Players ... and the ones for whom sports builds character

If a life spent around sports has taught me anything, it's that there are two kids of people on every team:

The ones who can play.

And the ones for whom sports builds character.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely believe that participating in sports can indeed build character. You learn discipline. You learn how not to give up. You learn how to get up when you get beat or knocked down. You learn to trust teammates and/or coaches, and to rely on them. You learn to respect authority (even if sometimes that authority is wrong). You learn that life is not fair, that some people are just more talented than you are for no reason other than genetics or God-given talent; just like you will also find out that you are better than some people for the same reason. You can also learn that you can take what talent you have and squeeze every bit possible out of that limited supply, and add to it by using your head, relying on teammates, understanding the rhythm of the game you are playing, simply work hard to be ready to take advantage of every break, recognize luck when it occurs, and accomplish more than you or anyone else ever thought you could.

But then there are those who play the game at such a level that they can get away with anything. Or so it seems. Grades? If it means being eligible to play, someone will make sure they get the help they need to be eligible. Rules? They don't need no stinkin' rules! The rules don't apply for the incredibly talented, because their talent knows no boundaries, which means the rules are treated more as "suggested guidelines." Practice? I refer to Alan Iverson, who was hardly alone among superstar athletes in his contempt for practice. I can't begin to tell you how many great athletes I have witnessed over the years in a career in sports who were allowed to exempt themselves from practice (usually under the guise of a pulled hamstring that miraculously healed itself by game time).

I don't mean for that to sound mean or bitter or angry. But it's true. On any team, there are the people that create value by giving their team the best chance to win, and so someone has always been there to make sure they are on the field/court/arena/whatever. It's just the way it is.

That's not just in sports, of course. Music, art, business, law, religion, you name it - very often, the very best understand their talent and ability puts them above everyone else and excuses are made for their lack of "character."

But the thing about it is, they rarely even realize they suffer from a lack of character, because this is just how it's always been for them.


Meanwhile, the 'average' ones, the ones who are good enough to play but maybe not so good that excuses are made for them when they screw up, learn discipline, and self-control, and determination, and loyalty and patience and even humility and how to win and lose with, well, "character."

Which reminds me of a time, in my early days, attending a high school sports banquet in a small community. The guest speaker was a local AM radio sports guy (not me, although I have been a local AM radio sports guy now that I think about it), and he was waxing poetic about the virtue of sports. He said something like, "we need sports, because sports builds character, and without sports young men would be out there experimenting with alcohol and drugs,'' to which the kid sitting next to me leaned over and whispered, "he's never been to one of our team parties!"

Here's another thing, however: sports is a great equalizer. In the vast majority of cases, eventually even the best become average.

The best kid on that middle school team? How often does he get to high school and find out he's "average." The best kid on the high school team? He might realize that, compared to other kids in the league/city, he's just "average." Certainly if he goes on to college - remember almost every kid on a college team was the best, or one of the best,on their high school teams. College to pros, same thing. Pros? Most are just hanging on year to year, knowing the team is always looking to find someone better (or someone just as good who is cheaper). If the best of the pros stick around long enough, they often end up role players (two former Boston Celtics come to mind: the great Pete Maravich - maybe the best ball-handler and shooter in basketball history - coming off the bench for the Boston Celtics in 1980; the great Bill Walton as the Celtics' "sixth man" in 1987).

Of course, that progression doesn't always mean those athletes learn "character" (however you define that). Sometimes the lessons ingrained in them as "stars," the special treatment they received and came to expect because that was all they ever knew, overrides the lessons that should be theirs in learning how to be a role player.

But to be honest, I ask myself: would I rather have been a superstar, or learned character?

I have to admit, I wonder what it would be like to be dominant in a particular field. I wonder if I wouldn't have been a bit arrogant about it. I think about a story I heard about Heisman Trophy winner and hall of fame football coach Steve Spurrier who, even as a head football coach later in his career, was known to see quarterbacks half and sometimes a third of his age struggling with a particular throw and saying, "Maybe that's just too tough of a throw. Let me try it." At which point he'd rifle the pass exactly where he wanted it to go with zip on the ball and say, "No, it's not the throw. I guess you're just not good enough." It's kind of cruel, but I have no doubt it was true. And I also have to admit, wouldn't it be fun to be able to do that?

I'm not saying Spurrier didn't/doesn't have character. I'm just saying he was arrogant. Of course, he could usually back it up, too. As the saying goes, it ain't bragging if it's a fact. And I have to admit sometimes I wish I could be so successfully arrogant.

There are the superstars who are great teammates, who display character. And as I just pointed out, there are those athletes who should be learning character but the old, early habits are too ingrained.

