Talking Football, Baseball, the South, & Our Generation

This one is about Alabama football, but in general about sports and our portion of the South.  It closes with a poem by Louie Skipper from his newest book It was the Orange Persimmon of the Sun, (only one at Amazon left in stock!) - a poem that probably says more about Bear Bryant, the man versus the myth, in just twenty-one lines than most could with 21,000 words of prose.

~~~~~

Talking football for just a while longer.  Well, we have a respite until Thursday, January 7, 2010  7:00 PM (CST) when Alabama meets Texas I the Rose Bowl for the National Championship.  I hear there are other Bowl games being played, but ... well, I will pretend to be interested!  What on earth will we talk about after that?


Given my usual nature, I am uncomfortable about feeling confident that Bama will beat Texas.  After all, we have played those dumbass Texans (yeah, I said it) nine times over the past century, and have yet to win a game:

Texas and Alabama will meet for the ninth time in the 2009 BCS National Championship Game. Since their first meeting in 1902, the Longhorns lead the series 7-0-1. The last time they met was the 1982 Cotton Bowl with Texas winning 14-12.  A heart-breaker for Alabama's first black Quarterback (thanks JP) Walter Lewis, who went on to suffer another unforgettable loss (aren't they all?) in the 1983 Iron Bowl.  After 108 years, it's our turn, dammit!

Texas vs. Alabama Game History

1902: Texas 10, Alabama 0
1915: Texas 20, Alabama 0
1922: Texas 19, Alabama 10
1947: Texas 27, Alabama 7
1960: Texas 3, Alabama 3 ("like kissing your sister"?)
1964: Texas 21, Alabama 17
1972: Texas 17, Alabama 13
1981: Texas 14, Alabama 12

That's good news now. Keeps the team hungry.  And you know Saban won't miss the opportunity to remind them of the Patriots of 2007.


That Texas would get into the BCS was, I recklessly and wishfully proclaimed before the Nebraska game, a done deal, a matter of Fate - they had to win, according to my fairy-book, so that the QB story between Bama and Texas, and plenty more, could play out!  Here's what I put up at Facebook:

Sat December 5, 2009: It is written: Alabama and Texas will meet again.  This time, it's Alabama's Greg McElroy against Texas's Colt McCoy for all the marbles in Pasadena. This time it's for our second-string Texan to meet their first-string Texan, our reject to meet their star, our Seabiscuit (McElroy, everybody's "other quarterback") to have one more match-race with War Admiral (now played by Colt McCoy, after Tim Tebow passed the role) ... you gotta love this story, folks!

Who knew Texas would get in only on the final play, that field goal?  You have to feel for Nebraska, a proud tradition and a heat-breaking loss, but they couldn't fight Destiny (how about that for analysis?)  On the SEC Championship, you were dead on, I think:

With this game, it's even hard to predict the winner.  Somehow I just have a feeling Bama will pull this one out.  I think more than anything else, I think Bama wants it more.  I'm sure Florida wants it too, but I think they have a bit of a sense of almost entitlement and maybe a wee bit of over-confidence.  Bama knows everyone is picking Florida.  And I think in this game it definitely helps to go in being the underdog - a sense of something to prove.  And having lost last year's game in the 4th quarter, Bama knows they can play with Florida.  And their motivation to finish the game will be at an all-time high.

Don't you feel that your conclusion before the Florida game - that Alabama wants it more - is also a factor in the game coming with Texas?  I am working off that, but I also think Bama is also a superior team, and Texas probably on par with, or a tad below, Florida.  My guess, without consulting the spreads or experts?  Bama by two touchdowns.  Setting aside our dreams as Bama fans, what's your pick for the National Championship?  Anyone care to commentatorize?

And now?

With college football 2009 coming to an end what will we all talk about?  I hope that you are, like me, a Saint's fan (that'll get us through an extra month, as I need to step up my interest in March Madness and NBA, since I never played much basketball).  For long-suffering Saints fans, this is a dream season - and for both Alabama and NewOrleans (still, we're get a test tonight) to be undefeated? even Hollywood couldn't pull off that storyline!  Talking about coaches showing no class, and Florida's Urban Meyer.  I was turned off of NFL football (though I stil watched some games) by the arrogance of William Stephen "Bill" Belichick, head coach of the Patriots.


To continue the topic debated at Facebook - basically sportsmanship as it is defined in 2009, I feel his attitude infected almost the whole team (it was reflected in Tom Brady to a degree) But Bellichick did not help the sport, in my view.  By contrast, you could appreciate the less arrogant, though deservedly cocky attitude of Randy Moss, and I always loved that workhorse Wes Welker, the most underrated MVP in football, especially since he is never even thought of as MVP!) but this notorious incident, and more significantly Bellichick's "who cares?" attitude after he go busted was a real kick in the pants!

Despite "Spygate," Belichick got the 2007 NFL Coach of the Year Award, as voted on by the Associated Press.  Winning has always been number one, but these days winning seems to pardon almost anything. But haughtiness goeth before a fall.  Right, Tiger Woods?  Right, Barry Bonds?  Not that fans are always fair (right, Roger Maris?) but who you are as a human being is part of what makes someone a champion, rather than a record-holder only.


