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January 1, 2018

Wait: You Mean I Can Get A JOB Doing This?

The first time was the Summer of ’66.

My grandparents drove over from Louisiana to where we lived in South Carolina and we went to Washington, D.C. I was 6 or 7. Me and daddy and my Granddaddy Teddy went to the top of the Washington Monument. We went to the Smithsonian Institute. We saw the White House.

That was good. That was fine. But I’d seen ponies and puppies being born back in Dillon County, so…

But then…

Then we went to a Washington Senators, Kansas City A’s baseball game. Sat 40 yards up from the first base dugout. RFK Stadium. The Senators won, 8-1. My baby sister woke from a two-hour nap, stretched and said, “That was a good game.”

And it was. And it got me to thinking…

Nov. 21, 1970. Final game of the regular season, clear-as-a-bell Saturday afternoon in the original filled-to-the-brim Death Valley in Clemson. S.C. The South Carolina Gamecocks beat the home-standing Tigers, 38-32, and I watched it while standing on the hill that today is stadium seating around the north end zone. It was the first college game I’d ever been to.

I was 11 years and 10 days old.

Guys in my little hometown took me. They could have drank beer all the way up there and back, but for some reason, they took me. They were in their mid-20s, a lifetime older than I was. Lyn Moody. Hayes Barfield. Rudy Huggins. Wayne Baxley. Seems like there was one more. Maybe Cricket Cox. They took care of me: I sat front middle, back when bench seats were a thing.

The particulars of the day are hazy. What I remember most is this: How can there be this many people in the world? This many colors? This kind of unrehearsed roar?

As far removed from RFK and Death Valley as I usually was in reality, those experiences were where I felt, besides home, most at home. And secretly I knew: All I ever wanted to be was a writer.

I read a lot when I was little, and still do. When I was a boy, I listened to tobacco and corn and soybean farmers tell stories. I listened to their wives. I listened to daddy preach three sermons a week. I listened to momma’s too, only they were shorter and more subtle.

And I played ball and watched ball.

The moments were training me. The days didn’t know it and neither did I. Designated Fate? Probably. It’s been hard but fun to write all this time. So of this new venture? Sure. We’re all supposed to be doing what we’re supposed to be doing, so…[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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October 5, 2017

A Thousand Saturdays

I don’t like the term “bucket list,” mainly because I don’t know why a bucket has to be involved. (Can’t it just be a list?)

But if you were to ask me why I am taking on this whole whatever-it-is thing we’ve named Designated Writers, it’s really very simple.

One thousand Saturdays.

Not sure where I heard it, but it wasn’t that long ago that someone talked about life at this age. Too old to be considered young for anything – I’m older than half the managers in the major leagues – but too young to get a discount in the golf course pro shop.

And what was said that brought it home for me was this: When you get to this point in life, you have about 1,000 Saturdays remaining. You better make the most of them.

So here goes.

If I told you that this website was something I’ve always wanted to do, I’d be lying. I didn’t lay in bed when I was a kid thinking “One of these days, I’m going to be a part of a kick-ass website.”

Twelve years into my career as a sports writer – something I was sure I would do forever – the plug got pulled. (A story for another day.) But writing, sports or otherwise, has never left me.

And so I watched as technology changed everything and thought and thought … and wondered and wondered … maybe it will all come back, though in some form I never imagined.

Or maybe it was just timing and my ability to pick up the phone and contact my partner in crime, Teddy Allen, at just the right time.

I’m a part of Designated Writers because this is something I want to do as the Saturdays begin to count down. I’ll get to the Grand Canyon or Lambeau Field or St. Andrews eventually. But this is what makes Saturdays – and the rest of the week — even more significant.

I love my real job and I have a second job I love as well. But this? This is what I was meant to do at a time of my life when I was meant to do it.

We will give it all we have for as long as we can. Sometimes (hopefully not often) we will produce content that isn’t fit for the cat to sleep on. But you will always know that we are doing this purely because it is what gets us from this Saturday to next Saturday.

Let’s get started.

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