Years ago I read a story about a bunch of top American CEO's who recalled getting cut from their sports teams. Maybe it was high school, maybe college, but they recalled with great clarity the moment when they realized they were not going to make the team, that they were not good enough. And despite all the success they had in business, all the money they made, the good they did in their communities, they all remembered clearly that moment when they were told they weren't good enough. And it drove them to succeed in other areas.

Another side note - I did a story on world class decathlete Trey Hardee, a world champion in his sport who, unfortunately, hit his peak between Olympic years (although he did win Silver in 2012). His motivation was being cut from his high school basketball team as a junior (which he still feels was unjustified!), driving him to track and field.

That leads me to two of my favorite Michael Jordan quotes. Jordan, of course, may well have been the greatest basketball player ever.

Jordan said two things that I think apply here:

“I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

and

“I can accept failure; everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying.”

Those are pretty good summaries.

But lest we get carried away with Michael Jordan, remember he's also the guy who, when told "there is no 'I' in team," responded with "Yes, but there is in 'win.'"

The Third (and Final) Death

The older you get, the more you go to funerals.

That might be a cliché (OK, it is a cliché), but it’s true. A guy I was talking to at one of those funerals said, “When you’re a kid you see all your friends and family at birthday parties. Then everyone gets together for graduation. Then it’s weddings. Eventually, it’s funerals.”

I guess I’m starting into the funeral stage of get-togethers.

The preacher at this most recent funeral threw out one of those t-shirt, wall-poster sounding phrases that the church loves. He said “if you’re only born once, you die twice. But if you’re born twice, you only die once.” Cute. And I get what he was trying to say. Of course, Jesus also said “if you believe in me you will never die,’’ but why let a little scripture get in the way of a good catch-phrase? (But then again, he also said "even if you die, you will live again,'' so there is that).

Actually, I was thinking about this whole dying thing. Somewhere in the past – some reading or late-night radio show or some article I came across or maybe it was something I thought up while making the drive from the Gulf Coast to Birmingham on a Friday night or Birmingham to the Gulf Coast on a Sunday – I came across this interesting theory about dying.

Each of us dies three times.

The first time we die is when our heart stops and the brain ceases to function and the organs fail. Whatever life our bodies had is over. We can no longer be heard.

The second time is when we’re put into the ground. Until then, even though our body is no longer functioning, we’re still visible. It's when we’re finally put in the ground and dirt thrown on our faces and we’re no longer visible that we suffer the second death. We can no longer be seen.

The third and final death comes when enough time has passed that no one remembers us. That may be quick or lingering … when you think of the famous people who are still remembered, as opposed to those ordinary people whose names are long forgotten. We can no longer be remembered.

It makes sense in a way. I mean, as long as we're remembered, we are "alive" in a sense. We even say "we're keeping the memory alive."

This idea kind of intrigues me. I once thought of writing a book with this as the premise, following a guy through all three stages of death. The first two are pretty quick, of course. He dies, he lies in state and people come to see him one last time. Then they shut the coffin and put him in the ground, his body to be seen no more.

The real fun beings waiting on the third 'death.' I had this guy going to this “holding area’’ for lack of a better term; kind of the idea of “Abraham’s bosom” where the beggar Lazarus goes after dying, or the concept of Biblical She'ol (Hades in the Greek) where the righteous dead await Judgment Day. Or maybe it was like a big library on a Saturday morning, sort of "The Breakfast Club" for the waiting dead.

But in my version, the holding area held everyone. People came in confused, of course, wondering if this was heaven. Every time someone new entered, everyone else stopped and looked to see who it was. And the new guy kind of walked around, looking for something familiar. Maybe he found a friend or a relative, who could then tell him about the place. And even while he's there, being told what this room is, a door at the far end opens and everyone stops, expectantly, looking at whoever comes through. That person, like the NFL Commissioner on Draft Day, calls out a name and someone gets up and heads to the door. It's deadly quiet, until the door is shut again, and then everyone goes back to doing whatever they were doing before.

At first – particularly for those who knew they were facing eternal punishment – it was a way to put off the inevitable, like a guy on death row. You’d have a part of the room where the famous evil people like Hitler and Stalin and Pol Pot and maybe some of the old Roman Ceasars and Genghis Khan hang out; over in another corner are the great philosophers and thinkers; still another place is made up of people like the Apostle Paul and John the Baptist and St. Thomas and Martin Luther … You get the idea.

And of course the ones who expected to be admitted quickly into the presence of the Lord are disappointed, while the evil ones laugh at punishment deferred. Imagine the surprise of those waiting "to be absent from the body means to be present with the Lord."

My guy could even spend some time wandering around, either talking to or listening in on each group, hearing the varied conversations that could take place.

