The Old Perfessor

I'm a professor of journalism at Wingate University near Charlotte, N.C. I've also written about sports for newspapers and other publications for more than 30 years. This blog's about journalism, sports and whatever else I find interesting on any given Sunday or other day, for that matter.

Sunday, July 26, 2009

"There Used to Be a Ballpark"

That's the title of a song which, baseball fan that I am, I've loved since the first time I heard it sung exquisitely by Frank Sinatra.

The lyrics by a songwriter named Joe Raposo (possibly more famous for writing tunes for Sesame Street and the Muppets) are suffused with a feeling of loss about a time and place in the past. I had to call it up on iTunes and give it a listen after I read about yesterday's induction of former Boston Red Sox slugger Jim Rice into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The connection dates back almost 40 years, in one of those "before they were stars" moments. Rice, a native of Anderson, S.C., played for his hometown's American Legion team against the team from my hometown of Clinton in the Legion playoffs during the summer of 1970. One game was played at what was known in town as "Cavalier Ballpark," a facility that in its prime was as nice as some minor league ballparks I've seen. The Clinton Cavaliers, the team it hosted, played baseball in one of the textile leagues, named for the cotton mills that sponsored the teams and still dominated the economy of the region in the post-World War II years.

The quality of play was often better than the low minors at that time, and the rosters included some names that would soon wear big-league uniforms. One of them was retired Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda, who pitched for the team in nearby Joanna in the late 1940s when he could get leave from military duty at Fort Jackson. When he was named manager of the Dodgers in 1976, I was working for The Clinton Chronicle, my hometown's weekly paper, and I interviewed some of his former teammates who still lived in the area. It made a nice "looking-back" column.

One of his former teammates must have sent Lasorda a copy, as I received a package in the mail from him a couple of weeks later with a cordial hand-written note, a Dodgers media guide and an autographed picture. I've been a fan of the man ever since. But back to Rice at Cavalier Ballpark.

As I recall it, that game ended up the deciding one for Anderson in the best 2-of-3 series, and watching Rice was like watching a man play against boys. He hit two monstrous home runs to lead his team to a victory. Those shots may still be orbiting the earth.

I encountered Rice one more time after he began his career with the Red Sox and I had taken my first daily newspaper job with The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, S.C. The paper's sports editor and my boss, Willie Binette, had come to the Grand Strand from the Anderson (S.C.) Independent and he knew Rice and his family well. This was in 1977 and 1978, when Rice rivaled the New York Yankees' Reggie Jackson as the most feared power hitter in baseball. So he was quite a drawing card when Willie prevailed on him to participate in a couple of off-season charity golf tournaments sponsored in part by the paper.

I remember him as a quiet fellow with a bone-crushing grip for a handshake. And he could send a golf ball flying with the same ease that he hit baseballs out of Fenway Park.

And what about that ballpark back in my hometown? It fell into disuse after the Legion baseball program was discontinued sometime in the Seventies, and it was eventually demolished -- not sure when. But it always makes me feel good to go back and see that kids are still playing ball there on the site. It's right next to M.S. Bailey Elementary School, and it serves as a practice and playing field for teams in the town's YMCA leagues.

The park might be gone, but the game endures.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Just catching up -- a trip to S.C. and other matters

Teaching three summer classes, as I'll be doing until the end of this week, hasn't left much time for blogging. But I'm taking a break from grading here on a Sunday afternoon to catch up a little bit.

I'm teaching one of these classes for the very first time, a PR, Technology and Media class in our university's Master's degree program in Sports Administration. I'm convinced that anyone involved in sports coaching or management needs some training in dealing with media, and in formulating messages to and getting feedback from key publics. (I was just as convinced that school employees needed the same thing when I worked for my hometown school district as a PR person back in the early 1980s.)

We're doing a variety of assignments, including a public relations campaign and various kinds of PR writing and I'm having each student maintain a blog to give them a taste of this useful tool for creating community and informing publics. I'll post some links in the next couple of weeks to show you their work. And, of course, we'll go to a sports event -- I'm having them take an insider's look at staging a Charlotte Knights baseball game later on this week.

It's made for full weeks this month and so the long Friday-Saturday-Sunday weekends have been welcome once they get here.

I spent Friday in South Carolina making a couple of enjoyable visits. I had lunch in Greenville with two friends from our days as Clemson students -- actually one is a hometown friend whom I first got to know in junior high school. He has worked in IT for a company in Greenville since the late Seventies -- they called it "data processing" back then.

The other lives in Harrisburg, Pa., and he and his wife were in town for his niece's wedding. We usually get together for a Clemson football game each fall, a streak that was broken last fall when I was in London. So it had been nearly two years since we'd had the opportunity to hang out.

