When sports don't - and do - matter

Today, at least 50 people died in a shower of terror and blood.

Today, sports do not seem relevant.

But, as the clock rounds the 11 o’clock hour and heads for midnight, I watch a school I used to spend most of my waking hours covering trying to make history, and I think, somehow, they still are.

Coastal Carolina University beat mighty LSU 11-8 on its home field in the first game of the Super Regional last night. A win tonight would give the Chanticleers (SHONT-a-cleers, it’s Chaucer) their first ever trip to Omaha and the College World Series.

Currently, CCU holds a one-run lead in the eighth inning. The bases are loaded. My heart is taking up a lot of room in my throat.

When I watch Coastal play baseball, I think about one of the single worst moments of a kid’s life I ever saw, and the steely grace with which he handled it. I try to imagine the inner strength his reaction took, and I try to summon some of it when I have to do something hard.

It was the early 2000s. The exact year is lost to the fog of my 40-year-old memory. The Chants, on their way to becoming the nationally respected program they are today, were playing at Georgia in a regional, the first round of the NCAA baseball playoffs. They had beaten the host Bulldogs, fearsome in their home park in Athens, Ga., a day earlier, only to lose in a rematch to set up a decisive Game 3 in the double-elimination format that would send the winner a step closer to Omaha.

In said Game 3, because of NCAA rules that attempted to maintain a semblance of neutrality despite thousands of fans chanting “G-E-O-R-G-I-A! Gooo Dawgs! Sic 'em!”, Coastal was the home team. It took a two-run, to the best of my memory, lead into the top of the ninth inning.

The main thing separating big D-I baseball schools like Georgia from mid-majors like Coastal is pitching depth. Judging by the Chants’ performance in Baton Rouge, that gap has closed, but as I sat in the press box many years ago, it was substantial. It led to the CCU starter who had thrown a complete game to beat Georgia a day and a half earlier coming on in late relief.

Scott Sturkie was a friendly, amenable kid, well-liked and easy-going. He had a slider that was hard to hit.

He threw one too many to Jeff Keppinger, the 2001 fourth-round pick of the Pittsburgh Pirates. With two runners on and two outs, Keppinger crushed the pitch over the fence for a three-run homer that gave Georgia the lead and, soon enough, the win.

Thousands of fans unleashed a primal roar that followed Keppinger around the bases. Sturkie, hearing that sound, thought what any pitcher in his position would: walk-off. Ball game. Forgetting that the for-all-intents-and-purposes home team was hitting in the top of the ninth, he walked slowly off the mound, head down, cap obscuring his face.

He reached the dugout before realizing his error. He turned around and walked back to the mound.

He struck out the next batter to end the inning.

I cannot imagine how hard that was. I tried to ask him, but for the first time in four years of wins and losses, Sturkie didn’t want to talk. I couldn’t blame him.

As I watch, over and over, people carrying wounded friends away from horror while illuminated by flashing blue-and-red police lights, I wish someone, somewhere, in a position of power in this country would show a sliver of that courage.

I think of the reporters covering the 50 people, as it stands tonight, shot dead at an Orlando nightclub. I remember, on a much smaller scale, talking to witnesses after a tree, uprooted by a tropical storm, crushed a child huddled with his mother on her bed, then returning home to a house that had no power but did contain a peacefully sleeping 11-year-old who somehow, some way been entrusted to me.

Now, it feels as though I failed that trust, and that’s harder than I choose to face most days.

As much as I miss the people with whom I found such happiness in that house, they are still within my reach. I can still talk to them, send them videos of my new cat, make plans to be able to touch them.

There are dozens upon dozens of families who will never be able to do that again.

There are plenty of social media buzzwords to accompany this latest atrocity. Guns. Gay. Muslim.

Others come to my mind. Loss. Pain. Senseless.

I pray, but I am tired of praying. Someone here, on this earth, by the power vested in him or her, needs to fucking do something.

Tomorrow, I will make an appointment to give blood.

Tonight, I watch baseball. It does not matter, and yet it does.

Throughout this day, young men have celebrated coming that much closer to achieving dreams that began in tee ball games and backyard batting cages. Earlier, a freshman stepped to the plate to pinch hit in his team’s final at-bat, and sent that team to Omaha for the first time in its history with a walk-off grand slam against the No. 2 seed in the country.

That moment cannot erase today. But it does ease it, ever so slightly.

The courage that kid, and these kids I’m watching now, show every time they put everything they have on the line takes me back to a sweltering Georgia Sunday almost two decades ago, and makes me believe in strength for tomorrow.

For me, and for those who need it so much more.

In celebration of her

All right, people. I tried to tell you, and this is your last chance.

Out of the sheer goodness of my heart, I wanted you all to know about the Women’s College World Series, which will decide the NCAA softball champion tonight. I told you about how fantastic the competition has been this year all the way back on Monday, which gave you plenty of time to watch the first two games of the best-of-three-series.