But every now and then one of the group is called out and gets to go on to the next place, signifying that his memory has been finally wiped out among those alive on earth; imagine that might be disappointment to be forgotten, but also relief at being allowed to leave the holding place. Even those trying to put off the inevitable might inevitably get tired of waiting, ready to get on with whatever comes next.

Then some complete unknown – a homeless beggar – comes through the first door and doesn't have time to look around, because as steps in the other door opens and his name is immediately called out and he passes right through to his eternal reward, because no one on earth even knew who he was when he was alive, much less has cause to remember him once he was gone, proving the Biblical concept of “the last shall be first.”

Over time, people like Paul and the Disciples and the Saints come to terms with waiting, knowing that as long as they are remembered their message has a chance to bring others into eternal life. Meanwhile, the evil ones desperately hope they continue to be remembered to keep from being sent into eternal darkness.

It had a great ending, too. Because for those who do not believe in God, the last words they hear are Matthew 7:23, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers,” meaning that after all the people of earth have forgotten them, so to does God forget them. Then and only then are they truly dead, once and for all.

It was going to be a book, then a novella, then a short story, and now just another idea in a blog because I don’t have the patience to work on that long of a project.


I read Steve Jobs' biography "Jobs" some time ago. It's an amazing life story. He was born the same year that I was, but that's about all we have in common. He truly changed the world, yet he also died very early because death has no respect for what you've done or the impact you've had.

Shortly after his first diagnosis with cancer, he gave a speech at Stanford and said: "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. ..."

Or, as someone else once said, "Death begins with life's first breath. And life begins at the first touch of death.”

OK, too much thinking about death. So I'll end this with a story.

Three guys are sitting around talking about death. The question comes up: "When you are in your casket, friends and family are mourning over you, what would you like to hear them say about you?"

The first guy immediately responds, "I would like to hear them say that I was a great friend and family man."

The second guy says, "I would like to hear that I was a wonderful husband and made a difference with a positive influence on all who knew me."

The last guy thinks a minute and replies, "I'd like to hear them say...... LOOK, HE'S BREATHING!!!!!"

"Jesus in a Jail Cell"

The church I grew up in was big on “testimonies,’’ where someone gets up and tells all about how horrible their life was before they came to know Jesus. And apparently because we didn’t have enough people within our own church who’d lived horrible enough lives before their conversion, we often brought in special guest speakers to share what they’d done before becoming Christians.

Today, in hindsight, I realize the purpose was not to talk about all they’d done before becoming Born Again. But at the time, all I seem to remember was all the stuff they did before whatever crisis occurred in their life to turn it all around.

I can remember former gang members, former Hell’s Angels, former band singers … just to name a few. I remember going to watch the movie version of “The Cross and the Switchblade” at a time when we weren’t allowed to go to movies (going to movies supported Hollywood, you know, and all that Hollywood represented), which led me to read the book. And the book was more graphic than the movie, and all I could think of was, “I’d like to see some of that!”

Yes. Mostly what happened to me in church in those days was being envious of the guys who’d ridden with motorcycle gangs or run with New York City street gangs or been some kind of Mafia insider.

What I needed, I decided, was not Jesus. Not yet, anyway.

What I needed was an honest-to-God, crime-and-horror filled, edge-of-the-seat exciting testimony.

The trouble with that was my upbringing. I didn’t know any motorcycle gang members, or Mafia dons, or how to get a switchblade (there was a rumor that you could buy them in Panama City, but we didn’t go to Panama City for vacation; I did find a knock-off knife that “looked” like a switchblade in a souvenir store in Gatlinburg, Tenn., and I bought that because it was as close as I’d ever seen to the real thing).

I did, later, know some guys who did drugs. But, honestly, I was so terrified of drugs that I just knew I’d be one of those guys who overdosed on the first “hit” of whatever I took. Even when, in college, I was confronted with the opportunity to smoke some dope, I couldn't shake the feeling that if I did there was a good chance it would be the last breath I ever took.

Being a drunk was out, because I couldn’t stand the taste of alcohol. Still can’t. Every now and then I try, just to see if my taste buds have changed, but they haven’t. Beer, wine, liquor, those fruity drinks with rum – can’t stand any of them. Once, when I was working a summer job for a billboard company outside of Athens, Ga., we went to a company picnic. I reached into the cooler for a drink, pulled out a beer, dropped it, and got a Coke. Later, one of the guys I worked with told me, “I knew you were a Christian when I saw you drop that beer.” He was Pentecostal, and often talked about demon alcohol. In fact, later in the summer he took me with him to go cast out a demon that had taken over one of his church-members. I never told him that I dropped the beer because I don’t like the taste; just like I never told him that “demon’’ we were trying to cast out was really just a guy suffering the “D.T.’s” (delirium tremens).

