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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 > 2009 > April
April 2009
COLUMN: Remembering John Davis — From the Alley to the A-List
Things will have come full circle for John “Joe” Davis.
Friday, the 69-year-old Davis — who hobnobbed with the some of the biggest names in entertainment and sports as a photographer of the stars in Los Angeles — will be remembered at an 11 a.m. funeral service at Mt. Pisgah Baptist Church at 1 Diamond Ave.
Some 55 years ago — in the pot-holed alley behind Diamond Ave, where he lived with his family, including his brother Willis “Bing” Davis, now a well-known Dayton artist — he set up a bunch of hurdles and practiced and practiced and practiced until he became the city’s top hurdler and a noted basketball player at Wilbur Wright High. His sports then took him to Central State University.
In 2004, he was diagnosed with ALS — Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
He is survived by his wife, Cheryl; sons, Wynton, Aaron and John Gentry; daughters, Michelle and Aleen; mother, Veronia Buffington; brother, Willis “Bing” Davis; sisters, Althera McGuire of Xenia, Diane Buchanan and Shirley Steele, all of Dayton; 13 grandchildren; two great grandchildren and many more relatives and friends.
Four years ago he returned to Dayton for a well-received show of his work. I spent part of an afternoon with him and wrote this story:
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FROM THE ALLEY TO THE A-LIST
Surrounded by the photographs of Muhammad Ali, Ray Charles, Sammy Davis Jr., Snoop Dogg, Serena Williams and scores of other Hollywood entertainers and prime-time athletes in his exhibit at the EbonNia Gallery, John Davis remembered how his A-list access was born in the back alleys of East Dayton.
“When we were kids, we never took the streets, just the alleys,” Davis said with a grin and a nod toward his older brother, Willis “Bing” Davis, the noted Dayton artist who runs the West Third Street art space.
“We were poor kids, didn’t have doodley squat. But as we’d go down the alley behind our place on Diamond Ave. and some of the other streets, we’d look in the trash cans.
“Bing would get little artifacts, broken earrings, anything to use in his art. He’d find pencil stubs, take ‘’em home, sharpen them and use them to draw. Me, I was looking for pop bottles, copper wire, anything I could sell so we had 10 cents for the movies on Jefferson Street.
“And then one day, I found a top-view Brownie camera. I took it home and started taking pictures of all my friends. After a while, though they got a little angry because they learned for the first month and a half, I’d never used any film. I was just, you know, practicing.”
Davis was laughing now, and the more you listened, the more you thought of that old adage about laughter being the best of medicines.
Today, the 65-year-old Davis flies back home to Los Angeles, and next Tuesday he heads to Mexico in an attempt to help prolong his life. A year ago he was diagnosed with ALS — better known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. It’s now robbed him use of his arms and more recently his legs, which explained the wheelchair he sat in Thursday afternoon.
“I know it’s moving rapidly,” he said. “It’s working toward my diaphragm and that’s what takes us out. I can still lie down pretty good, but that’s when the fear comes to me. I know everything is in divine order, so I don’t too much worry about that, but what hurts most is seeing the sadness in the faces of my family and friends. If love could heal me, I’d be cured.”
He came back here to open the long-planned exhibit of his photos that will run until Nov. 2 and, more importantly, to reconnect with home. He was once a stand-out athlete at Wilbur Wright High and Central State University and his family — including his 98-year-old mother, Veronia — still is deeply-rooted here.
“At first I wasn’t sure I wanted to come back,” he quietly admitted “I didn’t want everybody to see me down. And it was tough at first, but I’ve held my ground and I’ve been able to show people what I’ve been doing out there.”
His photographs — some of which also capture his other career as an L.A. counselor to the homeless, addicted and dispossessed — give close-up, often-compelling studies and often come with a colorful story.
“The first time I shot Sammy Davis Jr. was when he got on stage for an award,” Davis said. “As he stood there, I photographed his feet. He looked down and made some jokes about it, but afterward he asked why I’d done that. I told him he was one of the greatest dancers I’ve ever seen, one of the greatest hoofers in the world. He thanked me, and soon after that he called me to photograph his wife at ULCA. Right up to when he died, I worked with him.”
Yet, for all the celebrity portraits, the most endearing part of the EbonNia exhibit, isn’t from Hollywood, it’s from right here at home. There are pictures of his mom, his three sisters and two brothers and several old, black and white team shots, including one of his Washington Elementary basketball team that looks like an Our Gang portrait.
