My wife travels with me and my golf partner, Shawn Barker…not because she loves golf. She simply loves the surroundings and the time spent wandering places like Flagstaff and Monterey and Santa Rosa. After a yoga session in Santa Rosa … Continue reading Doodling with Snoopy
I miss the elocution of Yogi Berra. He once said, “The future ain’t what it used to be.” Last night as I watched Draymond Green’s leg fly north like a sledge hammer on wings directly into the fork of Steven Adam’s wickets, I couldn’t help but remember how much better it was in the old days when I played basketball and the physics of a 5’9” white kid who couldn’t jump nor discriminately kick past ankle height made the basketball court a safe haven for opponents body parts. Oklahoma City Thunder center Steven Adams reportedly said Draymond Green has … Continue reading Kicking the Wickets with Yogi
I can envision a time when I stop watching sports, because it’s become self-congratulatory, narcissistic, all-important, and ugly. And then a guy like Buddy comes along and redeems my cynicism and helps me remember the days of my youth when I played sports for no other reason than I loved the thrill of seeing the basketball net ripple and I would shoot until I couldn’t see the net ripple because it was dark but I could still shoot by feel and hear the swish. Thanks Buddy, for that great smile and four great years of joyful basketball. Here’s an article … Continue reading More than enough
This was a football catch for the ages in a million backyards, a thousand Friday nights, and a hundred campus Saturdays, just not according to the technocrats at the National Football League. Continue reading Seven Reasons Dez Bryant did NOT Catch that Football
When Belinda Carlisle of the Go-Go’s sings “Heaven is a place on earth” I stop whatever I’m doing and sing along. ‘Ooh baby do you know what that’s worth, you make heaven a place on earth’ It happened today, in my truck while driving to Tulsa and a blue-haired lady with a handicap sign hanging from her rear view mirror stared me down as she passed on the left. I guess my singing slows my driving and octogenarians humming Sinatra pass me. Is Heaven revealed in common moments, unassuming revelation, like Belinda Carlisle singing about love? Is Heaven a place … Continue reading Icebergs in Corn Fields
The bus crossed the 7th street bridge and I peered over the rail through an open window at the eddies of a muddy river, swirling coffee relentlessly shaping the bank of naked earth. On my first day of junior high ringing bells punctuated my hourly class schedule. This change in my academic life assaulted my senses, along with the smell of lingering cigarette smoke in bathrooms, hot sawdust and oiled metal cuttings from shop class, the musty sour odor of the gym class unwashed, and the siren smell of shampooed hair, the same hair that framed stick figure girls in … Continue reading The Color of God
I love to watch athletes compete…any age, any level…just lay it all out there and try, find a way, play better than anyone ever thought you could. Runners best their career time, diving shortstops covered in dirt, cross-country runners busting the tape with nothing left, talking to their legs and ordering them forward by sheer grit and will. And of course I love the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat when it’s tempered with grace and humanity. That’s the greatness of sport, finding what we have deep down inside, our will, our passion, the uncovering of an indomitable … Continue reading Demigods & Champions