Someone told me you had to learn to like alcohol, and I guess I’ve just never been dedicated enough to want to do that.

That lack of dedication has been a struggle for me, all of my life.

But I have dabbled around the edges of a lot of that kind of stuff. I had good friend in college who was basically permanently stoned (but he was a heck of a foosball player).

I worked construction one summer in Atlanta with a guy who was working just long enough to get his bike fixed, who was part of some Southeastern United States motorcycle gang whose name I can’t remember and can’t find on any google search of biker gangs. It seems like it was the Cherokee Outlaws or something like that. Interesting guy who told me a lot of great stories, who let me know how the gang would ride through small towns by going in groups of three but always allowing a car in-between because if they rode in bigger groups the small town police would pull them over and, at the very least, charge them with parading without a license. He also told me something I’ve never forgotten, that there were two books I needed to read: the Bible, and the Count of Monte Cristo. “They are both really long,’’ he told me. “But at the end, they both have a great message.”

The first time I was ever offered a rock of cocaine was on a golf course. It wasn’t some fancy country club; in fact, it was on a Monday when the course was closed but we knew a guy who would let a bunch of us play on Mondays when no one else was there (kind of like the CaddyShack kids at the swimming pool). The guy was nice about it: he offered, I declined, he said he didn’t mind if I wanted it because he had more, I thanked him for his generosity (I might have even said something like, "Not this time, maybe later" because my mama taught me to always be polite when offered a free gift) but told him I just couldn’t, and he said ok, and then we finished the round we were playing.

I’ve seen some stuff and … well, mostly I’ve seen some stuff; a lot of stuff, from years of traveling the country as a sportswriter. I haven’t done hardly any of it, but it now occurs to me that I was close enough that if something had gone wrong, I might have found my “testimony” story (“See, I was in this county prison where I first met Jesus. Not Jesus of the Bible, but a Hispanic guy named Jesus. I always thought that was kind of a sacrilegious name, but it turns out this guy was a Christian. At least, he had all these tattoos of crosses on his arms and chest and back …” or so my story would go).

I’ve actually never been locked up in prison. I did visit a county prison once, for a story. I've got a friend who did time in a minimum security prison. And I’ve ridden in the back of a police car a time or two in Panama City - but not while I was looking for a switchblade. The police just took me back to the hotel where we were staying and told me and my friends to stay out of abandoned sea-side motels. (It’s a long story).

All this time, I was never far from a Bible. I was a Christian, a Jesus-follower, born-again, washed in the blood, whatever you want to call it (but I have come to reject “evangelical” because it’s become so politicized). I always went to church, more or less (meaning not every Sunday, but enough to be able to tell my mama I went). And I always read a lot.

I’d studied some other religions, like Islam and Buddhism and Mormonism and the like. I recognized they could all be wrong, but they couldn’t all be right (including Christianity). I tended toward Christianity, maybe because that’s what I was raised in and my family was what a friend of mine called “off the deep end” - but in a good way, not the offensive way that is all self-righteous and “us vs. them” and always needing someone to look down on somebody else to feel morally superior and closer to God.

Lord knows – and I mean that literally – there were enough people in the church I grew up in who did practice self-righteousness and ‘us vs. them’ and looked down on just about everybody that wasn’t in “the club.” Heck, the pope was the antichrist; dancing was vertical fornication; long hair on a guy made you a homosexual; “mixed bathing” was out (that’s boys and girls swimming together for you heathens unfamiliar with the phrase); most books, movies, rock music, art, and just about any entertainment other than John Wayne and "Gunsmoke" was “of the devil.” (And while we had a few deacons that smoked, at least their wives didn't chew!).

I had all this Christianity in my heart, but my head kept telling me something just didn’t fit. I felt like you had to lock your intellect on the other side of the door (in fact, I once heard a preacher say just that: “you’ve got to listen to me with your heart and not your head, because God talks to your heart and the devil talks in your head").

Then one warm spring day I sat down on the front porch of a house I was renting and started reading “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis.

When I finished, it was early afternoon. I was sun-burned. And hungry.

But it was like someone had opened the barrier between my heart and my head, and I felt like I actually believed and understood, at the same time. That was big for me, to have my brain and my heart actually agreeing with each other. I don't know that it had ever really happened before. Side note: my oldest brother developed a Ph.D. program at Golden Gate seminary in order to "develop competent professors and well-informed, capable pastors who can address the complex social and religious environments of the West in particular." I was hardly alone in this idea.


Just to be sure, I also read Bertrand Russell’s “Why I Am Not A Christian.” Russell and Lewis were contemporaries, and both considered among the leading "thinkers" f their day. I wanted to give the other side equal time. But Lewis seemed to have all the answers for Russell.

