My original intention of these sports posts was do it weekly. That ain’t gonna happen.

If this were my “job” (and this site may soon look more like a job, but that’s another story), i would work to write one of these weekly. But it ain’t my job…yet.

For now, i will post these sports commentaries occasionally, hopefully with the same approach as Fred Russell.

This commentary was set off by watching a sport i do not fully understand or appreciate: soccer, specifically college women’s soccer.

Maureen was attending one of her “OSHER” classes, which she loves. They are college “courses” of various lengths for adults. No credit is given. The classes are taught, or presented by college professors. Here in the Southwest corner, San Diego State and University of California professors participate (i don’t think University of San Diego professors participate). Maureen has taken art history, history of religion, Italian, and a bunch of others, but no sports-themed courses, which is what this post is supposed to be about. So i shall cease this deviation from the topic at hand.

…Anyway, Maureen was out, so i washed the second load of clothes and was in the den (i like “den” better than “family” room: it’s just the two of us here now) folding and putting them on hangers . i turned on the television with the unlikely to be fulfilled hope of finding something watchable. Recalling something i passed over on the sports television schedule in the morning paper, i turned to the SEC Network, which fills up the non-athletic event airspace with some guy named Paul Finneman talking and talking and talking about unimportant stuff. But as the newspaper sidebar had indicated, i tuned into the Vanderbilt Women’s Soccer Team playing Florida in the Southeastern Conference tournament.

There are several things i should explain before continuing with my comments about the quarterfinal match.

1. For anyone who has read just a little bit of my stuff or knows me, i am a huge Vanderbilt sports fan. Unlike many folks back home, i root for Tennessee, Alabama, and Kentucky (in that order) unless they are playing against Vandy. i also root for other SEC teams, with the same caveat about Vandy competition, when they are playing non-conference opponents, especially the PAC whatever number they are using now, which used to be “Ten.” I grew up as a huge fan of both the Commodores and the Vols because of my father and George Harding. i root for Vandy, not just because i attended there, but because they want to be competitive in the right way in the SEC (more on that and Athletic Director David Williams later), sort of like Stanford in the PAC whatever it is.
2. i know very little about soccer, and a great deal of it makes no sense to me. i have watched USA in the World Cup and the Olympics and greatly enjoyed seeing my grandson Sam in one game a couple of years ago. i even played in a game in Key West in 1968. While attending Anti-Submarine Officer training, i joined a bunch of underwater swimming students, and several other students in the training command there to play a team from a Dutch ship that was there on a port visit. They beat the hell out of us. Castle Heights had a soccer team but i figured whoever played a sport in the winter in shorts didn’t quite have a grasp of reality.

But when i turned on the television, there was Vandy leading the superpower Gators, 1-0 in the opening minutes of their tournament soccer match. i had to watch. When i finished folding and hanging the clothes, i pushed the hamper to the side and sat down, other chores forgotten.

It was fun to watch. Florida is a powerhouse and Vandy held its own.

By game’s end, i understood the strategy. i enjoyed the play-by-play and color analysis, which was not over the top, but explained a lot of things i would have missed. The announcers were not super critical “Monday morning quarterbacks,” but pointed out the good play of both teams and praised individuals when they did something above the norm. They pointed out mistakes but the criticism was never harsh.

Vandy lost, 2-1, against a superior team, which frequently sends its  players on to professional teams and the Olympics (remember Abby  Wambach?).

The ‘Dores were smart and good enough to almost pull off an upset, primarily due to brilliant strategy and tactics by Coach Darren Ambrose. Simone Charley is a force. A bit of Ambrose and Corbin needs to be absorbed by Vandy football and basketball coaches. This game was fun to watch.  i’m not much of a soccer fan…but i’m getting there.

In fact, i may watch them a lot more next year.

World Series Observation

My wife has turned into a real baseball fan.

i was ready to move on to football and anxiously awaiting the Commodore, Aztec, and Mocs basketball season even though the University of Chattanooga, Tennessee changed its nickname from Moccasins in honor of the indigenous tribes that once roamed East Tennessee to “Moc” for Mockingbird, the state bird. Apparently some idiots thought “Moccasin” was an insult rather than an honor. i am still high on all three teams going into the season.

But Maureen turned on the baseball games. It was delightful to watch two teams, both of which i wanted to win. i leaned toward the National League Mets because i still dislike the designated hitter. The play was spectacular, and the Royals had a determination to win that was palpable.

