Talkin’ (more) baseball . . .

Just to continue the Chase Utley dirty-slide, no-dirty-slide discussion a bit longer before Game 3 of Dodgers-Mets tonight, here’s an interesting counterpoint from SportsIllustrated.com to my thought that the Dodgers’ Utley did what players have done in baseball forever — with baseball’s tacit endorsement, despite take-out slides actually being contrary to the letter of the law.

 

MLB right to suspend Utley, now must ensure play never happens again

The umpires got it wrong on Saturday night. On Sunday, Major League Baseball got it right.

With its precedent-setting suspension of Dodgers second baseman Chase Utley for Games 3 and 4 of the NLDS against the Mets, the commissioner’s office all but admitted that the umps erred by not ruling Utley out for his overly aggressive takeout slide in NLDS Game 2 that ultimately resulted in the tying run scoring and left New York shortstop Ruben Tejada with a broken right fibula.

In the very first words of its statement announcing the suspension, MLB calls Utley’s slide “illegal.” Joe Torre, MLB’s Chief Baseball Officer said, “After thoroughly reviewing the play from all conceivable angles, I have concluded that Mr. Utley’s action warrants discipline. While I sincerely believe that Mr. Utley had no intention of injuring Ruben Tejada, and was attempting to help his club in a critical situation, I believe his slide was in violation of Official Baseball Rule 5.09 (a)(13), which is designed to protect fielders from precisely this type of rolling block that occurs away from the base.”

Read the rest here.

 

Hard, fast and unfortunate

sliding

What happened to Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada via a hard, late takeout slide by the Dodgers Chase Utley in Saturday’s National League playoff game is every middle infielder’s greatest fear.

Catching a throw at second base, touching the base, gripping and throwing the ball to first and jumping up or out of the way before an elite, 200-pound athlete with a running start, metal cleats on his shoes and angry intent on his mind barrels into your lower body and knocks you into left field, as they say, is not easy nor for the faint of body or will.

Tejada was lined up, vulnerable — and wiped out.

Utley, a second baseman, slid straight into Tejada’s legs as the shortstop, after catching a flip from his second baseman at an awkward angle, tried to jump-spin at the bag and throw to first. Instead, Utley flipped Tejada up and over, breaking the shortstop’s fibula.

He was carted off, his leg in an air cast, Utley was ruled safe via a replay challenge, and the Dodgers rallied past the Mets to even their five-game series at 1-1.

You can find ample pages out there dissecting the play, focused on whether Utley was “dirty” or within the rules drilling Tejada as he did. I didn’t see the play live, but I’ve watched it numerous times this morning.

My humble take:

Utley was not dirty. Hyper-aggressive, yes, dirty, no. He employed a legal tactic, albeit from baseball’s Neanderthal days.

Tejada was unfortunate.

And it is all Major League Baseball’s fault.

Like it or not, Utley did what baseball’s interpretive rules give him freedom to do, slide hard into the second-base pivot man. It is interpretive because the rules leave it to the umpires to judge whether or not a runner clearly goes out of his way to interfere with a fielder making a play.

In this case, the issue is whether Utley abandoned all thought of reaching second safely and went directly for Tejada.

Of course, he went after Tejada — because baseball has allowed runners to go after middle infielders for more than a century.

Almost even with the bag, i.e. dangerously late, Utley slid to the right, never touching the base as he undercut Tejada. The irony is Tejada also never touched the bag after he caught the flip.

And it was all made worse for the Mets when Tejada’s failure to touch second was detected on replay and Utley was ruled safe — even though he left the field still without having touched second. And even though umps — wink, wink — routinely allow fielders to simply be “in the neighborhood” of second base, rather than actually touching the base, to record an out before throwing.

It is a mash-up of anger, hypocrisy, bruised egos and bodies that will reach through the rest of this series – that is, beanballs and one or more bench-clearing “brawls” are coming.

And it is one that I believe, thanks to the postseason spotlight thrown on this play and the severity of Tejada’s injury, will resonate through baseball with an overdue rules change.

I believe Utley when he says he didn’t mean to hurt Tejada, only to prevent him from turning a key double play. But I also believe the collision proves the arcane folly of keeping a play like this tacitly within the rules.

