Casey At the Bat: My Dad, Baseball, Big WAGI, and Raymond Parker

  Janet Belvin, a daughter of early 50s  FBC Gaffney SC pastor Frank Morris, has had some nostalgic stories  in the Chronicle about Gaffney and her short stay there. She is author of a  Front Porch milieu book and retired English Teacher. 

    My Dad came later and was in Gaffney from 62-78 at the mission of FBC, Bethany about three football fields down Wilkinsville Rd from the Union Hwy split. Like Frank he was a good friend of Raymond PArker and would visit the radio station often and go on air during Carolina in the Morning.

    He Called in from Portland Oregon once from a Baptist Convention. He roomed with Bobby Crocker of the Draytonville BC on that trip. Crocker was a High school football star in Union in the 50s, had a scholarship to Furman but his days ended early when Doctors discovered a heart condition.

     At the weekly preacher's breakfast and after they got back from Portland, one of the brethren asked Crocker if he was able to sleep given my Dad's snoring. Crocker said it wasn't a problem at all. Said they got to Portland without motel reservations and ended up in a king size bed about ten miles out of town. Crocker said first night we had our Bible Reading and Prayer and got in the Bed. Crocker said I just turned over and Gave Sweet Billy a kiss on the cheek and he didn't make a sound the rest of the week.

    Daddy loved Baseball growing up in a Mill Village in Rome Ga. His Mother had nine brothers and they had their own team in Wears Valley outside Pigeon Forge Tn. And my Dad claimed his sister Aunt Virginia almost married Leon Culberson, the grandfather of the Braves clutch player Charlie Culberson. Culberson subbed in for Joe Dimaggio's brother Dom in the 6th game of the 46 World Series between the Bosox and the St Louis Cards. Look up the Mad Dash on wiki.

     So over the years Daddy memorized the first verse of Casey at the Bat. In the 70s about every year the first day of baseball season he would drop by Big Wagi to do some poetry which Parker would start anouncing late March. Next week he would say, we should have Rev Billy Fox drop by to open Baseball season.

    So Dad third year in or so got to thinking he could do the second verse. Raymond would tell Daddy Billy that was great on the first verse you ready for the second. And Daddy would get about three lines into the second, start hemming and hawwing. Raymond Would say Keep working on it Billy , Maybe next year.

    As hinted above, Daddy's team was the Red Sox. I was watching the All Star game early 80s right after Yazstremski retired and was announced Coaching Third Base. The announcer is working it strong: "And now Ladies and Gentleman, coaching Third Base for the American League, the Legend, the thirty year left fielder for the Boston Red Sox, the Great Carl Yazstremski. Camera's on Yaz, he's clapping and breaks down crying. Daddy's standing up in front of the TV Clapping, and he loses it, basket case crying too  like a Baby for his hero.

   I tell friends the fat guy at bat , end of the movie MoneyBall Brad Pitt is watching on film. That's my Dad. You can find the clip online.

     One more Gaffney inflected anecdote. My Gaffney High Friend Grady Sizemore became the father of consensus greatest MLB player of the first decade of this century Grady Jr. He was a 30 30 guy one season, batter and base stealer. Developed serious problems with his knees but the Red Sox picked him up in 2014. First day of Baseball I was in the Sears in Gadsden Alabama and Grady comes up to bat, first time with the BoSox.

     He hits a home run in Fenway Park. I started crying that time. Wish my Dad coulda seen it.

Momma gone from the Earth 33 years now

  Momma died on March 17, 1988. My sister texted me and my brother this morning to say she has been gone now longer than she was with us.

    But  Momma made her mark. I have blogged about her often most colorfully when she made a display of the state of Alabama to some good church women in Gaffney, to the time she outwitted me in 85 in the Atlanta Constitution before I did.

      When My dad left his first church outside Newport Tn in 55, Bethel Baptist, Mose Freshour told him we liked you Billy, but we can always find another preacher. The woods are full of em, but we're gonna have to get six people to take Louise's place.

   After Momma Died Daddy told me about six sermons into Bethel Momma told him Billy, if that's the best you can do, we're gonna have a rough go of it. She started helping with his sermons, giving it some construction, beginning middle and a conclusion, and building his anecdotes and gifts as a storyteller around a basic framework.

     She typed his papers in seminary as she typed my six short story reviews for Miss Chadwick so I could graduate Gaffney High School in 71.

    Her father ran for school superintendent in Dekalb County Alabama in the second decade of the 20th Century and her Mother had three brothers, all medical doctors.....Momma kept the family afloat as her Dad was stricken with Arthritis during WWII, her brothers were in the war, and her sister had tuberculosis. All that drama played out in the house Noah Hall is living in now.

   She went to Celanese in Rome Ga to get a job; met my Dad and here we are. In a better world more of the manor born I'm convinced she coulda taught English at the college level or ran the SS Department for the Baptist Sunday School board in Nashville though the Heifner boys would say they are proud of the work their Dad and Forrest Jackson did there.