But the announcers apparently never heard of a pause. They went off of target, explaining many things that were flat out wrong or stupid.

Joe Buck kept trying to promote individuals making from half a million to twenty-five million dollars as storybook figures. He did it with a voice volume loud enough to raise the dead and my ire. Apparently, just short of screaming at a fast pace is supposed to keep one interested in the baseball announcer world. He was terrible. Good thing his father, Jack Buck, was such a great baseball announcer.

Harold Reynolds was the best of the booth team, but he often went overboard in his analysis. Whatever happened to throw the ball, hit the ball, catch the ball, run the bases, and either score or be out?

Tom Verducci was simply a mess. i don’t like people who haven’t played the game at that level pretending to know as much or more than those that have. And quite frequently, he was flat wrong.

Ken Rosenthal is Ken Rosenthal: knows his stuff but i don’t care for his stuff being interjected during play.

Erin Andrews is savvy and her questions to the managers were very appropriate. But i don’t want to hear what a manager thinks he wants us to hear in the game. i want to watch his players, not him talk. i also wondered if she was there because of her credentials and effectiveness, which she had and was, or for eye candy.

In the first game, Fox Network suffered technical difficulties described as a loss of power in the fourth inning. i could not believe the network people had the power to stop the game in progress. They claimed it was because the loss of power meant there could be no instant replay review.

Give me a break. We’ve played baseball since the middle of two centuries ago without instant replay. They have umpires. Someone was making a decision based on, guess what: money, commercials potentially lost.

After the delay, the broadcast went to the MLB international network where Matt Vasgersian and John Smoltz were handling the announcing duties. They were good. i did not like Vasgersian when he was the Padre television announcer. He wandered off the game and tried too hard to be funny. But for almost a whole inning, he and Smoltz were doing excellent work describing the game and telling the story without over-analyzing.

Then the Fox boys pushed Matt and John out of the booth and put in the three stooges, Harold, Todd, and Curly Joe.

Fox really distracted from a great World Series with enough drama to not require overkill.

Denouement

As much as i bash television, especially ESPN, Fox, and othe network coverage, for self-promotion, poor coverage, bias, terrible announcing, etc., etc., I have to acknowledge i can now watch Vanderbilt and many other teams in sports events i couldn’t even have listened to before the advent of ESPN in 1979. As much as i complain, i am glad the availability of sporting events is what it is today. And as i grow older, i know i can spend my more sedentary days to come watching sports.

So it ain’t all bad.

Perhaps, just perhaps, Castle Heights Military Academy may have been the breeding grounds for my becoming a pocket of resistance.

There had been some previous evidence i might go against the norm. But nothing, nothing like resisting going to Castle Heights, less than a block and then the tree-lined narrow road up the hill.

In 1958, i protested as strongly as i could with my very determined mother and father about their decision to send me to Castle Heights. They knew it would give me a leg up academically; they had received an excellent tuition price for several reasons, one being my grandmother was a housemother for junior school “goobers” in the Mitchell House.

But i was transfixed with this absurd dream of becoming the next Clifton Tribble, star running back for the Lebanon High School Blue Devils, before i would go on and succeed and surpass Doak Walker at SMU or John David Crow at Texas A&M and to go from there to eclipse the Los Angeles Rams’ receiver Crazy Legs Hirsch or Bobby Lane, the quarterback for the Detroit Lions and then the Pittsburgh Steelers. At least, that was my plan.

Besides it was military school and there were no girls.

i lost.

i graduated as a “Cum Honore” cadet in 1962.

Best loss i’ve ever experienced.

Attending Castle Heights as a “town boy” was a unique, wonderful opportunity. Castle Heights served me well. Had it not been for CHMA, i would have never learned the hard, hard lessons of flunking out of Vanderbilt. Nor would have i met some the best friends i continue to have to this day. i would have never ended up at Middle Tennessee State University and graduated with the best degree i could have achieved in literature. i would have never been introduced to the Navy and learned of my love for the sea.

Castle Heights was a magnificent place: professors, regimen, boarding students, day cadets, academic reputation, athletics of the highest quality, and that insanely great student newspaper created by many but driven by the spectacular “Coach” JB Leftwich.