I have read a lot of other stuff, too; a lot of philosophers and thinkers and believers and atheists and so forth. None of it has convinced me that options other than Christianity are anything but poor reflections of the truth.

And so, that’s my testimony. No drugs. No guns. No gangs. Just the beginning of how I came to believe what I believe.

I did run alcohol across the Mexican border back into the US from Juarez to El Paso one time, but that’s another story and not nearly as adventurous as it sounds. (“See, I was in this jail cell in Juarez where I met Jesus. Not Jesus from the Bible, but ….”)

Catching Up

A lot has happened over the last few years.

The Trophy Wife and I just celebrated our 26th Anniversary. Our daughter is getting married this summer. The Heir graduated college with honors and is looking at law school. The Young Prince is in college.

That's amazing, given what the last four years have been like, adjusting to the "new normal" of our lives post-accident. But it also reminds us that no matter what events happen that consume us, or that seems to require all of our focus and energy, or that pushes everything else into the background - life does go on.

Which is good. All these "normal" things of celebrations and weddings and graduations and such don't stop, and they shouldn't. Oh, when you're in the middle of something that changes your life forever (on so many ways), you may not get to enjoy those "normal" things as much as you'd like. On the other hand, maybe those "normal" things take on more significance because they are escapes - reminders, if you will, of other times.

In the past four years, I have lived in Gulfport. Then it seems like I spent most of a year living in the Hyatt Regency Superdome in New Orleans. Then I changed jobs and wound up with an apartment in Brookhaven, Mississippi. We sold our house in Birmingham because it looked like we'd never get back there, and The Trophy Wife moved to take care of her father the last year or so while he was dying of cancer.

And then, I got a call that brought me back to Birmingham to work; my father-in-law passed away (sad, but what a relief for him); and suddenly The Trophy Wife and I were back together on a daily basis, living in Birmingham. I have to say, as much as I loved the Gulf Coast (and I did), and particularly the people of Mississippi (which I really enjoyed), every weekend that I'd drive back to Birmingham (when I did) and I hit those rolling hills and see the trees and terrain, it just felt like home.

I know Leo the Dog was happy. He was living with me in Mississippi, and on weekends we'd load up the car for the drive to St. Louis, where The Trophy Wife was living and taking care of her father. It got where every Friday it got harder and harder to get Leo in the car for the trip (of course, his being almost 15-years-old may have had something to do with that). Or maybe that's me projecting, and it just got harder and harder for me to leave the South. I have always known I was a Southern boy, for better or worse, and belong with my feet planted on the red clay of Georgia or the black dirt of the Mississippi delta or the rock-hard hills of central Alabama.

And I needed to get back with TW (as I'll refer to the Trophy Wife). She'd had, at last count, nine surgeries in three years. The last was one of the hardest - a tendon transfer to alleviate the drop-foot that was a result of the accident. It required her to basically be on her back for three months, in a boot, with her leg elevated. That lack of activity set her back in all the other ways she'd moved forward in three years of physical therapy and exercise. It was one of the hardest times since the first year after the accident.

So it was truly an answer to prayer that I was offered the chance to come home. I'm not a sportswriter or sports journalist anymore, and it's always funny when people see me and I get that look like, "Didn't you used to be ...?" It's amazing how many people will say, "I watch you on The Zone all the time,'' and when I say I haven't been on The Zone in four years, they can't believe it. That's the power of TV, though. I have a good friend who left the local Birmingham TV market in the 1980s, and 10 years later he'd be in town and somebody would yell out, "Hey, great show last night" or "I watch you all the time!"

I quit writing this blog, too. I didn't quit writing, but just quit posting stuff here. Don't ask me why. In some respects, I was blown away by the response I received from writing about the ordeal with The Trophy Wife, by the incredible numbers of people who read it every day, who contacted me to talk about what we were going through, from seeing that people in Russia and Germany and Indonesia and other far-off places were reading daily (13 people in, of all places, Germany?) I started feeling like if I started writing about other stuff, I would be letting people down. The journey of recovery was not over, the "new normal" of our lives continues to change even now, but one time the TW said, "I don't want to be known as that woman who had the accident." She is so much more than that, and always has been and continues to be even now.

Or maybe I just got lazy.

But I did have a few friends who told me they had been reading my blog before the accident, enjoyed it, and urged me to continue. So I'm going to try. Besides, what's one more blog in a universe - blogosphere - where everybody has a blog? Just one more voice in a sea of words, written and spoken, that allow us to live in this new age of information isolation (we can ignore what we don't want to read or hear and just look for the stuff that agrees with us).

I saw where 60 percent of millennials get their news from Facebook. That shocked me, because I'd heard Facebook was only for old people now (same poll said 30 percent of Baby Boomers, of which I am one, say Facebook is now their primary source of news).

