CONCORDIA, Illinois. The walls and the rafters of the high school gym in this small downstate town are festooned with banners representing conference, district and state championships won by the boys' sports teams, the Cougars, a symbol of pride for local residents.
Cougar Pride!
"Kids here grow up dreaming of playing football or basketball when they get to high school," says local feed and seed dealer Lloyd Knox. "It's just part of their heritage."
"That's it--let him get behind you!"
And yet Concordia, as the smallest school in the widely-dispersed Tri-County League, hasn't had a winning season in any sport besides bass fishing in over a decade. "We know we can't compete with Champaign, or Urbana, or Champaign-Urbana," Knox says. "So we tell our kids you've got to find what you're good at and stick to it. That's a good life lesson."
The Cougar Marching Band
What the Concordia Cougars excel at is being good losers, and the banners represent "sportsmanship" awards handed out by league officials to keep smaller schools from cancelling their athletic programs and concentrating on academics. "It's like in college, when you hope the dumb kids don't drop out of chemistry or whatever," says Holcomb Blasdale, volunteer commissioner for the Tri-County League. "You need somebody to keep the curve down to a reasonable level."
"A spectacular dropped pass!"
Cougar athletes are taught to go out of their way to give opponents the benefit of the doubt in any contested situation. "When a kid on the other team signals for a fair catch, he's basically running up the white flag of surrender," says head football coach Wilber Rees. "If he drops the ball, we think you ought to give him a chance to pick it up before you just pummel him."
"Have I done everything I could to prepare my kids to lose graciously today?"
This Geneva Convention approach to interscholastic athletics has won Concordia--which means "place of peace" in Latin--many fans in other towns in the region. "The people from Concordia are so nice and pleasant," says Lu Anne Diggs of Waverly, Illinois. "We just love when they come to town--it helps our kids' self-esteem to beat somebody by twenty points without breaking a sweat."
As spring competition begins, Concordia Athletic Director Dirk Powell hopes his teams can again achieve a "hat trick"--worst record and best sportsmanship in the three major sports, football, basketball and baseball. "My only regret is that we don't play hockey here," he says. "Then we'd have a grand-slam."
NEW YORK. Encouraged by the success of its business-casual dress code in reforming the league's "hip-hop" image, NBA officials today announced that they will push for a "tattoo cap" when the current collective bargaining agreement expires at the end of the 2011 season.
Stern: "A tasteful 'Mom' on your bicep will not count against the cap."
"We feel it is important that our players not scare the bejesus out of affluent demographic groups with gangsta-style tattoos," David Stern said at a press conference here today. "Otherwise we might as well name the next two expansion franchises the 'Crips' and the 'Bloods'," he added, showing off his "street cred" to the admiration of NBA beat reporters.
"This kid's got a lot of heart, and a lot of epidermis."
Under the proposed cap, teams would be limited to a total tattoo coverage of 61% of the upper arms and necks of players on their twelve-man rosters. Teams could free up cap space by trading a power forward from an "urban" school for a shooting guard from Brigham Young or a flat-footed center from Gonzaga.
Seattle SuperSonics' owners: "Well, there was this girl named 'Tina' . . ."
Player representatives reacted angrily to the proposal. Mark Madsden of the Timberwolves said he wanted to see the bodies of NBA owners in the showers before agreeing to any cap. "Some of these guys may have 'Semper Fi' on their butts. Let them drop their pants and show the players what they got."
We do so many defensive drills in practice that we do them in our sleep. Man, I come home putting the press on my woman, denying her the ball. It's sad, man.
Boston Celtic Kevin Garnett, The Boston Herald
It was 7:28, and I had my game face on. I put the last glass in the dishwasher, dried my hands with a terry-cloth towel, and headed for the den.
Kevin Garnett
As I walked in, I saw my wife Sarah "Sally" Christopher, a two-time Volunteer of the Year for the Uphams School PTO, fiddling with a dried flower arrangement on the armoire. Just like her, I thought, acting blase right up to the moment of tipoff.
"Are you going to be in here or the living room?" she asked as she turned around. Like I'd tell her where I was going to set up. "Can't say," I said as I picked up the local paper and nonchalantly flipped through the high school sports section. The second hand on the Pottery Barn Scottish Terrier clock on the wall ticked up towards twelve. We looked each other in the eyes, bent at the knees and extended our arms for balance. Bring it on.
That is just so precious!