    She played ragtime piano on Saturday and the hymns of the Christian Faith for the Sunday Morning worship service. She gave an inebriated Doc Holliday the support to lead the singing one Sunday morning after he partied too much at a Furman homecoming and came to church on two hours sleep the next morning. She talked a neighbor into puttin his gun down one spring day in Gaffney when he was threatening suicide. When he put the gun down, his wife said what are we gonna do now, Louise. She said go pick it up and hand it to me.

    One time, the white boys and the colored boys were about to brawl in the back yard over a rebound dispute. Momma came out. The Black boys said we going home cause Mrs. Fox is a lady and we're not gonna fight you honkies in front of her.

     A Statue oughta go up somewhere.

Holden Caulifield, Maria Fabiola and Gaffney

   After the late Feb post on the Macdowell sisters and Faulkner, it came to my attention (registered with me)  Margaret Qualley is the daughter of Andie Macdowell, was pussycat in Once upon a Time in Hollywood (gets in the car with Brad Pitt) and is now starring in My Salinger year with Sigourney Weaver and will soon be onscreen as Ginger Rogers. 

   And as this coincides with Maurine Corrigan review on NPR Fresh Air about new novel by Avila, We Run the Tides, I gotta go for this. Ive Read the Novel in three days and Eulabee may appropriate Holden Caulifield for legendary status in coming generations. But it is Maria Fabiola whose name is on almost every page of the novel as told by Eulabee.

    As late as 1978 I hadnt read Catcher in the Rye. In my mind it was something shady, maybe there was a discussion about masturbation, something taboo but of literary significance. I'd read several novels of Phillip Roth by then, knew of the corn cob rape in the Faulkner canon, so wasnt naive, just hadn't read Salinger. It was the great Baptist preacher and thinker, Carlyle Marney who came to Gaffney to talk to the local preachers about Watergate, integrity, and other high minded topics with political implications. I crashed the presentation. It was Marney who brought up if a body see a body coming through the Rye. A Biblical notion, almost comparable to a Jesus parable it turns out to be, Salinger as a secular apostle.

    And the fact Salinger would go to High school basketball games and study the crowd, his community and explore in his mind what their souls were like, the darker reaches as well as the light of humanity from the flesh and blood he encountered daily.

     I tried several ways to get to Margaret to see if we could have some email exchanges about My Year with Salinger, to no avail. But there is a very good interview with her online about Salinger, though it never became clear to me she read the novel. Still the role has made an impression on her.

     I hope somebody from the staff of the Indian Post, her Momma's hometown HS newspapeer can get to Marge as this is a great teachable moment not only about Salinger, but to introduce them especially the girls ( Andie Rosalie has three sisters and it appears from a cursory review of facebook every offspring to date of the four girls is female with the exception of Andie's son) to Eulabee, Fabiola and their pack in San Francisco turning 13 in the early 80s.

   Almost everything horribly embarassing happens to Eulabee over the course of the novel and the ending for me had a touch of that nineties movie about the impostor played by Matt Damon in the Talented Mr. Ripley.

    For your daughters or friends female read We run  the Tides. Will give you an unvarnished appreciation of the difficulties of coming of age of the gender that don't play college football.

From Fyffe Alabama to Blacksburg SC, notable year in HS Basketball

   First friends come back to this next week as this is gonna be an intro. As Robin Williams said at the Oscars about 15 years ago, ain't no tellin how big this thing is gonna get.

    But before I get to Hayesville NC, Blacksburg and the tremendous run of Mikala Logan, and then a shoutout to John Blackwell and a stellar 2a Sand Rock team, got to say something about the NE Alabama legend Neal Thrash who went out a career ending winner with a state championship as coach of his hometown Fyffe Red Devil Roundballers. First boys title for the school since 1950s in a town made famous by the girls program of the 90s and the Queen Heather Mayes who front ended three state titles in that decade.

     On Neal's team this year was Parker Godwin, son of the older Simmons girl who won state in early nineties on a team where Mayes started I think her 8th or ninth grade year.  I saw her Dad and the Parker's Godwin Grandfather about three years ago at the Wendy's in Rainsville. They told me to stick around cause Neal was gonna have something the next two years.

    They were right. Parker was star of this team had a great game in the finals. And Neal got his basic defense down against a prep team from Montgomery (as in we recruit) and held the Catholic boy shooter down from 18 in the semis to 3 in the final.

    Fyffe had a scare in the last couple minutes as they went one for ten at the charity stripe and the commentators on radio said Neal was sweating it and finally just gave over to laughter. I'm glad they held on cause the gods woulda been horrendously unfair given all the good work to that point. Thrash had his wide body enforcer inside, I think the kid's name was Dalton, who has linebacker or some position scholarship to UAB. The big boy could deliver with the layups and Parker spotted Broadway often to round off his outside game, though the threes were slight in the finals; low scoring in the 40s.

