My Dad's Red Sox rollin in the World Series

  I've made several blogposts the last few years about my Dad's love for the Boston Red Sox, Carl Yazstremski,  and Leon Culberson who he said almost married his sister Aunt Virginia. Leon, Dom Dimmagio and the 46 Bosox are part of baseball lore told well by David Halberstam in the Teammates. My Dad passed in 99 so he never got to see the Bosox break the Series Curse. I remember seeing FFn Bucky Dent rip his heart out in 78 and it was some time in there, was it Buckner when the ball went between his legs. That coulda been the early 80s.

   Leon's grandson Charlie now plays for the Braves and had a glorious playoff with the Dodgers last year. This year with the Braves he faced the Dodgers and did okay.

    Walker Buehler played at Vanderbilt coming out of Clay County HS in Kentucky. I think he overlapped a year with Yaz grandson Mike. There was a natty in there somewhere. That year 14 or so I tried to get the Red Sox 1a team at Fluor Field to host Vandy and the Citadel. If they woulda pulled it off you coulda had the grandson of Yaz and the great grandson of Shoeless Joe Jackson of the Citadel on the same field. My alma mater Furman woulda rounded out a tri fecta.

   My nephew took Jon Lester's wife to her Jr Prom at Wade Hampton High. But that was before she met Lester and he went to the Cubs. Just random and I won't be speaking to my nephew for a while anyway maybe past Christmas.

   We'll see.

       I want the Sox to win, and my friend from Gaffney Grady Sizemore shared the outfield, well switched out with Jackie Bradley Jr in 2010; Grady Jr hit a home run first at bat that season and I thought he was on the road to redemption glory after a great decade with the Indians and then some rehab. But he faded in a few years jumped around to other clubs but they can never take his glory of the Indians away. Grady the father was a year behind me at Gaffney high, in the Band but he played baseball, even a little for Mars Hill College.

    But Walker Buehler of the Dodgers is my storyline this year. Against the Braves he walks a pitcher that was one for 53 on the year at bats and the next dude hits a grand slam. Place is going crazy. I thought a great baseball moment.

    Then he gets on the mound with the Red Sox and Jackie Bradley Jr stares him down like Jackie Robinson dancing off third toward the plate. Buehler comes unraveled again and baseball mayhem follows.

    Maybe I got it wrong. I think Buehler danced on Verlander, that was it. In any case here we are, Buehler is up tomorrow night and we'll see if Clayton Kershaw has any redemption left.

Furman looks at the slave holding founders; Baptists again in play

    For the last year Furman has taken a strong look at the founders Richard and his son James Clement, the first president, and their slaveholding and the theology and cultural apologies they developed to influence the south into righteous satisfaction they were doing God's will.

    I will post a link from circa Oct 17 Greenville Journal that will do justice to the initiative. This blog will focus on some of the drama that has become part of the conversation and the possibility of a poison pill in the report that has raised the suspicions among some pockets, precincts of the community, myself included.

   I want to say at the outset, face value this looks to have been a very worthwhile endeavor. There is some peer pressure from the likes of UVA, Harvard and others caught up in diversity--not a bad word--movement in higher education, but I have learned a good bit from the 40 page report and the nuances and frames, insights have been invaluable as Furman is not only my alma mater but Gaffney SC my hometown thus state as from third grade in 62 to the families leavetaking in 78 Ich bin Carolina Cracker!

     The poison pill is underdiscussion. I'd heard chatter but I understood clearly in a rollout Sat morning on campus library Homecoming day with about 15 folks in the room there is some discussion with the recommendations the longtime seal For Christ and Learning may be replaced with Furman's sister Judson College Seal that does not have Christ in the motto in any form, on the Cross or Resurrected.

    What follows for now are copies of some facebook posts I have made beginning with this morning on Furman's Main Facebook wall.

   Greenville Journal article should google up for Unearthing the Past, Furman reckons .

     And here are my posts on Furman facebook wall this morning.


