All things Georgia. All things Southern.
39 years ago on April 8, 1974, Hank Aaron blast home run number 715 and beat Babe Ruth’s home run record.
Aaron would go on to hit a total of 755 homers, a MLB record that would last until Barry Bonds broke it in 2007 and finished with 762 HR. Although to me and many others out there, Hank Aaron will always be the home run king in baseball.
Corbindawg
Lewis would have been happy to see Gen. Sherman get his comeuppance.
Yesterday, Conan O’Brien finally got revenge on the war criminal.
Corbindawg
I have said it before and I’ll say it again: the SEC needs a uniform drug policy.
You have some schools, like UGA and Kentucky, who are strict.
I am so sick and tired about hearing from the media that Richt runs a loose ship. Funny, too, how you don’t hear these reports about how much the team lacks discipline when there aren’t any arrests.
College kids are going to smoke weed, regular or the synthetic variety. You cannot tell me that the players at UGA are smoking weed at a significantly higher rate than those at other schools. The difference, as we all know, are the policies in place. Perception is reality.
Then you have the allegations against Auburn. The problem with this is, why would you expect a school and a coach to do the right thing if you aren’t forced to? The only rule they have is the rule themselves made. Who in the SEC office cares if Dakota Mosley failed 7 consecutive weekly drug tests? No one. And that is the problem.
Look at Coach Richt. UGA has finishes of #3 and #2 under Coach Richt’s tenure, and last year was a mere 5 yards short of playing in the National Title game aka winning the National Title. UGA went toe to toe with the mighty Alabama and Nick Saban. It was a heavyweight fight to the very end.
Many other sites and blogs question the strict policies of UGA as a barrier to greatness. I won’t argue that. But they are the rules the athletic administration put in place. And we stick to them.
Auburn fans probably would gladly trade that one glorious season of 2010 for the next 40 years of wandering in the desert. I can rest easy knowing that as long as this regime is in Athens, there might be some bad press about players doing stupid things and “boys being boys”, but there won’t ever be anything of this magnitude reported.
What is more important to us, as fans-winning it all under nefarious means or damn near winning it all by doing it the right way? That is something everyone will have to answer for themselves, but for me, I’m happy with the consistency of the status quo if it means we won’t be embarrassed and faced with NCAA sanctions.
However, all this would not be an issue if Mike Slive and the SEC office would grow a pair and make the drug testing policies uniform across the conference. Clearly schools like Auburn can’t be trusted to do the right thing.
Corbindawg
Last week, I got to go to one of the three Boys and Girl’s Clubs in Atlanta operated by the Salvation Army. The difference between this Boys and Girls Club and others is this one is being run by the Salvation Army, so they can infuse Christian messages into their programming.
I spent the afternoon there, and they are truly doing God’s work. Kids come in after school, and they have a safe place to go play games and do their homework. Outside of being hustled by a 2nd grader at bumper pool, it was positive experience.
Our group of all WASP yuppies went and spent an afternoon and played basketball, pool, board games and helped the kids with their homework. I was helping a boy do his subtraction homework (didn’t really need my help), and he opened a bag of Cheetos and shared them with the other kids at his table. His sister, who was just one grade ahead of him, wasn’t as nice. But this little boy was very sweet to share his afternoon snack.
Go to the AJC and read the headlines. Today there are many articles about the cheating scandal with the public schools. Atlanta ranks 3rd in the country as having the most roaches. Traffic and infrastructure problems plague the city.
While the City of Atlanta hosts several high profile sporting events at the Georgia Dome-Final Fours, Superbowls, SEC Championship Games, Wrestlemania, bowl games, etc., the city leadership thinks it is wise to invest money into a new facility, when the current one is very adequate.
Now, I know the City’s commitment is relatively small. But it is just bad PR and comes across as insensitive.
Arthur Blank has a foundation and its mission statement is:
The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation promotes positive change in peoples’ lives and builds and enhances the communities in which they live. We seek innovative solutions that enable young people, families and communities to achieve results beyond what seems possible today.