Castle Heights died, an untimely and undeserved demise, in 1987. Loss of Army JROTC support, rising costs, change in culture, Vietnam and the ensuing disrespect for the military, the cessation of the draft, and the costs of upgrading buildings a half century or older all contributed to the closing.

i often wish i could convey to my daughters and grandsons my experience at Castle Heights. Of course, that is as much a pipe dream as replacing Bobby Lane in the pro football annals.

But there are some folks who are dedicated to saving the legacy of that old prep school on the hilltop. There are many others besides the names one sees in the video. But those in this video have done a great job toward establishing a place to store the history of a great place. Rob and Susan Hosier deserve special mention for their dedication and unceasing efforts.

An aside: When i saw the women who are alumni, i could not help but feel some regret my sister Martha, because of the time and the place, was not allowed to attend. She did great in high school and college, and has achieved many wonderful things, especially as a daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother, but her not being able to attend has been a major factor in my being a devoted advocate to women’s equality.

Thank you Barbara Leftwich Froula (and several others) for posting this video on Facebook. i didn’t cry, but the tears did well up. It was a great tribute to the institution and giving us the hope of preserving the legacy as Don Ash so well put it in his final comments.

They were very good years.

i have a lot of “friends” on Facebook. To be honest, i justify this with the intention of taking this website (or “blog”: i still have a great distaste for this label) to a subscription status,  for which Walker Hicks is providing the expertise as we move in that direction. But i also enjoy connecting and reconnecting with folks from back home in Tennessee, Navy friends, folks who are friends and relatives i met through Maureen, and other folks i have met in my myriad of adventures over a half century of living in a whole bunch of places.

i enjoy learning about what they are doing, what thoughts they have about everything, their posts sharing funny and touching links, and their concerns about their friends and family.

My friends run the spectrum from far left to far right. i admire all of their commitment and passion for what they believe.

However, i do get tired of the lemming-like postings on Facebook. They are loyal to whichever side or candidate they believe represents what they believe. But most of what they post is slanted, if not actually untrue because it supports what they believe is right. They are totally one-sided.

But such postings are also lazy. There is no consideration of the other side of the argument. They also are  mean and debasing to the other side. It is just the opposite of honest and open dialogue about issues and policies.

Quite frankly, i get real tired of the laziness, the meanness, and the manipulation of news, quotes, and lord knows what else to sell whatever they are selling, perhaps to themselves.

Then today, i peeled off my “Murphy’s Law” Desk Calendar to today. It read:

Todd’s Two Political Principles

1. No matter what they are telling you, they’re not telling you the whole truth.

2. No matter what they are talking about, they’re talking about money.

Todd, whoever the hell he is, is a very wise man.

i should be writing my column for next Tuesday’s edition of The Lebanon Democrat. As usual, especially in the last year, everything i think about writing i find i have already written there, or i cannot think of anything until sometime late Sunday, so i can start Sunday evening, get tired, go to bed, wake up in the middle of the night, cannot sleep thinking of the column, and get up and get to it, completing the column and the article before the midday Monday deadline, way too late to make Jared Felkins, the editor, feel comfortable even though he’s never complained. But with all of that going on in my mind, i had the urge to write about an event, actually two, that occurred to me today.

As i get closer to seventy-two, yet another milestone of no particular real significance except for it meaning i am older, i have recommitted to some physical well-being. In the last month or so, i have slackened off of my already light workouts and disregarded dietary discipline in the best state of disregarding. i love to eat and love to drink. i can no longer afford to do that at the same consumption rate of my past, but i forget and still try. Someone my age who has my history needs to be a bit more circumspect unless they are ready to go, and i may be a lot of things, but i am not ready to go.

So when the blood pressure monitor suggested i was imbibing and digesting too much, i decided (Again and again; why do i feel like i’m in that movie “Groundhog Day?”) to recommit to physical excellence, or at least what remnants of physical respectability i might attain and maintain.

i vowed to cut back on the booze and the victuals: very moderate success so far, but i am pretty well off because my gourmet chef wife cooks healthy even though i wander off that path whenever i am on my own.

i joined Maureen’s gym where she does yoga four times a week nearly every week. i ain’t into yoga because i discovered early on, there are a whole lot of poses i cannot do and a whole lot more that make me feel stupid. So i went to use all the apparatuses (can someone please tell me why the plural is not “apparati?”) and the weights and especially the rowing machine.