We don't take much for granted, since among the three of us we've had a stroke, a couple of heart attacks and an angina attack. Maybe we're the real "Cardiac Kids" -- I keep thinking about those "Da Bearrsss" guys in the "Super Fans" Saturday Night Live skits from a while back.

I spent the evening with my brother, Jeff, in Clinton, where -- after waiting out a severe thunderstorm -- we had an enjoyable dinner at a fairly new place in town, the Jacobs Highway Study Club. Jason Bundrick, the proprietor, has turned the former Pizza Hut location into a fun place to get a burger and a beer.

There are plenty of TVs tuned to sports, pool tables and occasional live music. But our favorite feature is the restaurant's nod to its name -- shelves along the wall filled with a variety of reference and other books. Jeff and I usually take down the old World Book Encyclopedia Year Books.

I'm not sure whether anybody else ever really reads those books, but we get a kick out of browsing while we eat. If there's ever a test, we'll be in great shape.

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Where in the world is Bartolo Colon?

It's interesting how some stories in the media take on a life of their own.

As I took my Wingate University sports reporting class to the Charlotte Knights' game with the Norfolk Tides tonight, it was against the backdrop of a story that actually started national and then went local.

The Chicago White Sox had announced earlier in the week that veteran right-handed pitcher Bartolo Colon would make the first of several planned starts Thursday for the Charlotte Knights to rehabilitate a sore knee. Problem was, there was about a 24-hour period of time where Colon, who had been in Arizona doing some conditioning, wasn't reachable. (Colon doesn't exactly have a reputation as The Great Communicator anyway -- according to an AP story, White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen said it took three days to get in contact with Colon after the team signed him as a free agent in the offseason.)

This became a major story this morning, as the Knights PR staff said they started receiving calls from Chicago media trying to determine if Colon had arrived in Charlotte. It made it to ESPN, and according to Knights PR staffers, that national validation sparked interest from local TV and radio stations, who then also jumped on the story.

But there was nothing to tell until shortly before the start of tonight's game, when apparently Colon checked in to let the Knights know he was on the way. Now in a major league rehab assignment, the minor league manager is usually a fairly passive participant, letting the big league team set the agenda for their player. I asked Knights manager Chris Chambliss about all this after the game, a lackluster 5-1 loss by Charlotte to the Tides.

It provided a tiny moment of levity on a night when his team, which lost for the sixth time in seven games, hadn't given him much to be happy about. Here's the video:



Thanks to class member Chris Siers for shooting the interview.

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Baseball, fireworks and the American way of life

In almost all of the past 15 years, I've finished up the Fourth of July at Knights Stadium in Fort Mill covering a baseball game. (I've always wondered how the Charlotte Knights manage to get the July 4 home game nearly every year.)

As I've noted before, I always enjoy covering baseball, but the "event" that is the Fourth of July makes that game extra enjoyable. And so it was last night. The Knights have been plagued by low attendance in recent years -- near or at the bottom of the International League most of this season. (It's ominous to note that the teams that have kept Charlotte out of the cellar in recent years solved their attendance problems by moving -- Ottawa to the Allentown, Pa., area in 2008 and Richmond to Gwinnett County, Ga., earlier this year.)

But the July 4 game always brings out a crowd at the stadium near the N.C./S.C. state line. Crowd was 15,020 last night, third best in the stadium's 20-year history, and surpassed only by the previous two July 4 crowds. See the video for a look at the fans.



And it could have been just the number of people in the house, but it also seems like Independence Day brings out the best in the patriotic rituals that usually accompany an athletic event in this country. You could actually hear folks singing the National Anthem and a full-throated rendition of "God Bless America" at the seventh inning stretch was gratifying.

They were rewarded with a nice performance by the Knights, who beat the Durham Bulls, 11-2. Click here for my story in The Charlotte Observer. In addition to the offensive fireworks noted in my story, the Knights also got great pitching. Starting pitcher Carlos Torres (8-4) gave up four hits and struck out nine in eight innings. His strikeout total (93) gave him the International League lead.

I talked with Torres after the game and pursued this story line a little, but he minimized the importance. "The guy I passed has been in the major leagues for a month," he said. "I'd rather get them all out in one pitch. It's more of a tribute to my catchers for calling the right pitches in the right spots."

Gwinnett's Tommy Hanson, who was called up to the Atlanta Braves on June 3, had been the strikeout leader.

Then it was time to watch a little fireworks. I was glad that the comparatively brief game -- 2 hours, 22 minutes -- gave me a few minutes to go down to the bottom of the ramp the players take to the field and watch the pyrotechnics. Like everything else about July 4, the fireworks were bigger and better than the Knights' usual Saturday post-game fireworks -- which I usually miss because I'm working.

It was an appropriate ending to a good day in America.

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