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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2008 > November
November 2008
blog: Alter channels Bobby Kennedy
CANTON — He didn’t give his team a pregame pep talk.
The last time Alter head coach Ed Domsitz addressed his players before Friday’s Division IV state championship game with Steubenville at Fawcett Stadium was earlier that day back at the team hotel.
That’s when he shared something with them that had inspired him when he was their age.
“When I was 17 or 18 years old, I was a big Robert Kennedy supporter,” Domsitz said. “He would close his campaign stops with a quote from George Bernard Shaw and at that point the newsmen always knew to head off and get back on the bus.
“Kennedy would say: ‘Some men see things as they are and say ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and say ‘Why not?’
“That’s just the way I always felt about things, the way I looked at life. I talked to the team about it. I said, ‘What Kennedy was saying was that some people can sit around and moan and complain that things never happen. But others can go out and make things happen.’ That was the ‘why not? The why not us ? The why not now?”“
Alter scored the second time it had the ball and went on to overwhelm previously-unbeaten Steubenville, 21-6, to win the the school’s first-ever football title. The Knights finished with a whopping 384 yards of offense and amassed 21 first downs compared to Steubenville’s 6. They held the ball nearly 30 of the 48 minutes in he game. And on defense Alter held the Big Red — a team that had averaged 38.4 points in its four play-off games — to just one score.
That’s going out and making things happen.
Alter is one of the best teams I’ve seen come through the Miami Valley in decades. Not just how they play, but how they are coached.
Ed Domsitz, the old school coach with the brand new trophy, knows just what to do…and say.
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blog: Mercer on UD — “They’re in for a great season.”
After Dayton dismantled Mercer, 71-53, Tuesday night, I went to the visitors’ dressing room rather than UD’s quarters because I thought the Bears might be able to add some real perspective on the capabilities of the Flyers and how they stack up with teams from some of the name basketball conferences.
Earlier this season Mercer had gone into Alabama and won and did the same at Auburn. They led Georgia Tech last Saturday by 18 points with 12 minutes left before falling in overtime.
Two things — well, three, if I count how banged up they were afterward — stood out.
The Mercer players — as was Coach Bob Hoffman — could not have been more gracious and complimentary when it came to the Flyers. They were a class act. And they were impressed:
“That’s definitely the best team we’ve faced so far,” said Daniel Emerson, the Bears 6-foot-8 junior forward. “Georgia Tech was good, but as far as a team that plays together and has overall athleticism, this is definitely the best.”
The Bears also were blown away by the atmosphere in UD Arena. Not just the players, but Hoffman, who has been coaching nearly 30 years as an Oklahoma assistant, a head coach at Texas Pan American and Oklahoma Baptist, a head women’s coach at Southern Nazarene and in both the NBA Developmental League and the American Basketball Association.
“This place is awesome,” Hoffman said. “I’ve been to a lot of places in my career, but this place is unique. They’ve really got it going. Just the way they’re on top of you and the way the students are into it. You can tell (the fans here) really understand the game at a high level.”
Emerson, who led Mercer with 13 points, agreed: “To play here is amazing. Fan-wise this is the most impressive place I’ve ever seen. They give their team a great home court advantage.”
The Flyers do have a tremendous home court advantage, so this weekend’s trip to Chicago — for games against Auburn and especially Marquette in the Invitational Challenge tournament — will be an even better indicator of just how good this UD team can be this year.
It’s likely Mercer would have fared much better had its star player — point guard James Florence — not suffered a groin injury early in the first half. He only played 12 minutes total Tuesday night, just three in the second half. He had been averaging 23.3 points per game, but against Dayton scored just two.
Yet even had he played at his peak, I don’t think Mercer could have handled the intense Flyers’ attack on this night. Hoffman seemed to be of the same mind set::
“We’ve played some good teams in the other games and each time we were able to land the first punch. Tonight their coach had them ready and they ran their stuff so well. If you’re not engaged they’ll run right over you. We were close to being knocked out tonight.
“Dayton makes it rough on you from the start. We had some break-always, some easy lay-ups, but with Dayton there were no easy lay-ups. There were no easy shots.”
Against Mercer, Flyers sophomore Chris Wright had 16 points that included two bring-the-Arena-to-life ally-oop dunks, 11 rebounds and three blocked shots As Emererson put it later: “Wow!”
Charles Little — a “stud” Emerson called him — had 11 points and point guard London Warren was every place with six assists, three steals and two blocks to go with four pints and two rebounds.
“With the guys they have and the way they play,” said Emerson, who was sporting a shiner from an errant Flyers elbow while battling for a rebound, “I think they’re in for a great season.”
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blog: WSU — lacking confidence and a shooting touch
I’ve got to say, beyond the court it’s a lot more fun at Wright State basketball games than it’s ever been.
“Bob Grant’s got a good thing going now,” Jon Ramey — the former WSU player from the 1993 NCAA Tournament team and the current Smith Barney financial advisor and active WSU alumnus — said Monday night as stood among the leather couches in the court-level Platinum Lounge and pointed to the Nutter Center stands where another decent crowd had come to see Wright State tangle with Miami.
“Look at all this,” Ramey said. “This is great.”
Granted many in the crowd of 5,517 Monday night showed up thanks to 2-for-1 ticket deals and even some ticket give-aways. And that has drawn fire in some quarters, Giving tickets away cheapens the product detractors say.