    Thrash was head coach in Collinsville mid 90s to the early oughts. His son is an English teacher there now. Thrash went from Lilly White Sand Mtn, to down in the valley most ethnically diverse town in the state and pretty much everyone respected and adored the fellow, not counting a few players who barely dodged a clipboard or two. For a while he was famous for going Jack Nicholson in third quarters, out to lunch in his LSU Miles world, philosophical and distant, and would leave a game on autopilot. But if a game was in play, he always checked back in the the fourth Quarter.

     His 92-93 season was memorable in the aftermath of the Cedar Bluff football game which had strong implications for the upcoming basketball season, but Thrash survived that and along comes Solomon Stanton and Mark Dutton with a little help from Cory McAteer and Thrash takes the county tourney three times in a row.

   The Panthers owned it. Heart of Tuberville and Trump land, lower Appalachia, the County Civic Center which Jeremy Pruitt's Plainview HS thought of as their home court, was on fire in those days in a grand arena for lower Appalachia. Maybe NACC can have a conference on that in the wake of Hillbilly Elegy and the conversations it provoked.

     And this legend also taught Shakespeare. So come back as this will continue. I got to talk about Duck's grand daughter  Mikala Logan of Blacksburg  , Christ Church and the AShe boy from Hayesville who went deep in NC  

Russ Dean, The Clinton Chronicle, Abortion, Guns and Congressman Jeff Duncan

   I think I'm correct there are four strong colleges in the 3rd Congressional District of South Carolina: Presbyterian, Clemson, Erskine, Anderson, and Lander. So that's five. And there are several progressive Baptist churches including FBC Clemson and Anderson and Greenwood not to mention their friends at FUMC Clemson, and the trustees of Presbyterian College.

    Clinton native Russ Dean is making some waves in the Baptist world with his new book that takes a look at the myths of the Christian faith. He is also writing columns for Baptist News Global and his hometown Clinton Chronicle.

    Feb 22 he had a piece on abortion, as in it's time to take a look at abortion. About forty years go Frank Harrington, a long time trustee of Presbyterian College and the great pastor of the Peachtree Presbyterian Church of Atlanta had a sermon on the "thorny" question of abortion. He said the "weight of Protestant Theology comes down on the side of the Mother."

      Now forty years later Dean who I champion and delighted to share Furman as an alma mater, speaks as if its a new subject coming down the pike, I imagine sparked by the fetal heart bill in the SC legislature.

     I was proud Jerry Carter, new Republican to the SC State House from Clemson voted against the bill. I have to believe some folks at FUMC in Clemson talked to him about the venality of the bill, the mendacity of the politics of abortion.

     I think there is another school in Jeff Duncan district, Newberry the alma mater of Lee Atwater. Atwater said in his "nigger" memo of the early 80s abortion and gun politics have to take the place of race baiting as it is no longer palatable. The easily googled piece Holy War by Stansell in New Republic makes the compelling case abortion politics as played by the Trump base of the GOP and the SC Legislature, and Tommy tuberville of Alabama are chocked full of "mendacity". Stuart Stevens affirms the case quoting Atwater in the first chapter of his book it Was All a Lie.

     Baptist historian and social critic Bruce Gourley just two months ago made the connection of gun rights rhetoric to the militia rhetoric, the Big Lie that gave us the Trump insurrection of January 6.

    It was NRA Florida lobbyist Marion Hammer who gave the state the Stand Your Ground Law, without which the nation was less likely to suffer the Trayvon Martin polarization culminating with the BLM marches of last summer, not to mention Trump implying U Bama Heisman trophy winners Mark Ingram and and Derrick Henry were sonsabitches cause they didn't kiss up to his version of Kaepernick and the flag.

    As PBS documentaries  of Henry Louis Gates during February Black History month have driven home the point of James Baldwin, every black man at some point early on realizes the country that demands his allegiance is reluctant to give full allegiance to him

      Congressman Jeff Duncan is a poster child for the venality Russ Dean pokes at with his abortion examination. Duncan is also a founding member of the 2nd Amendment caucus, which places him in the Devil's vineyard of the Dark Money Politics of the NRA and gun lobby. There is a great evil Dean fails to confront full on. I hope he will do so soon in the Clinton Chronicle, and call on folks who know better to be brave and make plain to Clemson trustees, the so called good discerning people of Jeff Duncan's district and begin now in the Northwest pocket of Trumpland and fundamentalism in South Carolina to find a replacement.

     Darrien Rencher is a good fellow to consider. Bring Viola Davis and Oprah to Laurens SC and lets have a town hall about the legacy of Lee Atwater.

    You can read Dean's piece on abortion at

  https://baptistnews.com/article/why-we-need-to-talk-about-abortion/#.YD5ny2hKiM8

   Also see my blog of last fall on the politics of abortion "Sizzlin Lindsey."