That's scary. But it's also, I believe, part of the reason why society is changing so rapidly. A "movement" that used to take months or years to gain steam and impact the far corners of the country can now pick up steam overnight. Think of the social changes of the past decade (good or bad). Internet media is driven by "clicks" (the number of times their site and their stories are 'clicked' on by readers). That rewards outrageous or outlandish or just plan bizarre stories. I'm not saying journalists were ever impartial, but way back when we did have gatekeepers that judged what was 'newsworthy' and what wasn't; what was worth telling in the limited amount of time (broadcast) or space (newspaper)that media was allowed. Now, time and space are limitless on the world wide web. So no opinion or story or idea is un-newsworthy, particularly if it can get a 'click.'

I attended a high school graduation the other day. It occurred to me that this generation has access to more information than any in the history of mankind, but that this generation has been lied to more than any previous generation, too. And it will catch up to them.

We used to value truth as an absolute. Even if we weren't sure what it was, we knew there was some objective truth out there that was universal. Unfortunately, more and more it seems people want to argue that nothing is "universal'' and there are no absolutes (which I believe there are). Our educators preach teaching "critical thinking skills,'' but it seems they do a much better job teaching "critical" than "thinking."

As George Orwell once said, "In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is revolutionary."

We have to learn what is the truth, if for no other reason than it's the only way we can learn to do what is right.

Ink-stained wretches

That's what they used to call us ... ink-stained wretches.

It is a name for reporters, or more specifically (in my case) sportswriters. So-called because, I suppose, our fingers were either stained with ink from our pens, or maybe from the ink that came off the pages of the daily newspapers that we worked for. Either way, I rarely, if ever, had ink-stains on my fingers (although I did discover a few in my inside jacket pocket, where I often kept my pens).
Over the years in my previous life as a sportswriter, I spent more holidays and weekends with a fabulous group of story-tellers/fellow ink-stained wretches. At the very first football game I ever covered, I found myself with an assigned seat (they assign seats in press boxes) between Furman Bisher and Lewis Grizzard. Now, to a twenty-something kid who grew up in Atlanta and regularly stained his fingers reading the sports section, it was like sitting between the Father and the Holy Ghost.

I say "father" because Furman was the man I grew up reading; and "ghost" because Lewis seemed to spend more time walking around collecting stories than actually watching the game.
When "Mr. Bisher" came to his seat, I froze. But he leaned over and said, "Hello. I'm Furman Bisher." As if I didn't know.

That's the thing about most sportswriters I came to know over several decades of this. The good ones typically were very approachable - certainly by other sportswriters - and didn't take themselves too seriously. Oh, in the last few years I'd run into some real egos. But for the most part, no matter if they worked for the New York Times or Sports Illustrated (back when Sports Illustrated was the gold standard of sports journalism), they were just like the guy working for the county news: desperate to find a good story angle. And more often than not, it was the guy from the county newspaper who knew some little obscure tidbit on a player or coach that opened the door to a great story. I learned that early on, and never forgot it.

As a 'beat writer' - which means I was assigned to a particular team and was expected to know everything there was about that team - I attended every game of course (home and away), but also practices, meetings, lunches, and had countless conversations with coaches and administrators and players and medical personal and parents and just about anyone who might know something about the team I was covering that I didn't know and might need to know.

From 1985 until 2000, I was the beat writer covering the University of Alabama for the Birmingham Post-Herald. As a result, I spent a lot of holidays (bowl games, basketball tournaments) with a group of ink-stained wretches who became like family to me: Doug Segrest, Cecil Hurt, Chris Welch, Paul Gattis, Philip Tutor, Glenn Guilbeau, Andrew Carroll, Philip Marshall, Tommy Hicks, Jimmy Bryan, Steve Kirk, Mike Tankersly ... that great staff at the Post-Herald when I got there of Tom Lindley, Bill Lumpkin, Mack Shoemaker, RB Falstrom, Rubin Grant, Roger Shuler, Paul Finebaum ... and of course I'm leaving some people out. And there were the legends in Alabama sports like Lumpkin and Alf Van Hoose and Jimmy Smothers and John Pruett and Clyde Bolton.

And that was just in the state of Alabama.

And don't include the "talking hairsprays,'' as I called the TV sportscasters - good friends like Steve Phillips and Matt Coulter and Scott Griffin and Greg Screws and of course my old radio partner Herb Winches. And radio guys like Doug Layton and Jim Fyffe and Eli Gold. Again, there are more names than I can mention or, in some cases, remember. That doesn't mean they aren't part of my history.
And oh, the stories.

Not the ones that made the sports pages. The ones that occurred away from the stadium and practice fields, at dinner or traveling in cars or hanging out in hospitality rooms.