But I think it gives the place some life, a real buzz that too often has been missing in some recent years.
Unfortunately, right now the buzz has left the court. The 0-3 Raiders — who were blown out by Miami, 55-37 — are playing some dismal basketball. They look like a team with little confidence and a dearth of on-court leadership.
Their two returning stars — Todd Brown and Vaughn Duggins — are struggling. Duggins was 3-for-10 from the floor Monday night, Brown was 0-5 and by night’s end, he was passing up some shots, hung his head after another bad miss and his body language seemed to underscore a sudden lack of confidence.
Through three games this season, Brown and Duggins are a combined 14-for-54 from the field. That’s just 25.9 percent shooting. And Monday night the rest of the team wasn’t much better. As a whole, the Raiders (13-for-49) shot 26.5 percent. Add an inconsistent inside presence — and the lingering effects from food poisoning on the team’s bus ride back from Central Michigan Saturday — and you get a forgettable performance like this one
I think Brad Brownell is a very good coach and will eventually right this ship, although it won’t be easy. Eight of the Raiders next 10 games are on the road and that includes the looming Dec. 14 date at Wake Forest.
I see some real promise in juco transfer Cory Cooperwood and in sophomore Cooper Land with his outside shot. I like Kyle Pressley’s physical style and, Monday night, junior guard John David Gardner — 12 points, three assists, three steals — gave the Raiders some of their only inspired play. It was his best game ever as a Raider — something no teammate can equally claim from the Miami game.
It’s just too bad in this early effort to showcase its product to new basketball fans, WSU has stumbled on the court.
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blog: The Animal, Beanie’s Swan Song and other OSU memories
COLUMBUS — Here are five things I’ll remember from Ohio State’s 42-7 victory over Michigan Saturday at the Horseshoe:
1 — Receiver Tyson Gentry, left wheelchair-bound after a hit in spring practice in 2006, raising an arm into the sky to salute the cheering OSU crowd and then rolling out onto field, the last of 28 seniors to go through the corridor of former players known as the Tunnel of Pride.
Halfway through he was surrounded by the ex Bucks, who congratulated him, reached for high fives and told him how proud they were of him.
No one was more moved than teammate Kurt Coleman, the junior safety from Northmont High, who made that devastating hit on Gentry in 2006.
The two bonded after that and Gentry brought that up to the team before the Michigan game.
“Thursday night he told me what I did to him was the best thing that happened to him,” Coleman said quietly. “I didn’t understand and then he said it again at chapel Friday. He said it made him into a great person. … And when he rolled out there through the Tunnel of Pride before the game, I was so proud of him. He and his family have given me so much.”
2 — Quarterback Todd Boeckman — who lost his starting job to freshman Terrelle Pryor after game three and saw very little playing time since — being joined by his tearful parents on the field, then in the fourth quarter having one teammate after another come up to him on the sidelines and telling him to listen to the crowd chant his name..
Jim Tressel finally put the St. Henry High product into the game and Boeckman promptly completed all three of his passes, made two perfect throws, a 46-yard completion to Brian Robiske and an 18 yard TD toss to Brian Hartline.
Fellow seniors heartily embraced him. Guard Jim Cordle lifted him up and then, as he came off the field, Boeckman was met by linebacker James Laurinaitis, who ran out and gave him a chest bump.
Boeckman is beloved by man of his teammates.
3 — We likely were seeing the last of Beanie Wells’ one-man shows in the Shoe. This time next year he’ll almost certainly be in the NFL. With a rookie salary cap soon to come, foregoing his senior season would make economic sense now.
And the pros who have watched the three Michigan games in his career will be clamoring for him. The sculpted 237-pound junior opened Saturday’s game with a 59-yard touchdown run and had 137 yards when he finally left the game with a tweaked hamstring. By then he’d already passed Dayton’s Keith Byars for fourth on the all time OSU rushing list with 3,279 yards.
Last year he ran for 222 yards — including a 62 yard TD jaunt and another one-yard score — against the Wolverines. Freshman year he ran 52 yards for a score against them.
4 — Seeing the Animal — Joe Laurinaitis — the former Legion of Doom pro wrestler whose linebacker son James has been the heart and soul of the OSU defense this year, hobble across the back of the end zone late in the game. James’ mom followed, as did his sister, his grandparents and a few other relatives and friends..
“They were nervous wrecks all week,” James said of his folks. “Every time I talked to them, my mom was crying. They’re so wrapped up in everything I do …And that’s why they stormed the field afterward. They wanted to be part of something special.”
5 — After the game, Coleman embracing Michigan safety Brandon Harrison from Chaminade Julienne on the field. ” I told him I’d see him back in Dayton over Thanksgiving and we’d get with Javon (Javon Ringer, the Michigan State running back from CJ) and talk about good times this year.”
Coleman will have plenty to talk about.
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blog: Area’s Craziest OSU-Michigan Celebration?
I think this just may be the area’s craziest celebration of the annual Ohio State-Michigan game.
When halftime arrives Saturday, the folks watching the game on the various televisions at McSobers Saloon in Coldwater will head out into the parking lot where they’ll do a rag-tag reenactment of Script Ohio, the signature performance of the OSU marching band, a.k.a. The Best Damn Band in the Land.
