Relaunch

Sometimes you have to just own up to who you really are – at your core. And I guess one of the things that makes me who I am is my love of sports. I was reading an article the other night before I went to bed and I realized just how much of my “free” time I spend surfing the Internet for various information about the sports figures I have spent much of my life loving and hating. As a result, I hope to remake this blog as one that focuses on all things sport.

Of course as with many things in my life my views tend to be polarizing. But I want to try something different with this new blog. I want to inject my passion for sport into these entries, while attempting to maintain some neutrality where appropriate. Sometimes emotion and an opinion will be provided. Sometimes the simple facts will be enough. As a result, I will probably NOT talk a lot about Clemson University basketball because I am unable to be dispassionate/realistic about their teams. I went to school there (twice even!) and taught there for a few years. I lived there for twelve years from 1995-2000 and from 2001-2008. Bottom line: I care too much. One day I hope to be like The Sports Guy, Bill Simmons, who writes frequently about the Boston Celtics. He has been a rabid fan his whole life and recently said after taking his daughter to a Lakers vs. Clippers game (he lives in LA) that he would have left her in the parking lot if she had asked for a Kobe Bryant jersey. She has already made him angry by saying that she loved purple and hated green. The nerve! I think he was serious. Yet he writes about Boston sports fairly often and somehow those articles are highly readable. I hope to get there about Clemson sports, but I am not there yet.

While I offer no guarantees, I hope to eventually get to a point where I am able to write about the relationship between sports and culture. I hope to ponder what particular events or figures, both past and present, mean to us, as a society. Perhaps I might even delve into difficult topics like issues of race or gender in a particular sport. I am increasingly interested in the Negro Leagues and in discovering more about these tremendous baseball players and courageous men whose stories are often overlooked.

From time to time I do hope to offer a brief portrait of a relatively unknown sport figure. Warning: Selfishly, many of these posts will be about former or current baseball players. This is because I am realizing just how much I love the history of the game. While most kids I knew growing up in the 1980s and early 1990s were obsessed with current players of the time like Cal Ripken, Jr, Tony Gwynn, and Wade Boggs, I was learning about players like Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Jackie Robinson. There was always something about the mystique of these historical players that really gripped me and has, apart from a brief time surrounding the strike in 1994, never let go.

These players captivate me. Sport captures me. I hope to share some of this passion with you. Stay tuned.