With all the problems facing Atlanta, how can a $1 billion stadium help improve the community and lives? I wish that Mr. Blank spent some time driving around the city so he would see that Atlanta has more problems than an old Georgia Dome. And while a new Dome would might create an economic boom, I think a better way to help in economic development would be to help the children like the ones I met at the Boys and Girls club get out of the chains of poverty
How does a team strike out 16 times and still score 9 runs?
The long ball.
The Braves have 6 round trippers already this season, 2 from Justin Upton. The Braves finished in the middle of the pack for HR in the NL last year, and near the bottom of all the MLB. They kept company with Houston, the Mets and Seattle. This Braves lineup presents no easy outs (except B.J. Upton and maybe Dan Uggla). There is legitimate power up and down.
After the 1990s when the Braves were built on solid pitching, could we be turning to the long ball*? After all, chick do dig the long ball.
*Not saying the Braves pitching is not good now. Paul Maholm turned out an excellent outing last night.
I meant to comment on this last week, but couldn’t find the time. I am faced with spending the next 8 hours swamped in an Excel sheet or doing this post, so I am choosing the latter.
Last week Tyler posted about Spring Practice and noted that Hutson Mason was battling the Dengue Fever that he contracted over spring break. This reminded me of a time when I was confronted with the dengue fever, and it serves as a cuationary tale to you all.
Back in October 2011, my in-laws took my wife and I and her brother and his wife on a cruise. It was a very generous gift and we all had a great time. We took a Carnival Cruise, departed Jacksonville on a Monday and returned back on Saturday, making stops in Key West and Nassau along the way.
Despite the recent news about Carnival, I would go back on a cruise. It wasn’t what I expected it to be (a cruise isn’t as classy or ritzy as I thought), but I had fun. I would also like to spend more than an afternoon in Key West.
Anyway, as we were boarding the ship, I saw all sorts of literature about the warnings of the dengue fever in tropical locations, passed on by mosquito bites. I am especially prone to getting bit by Florida’s state bird, so I was going to be extra cautious in applying bug spray.
We did an snorkling excursion in Nassau. The boat ride on the catamaran was more fun than the actual snorkling. On the way back, the boat offered complimentary rum punch. After being with my teetotalling in-laws all week, and being faced with the expensive drinks on the ship, I took full advantage of the free rum punch. They really didn’t stop you at your limit of 2. After a 45 minute boat ride, I had a lot of rum punch.
We got back, showered and went to dinner at the only place that was open. There were several resturants during the day that were open, and I thought the market area would have an active night life. We banked on getting dinner off the boat. Well, Nassau turned into a ghost town. The third world country it is really showed its face. We went to the only resturant that was open. My wife and brother in law got chicken and shrimp; his wife and I got cheeseburgers.
The next day was our last day at sea. My brother-in-law’s wife was feeling sick all day and never left the room. Around lunch I started feeling sick. I went back to our room and slept for a little while. I woke up still feeling very sick to my stomach and finally my wife told me to just throw up. I am not one to force myself to throw up, I avoid vomit if at all possible. But I was desperate.
The next part is graphic, so I will try and be as delicate as possible. When I vomited a bunch of red stuff came out. One of the symptoms I read about the dengue fever was vomiting blood. Now, keep in mind this all happened very fast. As I lay on the bathroom floor on a Carival Cruise ship, looking down at a toilet full of red liquid, I was convinced I had the dengue fever and just vomited blood. I thought, “Oh my God, I am going to die on the bathroom floor of a Carival Cruise ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.”
I then vomited again, and then had a familar taste in my mouth. It was a fruity taste. I was relieved that what I thought was blood was actually the rum punch from the day before. As it turns out, both my sister-in-law and I just had a case of food poising from the third world beef from the night before. But for about 3 seconds between puking, I had self diagnosed myself as having the dengue fever and thought I was about to die.
So, if Hutson Mason really does have the dengue fever, I sympahthize with him.
