In My Hood Today? The Best Game in College Football (Texas/OU)

October 12, 2024.Reading time 8 minutes.

Just look at how beautiful this is.
This is my city.
This is the core, where I live, where I work, and where you’ll find me most of the time.

For the uninitiated, the foreground lights are less than 2 miles from me, right now. They are the State Fair of Texas, where as they have for the last 110 years, Texas will face against OU later today.

Goodbye, Pete Rose

October 1, 2024.Reading time 4 minutes.

One more time, in case you’re missing my point, this is not to excuse Rose.
My point is something deeper than these moralizing cultural tales.
My point ten years ago, and still this morning, is this:

“God has a soft spot for assholes.”

Rest well, Pete Rose.

What I Love About College Football

August 31, 2024.Reading time 7 minutes.

With college football, it’s really is not whether we win or lose. It’s that we all play the game.

We’re all in this together on those Saturday afternoons, cheering on our teams, big and small, hoping against hope that this year will be “our year.” College football is a unifying experience that is not just about the “Top 25.” It’s about everybody else too.

Wowza

February 2, 2024.Reading time 2 minutes.

I’ve been writing longform over on Facebook for more than a decade now, but never had anything approaching the reaction to this week’s post on Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. 10,000 shares?Are you kidding me? Wowza.So, thanks again to everyone for sharing/reading this post…and for re-enforcing my faith in humanity. It’s very clear that, like […]

What Taylor and Travis Teach Us About Men And Their Dreams

January 30, 2024.Reading time 13 minutes.

Let’s talk Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, and a very specific freaking out happening right now. Because it’s a NEW kind of freaking out. It’s not the same old “Taylor-hating.”And I think I know exactly what’s driving it. The world has been foolishly bagging on Taylor Swift for decades now. And all along folks like me […]

It Really Happened, Didn’t It?

November 7, 2023.Reading time 11 minutes.

Today’s trip down baseball’s memory lane are two Sports Illustrated covers, from this week in time, 50 years apart.The first is from the first week of November 1975, following the thrilling victory of “The Big Red Machine” over the Boston Red Sox. I don’t need to recount once more, but will of course, how the […]

The Final Lesson of Baseball

November 2, 2023.Reading time 13 minutes.

It is not an exaggeration to say that I wept openly last night. It is not an exaggeration to say that as Dennise, Maria, and I leapt from our chairs, into the middle of the room —all in mutual tears, falling into a jumping bear hug— I clumsily and excitedly grabbed them so tight, it […]

The Dream of a Screaming Baseball Headline

November 1, 2023.Reading time 8 minutes.

Today’s blast from baseball’s past is this screaming headline from the Cincinnati Post, and more Cincinnati Reds memorabilia from the box in my closest. As we’ve covered previously, my Dad bestowed me with a generational a love of the Reds, which developed concurrently with my love for the Texas Rangers. It seemed perfectly logical, since […]

Here’s To the Regular Season of Life

October 31, 2023.Reading time 7 minutes.

Today’s baseball blast-from-the-past is this actual line up card from a Texas Rangers game on Sunday, October 2, 1977. I must have bought it at a memorabilia convention somewhere in the Dallas area. Probably at a Holiday Inn with bad carpet. It was in a box with a lot of my other baseball stuff that […]

The Rangers’ Icarus

October 30, 2023.Reading time 11 minutes.

Among folks have a certain age in North Texas, saying you were present for the major league debut of David Clyde is akin to what folks say about Woodstock: A lot more people say they were there than who likely were even able to physically fit in that stadium.I think I was actually there. But, […]