At McSobers, some people bring along old instruments from home, others pick from the collection of plastic and homemade ones kept in the bar for just this occasion. Someone with a baton leads the snake-like procession — just as they do in Columbus — and one lucky person in the crowd will be chosen to tote the big, white sousaphone and dot the “i.”
The Script Ohio tradition at McSobers has been going on for the better part of three decades through two sets of owners and two different bar locations.
To help Saturday’s crowd mine its musical talent — actually they do it during every Bucks game — McSobers sells beers for 51 cents in honor of OSU linebacker Ross Homan, who graduated from Coldwater High and now wears No. 51 for Ohio State. And they sell 17 cent hotdogs in honor of OSU quarterback Todd Boeckman, who wears No. 17 and is from nearby St. Henry.
This is about The Best Damn Celebration I’ve heard of for this game.
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blog: In St. Henry, Boeckman embraced, not Tressel
No sporting event in the state is more anticipated than the annual Ohio State-Michigan football game. And no place in the area has the match-up been more anticipated than in St. Henry, the sports-mad Mercer County town of 2,300 that has more ties — per capita — to Buckeye football than any place in the state.
Seven St. Henry High players have gone to OSU to play football and three have become stars. Place’s like Fish-Mo’s tavern on West Main St. are decorated with Buckeyes souvenirs from floor to ceiling.
And yet this Saturday’s Nov. 22 game between the Bucks and visiting Michigan arrives with a previously unthinkable amount of mixed emotion — and in some cases outright disinterest — in St. Henry.
“Since I’ve been in the bar business, I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Matt Stelzer who runs Fish-Mos. “Some people who come in don’t even want to watch the (Buckeye) games now.”
What’s happened?
A lot of people believe Jim Tressel has turned one of their favorite sons into a Buckeye scapegoat. It’s not that the Ohio State football coach benched St. Henry bred quarterback Todd Boeckman in favor of freshman phenom Terrelle Pryor, it’s the way it’s been handled and how Boeckman — last year’s All Big Ten quarterback — has been exiled to the scarlet and gray version of Siberia.
“There was a lot of respect here for Tressel, but now a lot of people here have turned on him,” Stelzer said. “There a lot of dislike for him. Some just hate him. They feel he threw Todd under the bus.”
I detailed this story in a column that’s in today’s newspaper and on this web page.
When a veteran is replaced by a freshman player there are always going to be some bruised feelings and any coach — not just Jim Tressel — would draw fire from some quarters. But could this have been handled better? I think yes.
That point — more than just their kid being replaced — is what sticks in the craws of some St. Henry folks. Especially when they see how Boeckman has taken the high road in this and never spoken an untoward word about Tressel or the OSU program in public.
That fact is especially embraced by Boeckman’s teammates.
“I always knew how talented Todd was, but I’ve grown a new respect for him,” said senior linebacker and fellow captain Marcus Freeman.
“He’s a competitor and wants to be on the field — that’s got to be eating at him — but he’s doing all the right things. I see him on the sidelines and at practice trying to help Terrelle and that says something.
“A lot of guys — if their spot gets taken — they ain’t helpin’ nobody out. They got that ‘it’s-all-about-me’ attitude — but Todd isn’t that guy.”
Tight end Rory Nicol echoed that sentiment:
“He’s never backed away from being our leader. He still gets up and speaks in front of the team every Thursday like the other captains do. He’s doing everything he can to be a role model and set an example and a lot of guys here are really proud of him for that.”
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blog: Thoughts from the Dayton Flyers opener
Here are some quick thoughts after watching the UD Flyers open their season Sunday night against Wofford:
— Maybe I shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss their early season schedule of second and third tier teams — Wofford, Delaware State, Bethune Cookman, Mercer — as a cakewalk.
The Flyers had all they could handle in Wofford. They trailed much of the game and were out-rebounded — an unbelievable 35 to 25 — by a team they had a height advantage on at every position. The Terriers— led by 6-foot-5 Tim Johnson (13 rebounds) — just out-worked them inside.
— As of right now, UD looks like a two man show. High-fliers Chris Wright and Marcus Johnson combined for 34 points and eight rebounds.
It’s great to see the muscled-up Wright running the court, jamming ally-oop passes, swatting opponents’ shots and showing the initial flashes of what I think will be a season as one of the A-10’s greatest stars — especially after last year’s injury-plagued downer.
— Who in the world will give UD another offensive threat from the outside? Ron Lowery, Mickey Perry and London Warren were a combined 3-for-13 from the field. They combined for twice as many turnovers as field goals.
— How does Brian Gregory keep things straight with so many substitutions? The scorers table at UD Arena is busier than Grand Central Station at rush hour.
— Early in the game, Kurt Huelsman called for the ball inside, then faked one way, took a drop step the other way and drove up and under the basket for a beautiful reverse lay-up.
He didn’t do much of that last season and I thought, “Okay, new season, smaller opponents, he’s going to make some offensive hay tonight.” Turns out it was his only basket of the game. He only shot twice in 29 minutes…In 25 minutes, Charles Little made just one of five shots.
— UD did play some good defense — although Wofford’s 6-foot-2 Junior Salters gave them some problems from long range — but by my count, six different Flyers missed lay-ups and Lowery missed two.