Corbindawg
Baseball is a great sport. It has the tradition of the great teams, and each generation can relate to something special regarding baseball. How many of us as youngsters didn’t pretend their back yard was a MLB stadium?
Baseball also has some quirkiness about it, sometimes becuase of this tradition. But also because a clubhouse in many ways is like a frat house. This translates well to the silver screen.
I don’t particularly care too much for sports movies, but I do love me some baseball movies.
As today represents Opening Day across MLB, enjoy some of the all time hits:
NSFW
Corbindawg
Lewis Grizzard passed away 19 years ago yesterday. On March 21, 1994 this obituary ran in the AJC. The AJC reprinted it on the 10th anniversary of his death, along with the obituary for his beloved Catfish.
By Charles Seabrook,Tom Bennett
Staff WRITERS
Toward the end, Lewis Grizzard, knowing his chances of seeing another springtime in his beloved Georgia were slim, still made people laugh.
Even his doctors.
They recounted Sunday that in a tense moment last week, after they had explained to Grizzard that he had less than a 50-50 chance of surviving his fourth open-heart surgery, he responded:
“When’s the next bus to Albuquerque?”
Grizzard, whose thrice-weekly syndicated humor column made hundreds of thousands of readers laugh, died Sunday morning at Emory University Hospital in an intensive care unit after a life-support system was removed. He was 47.
Death came from massive brain damage, apparently caused by an obstruction that broke off from his aorta before or during surgery and lodged in an artery that fed oxygenated blood to his brain.
His body will be on public view at the McKoon Funeral Home in Newnan from 3-9 p.m. today. A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Moreland Methodist Church, the church he called “so dear to my childhood.”
He married there for the first time (at age 19) in 1966 to Nancy Jones. He married for the fourth time four days ago (to Dedra Kyle) in the hospital where he died.
He once said he wanted “somebody, preferably Willie Nelson,” to sing his favorite hymn, “Precious Memories,” at his funeral. His body, however, will be cremated, and the ashes buried next to his mother’s grave in Moreland.
His mother, Christine Word Atkinson, died in 1989 after a long illness. In many poignant columns and books, Grizzard wrote with near reverence of the former first-grade schoolteacher.
“Mama taught me that an education was necessary for a fuller life,” he wrote. “She taught me an appreciation of the language. She taught a love of words, of how they should be used and how they can fill a creative soul with a passion and lead it to a life’s work.”
The Washington Post wrote: “He compares every woman to his mother, who spoiled him rotten.”
But he reserved some of his most moving columns for his father, Lewis Grizzard Sr., a highly decorated veteran of World War II and the Korean War who died in 1970 of a stroke.
Grizzard said that after his father returned from the Korean War, he was a changed man. “He began to bender-drink heavily. He couldn’t handle the family finances and borrowed large sums of money. He eventually left the army, or the army left him.
“My mother could no longer cope with my father’s problems and had a 6-year-old on her hands. She moved us to her parents’ home and eventually divorced my father.”
Jim Minter, a former Atlanta Journal-Constitution editor and one of Grizzard’s closest friends, said “one of Lewis’s worries . . . was that he didn’t measure up to his dad.”
Grizzard said his book about his father, “Daddy Was a Pistol and I’m a Son of a Gun,” was his favorite.
Humor to the hilt
In large part, his family roots were responsible for making Grizzard a fiercely proud Southerner. His 20 books and syndicated columns in the Journal-Constitution and 450 other newspapers played redneck humor to the hilt. He took special delight in attacking Yankees, liberal politicians, draft evaders and feminists.
Many readers, instead of laughing at his wit, became enraged. Some called him a racist, a label Grizzard vehemently denied.
Divorced three times, Grizzard wrote that women’s activities should be limited to rubbing his back, hugging his neck, baking pies, frying chicken and washing his clothes.
“He’s pricked some people once considered off-limits to pricking,” Minter said. “He [was] absolutely the best of anyone I know at walking up to the edge of bad taste without being in bad taste.”