The takeout slide has been legislated out of high school and college baseball, to no loss of competitive intensity. As well, MLB a couple years ago banned the ability of base-runners charging to home plate — a la Pete Rose decades ago in the all-star game — to drop their head and shoulders like a linebacker and blast a catcher to prevent a tag or dislodge the ball.

The impetus was the knee that Giants’ star catcher Buster Posey had shredded on such a play. MLB adopted the high school/college rule; catchers can’t block the plate without the ball, and runners must slide into home.

That rule has saved needless injuries at the plate, just as the amateur rule that makes runners slide directly into second — and not detour to either side as Utley did — has prevented broken fibulas throughout the game. It’s also made the controversial “neighborhood” judgment no longer necessary.

It seems to me all that is good, and an obvious overdue adjustment needed at the top level of a sport where seven-, eight- and nine-figure athletes are the brilliant lifeblood.

Gamblin’ Pete Rose won’t understand. That is something we’ll just have to live with.

 

 

 

 

Happy Birthday, Coach

I just found out today is Marty Schottenheimer’s birthday. He is 72.  marty

Knowing this makes me happy, because I got to cover Marty, a football coach who presided over 200 NFL victories, as a local sports writer a few years ago when he worked in Virginia Beach. I liked him a lot.

I didn’t come to my interaction with him, as coach of the dearly departed Virginia Destroyers of the now-defunct United Football League, with the bias of fans burned by ill-fated games during his head coaching tenures in Cleveland, Kansas City, Washington or San Diego.

In a put-up or shut-up world, his legacy isn’t the best because Marty never coached a team to the Super Bowl, which is why he is the only coach with 200 victories who isn’t in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. I just went in with the idea that it could be really cool to deal with a coach of such renown – hey, that’s Marty Damn Schottenheimer – and talk football.

I was right.

I was interested to learn why he was slumming in a startup pro football league destined to fold. Misting up, he told me a story about wanting his young grandchildren to see him do what he was famous for doing — coach football players.

Damn, Marty.

He didn’t tell me he’d signed a million-dollar contract that later wound up in court for non-payment. Business is business, sure, and I of course knew he was cashing in on a league desperate to create buzz. But once he was here, it truly seemed much more than that for Marty. He and his staff coached ‘em up hard. The Destroyers won the championship the only year he coached here, his only title as a pro coach. He connected to his players, all of them many decades younger, with old-school appeals to their pride and team spirit.

It was fascinating.

Anyway, my point is Marty was as genuine as any authority figure I covered over three decades. It wasn’t faux sincerity, either. He is the real deal, salt-of-the-earth from near Pittsburgh. Bill Cowher the ex-Steelers coach swears by him. And more than once, he told me to please stop in to see him and his wife. Pat, whenever I was in Charlotte, where they live.

That hasn’t happened. But I don’t doubt he meant it, nor that these years later, he would welcome me with a man’s-man handshake and happily reminisce about his one curious year in Virginia Beach.

I hope Marty had a happy birthday.

 

Good stories are good stories

I get to do all sorts of stories now as a writer for Old Dominion, stories I would have never thought of doing or believed I could do with any degree of competency back in the day.

Stuff on nuclear physics, I kid you not. Biologists working with bees and spiny lobsters, photographers headlining exhibits at the Chrysler Museum, filmmakers, novelists and musicians creating their next ambitious piece of work.

Sometimes, though, sports will cross my path, which is a treat, considering my professional background. ODU has its own sports information office that distributes news and features mostly on current athletes, so the stuff handed to me usually involves alumni.

A story got passed my way recently and I finally got to write it amid all the semester-opening writerly demands. It’s about a former ODU women’s soccer player, who transferred in from community college but wound up playing only one season, who despite raising her young son as a single mother, graduated in computer science, works in hush-hush information security, and has labored nine years in the women’s tackle football league you didn’t know existed, the Women’s Football Alliance.

Two broken legs later, and one gold medal playing for a Team USA you also didn’t know exists, Okiima “Sweet Feet” Pickett soldiers on as a fullback for the league-champion Washington, D.C. Divas.

Soccer was her life growing up in Charlottesville, but then other parts of life started happening. We talked about it all for an hour on the phone one day. We laughed a lot. Okiima is delightful. And then I got to revisit, in a way, the featury sports column I used to like to write so much that maybe could draw in non-sports readers. Those were always my favorites.