Afterward Gregory was mostly optimistic. For Flyers fans, I hope he’s right.
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blog: WSU — Problems with the Spotlight
Using the Dayton Dragons as a model, Wright State athletics director Bob Grant and his troops are trying to make Wright State basketball games a fan-friendly experience this season to go alonmg with the always-promising product coach Brad Brownell puts on the court.
For the season opener Saturday night against Illinois State, there seemed to be something new in the arena.
Two big murals depicting great players and moments from Wright State’s basketball past graced the top of the Nutter Center walls.
There were green ambiance lights at another end of the arena, banners of the other Horizon League teams across from that and hanging from the rafters above the court, colorful reminders of the Raiders’ past NCAA Tournament teams.
Behind one basket were two lounges —one with leather couches, the other with tables that included basketballs and hoops — and up on the concourse there was a Kids’ Zone play area.
There was free admission to anyone wearing something with Raiders’ colors, but the truth is, you got in whatever color scheme you wore. While the cold, rainy weather held down the crowd somewhat, WSU still drew 6,371 fans — better than all but five crowds last season.
There was only one real staging problem in Saturday night’s opener.
“The spotlights got here too late,” Grant shrugged. “They were coming up from Cincinnati and there was a big wreck by Middletown. The guy got tied up in traffic. So we didn’t get the real effect with the spotlights.”
Then again, they weren’t really needed. Saturday night there wasn’t a whole lot to spotlight— at least not out on the court.
In the words of Raiders’ guard Vaughn Duggins, Illinois State “out-toughed” WSU, 69-61.
Illinois State — a team that won 25 games and made the NIT last season — shot better from the floor, over-powered the Raiders on the backboards and made the pressure plays the few times the game did get close.
While a few Raiders did have some shining moments during the night — reserves Cooper Land (12 points), Kyle Pressley (five rebounds) and Troy Tabler (three straight three pointers) come to mind — a couple of other WSU players had some untimely meltdowns.
Transfer Scott Grote had four turn-overs — including three in a row — and no points. He’s coming back from preseason injury and likely felt some nerves debuting at the school where his dad and uncle starred, but Saturday’s performance eventually will fade and I believe as the season unfolds. he’ll show himself to be one of the true stars of this team.
It should also be noted here that Illinois State is a formidable opponent from the Missouri Valley Conference. This isn’t like the University of Dayton opening today with Wofford, followed by Delaware State, Bethune Cookman and Mercer.
That said, this game was one WSU could have won had it played the first 15 minutes of the second half they way it did the final five when its aggressiveness cut a 13-point deficit to three points with 2:54 left.
Another problem that showed itself Saturday night was the lack of an inside presence. Scotty Wilson and Jordan Pleiman graduated and their replacements — some of whom are promising — are new or logged very few minutes last season.
“I thought the crowd not only was good, but it was excited and energetic,” Brownell said. “I wish we would have played better in the second half and given the fans something to cheer about. To be honest we didn’t give them enough chances to become players in the game.”
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blog: Farewell, Captain Tony
A dear old pal of mine has died in Key West.
Captain Tony Tarracino — fisherman, charter boat captain, gun runner, one-time barefoot king of the hippies, legendary hustler, ribald raconteur, former mayor (“I kissed the mothers, not the babies”), perpetual womanizer, father of 13 children ages 22 to 72 — died last weekend. He was 92. His funeral is this Saturday.
I’ve known Captain Tony for some 30 years. When I lived in Miami, I spent a lot of time in Key West, much of it at the Greene Street saloon bearing his name. I came for the libations, to shoot pool, listen to the music — I remember Jimmy Buffett, fresh out of Alabama, just starting off there for a few bucks a night — watch people and mostly just talk and listen to Tony.
Key West has been home to Ernest Hemingway, Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Tom McGuane, Phil Caputo and dozens of other novelists and playwrights, yet Captain Tony was the island’s greatest storyteller.
Over the years everyone from Walter Cronkite, Ted Kennedy, Strom Thurmond, Tallulah Bankhead, Jerry Jeff Walker to Buffett — who immortalized Tony in his “Last Mango in Paris” — soaked in his tales.
A book on him — “Life Lessons of a Legend” by Brad Menard — is just out and another is in the works.
I wrote about Tony over the years and some of those stories still hang in the bar. He gave me my own bar stool — my name stenciled in yellow letters across the seat— just as he did Muhammad Ali, Dustin Hoffman, Bob Dylan, John Candy and another pal of mine, Shelby Strother, one of the country’s best sportswriters who died way too young.
After his death in Detroit, his wife Kim and I went down to Key West, put the urn with Shelby’s ashes on the bar he loved so much and spent the night giving him the kind of raucous wake he would have loved. The next day — bobbing in a dinghy, with a hangover, a heavy heart and some thoughts written on a bar napkin — we spread his ashes at sea.
“Hell of a send-off,” Tony said that night. “He deserved it. He was the best.”
And so was Tony.
To remember him today, I’ve included a story I wrote back in 1995 after one of my trips from Dayton back to Key West.
TONY STILL KEY WEST’S MOST COLORFUL PERSON
KEY WEST — “I’m 78 years old, been married three times and had 10 great relationships in my life. From all that, my oldest child is 58, the youngest, 8. Thirteen kids in all. Now, truth is, I’d like to make it an even number. So if you know a healthy girl up there in Dayton.”