Pat Conroy, another best-selling Southern author whose novels often decried racism and other problems of the South, once suggested that Grizzard represented mostly what was wrong with the South.
Conroy wrote that he “loathed” the South that Grizzard revered.
Grizzard, who loathed neckties, once acknowledged in a television interview that “I’m not a modern man.” Many of his friends said he was born two centuries too late.
Grizzard poked fun at his record of marital problems and his greatest phobia – flying in airplanes. Whenever possible, he preferred to travel by car or bus.
A favorite target was Georgia Tech, the football rival of his alma mater, the University of Georgia. Grizzard was a fixture at Sanford Stadium on the Georgia campus on Saturday afternoons when his beloved football Dawgs played at home.
Former Georgia head football coach Vince Dooley, whose team won the national championship in 1980 with running great Herschel Walker, was one of Grizzard’s closest friends. Dooley’s successor, Ray Goff, was at the hospital Sunday when Grizzard died.
Grizzard left the university needing one course to graduate. Years later, UGA gave it to him and awarded him a journalism degree.
Popular on lecture circuit
Grizzard was a popular figure on the lecture circuit, commanding up to $20,000 a speech. He occasionally appeared on television, including guest spots on “The Tonight Show,” “Designing Women” and “Larry King Live.”
The columns, books and personal appearances made him wealthy, but Grizzard yearned to be taken seriously as a writer.
“I wish one time in my life I could do what other writers do . . . get me a villa in Spain and go there to write a book,” he said in a 1992 magazine interview. “I’d like to know what I could do if I really had the time to spend on writing a book, with no columns or shows to do at the same time.”
Lewis McDonald Grizzard Jr. was born Oct. 20, 1946, at Fort Benning, Ga.
After his mother divorced his father, she returned to Moreland and remarried. The young Grizzard grew up there and went to Moreland Elementary. He graduated from high school in nearby Newnan in 1964.
As a UGA freshman, he was a summertime feature writer for the Newnan Times-Herald. That September, he joined the 2-month-old Athens Daily News.
Newspaper ‘boy wonder’
He became a “boy wonder” of the newspaper business. He was named sports editor of the Athens newspaper at 19, and, at 21, became sports editor of The Atlanta Journal. He became an assistant city editor of The Journal in 1975, but left after a short stint to free-lance for Sports Illustrated and other publications.
Later that year, however, he joined the sports department of the Chicago Sun-Times, and that October was named executive sports editor.
But Grizzard disliked Chicago intensely, especially its bitter winters. Last year, when he was facing his third open-heart operation, which almost killed him, he said the surgery would be about as pleasant as “having to move back to Chicago.”
In April 1977, pining for Georgia, Grizzard phoned his old friend and mentor, Minter, then The Constitution’s managing editor. Minter said he was thinking of hiring a sports columnist.
“Hire me!” Grizzard said, and Minter did. The column began in The Constitution’s sports section.
In February 1978, the newspaper announced that Grizzard’s column would move over to the news section. Veteran reporters at the newspaper speculated that Grizzard might fall flat on his face because he lacked experience in news.
Column caught on
But his columns caught on like wildfire. They became the talk of Atlanta, and then the South. He was syndicated to other papers by King Features.
Decrying computers, he pounded out his columns on a vintage Royal manual typewriter, and phoned them in to his assistant, Gerrie Ferris – “Wanda Fribish” in his columns.
The fictional characters from his childhood, so familiar to his readers, began to emerge: Weyman C. Wannamaker Jr., Kathy Sue Loudermilk and Cordie Mae Poovey.
His move into book-writing became a Southern publishing event. Peachtree Publishers of Atlanta distributed his first book, the 1979 collection of his columns titled “Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You,” and it sold 75,000 copies the first week.
His second book, “Elvis Is Dead And I Don’t Feel So Good Myself,” made The New York Times best-seller list. He was annually the region’s best-selling author.
