Category: Sports

I Had Lots of Nicknames Growing Up Too

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5/10/24

Stonewall Jackson is a pretty cool name. Sounds like one of those famous baseball players from the Negro Leagues, like Dick “Cannonball” Redding, Smoky Joe Williams, Satchel Paige, or “Cool Papa” Bell, right? But Stonewall Jackson was far removed from those guys. He was just some Confederate general who died on this day in 1863.

Contrary to his hard-sounding name, I bet he was really shy. As a young man, I was awkward too. They named me Get-Your-Back-Up-Off-the-Wall. It doesn’t have the same ring as Stonewall, but it’s close.

However, that’s where similarities between me and Stonewall end. Stonewall had way more bad luck than I did. His own men shot him. It was either by accident or someone was jealous of the nickname. (“That Stonewall’s always acting so uppity, like he’s really made out of stone. We should see if stone chips.”)

He actually got the nickname during a battle when he just stood there trying to inspire his troops. That’s when someone exclaimed “there stands Jackson like a stone wall.”

They would’ve been better off saying, “there stands Jackson like a bat man,” then he would’ve called him Batman Jackson, which would’ve inspired way more fear. I bet no one would’ve even been brave enough to look in his direction, especially when he was wearing a cape.

But, no, they had to name him Stonewall, and see what that go him. He was struck three times when his men opened fire on him. One bullet shattered his left arm, which had to be amputated the next day. Soon, pneumonia set in, and Jackson began to fade. A week later, he died. He was only 39 years old. He would never live to see all the trouble his name would cause.

Today, School board members in Virginia’s Shenandoah County voted to change Mountain View High School’s name back to what it used to be called, Stonewall Jackson High School. In 2021, the name was changed to Mountain View in the wake of the George Floyd movement. The school board says that private donations will be used to pay for the name change.

I just feel bad for the school mascot. One second they were a mountain view, and now they’re back to being a stone wall.

#Iguessstonewallsneedlovetoo

I Caught a Rare Glimpse of Something Special Last Night…Make That Two Something Specials

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3/8/24

Last night in St. Petersburg, Florida, Donna and I attended a private screening of The Lionheart, a documentary about two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dan Wheldon and his family. The film will debut at 9 p.m. ET Tuesday, March 12 on HBO and will be available to stream on Max.

The film juxtaposes footage from the career of charismatic race car driver Dan Wheldon (who died in a crash at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Oct. 16, 2011) with the present-day story of Dan’s widow, Susie Wheldon, and his two sons, Sebastian and Oliver, who race in IndyCar developmental divisions with plans to compete professionally one day.

You may wonder how a mom could support her sons’ ambitions when the risks are so high. In the documentary, we see Susie’s struggles.

“It was never in my mind that I would deny them that, ever,” she said. “I knew from an early point that if they ever wanted to do that … I would at least give them the opportunity.”

That doesn’t mean it’s easy to watch her sons race. She worries.

“I’m a mom first,” Susie Wheldon said. “I’m human … I’m going to have those feelings about the boys.”

Audiences who watch this film may also find themselves in touch with similar feelings. I was so gripped by the raw emotionality of the story, as well as the heart-pumping race scenes, including footage of the crash that ended Dan Wheldon’s life, that I squeezed my bag of popcorn so tight, I promptly deposited most of it in my lap. (My apologies to the theater staff.)

But the best was yet to come. After the screening, Donna and I attended an afterparty where we saw many of the people featured in the film, including Susie Wheldon and her boys. We were also fortunate enough to be introduced to some of the people who made The Lionheart, including director Laura Brownson. When we told her how much we enjoyed the movie, she asked us to help spread the word, which I took to heart (and thus this post).

So, how is that we got to attend such a preeminent event? All the credit, of course, goes to Loren Hammonds, Donna’s brother. The world at large may know him best by his work as Head of Documentary, TIME Studios, but to Donna, he will always be her baby brother.

The Lionheart is a movie about family unity and resilience. But I didn’t need to look any further than Donna and Loren to understand the power of family to transcend and transform. What a night at the movies! Thanks, Loren, for making Donna so happy.