The glorious sunset — with the big, orange orb lowering itself into the horizon and the clouds glowing Technicolor pink and magenta — had been over for hours and that meant the high-wire walker, the bagpipers, Cookie Lady, Iguana Man, fire eater, steel drummers, xylophone and zither players and the hundreds of sunburned tourists who pack Mallory Square for the daily ritual were gone, too.
Turns out it was nothing but a warm-up act.
Now it was well past midnight and the most colorful phenomenon in Key West finally was coming to life.
Tony Tarracino — “Captain Tony,” as immortalized by Jimmy Buffett song and worldwide embrace — had walked into the sagging, mustard-yellow saloon bearing his name, pulled out a bar stool dedicated to Tennessee Williams and settled in for a nightcap. Once that meant Cutty Sark and water. Now, it was just a draft beer and another Lucky Strike.
Immediately, he was surrounded by three fawning New York college students, who never did notice the 17th century chastity belt, the shrunken heads he had gotten while searching for Ponce de Leon’s grave in Nicaragua and the skeleton wearing the blond wig all decorating the bar behind him.
The young women studied Tony’s perpetually tousled gray hair, the deeply lined face and especially those faded, still-mischievous blue eyes under which hung bags big enough for an overseas trip. They saw the ash-colored goatee, tobacco stained at the lip, and they couldn’t miss the naked woman that has posed on his right forearm since that long-ago night the young sailor visited a skid-row tattoo parlor in Seattle.
Most of all, they were mesmerized by his gravelly voice — as weathered and cracked as the hull of an old shrimp boat — and the incredible tales that spilled from his lips.
“I always had action going on my boat. One day we caught a mess of margate. They’re white snappers. I got a can of spray paint and painted ‘em red and green and yellow. And when I got back, Captain Tommy Lones, my big competitor, couldn’t believe it. He just kept saying, ‘I ain’t never seen no green fish!’ ‘Nother time, a guy flew in a few rainbow trout for me. I hung ‘em up and pretty soon all the old captains were down there trying to figure out what the hell I had. I made up a name and they went searching for it in a fish book, but couldn’t find it. Then some guy from Michigan walked up and blurted out, ‘Hey, those are rainbow trout!’ The other skippers chased me down the dock and threw me in the water.”
Over the years his stories have mesmerized thousands, none more so than Buffett, who first came to Key West in the early ’70s. Back then Captain Tony had a reputation for helping musicians and street people:
“Jimmy came in here, a kid from Alabama with cotton sticking out his ears, and I gave him a job. Paid him $10 and a few beers and told him he had to play something people here identified with. I said, ‘Nobody sings about Key West — that could be your ticket.’ “And sure ‘nuff, after a while he has a hit with Margaritaville. Then it was several years till we saw each other again. And then one day he walks in and we talked a long time about the past, about how to handle success, about my love affairs. Next thing I know I hear The Last Mango in Paris.”
It was Buffett’s tribute to the gritty, lovable street philosopher. As the song goes:
“I went down to Captain Tony’s To get out of the heat, And I heard a voice call out to me, Son, come have a seat. I have to search my memory As I looked into those eyes, Our lives change like weather But a legend never dies. I ate the last mango in Paris I took the last plane out of Saigon, I took the first fast boat to China, And Jimmy, there’s still so much to be done.”
Thanks to Tom Bush, owner of the Parrot Island store in the Town and Country Shopping Center, I’ve found out that Captain Tony has something of a cult following in and around Dayton.
To prove his point, Bush, whose store caters to the Buffett followers — Parrotheads — said he had a months-long waiting list to sell the Captain Tony posters — “All you need in this life is a tremendous sex drive and a great ego, brains don’t mean shit!” — he’d just shipped in from Key West.
“Anybody who follows Jimmy Buffett knows about Captain Tony,” Bush said. “People here want to know everything they can about him.”
So where should we start?
How about Elizabeth, N.J.? Tony was raised there. His sense of theatrics was developed early as he helped his parents with the traveling puppet show they ran in the Italian neighborhoods of New York City. The hustler’s heart was born while pasting labels on bootleg hootch he sold with his dad.
Tony said he quit school after the eighth grade — and an affair with Mrs. Wipperman, his eighth-grade teacher — and set out peddling cockroach powder, watches with no works and even plastic flowers taken from grave sites once the mourners left. Then came the flimflam that changed his life:
“In 1947, my father got one of the first TV sets in the neighborhood and one day fooling ‘round with the set, we found we could get the sound, but no picture, from Garden State Race Track. My brothers found we could beat the bookies with it since it took them six to eight minutes to get their results. We started past-posting races and winning a bundle.
“That went on for a month. Then there was a problem and I was told to go down to Lehman’s Bar in Newark. It was a mob place, so I took two football players with me. But soon as we got there, my heavyweights split and I ended up facing two big goons in Chesterfield overcoats by myself.
“They took me on a nice, long ride to the dump where they were getting landfill for the Newark Airport. They beat the hell out of me and left me for dead. I woke up the next morning with footprints on my chest. Right then I decided I needed a career change.”