Of course Bellichick is a great football coach (the Patriots have gone 102–42 in nine regular seasons with him as head coach) but my feeling is that losing the 2007 Superbowl could help him, if he can accept the humbling, and even Brady's awful injury that kept him out of the 2008 season can win back love since fans like their heroes to rise from adversity effect on Brady, who is a terrific player and pretty haughty himself, though not so sour as Belichick.  But how about the kid in his third season of his first job as a head coach - he's been with the Saints since 2006 - Sean Peyton.  Anyone from anywhere who loves an underdog has to root for the "Aints" - Who dat? - make that the Saints!  Before this season, from their start in 1967 through 2008, here are the cold numbers:

Regular Season wins 262
Regular Season losses - 375

Super Bowl Appearances (Conference Champs) - 0
Division Championships - 2

Not much to show for 32 years of football, eh? (The Saints weren't around for Super Bowl I, played on January 15, 1967).  Hope springs eternal, but this year Hope has a betting chance.  Season 33 for New Orleans - maybe this time it'll be different.  As I write this they're still 14-0 with three games left in the regular season.  The hot-shot, big-money Cowboys coming to the house tonight [Just squeaked by in the final 6 seconds with an interception, won 24-17], then it's Tampa Bay on the 27th, then to finish up in Charlotte with the Carolina Panthers at high noon on January 3.  Your odds on the Saints at this moment having a perfect season? [Zero, since this was written.  But hey, we'll take 16-1.  Even 14-3 would be a phenomenal season.  But it's not enough if the Saints at the very least win a post-season game, or even more to finally play in a Superbowl.  Come on, we're 0/32 in this department!]


Professional sports for the sports-crazed South, despite the prowess of Southerners (mostly African-Southerners) in baseball and in football (go, SEC!) there's never been the interest one would expect, given the NFL and MLB teams in Atlanta and Florida.  But this year, how could any fan hailing from the true deep South (which excludes the Florida pro teams, but keeps Atlanta) not celebrate the Saints, and also the Mannings of the NYG and the Colts?  Archie was a great QB for both Mississippi and New Orleans, but no QB can touch his record as a father!


In the US, baseball is supposedly having banner years in fan interest, according to the hype.  But there are lies, damn lies, and stats, as ark Twain famously observed.  The epicenter is probably somewhere between New York and the Red Sox.  Sure the Phillies, the Cardinals, and all the other MLB teams have die-hard fanatics in their cities, and yes there's always the great NL/AL divide (No middle ground on this one. You're either for or against. Me? I am a National League guy, hate the designated hitter rule!)


But baseball isn't cutting it with my son's generation.  It is so deep in our hearts, but somehow our appreciation for the Great American Past-Time (to re-coin a phrase) the relaxed, bucolic sport hasn't been transferred to our GenX kids, raised on instant-everything.  As someone rightly observed, baseball is a tradition passed from fathers to sons (or in our case, from elder brother to baby brother - remember that other year of wonders, the annus mirabilis of 1961 and even us in Mobile glued to the old rabbit-eared Motorola every time a game was broadcast to watch the home run chase by M&M.  I still carry a secret place in my heart for the pinstripes, and Mickey Mantle was my first sports hero.  But I cannot relate to the teamsand mega-buck players under the regime of the Steinbrenners, George & sons)   


Eric, you're New York born and bred.  Which is bigger in Manhattan - baseball or football?  You guys have four (4) freakin' Major League teams!  PS: Say thank you to Mobile.  We supplied the entire outfield for the Mets, I believe.  How many major league teams got the benefit from Mobile, back when kids still played baseball. (Black kids, of course, along with a few white guys who can jump.)


That next generation? In the parks where we once played Babe Ruth , and Connie Mack baseball interest plummets after Tiny-Mite football, and T-ball and Little League. Teen-agers (free from the dreams of their fathers) all choose to play basketball, not street stick-ball or whiffle-ball.


Down here a few cities like Mobile even tried to drum up interest hockey with a minor league team gt at a price the budgets could afford, since games could be played in existing civic centers. We went to watch people who could skate on the stuff they call ice.  That team persisted for a few minutes.  What was the name of the Mobile hockey team again?

We do have a minor-league baseball stadium here, built after most of you left Mobile.  The one in childhood was called Hartwell Field, and the Chuck Coners, aka, The Rifleman, played for the erstwhile Mobile Bears.  you know who.  The new stadium is out on Hwy 90. It's called locally, "The Hank."  You know who again.  Let's not foget the great Satchel Paige, whose nickname came during his days working baggage downtown at the trains station.  Both of them left as soon as possible and never looked back.  Wonder why?

Back to football, the 1970's, Alabama, and the Man.  This is the poem.