It’s a short story (posted at ODU news and minimally tweaked here), but I like it.

Meet Okiima Pickett.

———————————————————————————————————-

After Okiima Pickett broke her right leg twice in nine months playing tackle football, she had one thought: how soon till I can play again?

“It was a very traumatizing experience,” said Pickett, a 2003 graduate of Old Dominion University in computer science. “But I didn’t want to be known as the player who broke her leg and quit.”

Pickett, who played women’s soccer at ODU, is far from quitting the Washington D.C. Divas of the Women’s Football Alliance, even though she is 35 years old, has a titanium rod in her shin and screws in her knee and ankle.

A running back nicknamed “Sweet Feet,” Pickett is one of the Divas’ most experienced veterans with nine seasons under her shoulder pads. And in August, she captured her first championship of the 41-team league when the Divas defeated the Dallas Elite 30-26 in the title game in Los Angeles.

Her presence on the roster in 2015 seemed doubtful when Pickett’s leg was broken by a tackle during a game late in the ‘12 season, and then broken again in the first game of ’13, by the same opponents from Boston.

“Coming back from injuries like that, you have no idea what to expect,” said Pickett, who works as an information security engineer. “I was thinking my career might be over, wondering if I’d ever have my game back. So for me to be able to play again and contribute to a championship is an awesome feeling.”

Pickett did quit once; she stopped playing co-ed soccer near her Maryland home when teammates suggested she take her on-the-pitch aggressiveness to the Divas.

The idea intrigued Pickett, who said she asked to try out for her high school football team in Charlottesville but was denied by the coach, a family friend who worried about her.

“He said he didn’t want me to get hurt,” Pickett said. “I said, ‘But they won’t be able to catch me.”’

Pickett got pregnant and couldn’t accept the soccer scholarship she said ODU offered her out of high school. She wound up attending community college for two years and was recruited again for ODU’s soccer team. But with a challenging academic load, as well as her young son to care for, Pickett played just one season before she graduated in the summer of 2003.

Her son is 16 now, and Pickett said she is gratified he’s been able to witness the sweat and dedication she’s put into her comeback.

“Okiima is the ultimate D.C. Diva,” said teammate Kenyetta Grigsby, the team’s tailback who runs behind Pickett, a 5-foot-4, 140-pound fullback. “I didn’t think she’d let the leg injury stop her. She loves football and she loves the Divas, so I knew she’d be back.”

Pickett played for Team USA five years ago in the first International Federation of American Football women’s world championship – the U.S. won the gold — and said she hopes to make the 2017 national team at age 37, so retirement isn’t yet in the conversation.

“My leg can predict the weather,” she joked. “It still aches and stuff, and I also had mental hurdles to overcome this year. I needed to get my confidence back. In my mind, I feel like I limp when I run, although on film you see that I don’t.”

Grigsby said “Sweet Feet” should not fret.

“She had her leg so wrapped up at the beginning of the season, we called her ‘Peg Leg,’ ” Grigsby, a police officer in Northern Virginia, said with a laugh. “But she got her name back by the end.”

 

Crying For Baseball

One little kid standing at home plate wearing an oversized helmet, wielding a bat as tall as he is, trying and mostly failing to make contact with rainbow tosses arced softly by a dad-coach. Six or seven or eight other little kids arrayed about the skin infield, standing with their baseball gloves on their heads. Kneeling in the dirt sifting for pebbles or bugs or something as dad pitches and kid swings and misses, over and over. A mom standing alongside, urging Morgan and Cody to stop gazing into the dirt and to pay attention. To pay attention . . . um, why?

This soul-sucking scene plays out far too often on far too many dog-walks I take at the field across the street. Well-meaning (I suppose) but coaching-clueless parents leading “baseball” practices for 6-year-olds who have no idea why they are being made to stand on a dirt infield, with little or no activity in their midst, learning nothing at all about baseball other than to hate baseball for, well, making them stand on dirt with little or no activity in their midst, while kids in the other corners of the field are yelling and chasing soccer and lacrosse balls.