There are so many (but I can't use names) ... the college broadcaster who pulled into the media hotel in Memphis, handed the keys to his car (with his luggage and the broadcast equipment packed inside) to the valet, went inside to check in, only to find out there was no valet parking. ... or a certain TV guy (and Alabama grad) who so hated Tennessee that every time he crossed the border he'd stop his car, get out, and relieve himself on the "welcome to Tennessee" sign. ... Or another infamous road trip in which once the car full of sportswriters hit the interstate, one of the guys pulled out a quart of Jack Daniels, took off the top, rolled down the window and threw the top out saying "Well, I guess we won't be needing this anymore." (I will say, however, that the driver did not drink!).

I spent an eternity in the backseat of a rental car that was being driven up the winding Pacific Coast Highway by a sportswriter who somehow believed you were supposed to drive only using cruise control. But the Pacific Coast highway winds around the coast, causing a lot of speeding up and slowing down. This guy drove by setting the cruise control, then when he needed to he'd hit the breaks, then hit "resume,'' only 20 feet later have to tap the breaks again; come out of the curve and hit "resume" ... it was the most nauseating drive up one of the most scenic roads in America - and the last time I ever road in a car driven by this particular sportswriter (but that didn't make him a bad person!).

I was witness to a bar fight in a blues club in Memphis that was something out of a John Wayne movie, with guys coming out of the balcony and busting through stair railings, tables and chairs ... and to the infamous moment when a certain sportswriter bet that a star athlete would not show up for interviews the next day because he never showed up, and if the guy did show up, the sportswriter would wear a dress to practice. I slipped into the head coaches' office and told him about the bet, and he made sure the athlete showed up the next day for interviews. Of course, the sportswriter refused to wear the dress. And in one of the great post-practice press conferences of all time, the (then) head coach at Alabama started his post-practice press briefing with, "What do you guys think about a guy who welches on a bet?" He then proceeded to publicly (and quite humorously) called the sportswriter on it ... or getting a certain lineman to agree to give a group of us false information about this supposed major position change he was undertaking for the next game (which we made up), because there was one sportswriter who was infamous for eavesdropping on our interviews rather than getting in and asking his own questions, then writing stories based on what he overheard. Mind you, there was nothing stopping him from joining in our interview scrum; he just didn't do it. So that afternoon, after practice, we thought we got what we wanted when this guy asked the head coach about what would have been a major position change for this lineman, and the head coach looked at him like he was crazy (and we barely contained our giggling). We thought that was the end of it, but sure enough in his paper the next day, he'd printed the story anyway!

Too many sportswriters are not, traditionally, very good with money (maybe because we were paid so little). In the old days when we used to get our money for trips to bowl games or basketball tournaments in advance (to pay for hotels, meals, etc.), there was more than one sportswriter who found a way to blow a weeks' worth of expense money in the first night out of town (usually with alcohol or a strip club), causing very clever calls back to the office saying he'd "underestimated the hotel bill and would need more money" ... oh, and the guy who spent all his money in a strip club one night and defending it by saying the dancer 'was a really nice girl who really liked me!' ... or the guy who hit it big one night in a casino, winning something like $70,000, but he wasn't particularly happy because, he said, "about three more of those and I'll have broken even." ...

Obviously I could go on. But I won't. I will, however, repeat one of the great stories of all time that I'm surprised isn't more widely known.

It was after Alabama's famous "goal line stand" against Penn State, where the Tide defense rose up and stuffed Joe Paterno's offense on something like four plays at the goal line - the last one on fourth-and-inches - in the Sugar Bowl to win the national championship. In the post-game, everyone gathered around Tide coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. You had to get in close to Bryant, because he would mumble (which I found out in the only game I ever covered that Bryant coached, an Alabama game against Georgia Tech in Atlanta near the end of Bryant's career). So they gathered around, and one old-timer said to Bryant, "Bear, how close was that ball to the end zone?"

Bryant looked up, smiled, and mumbled, "about the length of your pecker."

That would be funny in and of itself, but because Bryant mumbled, from the back of the crowd somebody yelled out to the sportswriter, "How long did he say?"

And the old sportswriter, in a very loud voice, said "About a foot."

Which is why you never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Superman vs. Batman

I have not seen the movie, "Superman vs. Batman." In fact, I'm not sure what the plot is, other than I guess an attempt to merge the lucrative "Superman" series somehow with the lucrative "Batman" film series, and perhaps leads to a sequel around the "Justice League of America" (which, if my comic book memory is correct, Superman and Batman founded although neither played particularly big roles in subsequent activities; in fact, Batman eventually leaves JLA completely).