~~~~~

Bestiary for an October Night

It was the late 70's and I sat in the bleachers
one windy night to toast a coach named
after the bear he wrestled down as a boy in Arkansas.
An old man now, he waited us out
while under the lights a dance troupe from New York City
took to the twenty, more than a hundred
moving in unison in hound's tooth hats.

The Bear never looked up.
Could be so many images of one man repeated
was too much even for him.  Still,
when the elephant came out of the end zone
he was quick enough to mumble into a megaphone,
"What the hell is going on?"
I do not believe he had ever stopped to figure why

an elephant was the mascot of a football team
named after a tide of biblical blood,
only how the Crimson Tide came
between the Bengal Tigers and the Nittany Lions,
and where he himself stood, a game away
from passing Amos Alonzo Stagg
who, like the elephant, would soon be left in the outer dark.

Louie Skipper, from It was the Orange Persimmon of the Sun (2009). Used with permission.

For football fans in the South, 2009 has been a great year.  It might be a good time for non-fans, even the die-hard anti-fans, or ex-fans, to get interested in football in particular  and sports in general.

Later at Clark-Works, more posts, other topics. We'll see. For now, let this do as my version of a Sporting Christmas Card, with love for the game.

Happy holidays,
Clark

On Bama Fans and Mobile, Alabama: Hard Words

Last revised 12:32 am 11 December 2009 Claiming same leeway they get in  Congress with routine magic words  "Mr Speaker, I request the right to revise and extend my remarks for the record."

12/11 Added asides on racism, on personal history. Revised title. Appended "Fight Son" and "Rammer Jammer"

12/9  A few unfair remarks cooled. 

-----------------------------

History: I posted something about the SEC Championship from my brother, who is a big Bama fan.  Did not generate many comments. It was, after all, mostly analysis.