These bored kids will not be long for the game, and I do not blame them. I blame societal circumstances that long ago made neighborhood pick-up baseball games extinct as dodos, that left “organized” baseball the only baseball left to be played by kids, that forced well-meaning, coaching-clueless parents to lead baseball practices they have no business leading.

They have no business there because they are blind to what they are doing, namely killing baseball for the kids they are trying to excite to baseball.

This conundrum has puzzled me for the 15 years I have coached in rec ball, American Legion ball, high school ball and observed the coaching that goes on around it all. The puzzle is why moms and dads cannot and do not take the minor steps necessary – minor as in reading articles or viewing YouTube videos for basic drills every kid can do at the same time — to think about structuring practices that include no standing around but steady skill-building, fun activities for 30 or 45 minutes — 60 at the very tops. Run-the-bases races. Catch the easy rollers or pop-up competition and throw-the-ball-at-the-target contests. The underhand tossing of tennis balls — coach to kid, or multiple parents to multiple kids simultaneously — so they can feel and instinctively know what it is to swing a bat (however they swing it) and to feel and see and sense the joy of connecting a rounded stick with a rounded ball in flight.

It is not that hard, not in the least, except that it is being made to seem so at the very entry point where baseball cries out for simple joy, simple activity, simple simplicity.

It hurts my heart, because the kids, and the game, deserve so much better.

 

 

Phollies

Philadelphia-Phillies-1971-1991

The Philadelphia Phillies of my youth stunk out loud.

From 1964, when they gagged away the National League pennant in the last couple of weeks, to 1974 – ages “little boy” to “oh my god, he has a driver’s license?” personally speaking — they had four winning records and won 47 percent of their games. And except for the Crash of ’64, they never even sniffed a championship. This fabled run of ineptitude actually included the 1972 season, when left-hander Steve Carlton, pitching for baseball’s second-worst team – thank you, Texas Rangers – somehow won 27 games for an outfit that won 59 in all.

I mention this because the Phillies (of my youth extrapolated) stink out loud again — on pace for their worst season since my late father, who died seven years ago at 84, was 1.

Back then, I didn’t know any better. It’s just how it was. Philly teams stunk. Sorry, kid, that’s how it is here. Want some ketchup for that scrapple?

But now it’s just sad, because the Phillies have not stunk recently. They won the World Series – just the franchise’s second WS title – in 2008. They lost the World Series in 2009. They won their division in 2010 and 2011. First baseman Ryan Howard, second baseman Chase Utley, catcher Carlos Ruiz and shortstop Jimmy Rollins were stalwarts on those teams.

But it is 2015. Rollins is 36 and batting .176 in the first season of his native California twilight with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Howard is 35 and batting .193 in Philly. Utley is 36 and batting .103. One-oh-three, which translates to nine hits in 25 games. Ruiz is 36 and hitting .242 with one extra-base hit. Roy Halladay retired a couple of years ago, his arm shot. Cliff Lee, on the DL again with a shot arm, is about to join him in the pasture. At 10-18, the Phillies are baseball’s second-worst team – thank you, Milwaukee Brewers – and on pace to outdo those ’72 phrauds by a country mile.

I was going to say that the dismantling of this now-threadbare franchise is disheartening, except it wasn’t dismantled. It was left by its heinous (mis)-management to simply languish, whistling past the proverbial graveyard, handcuffed by foolish contracts, failed player development and frivolous scouting. Fs all around. If there is a franchise “plan,” it is not apparent. And any promise of a fortuitous reversal any year soon is not forthcoming.

In the meantime, those left who still care about baseball in what’s totally become an Eagles town are required to avert their eyes. Shake their heads. And rue the Philly twilight of three beloved athletes who are marking fruitless time in a pitiless march toward the end of their careers, which might very well come in midstream a la another Phillie great Mike Schmidt in 1989. Hitting .203 after 42 games, Schmidt quit at age 39, tearfully aware he no longer could play.

A trail of tears has formed again in Philly. Valedictories hang in the air, cruel and unforgiving, circles of brilliant athletic lives all but closed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suited Up

I’m so happy I’m able to still wear a baseball uniform.

You sometimes hear big-leaguers talk about the thrill of putting on their team’s colors – the pinstripes and the script across the chest and the fitted cap. But it really is true for them; the most self-aware players, at least. Those who understand the rare gift they possess and, in most cases, its minuscule shelf life.