In addition, i decided to resume my early morning sort of aerobic workout. i began running regularly in the final year at Texas A&M NROTC. i had run at several other commands, especially the USS Anchorage, but never kept it up. After i began running almost daily, i was never fast, but from 1979 until the early 1990’s, i would run at least six miles almost every day when not at sea. After work while the Okinawa was in overhaul, in 1982-83, i would frequently run a fourteen-mile course to the Coronado Bridge and back to JD Waits and my condo in the Coronado Cays.

But those days are gone. Sporadically, i do a fartlek, power walk, or some kind of run/walk up our hill to the Catholic Church and up a gradual hill to a convenient turnaround, a distance about 3.2 miles. This practice had fallen into disuse for the last several months.

This morning i resumed the event. Waking at my usual pre-5:00 a.m., i performed my morning ablutions, took the necessary stretching, about quintuple the amount i used to perform before a run, and took off. i decided i would only do a power walk as i knew i needed to build up to running again.

It was dark when i started, giving me the sensation of a morning watch (0400-0800) on the bridge. It was quiet. i was surprised to see a couple of other walkers or runners. The most dedicated of this type go down to Rohr Park at the bottom of our hill and run the perimeter.

Mostly, except for the occasional headlights of a car headed to someone’s work, i was alone in the night. When i reached the apex and turnaround of my journey, this mariner’s eye and soul detected first light, one of the most peaceful times of any day.

Then, as i headed down the hill, i caught sight of something to my right. It looked like a lighting bug flashing once in the middle of the road. i turned my head but saw no more light and no flying bug. i discarded it as a reflection and returned to my task.

About a quarter of a mile further down the hill,  the light flashed again on the periphery of my vision. This time i stopped to look: Nothing.

i have never heard of lightening bugs in California, especially the Southwest corner. Yes, it was most likely two similar reflections. They could have been reflections in my brain.

Lightening bugs are not as plentiful, even scarce back home nowadays. The mosquito spray does not only minimize those nasty critters. i was always disappointed when i could not share one of my Lebanon childhood joys of lightening bugs with my daughters.

But there still were a few back home in the summer but none, none in the Southwest corner.

I am now convinced those two bug lights were an illusion or a reflection, a refraction of light of the moment or in my mind.

Still the remainder of the walk was easy. i thought of the jars with the holes we poked in the top; of running and jumping around that backyard, barefoot in the summer nights, catching bunches of those lightening bugs in the jar and covering with the cap; watching them for what seemed endlessly but was truly only until we had to go in and get ready for bed…and how we would awake to find the lightening bugs in the jar pretty much wiped out.

It was a long time ago, but i still remember the lesson those lightening bugs taught me.

This is the north side of Lebanon High School on East High before it burned down in 1937 (i’m pretty sure it’s the north side, and i think it was 1937 as my uncle, Bill Prichard, the youngest of the Prichard children began school going to multiple shops and homes because of the school had been destroyed and i believe he was a freshman in 1937). The high school was located on the site where Highland Heights Elementary stood for many years. This photo is from  a post card in my parents’ memorabilia.

Other than my uncle not going there, the old building has some family history.

After my grandfather,  Culley Jewell lost part of his hand in the portable sawmill he and my Uncle Jesse constructed from a steam engine they bought in 1918, he became the custodian for Lebanon High School and McClain Elementary. In the 1920’s and 30’s, my father was my grandfather’s primary helper, cleaning the schools after classes each weekday and firing up the boilers for heat early each morning in the colder months.

After one afternoon cleaning the high school in the early 1930’s, Jimmy Jewell was walking home down North Cumberland on the way to his home on West Spring. Estelle Prichard was visiting her mother in a home on North Cumberland where Granny was a 24-7 caregiver. My mother urged my grandmother to the porch to show her the lean young man with a fine mane of hair walking down the street in the bib jeans he wore while cleaning the schools.

Estelle announced to her mother, she was going to marry that young man.

My grandfather was involved with providing a gym for that high school (i do not know where the high school had played basketball previously). He installed the wood floor for the gym in the basement of that high school building. It was where my mother played when she set the season and single game scoring records which stood for a quarter of a century before they were broken by Ann Lucas (1960?) i regret not asking how high the gym’s ceiling was because i always had a hard time understanding how a gym could be in the basement.

But the high school was an impressive structure.