If you listened, you saw Oklahoma hold on for a 3-2, extra-inning win in the first game, with the tying run stranded on third. Then you saw Auburn erase a 7-0 lead in the second to win 11-7 in extras on a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the eighth as men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl, on hand in Oklahoma City, lost his mind. This, after Tigers left fielder Tiffany Howard made an over-the-fence, snow cone catch to rob Shay Knighten – whose swing, like Auburn's Jade Rhodes', is a thing of beauty – of a two-run home run in the sixth inning.

If you didn’t listen, maybe hearing what you’ve missed will tempt you to tune in tonight for the decisive Game 3. If not, maybe this will:

Let’s celebrate strong women accomplishing great things. That, and just that, just for a night.

Yesterday, Hillary Clinton became the first woman to earn the presidential nomination for a major U.S. political party in history. While nothing new in India or the 18 countries that currently have female leaders, somehow this had eluded the land of the free and the home of the brave until 2016 – 96 years after the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote.

Politics aside – if such a thing is possible anymore – that is cause for celebration. (If you don’t think so, you probably haven’t read this far, anyway.) Instead, the backlash has begun in earnest. No, as one particularly eloquent Facebook commenter put it today, a vote for Hillary is not just a vote for a vagina. Hey, I’m as fan a big of alliteration as anyone, but I daresay a vote for Hillary might be a vote for a former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State, someone with decades of foreign and domestic policy experience who is unlikely to nuke the first world leader to insult her.

But I digress.

This has been a week where we’ve learned that a man can rape – let’s stop pulling our linguistic punches – a woman and be sentenced to six months in jail – jail, not prison. We’ve learned that unconsciousness passes for consent. We’ve learned that boys will be boys, and if they happen to be white, affluent, athletically talented boys … well, wink wink, nudge nudge.

We’ve learned this, from a Washington Post article published yesterday: most people accused of rape are never found guilty at all. The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network estimates 97 of 100 avoid any punishment.

I’ve learned about the damage done to a person I love who was raped. I’ve learned about a society and its fucked-up mindset that, for a long time, didn’t even call it that.

I’ve remembered when yes was the path of least resistance.

So yeah, I want to watch some women accomplish something great. I want to see eye black as dark as mascara and fierce competitiveness barely held back with headbands. I want to hear the crowd roar for something the woman at the plate or in the outfield did, I want to see the players hug one another and cry tears of triumph, and I want to hear the female announcers tell me about it.

I also want to see a good game, and that’s more likely – if recent experience is any indication – to take place tonight in Oklahoma than in Ohio.

A change of pace

If you’re finding the NBA Finals boring, congratulations. I applaud your obviously sound judgment.

I also have a suggestion for you.

You could try watching the Women’s College World Series.

Now, I am a long-time watcher of postseason softball. My father coached high school softball (I may have mentioned that his Landrum Cardinals won a state championship in 1994) and my child plays it. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but I rather liked the collegiate slap bunts, the moving of runners (do you know how hard it is to steal a base when you can’t leave the bag until the pitcher has released the ball?), the near-certainty that one run – and definitely two – meant victory, as pitchers overpowered batters at 60 mph from 40 feet away.

Y’all. It ain’t like that anymore. These women can knock the cover off the ball.

Yesterday (Sunday), I watched Auburn beat Florida State, 8-7, in extra innings in an elimination game. The Tigers went up 3-1 on Carlee Wallace’s three-run home run in the first, only to see the scored tied an inning later. The Seminoles then took a 4-3 lead before another Auburn long ball – a three-run blast by Jade Rhodes – made it 6-4.

Down 7-4 going into the top of the seventh, FSU tied the game again on – you guessed it – Cali Harrod’s three-run homer to right center. The drama finally ended on an RBI single in the bottom of the eighth that sent Auburn into the championship series against Oklahoma, which, conveniently enough, starts tonight at 8.

The Sooners, winners of a school-record 30 straight games, are led by freshman pitcher Paige Parker (36-3), who has won her last 26 outings and tied an NCAA record this season with four – FOUR – perfect games. Hey, I didn’t say the pitching had gone away.

If you do tune in, be prepared for lots of large ribbons tied around long ponytails and near-constant chatter and cheering from the dugouts. These things can border on irritating, but they also signify a team unity that I’ve come to appreciate more as I’ve watched my child build friendships in which the fun is more important than the final score.

That will not be the prevailing attitude tonight in the best-of-three series. Sit back, enjoy the drama that comes from both sides of the plate, and watch some first-class athletes fight for a national championship.

You can always flip back and forth to Game 4 of the Stanley Cup – a final which has, so far, put basketball’s big boys to shame.

Take me to church

It’s my fault. I’m sorry. I should have known better.