As the clock struck 7:30, we lunged for the remote and, after a brief scramble, I emerged with possession. "Celtics vs. Kings," I said as I pointed and clicked at the big-screen TV. "You're going to have to go watch 'The Queen' someplace else."
"That's okay, I'd rather spend time with you," she said calmly as she picked up a Martha Stewart Living from the wicker magazine basket at her feet and took a seat on the couch. I wasn't fooled--I know a zone defense when I see it.
The Celtics took a 25-17 lead as the first quarter ended, and I decided it was time for dessert. "I'm going to go get some ice cream," I said as I got up from my chair. "You want anything?"
"No, I'm fine for now, thanks," she said, not even looking up from a photoessay on homegrown herbs. She had learned the game in the hardscrabble Presbyterian living rooms of her youth, in a gritty suburban neighborhood where you didn't get to watch H.R. Pufnstuf unless you were quick to the dial, and willing to throw an elbow at your big sister if you had to.
H.R. Pufnstuf: He's your friend when things get rough.
I scooped myself a bowl of Haagen-Dazs strawberry frozen yogurt--I needed to be ready to run if she decided to switch to an uptempo game in the second quarter. I turned and walked back to the den and saw--Sally with the remote in her hand, clicking for the Lifetime Channel!
Lifetime Disease-of-the-Week Movie: "I just hope you live 'til the next commercial, sweetie."
"Hey, what gives!" I said with a pouty look that I learned by watching Miami Heat coach Pat Riley.
"Gimme the remote, dammit!"
"You snooze, you lose," she said as she watched a mother lovingly stroke her daughter's forehead.
I flopped down in my chair as if I'd just been pulled from a game for a missed slam dunk. "What's the Disease-of-the-Week?" I asked, knowing that someone would get sick and die before I'd see another transition basket.
"They don't know yet," Sally replied. "They think it might be Osgood-Schlatter's Disease."
Osgood-Schlatter's Disease
"What a crackpot diagnosis that is!" I said with a snort. "Everybody knows Osgood-Schlatter's primarily affects adolescent boys . . ."
"Primarily," she said without taking her eyes from the screen.
I decided to slow things down and work the shot clock. It is virtually impossible for a woman to watch the Lifetime Channel for more than ten minutes without breaking into tears. Sure enough, just as they wheeled the girl into the operating room for emergency surgery, Sally began to sniffle.
"I'm going to go get a tissue," she said as a touching commercial for instant cinnamon-flavored cappucino (yuk) came on.
"You getting a cold?" I asked solicitously, if sarcastically.
"Keep up the trash-talk and you can sleep on the couch," she said.
As soon as she was out of the room I set up on the block in front of the cable box and switched back to the game--45-44 Kings, halftime. The Boston Celtics dance team--who go by the name 'The Boston Celtics Dance Team'--took their places on the historic parquet floor of the TD Banknorth Garden to shake some obligatory male-fan-base-pleasing booty.
Red Auerbach is spinning in his grave.
"Oh for the love of God!" Sally exclaimed when she returned as she saw the rock-hard abs that are standard equipment on the underemployed aerobics instructors who succeed in the fiercely-competitive world of NBA fleshpot entertainment.
"I thought you liked dance," I said with an innocent look on my face. "Sure, they're not the Boston Ballet, but then who is?"
Co-Defensive Players of the Game
Sally plopped down on the couch as Rocco and Oakie, our two cats, came into the room, looking for a warm lap to sit in for the rest of the night. I don't like to brag, but they do favor me--maybe because I'm such a sensitive guy.
Sure enough, they both hopped up in my chair and settled down after doing that circling thing that cats do to find the best spot. Rocco took the high lap up by my waist where he could get his chin scratched, while Oakie took the low post on my ankles, which were resting on a footstool.
"They sure love you, don't they," my wife purred with a chocolate-eating grin after our little tableau vivant was set.
"What's not to like?" I asked rhetorically.
"Oh, I don't know," she said with a thoughtful look on her face. "Maybe the way you hog this!"
As she spoke she stole the remote from my hand. I was stuck--I couldn't fight my way through the double-team. "Illegal defense!" I yelled.
Deviated septum: Before, and after.
"You're not going to get that call in a close one," she replied coldly. "The refs aren't going to win the game for you."
Sally switched back to Lifetime, where the ailing daughter was seen walking out of the hospital and throwing away her crutches. "Mom!" she cried. "I'm fine--it was just a deviated septum!"