He boarded a bus and made his way to Miami with one thought in mind. “All I wanted was to go to Hialeah Race Track. To me, that was like a Jew going to Israel or a Catholic to Rome.”
It didn’t take long for the pilgrimage to turn into tap city. That’s when he saw a poster on Biscayne Boulevard advertising Key West. Hitchhiking down the Keys on the back of a milk truck, he was stunned with his first glimpse of the tropical outpost:
“I couldn’t believe it. Key West was like the Barbary Coast — dozens of whorehouses, bars, poker games and crap tables. It was so beautiful I cried.”
He got jobs heading shrimp for a seafood processing plant, then working as a mate — first on shrimp boats, then charter fishing boats. Finally, he talked a wealthy tourist into financing his own boat. And, before long, he was the most fabled fisherman in Key West.
“You know what made me a good fisherman?” he asked. “I went after it the same way I tackled the rest of life. I broke rules, broke tradition. When I’d hustle on the dock and tell stories, it was all foreign to the rest of the skippers. But the people listened. They wanted on my boat, and they had fun. From that, the legend just grew and grew.”
“I had a boat load of people out fishing one day when Tommy Lones came up with his drift boat. He anchored next to me, so I decided to work him. I mean, I lived just to beat him. Well, I told my passengers I was gonna throw my overcoat in the water and start shooting at it. And I wanted them all to run to that side of my boat and start yelling and making a fuss. They did. They took pictures and went wild. Well, poor old Tommy got depressed. His party wished they were on my boat where all the fishing action was, so he started up his engines and left. Back at the docks, he couldn’t wait to find out what we’d got into. When someone told him I’d shot my overcoat - it just blew his mind.”
In 1960, Captain Tony took over the run-down bar on Greene Street — the original Sloppy Joe’s where Hemingway drank scotch and soda daily and met his third wife, journalist Martha Gelhorn.
Hemingway had been so taken by the place that he included it in “To Have and Have Not,” calling it Freddy’s and describing it perfectly.
That Captain Tony resurrected the place — Sloppy Joe’s had been moved to Duval Street once Hemingway left town — is fitting.
Tarracino could very well pass for Harry Morgan, the legendary sea captain in the novel. Morgan fished the waters of the Florida Straits, running rum and guns and playing a deadly game of Cuban politics in the 1930s. Tony did the same 30 years later.
Just as Tony was no ordinary fisherman, his drinking establishment was no ordinary bar. Esquire once picked his place as one of the 10 best saloons in America.
Although Captain Tony recently sold the bar, the place still lives off his name, and once in a while you’ll still find him there telling his tales and dispensing his salt-of-the-earth philosophy.
“The white jewfish became the first fish I really knew. He drove me nuts for 20 years. He weighs 1,000, maybe 1,200 pounds. He’s the size of a Cadillac and lives inside the wreck of the Sturtevandt, an old destroyer 20 miles from here. I don’t really think he’s an al-bean-no. I think he got his scales blown off him. They did a lot of demolition work in the area, and I think he got too close to an explosion. He survived, though. He became a personal thing to me. Once I baited him with a 36-pound amberjack. He broke the rope I used for a line and wrapped it around the propeller. Another time I had a fisherman hooked up with him and the guy had a heart attack so we cut the line. Then there was the time I got him on, but a big blow came up. The boat started bouncing and the line snapped. That fish became a great symbol to me. And to this day I hope he is alive out there. Some things you just never want to let go of.”
In recent years, he parlayed his popularity into everything from politics to promotion. In 1989 — on his sixth try — he won the race for Key West mayor and immediately began lifting the banner of the town’s everyday folks.
Since his two-year term ended — he’s since been named Mayor Emeritus of Key West — he’s been working on a book of his life (a movie telling part of his story was released a few years ago) — and caring for his family.
He and his understanding wife, Marty — who is in her ’40s and first met him when she was a college student vacationing from Michigan — have two children, 13-year-old Josie and 8-year-old T.J.
For all Tony’s risque ruminations — “I’ll take that Dayton gal to Vegas, get me one of them rooms with a ka-shoot-zee, a cho-soo-gee, what’s the name of that thing where the water hits you in the rear end?” — he’s a caring family man who remains true to Marty. Not that he’s tempered his sales pitch.
Recently he began offering a nightly gambling cruise — FunKRUZ, it’s called — out of Key West. “I help run the casino and kiss the pretty girls,” he said. “It’s the perfect deal.
“All my life, I loved gambling and women and the sea. Now I got ‘em all together. It’s like God gave me a pre-taste of Heaven.
“Truth is, when that angel finally does appear and says, ‘Hey Tony, what’ll it be — heaven or hell?’ I’m gonna ask, ‘How ‘bout Vegas instead?’”
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blog: “Your country Is amazing!”
I have never been prouder of my state. My country. We have shown what we truly are made of. We went through a hotly contested —sometimes quite nasty — election process and then voted vigorously and peacefully and, once again, showed the world what true democracy can be.
A couple of weeks ago here — in a dispatch entitled “Ashamed of Some Fellow Ohioans” — I was critical of some folks in this state who had been spewing racial and religious hate at a Sarah Palin rally. While they may have been a minority, they were loud and unwavering in their disparagement of Barack Obama.
I said we are better than that here in Ohio — and while some people took great offense to that — in the end, we showed just that.