My remarkable streak of bringing bad luck to my alma mater and main sports team, the South Carolina Gamecocks, continued last night, when I watched the baseball team squander a 4-0 first-inning lead in a 5-4 loss to Rhode Island in the first game of an NCAA regional at Founders Park.

But I must confess: I don’t feel that bad.

To begin with, the underdog winning the first game of a regional is not a rare phenomenon. Smaller schools have less depth than bigger (two-time national champion, maybe) ones, but No. 1 starters are good everywhere, and URI freshman ace Tyler Wilson is no exception.

Wilson, a 6-foot-4 left-hander, went 6-2 with a 1.75 ERA and 70 strikeouts in 82 1/3 innings pitched in his first collegiate regular season to earn Atlantic 10 rookie and pitcher of the year honors. The Gamecocks got to him early on Friday, with two home runs contributing to the early advantage.

To say Wilson settled down after that is something of an understatement. His next six innings yielded zip – no runs, and precious few hits, as he consistently got ahead of hitters by catching the outside corner of the plate and turning balls that had left the park into harmless popups. The Gamecocks helped, to be sure, stranding runners in crucial situations as USC starter Clarke Schmidt began getting hit – hard – culminating a three-run fifth inning that put the Rams on top for good.

Gamecock outfielder T.J. Hopkins warms up before Friday's game.

 I watched all this unfold from my front-row seat down the right-field line, found online a few days earlier. (There are advantages to only needing a single ticket.) It had taken quite a while to get to that seat, as thunder and lightning delayed the first pitch by an hour and left fans, including me, waiting in the sweltering sun that followed for the gates to open. I’d arrived straight from work, around 5:15 p.m., having never been to the “new” park (which opened in 2009) and unfamiliar with parking logistics. Roughly two hours later, I was finally inside the stadium.

I’d heard its praises sung by friends, and it was beautiful, even with its green outfield grass still partially covered by a tarp. I made an initial circuit, noting the presence of Big Spur, the rooster touted as college sports’ most engaged mascot (I wondered about those metrics), the red-white-and-blue bunting draping the garnet railings, and the handful of fans dutifully copying the starting lineups, posted on a large whiteboard hung on the brick wall, into their scorebooks.

Before the game, fans copy the lineups into their scorebooks.

Big Spur surveys his territory.

I quickly consumed a jumbo hot dog and a Diet Coke, then sought relief from the sun, taking its sweet, sultry time setting, with a watermelon Italian ice. At minor league games, my first in-park purchase is usually a craft beer, but I didn’t mind the change.

The game got off to the aforementioned great start. As things took a turn, I yelled and fretted and groaned as runners were left in scoring position, but I also took frequent looks around me, taking in the clouds streaked with yellow and pink brushstrokes, the top-of-the-dugout antics of Cocky, the hunched-over figures in the press box. I noted with a personal and professional pang that I could see no women among them, but I also knew one was an old friend I hadn’t seen in a very long time. We tweeted back and forth – ah, technology - about the game and possible lunch plans. That eased the sting of back-to-back Rhode Island homers.

Cocky had plenty of reason for concern on Friday as South Carolina lost to Rhode Island.

I chatted with two friendly seatmates, laughing in understanding when, with runners on, a Rams batter hit a grounder foul and one screamed, “Get two!” As she shook her head at herself, I commiserated. “It had potential off the bat,” I agreed. I absorbed bits and pieces of surrounding conversations, learning about imminent grandbabies and weekend plans.

I vacated my seat for the ninth inning in one of the acts of sports-related superstition my husband chides me for. No, I didn’t really think my relocation to the grassy berm above right field would change anything. But it might.

It didn’t, as the Gamecocks couldn’t figure out a way to capitalize on a leadoff walk. I walked back to my car as the clock crept toward midnight, disappointed but buoyed by something I wiggled around my brain trying to name.

I was glad, I supposed, that I hadn’t gone straight home after work, as has become my habit too often in my still-new life. I was happy to have finally seen Founders Park, and to have shared for a moment the communal worship at the college version of the church of baseball. Thinking about seeing my friend produced an inward smile. The slightly obnoxious pack of celebrating URI students didn’t really even bother me, because their team had played a great game.

The Columbia skyline stretched across the night sky, with the promise of another game, another chance, tomorrow. Maybe the pitching would hold up and the bats would come alive and the Gamecocks would win, and keep winning, out of the loser’s bracket and onto the Super Regionals.

Maybe , at least for a night, seemed to be something I could live with.

Bargain hunting

Yesterday, overcome by some sort of Mothers’ Day fever, I uttered the un-take-back-able words, “Whatever you want to do tomorrow … ”

Thus, I found myself brushing my teeth at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday before pouring not enough coffee into a Styrofoam cup, climbing creakily into my mother’s passenger seat and heading off for a morning of yard sale-ing.