"Oh, honey, that's wonderful!" the mother exclaimed. "Now we can go shopping for scented candles and potpourri again."
"Okay, it's over," I said. "Can we switch back to the game now?"
"Let's see what's on the House and Garden Channel."
BOSTON. In a move that reflects Danny Ainge's philosophy to "get old in a hurry," the Boston Celtics today traded guard Rajon Rondo and the starting lineup of St. Brigid's fourth-grade CYO Falcons to the Philadelphia 76ers for the rights to Dolph Schayes, a star of the early NBA.
Dolph Schayes, pictured shortly after the earth cooled.
"I am confident that with the addition of Dolph Schayes we have put in place the last piece of the puzzle that has been sitting on the card table in the game room at the Shady Acres Rest Home for some time," said Ainge, who is Executive Director of Basketball and Mascot Operations for the Celtics. "Dolph is the kind of guy I would have idolized when I was growing up, if I hadn't been two years old when he retired."
"Aw, Red--do I have to wear my blazer to the game?"
Ainge and the Celtics made headlines around the league over the summer as they acquired thirty-two year-old Ray Allen and thirty-one year-old Kevin Garnett for young stars Gerald Green, 21, and Al Jefferson, 22. "Gerald and Al have a great future in this league," Ainge said, "but they didn't fit into our system where everybody has to buy a round after a win."
Togo Palazzi: Is he available?
Those who know Ainge personally say his purge of young players is tied to feelings of insecurity he first developed when he joined the Celtics as a baby-faced guard out of Brigham Young University in 1981. "Danny used to get carded a lot," says former teammate Robert Parrish. "That's what happens when you try to use Chuck E. Cheese tokens to buy a pitcher of light beer."
"Hey Danny--these two bet fifty tickets they can beat you at the free throw machine!"
As for Schayes, the 79-year old says he is excited about the prospect of winning his second NBA championship. "The only time I won it all was in '55," Schayes said. "I don't remember which century."
NEW YORK. Barry Bonds has courted controversy in a variety of ways over the course of his career, but he underestimated the force of the reaction he's received after he called HBO announcer Bob Costas a "midget".
Eddie Gaedel and Bob Costas: No comparison.
"Costas? Please--don't make me laugh," said Rachel Wilner of the Little People of America, a group whose members include both midgets--short, normally-proportioned people--and disproportioned short persons or dwarfs. "Maybe a mental midget if you're talking about 'Fair Ball'," a book by Costas, she added with contempt.
Bonds' comment came in response to an interview between Costas and Curt Schilling in which the Red Sox pitcher said Bonds' refusal to address accusations of steroid use was tantamount to an admission of guilt. Logic-Impaired Americans, which provides support to individuals whose cognitive skills prevent them from making sense, came to Bonds' defense. "Barry has a right to confuse the message and the messenger," said James Robinson, the group's executive director. "Those two words share many of the same letters."
"I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to compare you to Bob Costas."
While Eddie Gaedel--a midget sent to bat as a member of the St. Louis Browns by owner Bill Veeck--holds a hallowed place in baseball history, there has never been a midget broadcaster, and Bonds issued a press release to clarify his comment. "I did not mean, nor did I intend to suggest or imply, that Bob Costas could ever qualify as a midget. I regret any offense I have given to any actual midget."
Marvin "Bad News" Barnes
Costas began his career as play-by-play announcer for the Spirits of St. Louis, an American Basketball Association team led by Marvin "Bad News" Barnes, the 1975 ABA Rookie of the Year who once composed the following limerick about Julius Erving on the eve o####ame between the Spirits and the New York Nets.
Bad News Barnes and Dr. J.
There once was a doctor named Erving, Whose slam dunks were especially unnerving, But when Marvin gets movin', And the crowd gets to groovin', For the Doctor a hospital bed they'll be reserving.
During his college career Barnes was suspended from the Providence College Friars after beating his roommate with a tire iron. "News will be back," Barnes said at the time, "'cause his fans be demandin' it."
Spirits of St. Louis jersey
When reached for comment, Costas declined to respond to a question posed by a reporter for Gerbil Sports Network. "Ooo--Mr. On-Line Journalist," he sneered. "You started out writing about Barry Bonds, then got completely sidetracked with a stupid digression about Marvin Barnes. You have the attention span of a chipmunk," he said before pausing. "Actually, that means you're highly qualified to write a blog."
