quarterbacks do in the NFL (Hint: think headset and clipboard). Well, hope can do a lot of things, but it’s not going to stop Tim Tebow when he starts churning those Sequoia Tree trunk-sized legs of his for yet another run up the middle, and it’ll make little difference on 3rd and 5 when he flings a laser-guided cruise missile that comes screaming in, low to the ground, just past the outstretched fingertips of a cornerback and into the hands of a diving teammate.… Read the rest

The King’s New Eyes

When I finally worked up the nerve to hand “Hank” some cash, he drew back as if I was coming at him with a knife. This startled me, and for a moment I wondered what kind of fix my attempted charity had gotten me into. Would he lunge back at me in self defense? Or would he start to channel the cacophony of voices inside his head and yell profanities at me instead? I braced myself for just about anything. I suddenly wished I had just left well enough alone and dropped off the money at the checkout counter, just like everyone else did.… Read the rest

A Communion of Saints

I don’t always do eye exams on Catholic priests, but when I do, I prefer to be blessed.

And that’s exactly what happened yesterday when I examined an honest-to-God padre, Father C. I’ve examined my share of Baptist preachers and various charismatic sorts, even a couple of Episcopalian rectors, but as far as I can remember Father C. was my first Vatican-verified vicar. He was Irish too, which was simply gravy on the potatoes.

He was the second patient in as many days to created a stir in the waiting room. The first one was the man with the Crimson Tide elephant hat, complete with long, gray trunk, who came in Monday still high on the fumes of Mt.… Read the rest

I Don’t Hate UT, But Bama Man Does

The Third (or thereabouts) Saturday in October is upon us, and if you’re a true Crimson-blooded Tide fan, that means one thing: Tennessee Hate Week.

The problem is, I’m just not feeling it. The hate, that is. No, I am full of love for all mankind–even, and perhaps most especially, my many friends, neighbors, co-workers and dear, dear family who are loyal Volunteers. You see, it’s been quite a year for our family, and frankly, football is just not that high on my priority list anymore. I’ve grappled with some enormous challenges, and the raging, blind forces of fate have compelled me to consider once again, What are The True First Things of Life?… Read the rest

Just Missed Ole Miss

Gentle Fusioneers, allow me to tell you the story of how I just missed becoming an Ole Miss Rebel.

It was February, 1991 and I was nearing completion of my residency in Nashville. Number One Son had just turned two years old, and Eyegal was very pregnant with Number Two. We barely subsisted on my meager resident’s salary, but we were young and dumb and didn’t know what it was like to have money, so we were happy. Number One has early memories of us pushing him in the stroller through Green Hills Mall, looking in the windows and not buying a single thing.… Read the rest

R-a-z-o-r-b-a-c-k-s. Whatever.

razorback postcardIn July, 1970, my father loaded all of us into a blue, 1968 Chevy Impala sedan with newly-mounted, under-the-dash AC and headed west to Cal-ee-forn-i-a; swimming pools, movie stars, and the American Postal Workers Union Annual Convention at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.

He decided that since this was a once-in-a-lifetime trip, we should hit all the highlights. On the itinerary were The Painted Desert, Grand Canyon, Disneyland, Yosemite, Sequoia, Vegas, Salt Lake City, Yellowstone, Mt. Rushmore and the St. Louis Arch. We even ventured off the beaten path and got a few kicks on Route 66 at some kitschy attractions like the Fort Courage Trading Post in Houck, Arizona.… Read the rest

He Did Jobs No One Else Wanted To Do

Dear Tim,

I don’t usually talk to dead people, but the special circumstances of your untimely death call for unusual tactics. You see, it’s very important for people to know the story I’m going to tell because I think it gives a capsule insight into who you were.

Or are. My apologies; I really don’t know what to say, because I really don’t really know what lies beyond that murky river. I guess that’s why they call it faith. I hope it’s all true, but I can’t prove it. For all I know, you could be sleeping soundly. If so, you can read this when you wake up.… Read the rest

My World Is Crimson and Houndstooth

I remember that 1973 butt-whoopin’ like it was yesterday. What I didn’t remember were all the rest that went along with it.

No, I’m not referring to the time I was playing in my mother’s sacrosanct living room and broke her prized vase. The scalding that followed burned bright and hot. She regretted that one, as I recall, checking me later in the afternoon for “marks” and apologizing profusely, probably worried that Dad would get on her for being a little too rough.

I’m talking about the 77-6 smackdown that Bear Bryant’s boys, with their high-octane wishbone offense, laid on Charlie Coffey’s hapless crew of Virginia Tech Fighting Gobblers (aka, “The Hokies”) in October of that year down in Tuscaloosa.… Read the rest

“I Really Don’t Know…

crashdavis.jpg_art_160_20080902174136It’s not exactly amoeba to man, but as you can see, there’s been a little evolution going on around here nonetheless. Behold, Ocular Fusion 3.0!

Thanks to Greg Kendall-Ball (known in Church of Christ blogging circles as the “Blogfather”) for lending me a hand and lifting me up from the primordial goo that was WordPress 2.0. The quantum leap forward to 2.8.4 feels downright bipedal. Now if I can just get my cranium to expand a few more centimeters, I should be good to go.

The new WordPress theme is “Deep Silent,” (very apropos considering how quiet I’ve been the last few months), and the “old timey” eye exam header is from The Ophthalmoscope And How To Use It (1st Ed.,… Read the rest

Clarkston 1, Huntsville 0

outcastsunitedEyegal and I had the privilege Sunday night of hearing author Warren St. John (Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer–A Road Trip Into the Heart of Fan Mania) discuss his new book, Outcasts United–A Refugee Team, An American Town.

St. John’s book chronicles a season in the lives of “The Fugees,” a soccer team comprised of teenage boys from around the world who now live in the tiny southern town of Clarkston, Georgia outside Atlanta as a part of a United Nations refugee resettlement program. The central figure in the book is The Fugee’s coach, Luma Mufleh, a young Jordanian woman of privilege and Smith College graduate who, as it turns out, is something of a refugee herself (her father cut her off after she refused to return to Jordan following graduation).… Read the rest

The Crimson Dream

I’m awake at 3:OO AM. It’s as if The Phone Call has reset my body clock to beat the roosters.

But then again, it could have been The Crimson Dream that startled me awake. I mean, when you have a dream like that, why risk going back to sleep and forgetting it? No, better to get up, get at it and write it down quickly to preserve it for posterity.

In The Crimson Dream, I was as I am now: a balding, 47-year-old male who is in pretty good shape for his peer group, but with the usual trace of middle age paunch.… Read the rest

And For That, We Are Thankful

When I finished “The Anatomy of a Broken Bone” two and a half years ago, I was hoping there would never be a Part II. “Here’s hoping our first one will also be our last,” I wrote.

So much for wishes, well-laid plans and good intentions.

Number Three Son is down again. This time with a broken distal left fibula (ankle, essentially) obtained while sledding down a snowy hillside on a trashcan lid in the wee hours of Sunday morning in Gatlinburg, Tennessee at the annual “Juiced-For-Jesus,” mega-monster youth rally, Winterfest.

The chance to frolic in a few inches of fresh, frozen precipitation was just too much of a temptation for a gang of Southern boys whose experience with the stuff is limited mainly to pictures on the internet and coverage of the Winter Olympics every four years.… Read the rest