For the most part people here were concerned about the economy, health care, the war, the way we interact with the rest of the world and not the color of a man’s skin.
Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States and Ohio played a big part in it. When he won the state and its 20 electoral votes Tuesday, it sent a a ripple across the country. As Charles Wilson on Slate.com put it: “An Obama win in Ohio preserves the state’s role as an election kingmaker.”
People embraced Obama’s message of hope and his non-polarizing style along the campaign trail. They saw his focus and certitude and they believe in his competence.
As was said in Wednesday’s USA Today: “If racial prejudice and mistrust die in a thousand moments of progress, this is the most important one in a long, long time.”
No one helped that thought along more Tuesday night than Republican candidate John McCain, who once again showed what a good man he is.
His concession speech was full of grace and good will and showed more than anything how much he loves his country. He’s given long service and much sacrifice to our nation, has stood up to the most partisan of advocates and regularly has reached across the Congressional aisle and shown the power of compromise to get something done.
In the years to come, it would be great to see him playing a pivotal role with the new president in moving this country back in the right direction again.
I know there are some people who still don’t get it. As I do almost every day, I stopped by the United Dairy Farmers store at Brown and Stewart Streets early this morning and a guy had just been in there on a rant that was full of prejudicial passion.
He told everyone “This is the worst thing to happen to American… It’s the end of the world.”
The end of his world maybe — and we are the better for that.
As I watched the returns come in last night — and saw the huge crowds gathered across the country from Chicago’s Grant Park to Times Square in New York City — I remembered a scene that struck me three days after the Olympics ended this past summer. I was still in Beijing, staying at a media village that housed people from all over the world.
I walked into our communal dining area for breakfast that Wednesday morning and saw everyone — people from across Europe, Asia, Australia, the Caribbean — all fixated on the television. It was tuned to CNN and because of the time difference. it was still Tuesday night here in the U.S.
Everyone was watching the Democratic Convention. People were mesmerized by it. They all wanted to know what was going to happen in America.
A couple of days ago, I got a phone call from one of my best friends — a columnist in London — and all he talked about was the election. He wanted to know how Ohio would vote, what black athletes thought, what people in the farmlands of northwest Ohio where I’m from were thinking.
Another columnist at his paper — prefacing a recent story with “why so many of us love the United States,” — noted how the first 26 U.S. presidents could have owned the possible 44th as a piece of property and then marveled about the remarkable transformations our nation undergoes.
And then this morning, I got the biggest surprise.
I got an e-mail from a sportswriter I know in Estonia. His message contained just four words:
“Your country is amazing!”
Like I said, I’m proud today.
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blog: Obama and McCain feel embrace of sports
On the eve of Tuesday’s presidential election, here’s one thing that stands out.
Sports and politics in America haven’t been this intertwined in a generation.
Tonight — in their last major chance to appeal to Americans during a much-watched spot on prime-time television — Democratic hopeful Barack Obama and his Republican counterpart, John McCain both will make half-time appearances during the Monday Night Football game between the the Pittsburgh Steelers and the host Washington Redskins.
Earlier today each candidate was to be interviewed separately by MNF half-time anchor Chris “Boomer” Berman and those tapes will be shown at the mid-game intermission. Since Monday Night Football has been averaging 12.2 million viewers this season, the audience will be substantial.
By the way, Obama first appeared on MNF on Dec. 11, 2006, when he opened the broadcast of a game involving his hometown Chicago Bears by poking fun at his upcoming official announcement that he’d run for president.
“I am ready,” Obama said before donning a Bears cap and grinning, “for the Bears to go all the way, baby!”
When it came time for the official nominations, both candidates got them at big sports venues. Obama accepted his at Invesco Field, home of the Denver Broncos, while McCain got his at St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center, home of the NHL Minnesota Wild.
In the months that have followed, sports owners, coaches and even pro athletes — too often more comfortable side-stepping politics and throwing their support to either Nike or Reebok, where they can make a buck — have gotten behind either Obama or McCain.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Walton, Los Angles Lakers forward Luke Walton, Tiger Woods, LeBron James, Bengals linebacker Dhani Jones, Cincinnati Reds manager Dusty Baker, Pittsburgh Steelers owner Dan Rooney and long-time Republican Charles Barkley all are supporting Obama.
So are Magic Johnson, Detroit Pistons President Joe Dumars, Penn State QB coach Jay Paterno, Portland Trailblazers big man Greg Oden, Chicago Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf, Lakers coach Phil Jackson, Phoenix Suns forward Grant Hill, former NFL running backs Marshall Faulk and Emmitt Smith and Phoenix Mercury guard Diana Taurasi.
Muhammad Ali posed with Obama on a 2007 cover of Vanity Fair magazine, and was in the audience in August when Obama addressed the Democratic National Convention.
James donated $20,000 to a pro-Obama committee and led a Last Chance Rally for Change last month in Cleveland along with entertainer Jay-Z.
Even Michael Jordan — usually political Milquetoast — has contributed the maximum $2,300 to the Obama Victory Fund.
In turn, McCain’s supporters include John Elway, Troy Aikman, Nolan Ryan, Jack Nicklaus and Richard Petty. Cleveland Browns quarterback Brady Quinn and tackle Joe Thomas both took the stage at a rally in northeast Ohio and publicly embraced McCain.