Then I wrote a private message to one friend, and then to a lot of friends I knew to be Bama fans. In this private message, I shared thoughts from Philip Shirley, my old pal from T-town who now writes a very good column about Bama football at al.com called From Behind Enemy Lines.

My concern was the tone of some remarks Bama fans were beginning to repeat, and it looked like the mean-spirited stuff was gaining a kind of general acceptance.  Like it was okay.  It's not okay, and I didn't not like it.  So far, no response to that message.  No - the other day there was one (1) reply, from Mark. 

So now, this.

Fair warning, it is over the edge.  But I found out I had to raise the pitch to drive the point home - and I hope, to stimulate a lively conversation.  A fair and balanced editorial wouldn't get it.  I hope this rant merits an honest and productive discussion. [Dec 11: since it was first posted on Tuesday 8 December, this hope has been working out okay.  It has probably peaked, so I'd be selling short from here.  But it's had a good run.]



Now I enjoy talking smack as much as any fan - after all bragging rights are an Iron Bowl tradition, an art-form of the highest order! And this year - at last! - Bama fans really can enjoy our day in the sun! Yet some of the smack talk I was hearing more and more stopped being witty and seemed to just turn mean. It's not like yelling in traffic at all the idiots - we all do that.  Nobody can hear you.  But immature flame-wars and mean-spirited taunting? Not worthy of us Bama fans.  This may be okay for the lowly Texas, Florida, or Auburn louts, but not for us Crimson elite. (: Do I need to say that this is smack-talk?  See, wink-wink smiley face! ->  ;)

A little history.  My big brother, Frank "Trip" Powell, was Student Council president of Murphy in 1964, the year the first black student came, and he was assigned the task by the administration to "look after that colored boy" and try to keep the racial violence down.  He saw how we white folks treated Henry Hobdy. Urine poured into his locker on a regular basis, bumps in hallways during class-change, books scattered, constant threats both subtle and outright, beatings.  The South - and he rest of the country - has come a long way since then.  Racism is no longer so obvious.  And by racism, I do not refer only to whites against blacks, but the other way also.  (And throw in browns, yellows, the whole spectrum while you're at it.  Racism must have external markers to work right.  How can you be racism agaist people with 0-positive blood?  But you can if they ae old, or fat, or young, or poor, or if they have a funny dialect.)

A few guys on this list were on the first football team where a black student managed to make it through the summer two-a-days.  I was one of those guys. That didn't happen till 1970.  In 1971, the year my wife graduated,  the anger finally erupted in blood and broken glass at Murphy.  I showed up that day to visit my History teacher, Harriett Lillich, and that's what I found - blood and broken glass.  The school empty.  I tried to ask Ms Lillich what happened but she stopped me: "How did you get past the police cordon?"  My wife is a graduate of Murphy, one of the few in the class of 1971 who did not move to Davidson High School or UMS - anywhere but Murphy.

I also taught for several years at Murphy, and aimed a lot of criticism in my Press-Register column at the black community.  I'll tell them straight to their face that they are messing up what was given to them by those who came before.  I am certainly no comfy liberal, far removed from what is happening.  I still live in the South.  And my wife still teaches, as she has for 25 years.  We've both seen unbelievably bad behavior from the younger generation of black kids.

So don't give me this "Oh, Clark doesn't get it.  Or dismiss it with what my high society friends whisper when they think I can't hear: "You know he's always been crazy. He's just an a-hole.  He's not one of us."  Damn right!  I'd plead to those charges.  But I still get this stuff from people who don't know a thing about me other than the guy the remember in high school, or college. It's the same for you, I'll bet.  It is hard to be who you are among those who know who you were!

