November 6, 2001 — When my beloved New York Yankees lost in Game 7 of the World Series on Sunday, two streaks came an abrupt end. The Yankees’ three-year championship run is done. Finished. Kaput.
So is my reign of baseball bragging rights in The Times newsroom, where tomahawk chops are preferred to pinstripes.
I started writing the Sporting Life column in the fall of 1998, just as the Yankees were readying for their run. Coincidence? Yeah, probably. But it’s only fitting that the year the Yanks’ dynasty crumbles is the year Sporting Life leaves The Times’ sports section.
Yep, you read that right. Nope, you’re not getting rid of me that easy. I’ve grown accustomed to the Southern climate.
Sporting Life will live on, but in a new home. Starting soon, you will find Sporting Life every Thursday in the Weekends section of the newspaper. Now I can venture outside the realm of sports with some of my adventures. (My editors will contend that I got that ball rolling a few weeks early. The two-part column on my road trip in search of a bumper pool table raised some eyebrows.)
As Sporting Life prepares for its unfettered future — ballet, anyone? — it’s time to sort through the column’s sometimes perilous, sometimes preposterous, past. Here are five columns that got people talking. Sometimes the people even had nice things to say.
Ice climbing: Feb. 23, 1999
‘Like chess and Russian roulette’
But above all, I remember being above all — boots and axes lodged into the ice at the top of the route — and looking behind me at the rolling rises of the Appalachian Mountains.
I realized at that moment, that I had nothing on my mind.
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• Most readers were not surprised that I tried ice climbing; they were surprised that I did it in Georgia.
But Michael Crowder, my climbing guide, has been doing it for years. When the ice is ready in the South — which isn’t often — he makes sure he’s ready, too.
Earlier this year, Michael traveled even farther south — to Peru — to play on some icy peaks. That trip to nearly 20,000 feet in elevation made the wall we climbed at Hog Pen Gap look, well, it made it look like something you would expect to see in the “mountains” of Northeast Georgia.
Horse riding: Sept. 12, 2000
Girl, horses make ‘magic’
“He’s watching,” Honey called out from atop Hunker. She sported a wide smile.
And, sure enough, he was. Godfather II peered out at us from behind a wooden fence near the stable. He was checking on his little friend. He does this often, I was told.
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• Everybody loved then 8-year-old Honey Beth Campbell and her horses Hunker — the younger one she won a state championship on — and Godfather II — the aged one whose sagging back she learned to ride upon.
One reader wrote: “Even if I didn’t like little girls and horses, I do now.”
“To this very day, people come up to me and talk about that article and ask about the kid and the horses,” Dodie Ellison, Honey Beth’s grandmother said recently. “There have been quite a few occasions in the mall that someone has approached (Honey Beth) and her mom and said, ‘Are you the little girl in the paper with the horses?’ I mean that was over a year ago.”
Honey Beth continues to ride. And Godfather II, now 28 years old, continues to watch.
Nude water volleyball: July 10, 2001
The Bible Belt in the buff
Serendipity is a clothing-optional resort. Although upon my arrival, I appeared to be the lone person taking advantage of that option. The entire poolside population was stripped down to its skin. And I was the only one who seemed to notice.
I was overwhelmed.
But the people in the pool were waiting for me. And in there, clothes are not an option. So I dropped trow, hit the showers — that’s a park rule — and hopped on in. Nobody gave me a second look.
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• Whoa. As if getting naked in public wasn’t nerve-racking enough, some Times readers stripped me down verbally after my column on nude water volleyball at Serendipity Park, a nudist resort in Cleveland, went to print.
One wrote that, after reading the column, he no longer allowed his children to read The Times “for fear of being exposed to an intentional promotion of vulgar acts.” Another wondered who the “idiot” was who hired me and suggested I “go flip burgers.”
I wonder what those readers will think when they learn that the story won an award from the Eastern Sunbathing Association. One catch: I have to go back to Serendipity to pick up my plaque. I think they want me to play nude horseshoes this time.
Bull riding: Dec. 8, 1998
Rookie cowboy survives wild ride
I remember nodding, signaling the rodeo clown to open the chute. And then I remember my back loudly colliding with the earth, the air being forced out of my lungs. A true “chile wop,” I later learned. …
Somehow I got talked into going again. I rode a bull named Repo for 2.69 seconds. The bull made a turn and I didn’t. The fall was softer this time.
I landed in a heap of bull dung.
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• Thankfully Times photographer Tom Reed has a quick trigger finger. He actually managed to get some shots of me on the back of a bull in Barrow County. Those moments were very short-lived.
Tom, of course, also snapped plenty of photos of me falling, first on my wrist and then on my back.
Tom’s photos hang on the wall in my living room. They remind me of the column topic that is met with the most surprise from the public. And they remind me why I have vowed to never do it again.
Skydiving: May 1, 2001
Ready, set, JUMP!
A 50-second freefall through clouds and cold thin air satiates the senses. It’s incomparable. It’s incomprehensible. …
I believe I remember most of my first jump. I close my eyes and mental snapshots fill my mind.
But that’s all they are — snapshots. I can’t play them back continuously. I can’t even put them in the proper sequence.
It’s kind of like waking up and trying to piece together a dream. You’ve got many of the parts. But somehow they never add up to anything manageable.
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• I try to do at least one stupid thing for this column each year, and I think jumping out of an airplane is about as stupid as you can get — even though I would likely do it again.
Skydiving seemed an inevitable Sporting Life topic, given the nature of the column. And when people would quiz me on the activities I’ve tried and haven’t tried for the column, they would always come to skydiving. I was tired of saying, “No.”
What stupid thing is next for me? Well, how about fishing for giant catfish … with your bare hands. I’ve been trying to set up such a trip for some time now. It’s called noodlin’, grabblin’ and hoggin’ — in addition to stupid.
If you know anyone who does it, could you please tell them to give me a call?