Among McCain’s donors are NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, Phoenix Suns chairman Jerry Colangelo, former University of Arizona basketball coach Lute Olson and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
McCain’s biggest athletic supporter has been Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. The two men have been friends since 2000, when Schilling joined the Arizona Diamondbacks..
The two have worked together on a variety of issues including melanoma — both McCain and Schilling’s wife, Shonda, are survivors of skin-cancer — and the pitcher has been on the campaign stage with the Republican hopeful several times.
One of Obama’s most fervent backers has been veteran NBA center Alonzo Mourning, who last played for the Miami Heat and spent much of the past offseason at rallies and colleges around Florida, registering voters along with former Georgetown teammate Patrick Ewing and encouraging everyone to vote for Obama.
As he told MBCSport.com Ethan Skolnick of NBCSport.com:
“Unfortunately, people are afraid of memorabilia sales, endorsements, political biases, things of that nature. I’m not concerned about that. I’m not afraid to stand up to what I believe in. We live in a country where we have that God-given right.
“It’s up to us as adults to educate our younger people on that right, and to remind them of the people that lost their lives for them to have that right, to make a decision that will dictate their futures. I’m not ashamed to bring up the past, and helping people understand what their future will be.”
This political season several other sports figures have felt the same.
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blog: Eye gouges, left hooks — “It was like the UFC!”
CINCINNATI — Although Chad Johnson had two touchdown catches Sunday — equal to his totals for the first eight games of the season — and was all smiles after the Bengals first victory of theyear, he admitted one thing threw him for a loop against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
It was the third-quarter fight between Bengals 6-foot-7, 330-pound guard Andrew Whitworth and Jacksonville’s defensive tackle, 6-foot-7, 335-pound John Henderson.
As he watched Henderson’s attempted eye gouges and Whitworth’s roundhouse left hooks, Johnson — at 6-foot-1 and 192 pounds — was mesmerized…from afar:
“It wasn’t about the fighting. I just wanted to know who in the world was gonna go in there and break that up. They are huge. It was like the UFC!”
In topping Jacksonville, 21-19 Sunday, the Bengals did a lot of things they hadn’t been able to do in their 0-8 start.
They had their first 100-yard rusher in Cedric Benson (24 carries, 104 yards.) Johnson showed a glimmer of the force he was in seasons past. Carson Palmer’s replacement at quarterback, Ryan Fitzpatrick, finally looked settled as he completed 21 of 31 passes. And the defense — which had managed just six sacks in eight games — managed to dump Jags quarterback David Garrard three times.
Yet the thing people will remember most is Whitworth’s free-for-all with Henderson.
It left the Bengals crowd — who have done everything this season from boo to walk out early on the often deserving-to-be-dissed team — to shower Whitworth with full-throated cheers. Finally, a Bengal showing them nothing but fight.
The Cincinnati players were just as struck by Whitworth’s spirited display.
“I loved it — just loved it,” said Bengals’ right guard Bobby Williams. “He kind of defined the offensive line as some mean tough guys who are going to keep fighting for this team.”
Left tackle Levi Jones felt the same: “Man, that was two 340-pound guys, both of them 6-foot-7. That’s a lot of beef. That’s two brahma bulls going at it.
“This whole thing really started (Saturday) with Whit’s talk to the team about each of us pulling for each other and not backing down. He wanted us to show a different attitude out there and then this happens and it just accented all that.
“On the football field, you can’t back down. This is the sport of men.”
In the case of Whitworth and Henderson, two of the biggest men on the field.
The confrontation began late in the third quarter on a Cincinnati run play where Whitworth and Henderson tangled.
“He slammed me. I went back at him and he felt I’d got him in back of the legs,” Whitworth said. “He swung and hit me in the helmet and I stood up and he jacked me in the face — just a blatant punch.
“Levi started screaming for the refs to throw a flag, but they didn’t.”
Jones nodded: “I knew trouble was comin’.”
It came on the next play. Jones said Henderson came up to the line “yelling” at Whitworth. As Bengals receiver T. J. Houshmandzadeh said of Henderson, “He just went plain crazy…(Whitworth) was 100 percent provoked.”
Whitworth pushed Henderson past the quarterback on the play and as the defensive tackle fell, he grabbed the Bengal lineman’s face mask and ripped off his helmet.
The bald and bearded Whitworth — who also had his helmet ripped off twice this year by Tennessee tackle Albert Haynesworth — turned and began running toward the play when he said Henderson jumped him from behind and tried to “gouge my eyes right outta their sockets.”
He said he had to defend himself — and so he threw the punches — and finally the refs flagged both linemen and ejected them from the game.
Fans reached down over the railing in the stadium tunnel to high-five Whitworth on his exit. Once in the Bengals dressing room, Whitworth said he “ranted and raved ” a while before watching the rest of the game alone in the players’ lounge.
Henderson stayed on the bench a couple of plays — a towel over his bald head — then was told to leave the field. He put his helmet back on for the long walk and then taunted Bengals fans along the way. A water bottle came flying out of the stands at him as he walked through the north end zone. Once he reached the Jags’ quarters, he dressed and disappeared without speaking to the press.
The league will certainly take action. While Whitworth wishes he would not have retaliated, he said, “Lord, it was self defense. He was digging his fingers in my eyeballs.”