At age 58, I petty much know who I am and who I was - yes, I was at times an insufferable ass, and sometimes I was pretty crazy.  So what? I'm pretty sure most people could find similar critics. Yet after 25 years based here in Mobile, I also I know some other things, some wonderful, some I do not like and never did.  I am tired of keeping quiet: there is a special brand of racism in Mobile. We never had real riots here.  We are too polite. You can find this in John Howard Griffin's visits to Mobile as a white soldier about to ship out in 1942, and again when he "passed" as a black man in 1959. He saw two very different Mobiles as he reported in Black Like Me.  Or more recently, in an excellent documentary The Order of Myths by Margaret Brown, a Mobilian herself.  This shows how the Mobile society is really quite complex, how you find the best and the worst of humanity mixed into the crazy gumbo of this very "inside" town.  Mobile is quite different from the rest of the state of Alabama, and even different than the neighboring cities along the Louisiana, Missisiippi, Alabama "Cajun Coast," as I call this unique region - which is larger and older than just Louisiana.  It is a strange realm, this Cajun Coast ...

Mobile now has its first black Mayor, and we like to use that to prove we are not the steroeptype, though few of my white friends actually voted for Sam Jones (Ijust to be testy, I put a Sam Jones sign up at my place on Riviere du Chien!  The new racism is not substantially different than the Jim Crow it replaced, it has only changed the words it uses. It is more subtle, but just as real.  From both sides, mind you, who like to pretend racism does not exist, or at least it's not so bad, not here, not in Mobile! But it does, here and just as it does everywhere.  Just take a look at the most racial and segregated hour in America - ten to eleven on Sunday mornings.  You know what I'm talking about.

I have seen this stuff all my life. Seen the colored and white only bathrooms downtown, seen those signs go away, seen the troubles of the 1960s, seen those pass, seen what's happening now, seen how the latest generation is as different from us as we were from our parents, and (dare I say this?), I've seen what is to come, though exactly when I'm not so sure.  Man, I drove cabs into Orange Grove and Happy Hill in the middle of the night. I've worked on river towboats, on ships, drove trucks, done hard labor, taught school kids from grade 6 through Sophomores in college. I've been places most haven't dreamed of visiting, seen things most can't imagine.  White Mobilians, for example, know more about Spring Hill or Russia than they do about whole sections of their own city.  Same, but in a different way, for Black Mobilians.  I am tired of this polite-but-separate New South.  I won't, I can't keep quiet any longer. Not now, not at my age.  Soon I'll be dead.  Then I'll keep quiet.  But now, if I don't speak my heart, I'm already dead.  That's how it feels.

Okay, sermon's done, history class is over.  Now for some football. (Wait. Do I need to bring up the fact that Mobilian Winston Groom pointed out in Forrest Gump - or do I?  Think of the Alabama teams of the 1960's, George Wallace's infamous pre-staged psychodrama at the steps of Foster Auditorium on June 11, 1963.  Notice with me the color of the first string this year.  Wonder when we will mark the first black quarterback, the first black Head Coach?  It may come sooner than you think!  O the demographics, they are a-changin')

Trip, who has lived overseas for the past 20 years, just sent me an email. It's an email, so he rares back and really speaks his mind.  I didn't ask his permission to post this, since he isn't on Facebook, but I will. Remember, he himself says "Sorry, just felt the need to vent a bit."  Me too. As I said, the point is to stimulate some discussion - even provoke it - and I never expected everyone to agree.  How to express differing but deeply held views, maybe crossing the line a little with some smack-talk, (you gotta laugh but show some class)

So here's my brother Trip, and remember, friends, he is as he himselfe= admits venting (slightly different than ranting but that's quibblie.  I leave it as it is:

You know, after a whole season of reading about Bama on the Internet ... and reading at least portions of many comments on most articles, I find myself totally shocked and embarrassed/ashamed and pissed off at the vast majority of Bama supporters. They have almost universally trashed Tebow for crying and no one, not one single comment, has yet commended Tebow for his class in congratulating Alabama, wishing them well, and saying he was "proud" of the Bama team. They frequently are really violent in their comments and often want to kill or maim one or more members of the opposing team. They trash other fans and constantly say rude, mean, and hurtful things to people they don't even know. I know one thing - I couldn't live my life with so much anger and hate inside me. I don't know how they do it. They must live really miserable lives with Bama football being the only good thing in life for them. And none of them can spell at all - I think almost all of them are functionally illiterate. How did they ever graduate from Bama or any other university if they don't know the difference between their and there or how to spell definite (if I see definate one more time, I'll scream). They never give another team credit for anything and even trash FIU and UTC. Even after all the bad years Bama suffered, they have no humility at all - or empathy or sympathy. I like what Saban tells his players - when you score a touchdown, have some class and act like you've been there before. Too bad Bama fans don't listen to what Saban says like his players do. Bama fans just don't have any class. And Rammer Jammer, for me, goes into that category of "no class" too. Why not have a cheer for your team instead of one that trashes the other team?  Celebrate your own team; don't trash and embarrass the other team.

Bama fans were so impressed with the class of the Virginia Tech fans and a couple of other fan bases. Why can't they take a cue or two from them? Why doesn't the class of another fan base cause Bama fans to self-reflect on their own 'classlessness'?  I hate to say it, but I think it's because they don't have the self-reflective capacity it would require - or the self-consciousness to even be aware of their own lack of class.

In short, illiterate rednecks to the core. I know that reveals my own discriminatory tendency, but it's not the way I started this year. I started by assuming there was some good with the bad like everywhere else. But now, unfortunately, I think the good and enlightened Bama fan is a minuscule percentage if not a complete oxymoron.

I guess I have romanticized my past a lot - I don't remember everyone in Bama or who follows Bama being so, so redneck. In short, I'm so turned off I don't even come close to having words to describe how turned off I am. I have realized I have absolutely not a thing in common with them except loving Bama football. That's it. I don't think I would socialize with any of them. If I ever fleetingly entertained thoughts of ever returning to Alabama to live, those ideas are dead and gone forever. Makes me wonder how you manage to continue living in Mobile all these years. Sorry, just felt the need to vent a bit.

Sorry, folks, but he has a point.  Though my brother has been overseas for a long time, I've had reasons to stay in Mobile.  I love it down here in L.A. (Lower Alabama) on the Redneck Riviera and I'll go to the mat for my sweet home Alabama.  But I do not bigots and srupidity and just plain hatefulness.  And I don't like what we are becoming down here. We're better than that. Unlike most Bama fans, I actually graduated from the University. (I scuttle to say that you don't have to attend or graduate from any school to qualify as a fan!  But you do get some bragging rights.) We didn't see fans acting this way when Coach Bryant was around.  I too am embarrassed for the state of our State.  And I am too old to keep quiet, like a polite Mobilian always does.  To hell with that!

It's time for all of us to stop being proud of being stupid.  And it's time for someone to say this.  Maybe this one will generate a conversation!

Roll Tide!

This Note is set to be public to "Everyone" so if you object or agree or if you want to pass it on to someone, feel free.




Fight Song

Yea, Alabama! Drown 'em Tide!
Every 'Bama man's behind you,
Hit your stride.
Go teach the Bulldogs [how] to behave,
Send the Yellow Jackets to a watery grave.
And if a man starts to weaken,
That’s a shame!
[here's where the rhythms get wobbly]
For Bama's pluck and grit have
Writ her name in Crimson Flame.
Fight on, fight on, fight on men!
Remember the Rose Bowl, we’ll win then.
So roll on to victory,
Hit your stride,
You're Dixie’s football pride,
Crimson Tide, Roll Tide, Roll Tide!

"Rammer Jammer"
    Hey Gators!
    Hey Gators!
    Hey Gators!
    We just beat the hell out of you!
    Rammer Jammer, Yellow Hammer. Give 'em hell, Alabama!