But it is also true for high school coaches, the ranks of which include me as a volunteer assistant who makes it out to the field when he can. That is hardly as often as I would like. Nowhere close. Bills must be paid and office hours logged, it seems. Still, “community service” hours offered and encouraged by my new employer allow me to be out on the field, in the uniform, in the base coach’s box, a couple times a week at games – practice times unfortunately do not mesh with this new schedule. Yet there still are chances. And every chance is a chance I do not take lightly.

In that regard, with first pitch pressing or often already taken place, I have become deft at dashing from the office to the car, the uniform piled in the front passenger seat. Shoes and socks easily slip off as I drive barefoot to the first stop light, which affords ample time to switch out to the uniform socks. At the inevitable next light, the business shirt gets doffed into the back seat as the T-shirt and school-logo coaching shell slide over my head.

The momentarily naked man from the waist up behind the wheel perhaps raises eyebrows in the vehicles nearby.  I never notice, though. I am too busy taking off my pants.

This is easier than it looks, although it does involve unbuckling the seat belt and squirming to the side at just the right angle (while seated at the light, of course!). Lift up, slide down, slip off, toss in the back, slide on most of the way – then snap up, buckle and align at the next light. Probably 10 or 15 seconds flat. Done.

By that point, it’s all over but the donning of the weathered turf shoes that reside in the trunk once I’ve parked at the field. By then, the game face is on, and usually so is the game, so I jog over and slide into the dugout to soak up and savor it all again.

I get to take up space in the first-base coach’s box, cheerleading, congratulating those who make it that far, encouraging those – much more frequent, of course, because baseball is totally a game of failure – forced to make U-turns back to the bench after making out.

I started coaching years ago to touch the part of me that went dormant when I chose a bird in the hand – a sports writing job – over the concurrent pursuit of a college baseball graduate assistantship.

I started as a way to honor my father, who literally built a youth club from the ground up across the street from our house and introduced me to baseball. I think of him, and how proud he was of me even reaching the minor leagues, every time I am on a baseball field, without fail.

I started and continued long after my son and daughter put baseball and softball aside, because being on that perfect field and teaching the game’s finer points — and feeling warm and worthy when a particular lesson takes root — “feeds my soul,” as a helpful confidant of mine likes to say.

You bet I am proud to still wear the colors.

You bet I am blessed to still take the field.

With luck, the kids around me sense a soul being fed — and perhaps might aspire to the same for themselves. Today, and over their countless tomorrows.

 

 

The terrible time . . .

Eight years since the mass murder at Virginia Tech.

The horror remains unimaginable and always will be so. My good friend and former sports writing colleague Kyle Tucker and I were e-mailing some memories today about that terrible time and the role Hokies football played toward healing when it returned 4 1/2 months later; Kyle was decamped in Blacksburg then as a world-class beat writer, as you may know.

It moved me to look up the things he and I wrote from that first emotional game Virginia Tech played that early September, 2007 afternoon when Hokies fans filled Lane Stadium to weep and watch and reflect.

I pulled the front-page story I was asked to do that day from the newspaper archives. I paste it here in memory:

 

A Tech tradition. Memories of ‘the 32.’ Closer to healing.

BLACKSBURG | A voice hung in the air of Virginia Tech’s Lane Stadium on Saturday. The song it sang was simple, clear and haunting. It accompanied a photo montage on the video board, heralding the blessed return of football to this proud college-football town. Healing was in the words. Hope was at its heart.

Walk humbly son

Walk humbly now

And cherish every step

For a life well spent

On this earth we’re lent

Will be marked by the void you have left …

Moments earlier, the 66,233 people who filled the stadium had raised their voices in a spontaneous pre game cheer – for the Hokies’ opponent, East Carolina University.
“Thank you … Pirates!” “Thank you … Pirates!”
Usually, that four-syllable cadence is reserved for a rousing chant that shakes Lane’s walls: “Let’s go … Hokies!”
Then again, usually the visiting school doesn’t present a $100,000 check to its host at midfield right before kickoff.
East Carolina’s donation to the Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund was one of many signs of something dramatic, something different on an overcast afternoon.