  

I was in a group of about 15 folks in the Library Saturday morning for the rollout of the Slavery Justice initiative. Fascinating report but I fear there is something of a poison pill in the recommendations that would in effect remove Christ from the University Seal. I posted my concerns on the facebook wall of Brandon Inabinet. We remain facebook friends but he deleted my comment. I also shared my concerns on the wall of the New Baptist Covenant which had their tenth annual gathering last week. You can click over to their wall and see my comment in the Ruby Sales thread. Furman certainly is part of a big historical movement as Ms Sales is quoted with the following: “I submit to you today that the story has not been told – that the South has a rendezvous with destiny, that the whole struggle for human and civil rights will be fought in the South,” said Sales. “It will be the battleground for human and civil rights in the 21st century.”


Stephen M. Fox And at Furman, you can not disconnect Civil Rights from names like TC Smith, Marshall Frady, Martin England, LD Johnson, Will D. Campbell and Carlyle Marney and I see NO enthusiasm for celebrating their contributions as Baptists in the current Furman conversation and that saddens me..

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Interest elevates at Furman

by Stephen Fox » Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:36 am

Latest post on facebook quoting myself

There seems to have arisen a misunderstanding of my use of the term poison pill. The term was never uttered in the meeting Saturday morning or in any conversation I can remember to date about the report. The term is mine after Ive thought about the presentation Sunday and the many conversations I had since then and a few before to describe the concern about the seal. I wanted to do my best to be as clear as I could about that. Thanks. Looking to see how this concern plays out with the New Baptist Covenant and wider Baptist progressive Movement given well aware of the 1990 breal with the SC SBC, Furman will forever be known as a Historically BaptistCollege and the virtues of that history should be proclaimed as broadly as the current gut wrenching over the apologists for slavery of the founding fathers. Going forward maybe somebody can channel Marshall Frady much better than my capacity, in the interest of Transparency and I find many suspicions about that in the chatter this process has evoked. Thank you, Proud to be a Paladin and Jesus knows that and many Furman folks now in heaven if I could be so retrograde at this juncture to utter such arcane phrases, callin on the name of the Lord and what not.

Three new books for Gaffney High School

   Last Friday was Gaffney High School Homecoming. I hope to be the guest speaker for seven minutes at the Traditional two hour long assembly 2021 my class 50th but that's three years away.

     I called to leave a message for Tommy Martin but he was in the office early. Turns out he is of the class of 63 five years after his oldest sister, a classmate of Libby Harrill Mitchell, a Furman grad who became LT gov of Maine and ran for Governor.

    She would be a great speaker also but this was her year.

    Tommy has a younger sister Kathy who went to Furman, GHS 68. So Tommy tells me it's a family reunion for them as they cover the fifths. 

   Was also a big day for Limestone which used to be a mile from my house. When they got a good surface on their tennis courts I spent a lot of time there hitting the wall. Limestone looking at a new ten million dollar library by 2020. Tommy said they visited the impressive complex at Young Harris as they were envisioning.

   Rahul Mehra was back in town, the College of Charleston grad of Distinction. His father taught Biology at Limestone, something of a legend if not an icon.
 
     Rahul is doing well in Tampa but can't pay for the new library all by himself. Help him out if you can.

      But back to Gaffney High. Had a delightful conversation with Karen Mabry Denton, GHS 94 or so and GHS Libraria.  She is Barry Denton's daughter in law. She said she's good, Rahul and I don't even have to make a pledge, to get my suggested books.

    1. Jill Lepore new history of America. A Thousand pages with a spotlight on James Madison's slave Billy, and later the Birch Society marinated Phyliss Schlafly, a Jezebel with great influence who worked in the shadows with Pressler and Patterson and the residues of the White Citizens Councils in the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention.

    2. Joe Crespino's Strom Thurmond's America. I recommend it as does David Shi, a friend of Gaffney's Jackie Queen from their football days at Furman and former chair of the History Department at Davidson.

    3.  Frye Galliard's Hard Rain. See my blog review about three posts down. Frye himself read it and liked it. I call Joe Kennedy's DC office yesterday and told them of Frye's affection for Bobby, Joe's grandfather and the Gaffney connection through Marian Wright Edelman. They're gonna read my blog too, possibly Joe himself. But more importantly I think Frye a shoe in for the reference shelves in Joe Jr's DC office.

   Bill Moyers was right when he sent me a note in 88 that said People like me make a difference; because I do.

     As I hope to tell the third generation at GHS in 21: Remember Flight, Because the Bird is Mortal.