February 28, 2002 — When Bernie Olejnik took his seat behind the Bingo King Autotronic 7600, everybody shut up. Many in the crowd of nearly 100 at the Gainesville Elks Lodge on Sunday had been waiting more than an hour for this moment — waiting patiently for that first bright …
Read moreJuly 3, 2001 — I believe Wiffle Ball players peak at the age of 12. After that, it’s all downhill. Perhaps physics has something to do with it. The lighter the bat, the lighter the batter, or something like that. I don’t know, I never did very well in science …
Read moreNovember 7, 2000 — From the moment I walked into Sweetwater Billiards in Duluth, Jonathan Forrester was all business. He was sizing me up. He was trying to figure out what, if anything, I knew about darts. I knew a little. Back in college, I threw my share. Not many …
Read moreOctober 17, 2000 — Horseshoes and hand grenades. Marcellous Love knows about both. The 55-year-old Gainesville man grew up poor in the hills of North Carolina, one of eight children on a small family farm. They lived off the land, and passed down shirts and shoes from child to child. …
Read moreAugust 8, 2000 — Good golfers generally aren’t good miniature golfers, somebody told me recently. That person was wrong. And so was I, for assuming that the opposite also holds true: That awful golfers — like me — would somehow be ameliorated by the plastic greens, colored balls and banked …
Read moreMay 2, 2000 — I just finished playing my first game of croquet, and my head hurts. No, I was not struck with a mallet or plunked with a ball. It’s just that this sport can be quite complicated. Three hours on the court, and I was both confused and …
Read moreDecember 7, 1999 — “You’re in pretty bad shape there,” Jim Jennings said to me matter-of-factly. He was describing the predicament that lay before me on the green felt of his pool table. He could have just as easily been describing my somewhat larger problem at the time: I was …
Read more