Two orange ribbons with a maroon “VT” decorated the playing field. A flyover of two Air Force jets followed the national anthem and a moment of silence. The teams simultaneously ran into the stadium, a departure from the Hokies’ usual solo entrance to a heavy-metal soundtrack. Hokie fans had been asked by Tech’s administration not to boo the Pirates.

Four-and-a-half months after 32 people were killed on campus in the worst mass shooting in U.S. history, Virginia Tech’s community gathered to weep and comfort but, yes, to celebrate its familial bond.

Normally, the opening of football season is one of the most-anticipated events at Virginia Tech. Normalcy, though, really wasn’t in Saturday’s equation, even as the ninth-ranked Hokies defeated East Carolina 17-7.

It was a step, however. Welcome and eagerly awaited.

“I think that’s going to be a continuous process,” head coach Frank Beamer said. “I think as long as you’re Virginia Tech, I think you’re probably going to remember April 16 every day. I think that’s just part of it, and let’s continue to move on.”

Walk humbly, son

And store your pride

When you need strength later on

For your life’s work will be judged if earth

Is saddened when you have gone …

“We heard that song playing when we walked into the tunnel,” Virginia Tech quarterback Sean Glennon said. “I don’t know what it was. But the whole stadium seemed to be silent. That was definitely a weird feeling.”

That kept with the day’s somber tone, the surreal sense that Virginia Tech student Milford John-Williams tried to explain as he lingered near ESPN’s popular “College GameDay” telecast, which originated across from the stadium.

“This is just a mixing bowl of emotions,” said John-Williams, a senior economics major from Woodbridge . “I don’t know that words can really describe it.”

Mingling nearby, Tech graduate Terry Saylor worried how that emotion would affect her team. It will be much this way all season; media will continue to spotlight the Hokies’ ability to rally their “Nation.”

Tributes and spirit-fund checks will continue to flow from opposing schools, even as the Hokies pursue the national-championship chance many experts believe is within their reach.

“I think the players could be feeling an emotional pressure to have a successful season,” said Saylor, Class of ’77, who added that she and her husband, Greg, were “compelled” to attend the game from Atlanta.

“I don’t think you can ever put it behind you completely,” Greg Saylor said. “I’d just as soon it be played down, though. You’ve got football players trying to do their best. You can’t wallow in it continually. But for the moment, this is our reality.”

And perhaps focus was hard to find amid the buildup. The Hokies’ performance was disjointed; they struggled to run the ball, gaining only 33 rushing yards against a team they were favored to beat by four touchdowns.

They scored just one offensive touchdown – 10 points came on a field goal and an interception return. Tech fumbled the ball away twice, and Glennon threw an interception on the Hokies’ first play of the game.

“It’s quite obvious we better be better next week,” said Beamer, whose team plays at second-ranked Louisiana State next Saturday night.

Walk humbly, son

Walk humbly, now

And forget not where you are from

Will you walk humbly, son?

When it was over, Beamer said Tech’s seniors will place the game ball at the memorial at the on-campus Drillfield, where 32 stones honor those killed in the massacre.

Running back Branden Ore said the Hokies know they’ll play for “the 32” all season. And Glennon hoped the Hokies were “mentally tough enough” to deal with the responsibility they have shouldered.

“Once the whistle’s blown, we have to put that out of our heads and go out and play football and do our assignments,” Glennon said. “Obviously we didn’t do that today, because we came out flat, especially on offense.”

Still, a football season is always a hard and challenging walk. But along their new, uncharted road, these Hokies will walk accompanied like never before.

 

 

(Note: That ’07 season, Tech went 11-3 overall, 7-1 in the ACC and won the Coastal Division as well as the ACC championship game.)

Just do it, kid

My default recollection has always been that the notion to become a sports writer came to me late. Relatively. I’d dabbled in it loosely in high school, and for a few bucks for the first time as a college senior —  a bored business major with a native ability to string words together, I’d noticed, better than a lot of my peers in English class.

Once I failed my life-long quest, to that point, to become a major-league ballplayer — getting into the race in the minors but barely off the starting line really — sports writing became a viable option that wound up being more than viable. But it seemed accidental. I would do it a while, have some fun, then get on with coaching college baseball, my real calling.