He chronicled his newspaper career in a book that also summed up his feelings about the South: “If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I’m Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground.”
At the time of his death, he was planning his 21st book – about dogs, especially his Labrador retriever, Catfish, who died five months ago.
Stage and album
Grizzard added concert stage appearances in 1985. A favorite closing line: “Life is like a dog-sled team; if you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.”
That same year he released a comedy album, “On the Road With Lewis Grizzard – I’ve Seen England, I’ve Seen France, I’ve Seen Miss America Without Her Underpants.”
Most readers, however, knew him through his newspaper columns.
As his fame spread, he let readers and audiences in on the details of a playboy lifestyle he had adopted. In one column, the onetime country boy from Moreland described how he had shot the rapids on a river in Idaho; in another, how he had spent the day sunning himself on the Cote d’Azur in the south of France – and taking note of the topless swimsuit attire.
Some of his newspaper colleagues were models for some of the characters. Journal-Constitution reporter Bill Robinson, his longtime friend, became Billy Bob Bailey, the world’s most obnoxious Alabama fan.
He wrote about things he liked – home-grown tomatoes, Moon Pies, doughnuts and especially barbecue – and things he disliked: buttermilk, fishing, computers, electric typewriters, Dom DeLuise and TV evangelists.
Columnists are fair game for every cause and complaint, and Grizzard frequently gave the space to them – a hit-and-run victim, a couple whose home had been burglarized.
But more commonly he wrote about his passions: trains, patriotism, pickup trucks, cowboys, his dog Catfish and country music.
The trivialities of his life filled the column: He couldn’t build or repair anything. At age 7 he wanted to be Roy Rogers. His mother made him bathe. No one could cook eggs over medium-well the way his mother could.
Commentary and criticism
But he also ventured into social commentary, sometimes drawing sharp criticism.
When some friends who had been rafting on the Chattahoochee River found themselves in the midst of a gay raft race, Grizzard wrote that people “have a right to float down the river without having to see a sex show, gay or otherwise. If sex had been meant to be an outdoor activity, we would never have been given motel rooms.” Gays blasted the column as unfair.
But he frustrated his conservative readers, too, when he supported abortion and gun control. Of the latter, he wrote: “The National Rifle Association [members] are bullet brains. I’d like to see the animals armed.”
After his 1993 heart surgery, Grizzard took a softer tone in his columns, writing appreciatively of his recovery and his relationship with Dedra.
Mainly, he loved life, and it showed, said his friends. Grizzard said one of his big worries was that “somewhere there is a great party going on, and I’m missing it.”
HIS BOOKS
The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture called Lewis Grizzard “the Faulkner of the common man.” Here’s a list of his books:
“Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You,” 1979.
“Elvis Is Dead and I Don’t Feel So Good Myself” and “Won’t You Come Home, Billy Bob Bailey?,” 1980.
`Don’t Sit Under the Grits Tree With Anyone Else But Me,” 1981.
“They Tore Out My Heart and Stomped That Sucker Flat,” about his first open-heart surgery, 1982.
“If Love Were Oil, I’d Be About a Quart Low,” 1983.
“Shoot Low Boys, They’re Ridin’ Shetland Ponies,” 1985.
“My Daddy Was a Pistol and I’m a Son of a Gun” and “When My Love Returns From the Ladies Room, Will I Be Too Old to Care?,” 1987.
“Don’t Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know Them ‘Taters Got Eyes,” 1988.
“Chili Dawgs Always Bark at Night” and “Lewis Grizzard on Fear of Flying,” 1989.
“If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I’m Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground,” “Advice to Newly Wed . . . & the Newly Divorced” and “Does a Wild Bear Chip in the Woods?,” about golf, 1990.
“You Can’t Put No Boogie-Woogie on the King of Rock and Roll,” “Don’t Forget to Call Your Mama, I Wish I Could Call Mine,” and “Heapin’ Helping of True Grizzard: Down Home Again With Lewis Grizzard,” 1991.