That may not be a word, and the subject itself may not be a competitive sport, but it should be.

Off we went, a few targets circled in the classifieds (yes, Virginia, those still exist) but prone to sudden braking should a small red-and-white sign bearing the magic words be spotted staked into the ground. One didn’t need Google maps for this journey. Just follow the line of minivans, or the dinged-up gray Corolla driven by a woman who whizzed in and out of three locales we also visited with a slightly manic expression of determination fixed on her face.

Cars lined both sides of narrow residential streets in near-identical subdivisions. SUVs pulled away from curbs without the slightest backward glance. One white contractor van tailgated us to two locations, slowing as we slowed, but whether the scruffy dude driving was looking for merchandise or victims, I couldn’t say.

We were in search of a microwave, though the thought of nuking food in a small, enclosed container that had nuked other people’s food left me a bit cold. At our first stop, the Holy Grail had been sold minutes earlier. Our second and third destinations were driveways full of plastic kids’ toys and didn’t merit disembarking from the car.

The fourth, run by two professional women with pocketed aprons and a practiced stream of chatter, yielded $5 fruit (which may have been cleaned once, during the first Clinton administration). For $5, I would have given anything I was selling a once-over with a Clorox rag, just because the people buying it now knew where I lived. I would cringe to think of people passing my house in the future, thinking to themselves: Oh, yeah, that’s where Filthy Microwave Lady lives.

But I digress. Tinges of morning bitchiness aside, I was actually happy to be ping-ponging from one table weighed down with sad-eyed stuffed animals and floral place settings to another. It gave me a chance to erase a guilt-ridden memory I’ve held onto for years, when my mother, visiting me at the beach where I lived in my 20s, wanted to go yard sale-ing one morning. I grudgingly dragged my hungover ass at out of bed sometime around 8:30, shrinking from Mama’s gradually fading enthusiasm. I didn’t get out of the car at the two addresses she found in an unfamiliar town. She came back from the last picked-over piles to say that all the good stuff was gone, and we drove back to my apartment, where I probably went back to bed.

My personal performance was much better this morning. I said good morning to strangers, smiled at the little girl with her lemonade-and-cookies setup in one driveway, carried the $5 microwave to the car. I cleaned it in our garage, watching the stragglers leave the next-door neighbor’s yard sale, while a cool breeze blew through the open window.

I thought about driving down the tree-lined road, green hills rolling away on either side as a Carolina blue sky rubbed away a light shroud of fog like sleep from its eyes. I thought how the road curved, and how the first thing visible once it straightened was a large Confederate flag rippling in that breeze.

Yesterday, at the end of a drive home I can now make in a little more than an hour, I went to see my Granny. I took her some potted hydrangeas, blue instead of the white that grew on what we called the snowball bushes in the front yard of the house that was as much my own as the one where I technically lived. I didn’t stay long. There was a funeral going on nearby – how awful, I thought, just before Mothers’ Day. I told Granny and Pop I missed them, but I tell them that a lot anyway.

I miss them, and I miss parts of this place. I miss the newspaper folded to the funnies on the kitchen counter. (Daddy sometimes reads out loud the ones that amuse him the most, usually Snuffy Smith.) I miss the smell of the beans slow-cooking until their much-anticipated date with the cornbread tonight. I miss the friend who’s been the other side of my self since we were 15, when my preppy blouses met her faded jean jacket underneath a print of “The Persistence of Memory” in Spanish class.

I don’t miss the misguided affection for a past that doesn’t really contain all that much to be proud of. (I say this as a very proud Southerner. I am proud of the certainty that whoever enters the store in front of me here will look back and hold the door. I am proud of the people who are as true to themselves and their family and friends – often interchangeable concepts – as the red-dirt earth. I am proud of my accent, which elongates vowels and drops g’s somethin’ fierce the longer I stay. I am not proud of, and do not celebrate, so often being on the wrong side of history.)

I don’t miss the front-page newspaper story on National Day of Prayer. (I have no problem with praying. For my thoughts on gussied-up praying in public, see Bible, The Holy, Matthew 6:6, red letters.) I don’t miss the Waffle House cook whose eyes narrow at the white man and black woman coming through the door.

I also don’t think that racism, or sanctimoniousness, or ignorance are regional blights. Would that they were. The offending sections of the country could be quarantined and starved until sanity prevailed. But as current events have made clear far and wide, it’s gotten a bit beyond that now.

I’ve never found sticking my head in the sand to be a helpful approach, as anyone familiar with my occasional social media rants may realize all too well. But I admit, it’s getting harder to engage with an outside world that leaves handicapped women stranded on the side of the road or obsesses about exactly which bodily instrument is doing the peeing in a public bathroom – and does so in the name of Jesus.

So some days, I get up at 7:30 on a Saturday and go yard sale-ing with my mother, find a $5 microwave, and call it good.