But when I found out earlier today that Stan Hochman, an all-time great, wise, savvy, prolific and ballsy Philadelphia sports columnist, had died at 86, it hit me that my recollection was faulty. I realized this because, out of the brain dust and cobwebs matted atop each other, I remembered my one and only brush with Stan Hochman.

I’m not here to say he was my hero or mentor. But looking back, he damn well might have been my inspiration. It only took me 45 years to figure that out.

As a kid, 9 or 10 maybe, I was at the Spectrum in Philly with my dad. We were at a 76ers game, although it actually might have been the NBA all-star game. I know I attended the latter around that time in the late ’60s, because I still have the game program in a box in the attic — um, unless I sold it a couple years ago. I think I might have sold it. I’m pretty sure it had Bob Lanier’s autograph on it and I thought, hell, that’s got to be worth a few bucks online. Yeah, I hate to think I sold it . . .

Anyway, why I bring this up: I was just a little kid but I full-well knew who Stan Hochman was. THE awesome columnist for the Philly Daily News, a raucous, tabloid, afternoon daily at the time that ran long stories and devoted pages and pages to sports coverage, many more pages than the Inquirer.

So I am at the game. I am walking by the court during warmups to sneak peeks at the players, perhaps the all-stars. I recognize Stan Hochman from the picture on his column. He is sitting at his seat on press row. I have never spoken to a sports writer in my life. I have no reason to speak to a sports writer. And I have no idea why something moved me, a shy kid with nothing to really say to anybody, to speak to Stan Hochman, of all people, at that moment. (And what would I say anyway?) But I did speak to him. I stopped at his seat. I don’t recall interrupting him, I think he was just sitting there. And my memory tells me I said something along the lines of “Excuse me, Mr. Hochman?” My memory tells me he turned and looked at me. He did not ignore me or tell me to get lost. “Yes, son?”

I told him I really liked his writing. What the hell? What? But he was gracious. He said thank you. And again, for some reason I didn’t quit while I was ahead but I continued: “May I ask you, how did you become a sports writer? How DO you become a sports writer?”

Foreshadowing? Where did THAT come from? I’d always thought I was big-leagues-or-bust. No Plan B. Having a Plan B meant you werent’t all in on Plan A. Who knew I was actually working on B as a pre-teen? Stan Hochman remained pleasant. Patient. I haven’t Googled this, so my memory could be exposed as very wrong and this was all a dream, in which case this would all be embarrassing. But Stan Hochman answered my question. My questions. My recollection is — again, I haven’t awoken Mr. Google — he said he had been in the Navy, and no, he had not gone to college to become a sports writer (I had asked him if he’d gone to college to become a sports writer). Somehow, it had just happened, he said. He started writing and soon enough he had become Stan Hochman, the sports writer (soon to be the Philly sports writing legend). And he said kid, you could do it, too. If you want to do it, why not? You could do it, too.

I thanked him and moved along, wary even then of over-staying my welcome and being a pain in the ass. But I had shared Stan Hochman’s space for maybe 60 seconds. He had encouraged me, some dumb kid bugging him before a game. I went on and continued to read his blunt, witty, bare-knuckle column in a bare-knuckle pro sports town for years and years.

And in the end, I did not go to school to become a sports writer. I just started writing, and soon enough I was a sports writer. Damn if Stan Hochman hadn’t said it could be so. Damn if he wasn’t right.

 

Kentucky? Read all about it

If you want the best, most authoritative, most compelling sports-writer coverage of Kentucky’s quest to win two more games and complete an undefeated college basketball season with the NCAA title, riding with Kyle Tucker of the Louisville Courier-Journal is where you want to be.

No writer has been closer to coach John Calipari’s program the last few years. If it is happening in or around Kentucky’s team, my man KTuck, still known in Virginia for his exhaustive, game-changing beat work on Virginia Tech football, is all over it. Hell, he’s all over it before it happens.

You know what I mean. He’s the best there is at the day-to-day college sports grind. Nobody grinds the grind like Kyle, and that’s a badge of pride not awarded lightly. He’s just the best. He cares. He knows his stuff. And through skillful reporting and writing, he wants to you know and care, too.

Check him out all week through the title game next Monday, where Kentucky will be if it beats Wisconsin on Saturday night.

On Twitter, he’s @KyleTucker_CJ. Follow him now, sports fan. You’ll be glad you did.