“I Haven’t Understood Anything Since 1962: And Other Nekkid Truths,” 1992.
“I Took a Lickin’ and Kept on Tickin’ and Now I Believe in Miracles,” 1993.
Source: Books on File, 1992-93
© The Atlanta Journal – Consitution
Originally published November 28, 1993 in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Reprinted Monday, March 21, 1994:
By Lewis Grizzard
My dog Catfish, the black Lab, died Thanksgiving night.
The vet said his heart gave out.
Down in the country, they would have said, “Lewis’s dog up and died.” He would have been 12 had he lived until January.
Catfish had a good life. He slept indoors. Mostly he ate what I ate. We shared our last meal Tuesday evening in our living room in front of the television.
We had a Wendy’s double cheeseburger and some chili.
Catfish was a gift from my friends Barbara and Vince Dooley. Vince, of course, is the athletic director at the University of Georgia. Barbara is a noted speaker and author.
I named him driving back to Atlanta from Athens where I had picked him up at the Dooleys’ home. I don’t know why I named him what I named him. He was all curled up in a blanket on my back seat. And I looked at him and it just came out. I called him: “Catfish.”
I swear he raised up from the blanket and acknowledged. Then he severely fouled the blanket and my back seat.
A powerful set of jaws
He was a most destructive animal the first three years of his life.
He chewed things. He chewed books. He chewed shoes.
“I said to Catfish, ‘Heel,’ ” I used to offer from behind the dais, “and he went to my closet and chewed up my best pair of Guccis.”
Catfish chewed television remote control devices. Batteries and all.
He chewed my glasses. Five pairs of them.
One day, when he was still a puppy, he got out of the house without my knowledge. The doorbell rang. It was a young man who said, “I hit your dog with my car, but I think he’s OK.”
He was. He had a small cut on his head and he was frightened, but he was otherwise unhurt.
“I came around the corner,” the young man explained, “and he was in the road chewing on something. I hit my brakes the second I saw him.”
“Could you tell what he was chewing on?” I asked.
“I know this sounds crazy,” the young man answered, “but I think it was a beer bottle.”
Catfish stopped chewing while I still had a house. Barely.
Known far and wide
He was a celebrity, Catfish. I spoke recently in Michigan.
Afterwards a lady came up to me and said, “I was real disappointed with your speech. You didn’t mention Catfish.”
Catfish used to get his own mail. Just the other day the manufacturer of a new brand of dog food called “Country Gold,” with none other than George Jones’s picture on the package, sent Catfish a sample of its new product. For the record, he stil preferred cheeseburgers and chili.
Catfish was once grand marshal of the Scottsboro, Ala., annual Catfish Festival. He was on television and got to ride in the front seat of a police car with its siren on.
He was a patient, good-natured dog, too. Jordan, who is 5, has been pulling his ears since she was 2. She even tried to ride him at times. He abided with nary a growl.
Oh, that face and those eyes. What he could do to me with that face and those eyes. He would perch himself next to me on the sofa in the living room and look at me.
And love and loyalty would pour out with that look, and as long as I had that, there was very little the human race could do to harm my self- esteem.
Good dogs don’t love bad people.
He was smart. He was fun. And he loved to ride in cars. There were times he was all that I had.
And now he has up and died. My own heart, or what is left of it, is breaking.
© The Atlanta Journal – Constitution
Today, 19 years ago, the world lost a DGD in every sense of the word when Lewis passed away.
We can thank of nothing more appropriate than this photo.
This post’s title has a lot of pun intended.
Classes resume today in Athens. We haven’t heard any reports from credible news outlets about any hotboxing in LA on the way to PCB or any drunken escapades in Remerton on the way to Daytona.
That is just winning a battle of the offseason’s annual war against Mark Richt. The next major battle is when the drug test results come back from this week.
I really hope the Athletic Association Board in their most recent meeting went into a closed door exec session and said that there would be no drug tests administered for 6-8 weeks after Spring Break. Now, that truly would be random.
Corbindawg