KNOB NOSTER, Missouri. Pro basketball scouts and agents have been flocking to this small town in central Missouri for months now, making for crowded conditions at the Motel 6 on State Highway 50. "I've had to put two guys into the same room with a rollaway bed," says owner Gene Ray Hampton. "They complain they don't have any privacy."
Clell "World" Furnell
What the scouts come to see is the man who is expected to make donkey basketball, a variation of the American indoor game played on the backs of Equus asinus, the domestic ####, as popular as the NCAA's Final Four tournament.
Driving to the hoop.
"Donkey basketball is the next major sport, and Clell 'World' Furnell is going to be its George Mikan and Michael Jordan rolled into one," says David Nurvine, a one-man promotional whirlwind who has bankrolled the National Donkey Basketball League's Springfield, Missouri franchise, the Missouri Mules.
Mikan: He changed the way the game is played without using a donkey.
For smaller cities across America who clamor for the glamour and excitement of major league sports but don't have a local billionaire who can front the money for a baseball, football or NBA franchise, donkey basketball is seen as the next best thing.
Twenty-second manure time-out.
"We'll have eight teams to start," says NDBA President Horace Schuster, "Chicopee, Mass., Troy, New York, Birmingham, Alabama, Paducah, Kentucky, Hot Springs, Arkansas, Scranton, Pennsylvania, Moline, Illinois" and the Missouri entry. "We hope to go global by 2012," he adds. "There's a lot of donkeys in Mexico."
Kevin McHale
What has the scouts salivating is Furnell, who has a low center of gravity combined with an extraordinary reach that is drawing comparisons to Kevin McHale, the Celtics forward of the '80's who could tie his shoes without bending at the waist. "Clell has the perfect body for donkey basketball, and he's going to revolutionize the game," says Schuster.
"The Mules are on the clock with the sixth pick."
With the league's first draft approaching fast, there are rumors of teams trading a bundle of picks to get at Furnell, who says he is looking to buy his mother her first double-wide house trailer with a signing bonus that is expected to be in the high four figures.
Home Sweet Home--at last.
"We been livin' in rented trailers as long as I can remember," says Furnell. "If I have anything left over, I'm goin' out to the QuikPik and get a Big Gulp Slurpee."
SEDALIA, Mo. It's the final round of the third-grade spelling bee at Sacred Heart Elementary School in this small Midwestern town, and you could cut the tension in the school's gymnasium with a wooden ice cream spoon.
The two finalists are Dixie Lee Ray, a tall girl with dark brown hair, and Teddy Rouchka, a shorter boy wearing the tie and white shirt his mother bought him for his First Holy Communion.
The metal folding chairs are packed with parents, teachers and students, all perched on the edge of their seats. Only one person looks out of place; a middle-aged man with a sport shirt open at the collar to reveal a gaudy gold chain on his hairy chest skulks along the back wall of the gym. He is holding a Dora the Explorer back-pack in each hand, one blue, one pink.
Lloyd "C-Note" Daniels, the apparent intruder, is a new element in the increasingly high-stakes world of competitive spelling; a sports agent who stands to make millions if he can sign a young spelling phenom and serve as escort to the world of professional orthography and big-ticket product endorsements.
"The smart money's on Dixie Lee," says Daniels as his eyes scan the room for the school's principal, Sister Mary Joseph Arimathea, a Precious Blood nun whom the agent describes as a "holy pain in the ####." "Teddy's a comer, no doubt about it, but Dixie Lee's parents are professors at State Fair Community College, so she's got the bloodlines," says Daniels, handicapping the action.
Spelling bees, like beach volleyball, had been around for years before a "perfect storm" in the entertainment industry came together to bring them to national prominence; the documentary film "Spellbound", the Broadway musical "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee", and the Hollywood dramatic hit "Akeelah and the Bee". "Before all the hoopla, I had this gig pretty much to myself," says Daniels. "Now, guys who used to schlep sneakers around to CYO basketball tournaments are trying to horn in on my game."
Teddy Rouchka steps to the microphone to spell the first word of the final round. The moderator, Sister Mary Clarus, the school's no-nonsense music instructor, calls out "accelerator".
Teddy is obviously nervous, and Daniels watches closely to see how he handles himself in this clutch situation.
"Use in a sentence, please," the boy says, and after a moment's thought, the nun says "When the green light turns to yellow, Mommy steps down hard on the accelerator," to scattered laughter from the audience.