But I have long been fascinated with the ideas of "Superman" and "Batman." Because when you think about it, there really are only two kinds of Superhero: Superman and Batman.

I say that despite the onslaught of other "superheroes:" Spiderman, Aquaman, The Green Lantern, Captain Marvel, Captain America, Iron Man, Wonder Woman, The Hulk, Flash, Silver Surfer, Thor (who is actually supposed to be a Norse god, which kind of puts him on a different level) ....

But really, it all comes down to Superman and Batman.

Superman could do everything man ever dreamed of doing but was physically unable to do: faster than a speeding locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, X-ray vision to see through walls, bullets bounced off of him, knives were unable to penetrate his skin. He had super-hearing, super thinking, even super breath (able to create high-speed winds). He could apparently fly not just through the earth's atmosphere, but through outer space (where he often diverted on-rushing meteors and such). He was, of course, other-worldly (from the planet Krypton), and his only weakness was exposure to green Kryptonite, mineral debris from Krypton. In other words, in the beginning at least, the only thing that could harm Superman was something from his place of origin, from "home," if you will.

Superman is the fantasy, the dream. Take just about anything man has ever dreamed of doing, and Superman could do it. And to show how much man always dreamed of doing those things, just look at how many of those skills man has since adapted to: we can now fly (even to the level of solo-flight of jetpacks); we have developed bullet proof vests so that most bullets do not harm us; we have developed devices that allow us to 'see' and 'hear' from great distances and even through barriers; computers enable us to have super-thinking ... and so on.

The rest of those "superheroes' - other than Batman - are mostly perversions of Superman. They tended to focus on specific abilities, but really, what could any of them do that Superman couldn't, for all intents and purposes, do as well (if not better)?

Which begs a sidebar: how limited is Spiderman? I mean, I always enjoyed Spidey, except that I realize he's really of no use outside a major city. I mean, his spider-strength and spider-sense might work anywhere, but his webslinging is far less impressive in a small town where the tallest building is, say, three stories. Or on the plains of Kansas, where Spiderman could, I guess, swing from the tallest stalks of corn (and how stupid would that look?) Truthfully, Spiderman seems to be a strictly urban hero.

Now Batman is different. I have always been a Batman fan, and here is why: he is a truly human superhero. There is no suggestion of any special 'power' that Batman has. The implication is that any one of us, with enough money and know-how, could become Batman. He has great gadgets that make up for his lack of true superpower, and he's honed his physical skills into a cross between a world-class gymnast and 10th degree martial artist, but technically speaking there is nothing there that isn't humanly possible.

Superman, at least in the beginning, was almost naive in his strict morality, his belief in truth, justice, and something called "the American Way" (which, interestingly enough, people back in the day would have understood what that meant and basically agreed with it in principle; I doubt seriously such is the case today). In fact, at one point there was a self-imposed code that Superman could not kill a human being.

Batman was anything but naive. In fact, he is always seen as a border-line criminal, a vigilante who takes the law into his own hands. Batman has always been out to get the bad guys and seems to have little moral compunction about how that happens. He is clearly obsessive, almost singularly so (which is the only way he could have become what he became), which makes normal relationships difficult at best (unlike Superman, who as Clark Kent is able to pine after Lois Lane and as Superman is able to have a relationship of which Batman would be envious, if the Bat weren't so obsessed). If Superman lived by a moral code that forebade killing and never (at least to my memory) struggled with it; Batman seems forced to restrain his venge-filled actions, as if he'd like nothing better than to just kill the bad guys and be done with it, and it is only by his own obsessive self-control that he does not become the evil he has dedicated his life to fighting.

Anything on the Superhero scale beyond these two are simply perversions, knock-offs if you will, of the original.

Superman is perfection; Batman is the closest humanity can come to achieving that perfection.

Maybe that's why I always preferred Batman over Superman. I could identify with Bruce Wayne's (Batman's true identity) struggle with his own dark side and his obsession over achieving his own version of perfection - both physically, mentally, and socially - yet giving in to his own vices.

I haven't seen "Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice." Maybe I will at some point. One synopsis I read sounds good: "Fearing that the actions of Superman are left unchecked, Batman takes on the Man of Steel, while the world wrestles with what kind of a hero it really needs."

I did see the trailer. And there is one line from that that I did like. Batman, for whatever reason, says to Superman, "Time to learn what it means to be a man."

Without knowing context, that line represents the essence of the difference between Superman and Batman.

To create "Superman," we had to go to another planet, to another race of beings (despite their very human-looking nature), to something truly other-worldly.

To create Batman, it took one revenge-obsessed man with unlimited time, energy, and resources.

Both are cartoon characters, of course. So it's all silly nonsense.

But Batman captures the essence of what it is to be human: to struggle with who we want to be, against who we're afraid we could become.