#thelionheart

So, What Happens When Our Phones Let Us Down?

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2/23/24

So, how was your day yesterday? Hint: If you’re an AT&T customer, that was a trick question.

For about 12 hours yesterday, about 74,000 AT&T customers experienced a disruption to their internet and cell phone service. So, what’s a little harmless outage? People mostly use their phones for games and gossip, right?

Turns out that a lot of people rely on their phones for their livelihood, so yesterday’s outage was more than a slight inconvenience. Take me and Donna, for example, a blogger and a realtor. Okay, okay. Take me out of the equation. I barely look at my phone. The same can’t be said for Donna.

As part of a real estate transaction that Donna was working on yesterday, we found ourselves at a home that required a home inspection. But the inspector’s first words to us (after he said, “hello, you gorgeous couple”), were not encouraging. “There’s something wrong.”

He cradled his phone in his hand like it was an injured bird that had just fallen out of a tree.

“I think the cell phone tower must be down in the area,” he said annoyed. (Inspectors use their phones to compile the home inspection reports they create.) “I’m going to have to take pictures and do the report from home.”

Even I knew that meant we should expect a delay in the inspection process. In this modern age of technology, where our phones serve as magical genies to grant us our every wish, it’s more than frustrating when our phones don’t work and you don’t know why. Imagine all the Uber drivers who went without pay yesterday?

If it’s any comfort, AT&T said the outage was caused by a software update that went wrong, not a cyber attack. But DURING the outage, customers complained about AT&T’s lack of transparency.

The chaos caused by the phone outage even affected at least one police department, which reported that its 911 line was briefly flooded with people dialing to see if their calls would go through from their cell phones. Was it the Russians? Was it hackers? You can see how it might make panicky-type people panic?

Donna dialed her customer to tell her about the problem the inspector was having.

“Hmm, I can’t get through to her,” she said.

She texted. She called again.

“That’s odd. Let’s drive over to her house.”

(Hint: Donna is one of those panicky-type people.)

But we eventually shrugged it off and moved on with our day. We aren’t AT&T customers, so we weren’t getting the error messages that other people were getting. In fact, it was reported that some iPhone users saw SOS messages displayed in the status bar on their cellphones. Wait a minute. SOS, as in “Save Our Ship” or “Save Our Souls”?

Come on, phone companies, get over yourselves. Do you think you’re so important that we couldn’t live without you for a day? Do you think we’re so dependent on all those apps you offer? Do you think we’re slaves to our phones just because we can’t put them down?

Okay, so some people may need to attend a cellphone-aholics meeting. Is it too late to go back to two tin cans and a string?

#twotincansworksforme

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11/30/23

Midnight marks the end of Florida’s hurricane season (…and the crowd goes wild!). To the rest of the United States, this season is known as the Atlantic hurricane season. But come on…. Which location gets sucker punched more than any other during hurricane season? It’s where I’m sitting right now. Florida is almost parallel to the Cape Verde Islands where hurricanes form off the African coast.

Even though hurricanes can form in the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico, late in the hurricane season more of them form near the Cape Verde Islands. And like much of the world’s tourists, once they decide they’d like to travel, they head straight to Disney to see what the big deal is all about.

So, if you’ve ever wondered why there are so many “Florida Man” stories, it’s because Floridians have the best weather (it’s going to be 83 degrees tomorrow) and weather that wants to kill you. Being caught between those two extremes is bound to make people a little nuts.

So, am I counting down the minutes until midnight? No, because, of course, hurricanes have also been known to form outside of hurricane season (June to November). In fact, there’s a 2 percent chance Florida could still see a hurricane this year (so, you’re saying there’s a chance).

For now, the season ends as one of the busiest on record. Twenty named storms, including seven hurricanes, came to life, which is the fourth highest total in a single year since 1950. Fortunately, most of those storms veered into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

But, because of the warming of the oceans, forecasters say there’s “high potential” for an even more active hurricane season in 2024. Gee, thanks global warming. So, I guess that means that I’ll be writing my blog under water next year.

Eh. I’ve written under worse conditions.

#seeeverybodythen