"Did you see that?" says Daniels, folding his arms across his chest as if he is evaluating the brush strokes in a Caravaggio. "He knows what the word means. He just asked for a context check the way a good point guard calls a 20-second timeout--to settle things down. Smart," the agent explains. He nods his head at the same time as he starts to tap his temple with an index finger and ends up poking himself in the eye.
Up on stage, Rouchka clears his throat. "Accelerator. A-C-C-E-L" he begins, then pauses.
"Lot of kids will say 'O' now if they're spelling phonetically," Daniels says. "Street smarts are okay, but you want kids with good fundamentals, too."
A mind-reader would see Rouchka's brain running through the possible vowels to use--A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y--for the next letter. The gym is as quiet as it was the day before when the seventh-grade basketball team needed two last-minute free throws from power forward Earl Gehrke to stave off a late rally by archrival Knob Noster.
"E", Rouchka says, and the rest of the letters spill out like SpaghettiO's from a can. "R-A-T-O-R", the boy declaims. Daniels is duly impressed.
"The kid nailed it," he says. "He's got Kool-Aid in his veins."
Dixie Lee is next, and she strides forward with a confident air that borders on cockiness. "She's like a Derek Jeter cause she's got that playoff experience under her belt," says Daniels. Indeed, the slim girl with harlequin glasses scored a perfect "100" in last year's second-grade competition, advancing to the regionals in Green Ridge, Mo. before transposing the first "a" and the "u" in "restaurant".
Sister Mary Clarus calls the word "malfeasance", and a murmur rises from the crowd. "Geez," Daniels says with a bewildered look on his face. "That's not part of a third-grade curriculum. She can handle it, but it's not gonna be easy."
The girl doesn't hesitate. "Malfeasance," she begins. "M-A-L-F-E-I--"
A groan goes up from Dixie Lee's mother, and just like that it's over. At first, Teddy Rouchka doesn't realize what has happened since he's never heard the word that brought him victory. When he sees the girl break into tears, however, he leaps out of his chair and pumps his fist before heeding hand signals from his mother not to incur a personal foul for excessive celebration.
It's time for Daniels to make his move. "I'm going after both of them," he says as he picks up the backpacks and moves to the door through which the students will return to their classrooms.
"Hey Teddy--great job! Dixie Lee--tough, tough word, okay? I got something for both of youse."
Sister Mary Joseph Arimathea sees Daniels and moves to cut him off. "Get out of my school, you ####!" she screams.
"Hey Sister Joe, I don't want no trouble, okay? You're doing your job, and I'm just doing mine."
"Dora!" Dixie Lee squeals with excitement when she sees the pink backpack.
"There you go sweetie," Daniels says as he hands it to her. "It's got an Artgum eraser in it, and some Eberhard-Faber pencils and . . ."
Arimathea grabs the backpack and throws it in the school's lost and found bin. "That's what I think of you and your . . . your . . . bullfeathers!" she says, spitting the words out with fury.
"I want Dora!" Dixie Lee cries, and the flow of tears she had stanched before begins again.
"Here sweetie--I got some Sour Patch Kids for you," Daniels says as he slips the girl a pack of the soft and chewy treats before she runs off in tears to the girls' room.
"You're going to ruin her amateur standing," the nun screams, her red face brilliant against her white habit.
"What about me?" Teddy says as he tugs at Daniels' sport shirt.
"You?" Daniels asks expansively. "You're the champ! You get one too!" he says as he hands the boy his backpack. "Scram, okay?" the agent whispers. "I'll meet you over by the teeter-totters," and the boy eludes the grasp of the angry principal.
"It's people like you who are ruining spelling!" Arimathea says, her face so close to the agents you couldn't slip a scapular between them.
"Sis--don't look at me. I could never spell for nuthin', but at least I'm honest, unlike some of the maggots you got in the game today."
"Like who?" she asks.
Daniels' glance turns towards the girls' room where a shadowy figure hands over a Barbie Dream House to Dixie Lee. "I'm not gonna mention any names," Daniels whispers, "but his initials are Jimmy 'The Squid' Alfonso."
The nun recoils in horror at the scene before her. "Point shaving? In my school?"
"Let she who is without sin," Daniels says smugly before stalling as he forgets the rest of the homily. "Ding-a-ling-ling-ling, or whatever."
Con Chapman is a Boston-area writer. He is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His work is available on Amazon Shorts (at 49 cents a dowload), and he writes on sports for Flak Magazine.