“All that is what the rest of my life was built on,” Davis said. “That’s the foundation and our mom was the center of it.”
Although his mother had just a third grade education when she left her South Carolina sharecropping life for Dayton, she was schooled in hard work and common sense. When her husband left the family, she was left to raise the six kids on her own and often worked two jobs at a time.
And through it all she managed to nurture her kids. In Bing’s case that meant taking brown paper bags and ironing out the wrinkles on them so he had drawing paper. John ended up the city’s top hurdler and was good enough to play college basketball, as was Bing, who played at DePauw University.
“Bing and I were like Mutt and Jeff,” John said. “What you see from Bing now is what I’ve gotten all my life. He hasn’t changed. He’s truly a good person. In some ways, I felt like I was his alter ego. He was extremely sensitive. Me, I was the steady pusher. I’d say, ‘Cmon, let’s bring your work here or there.’ Early on, he was his own worst critic, but I believed in him and everything he did.”
The lessons of Dayton worked well in Los Angeles for a while, but eventually, he said, things got derailed: “Bad times I could handle. I was used to them. But good times — when the money was good and things were easy — I had problems with that.”
He went through a divorce and a downward spiral that he said lasted over a decade: “I had tried to hide it from my family, but one day mom called. She said, ‘You can’t raise children drunk. Get your life together.’ That stayed with me and eventually I put all that down.”
He got a job as a counselor, excelled at it and along the way, a woman he worked with gave him a Nikon FG she and her husband weren’t using. He sent a $10 money order to New York for camera instructions, this time added film, and a career was born.
His celebrity connection came by accident: “I took the whole family to a nightclub to see my favorite entertainer — O.C. Smith — whose big hit was Little Green Apples.
“Well, I was leaning against the wall with my camera, when a woman asked me to come over and take a picture. I didn’t even look at her — I just couldn’t take my eyes off O.C. — and I told her, ‘No I’m not a professional photographer.’
“She came back again and said, ‘Please sir, you’re the only person here with a camera.’ I looked up and went ‘Oh my God.’ It was Marla Gibbs from the show 227. A movie star! Well, I took three pictures of her with her classmates and she comes o’d like me to take pictures. I never slept that night, but I made the party and that got me started. You’d be surprised what you can do when you have to produce.”
And that made him remember another story from the alley.
“That’s where my hurdling began, too.” he said/ “One summer Coach Dean Dooley brought over two hurdles and a tape measure. He said, ‘I want you to be a hurdler. I told him I didn’t know if I could and hurdles kind of scared me, too. He told me to work it out in the alley. And sure enough in those cinders and pot holes, that’s where I practiced. By the end of the year, I was the hurdles champ in the city.’
His eyes twinkled and his laugh filled the room and you sensed he had found some good medicine in this trip back home.
TweetCOLUMN: The final bell for former champ Greg Page
Former heavyweight champ Greg Page died Monday at his home in Louisville. He was 50.
Authorities said the cause of the paralyzed boxer’s death was a fall from his hospital bed.
More specifically, Jefferson County deputy coroner Jim Wesley said he died from “positional asphyxia” — the inability to breath because of body position. Page’s head was stuck between the bed and the protective metal bed rail.
But if you really want to point some fingers at the cause of his death, aim those accusatory digits straight at a Kentucky fight promoter, an unlicensed ringside doctor and a state boxing commission who, together, showed an unconscionable display of ineptitude, carelessness and total disregard for the boxers.
Thanks in a big way to their handling of Page’s last fight — a poorly regulated affair in a dingy Northern Kentucky night club back in March of 2001 — Page nearly died ion the ring. As it was, he ended up with permanent brain damage, was paralyzed on his left side and was forever wheelchair bound.
Monday, the corner himself said Page’s death was linked to that last fight. Wesley told the Louisville Courier Journal that the former boxer slipped out of bed “because of the complications of his fight injury.”
That ill-fated night in 2001, Page — then 42 — was only a shell of the fighter who twice had won the National AAU crowns; who, as a teen, had sparred with and gotten rave reviews from fellow Louisville Central High grad Muhammad Ali; and who, in 1984, had won the WBA heavyweight crown by knocking out Gerrie Coetzee in South Africa.
With just over 10 seconds left in the 10th round of that 2001 fight challenger Dale Crowe — at 24, 18 years younger than Page — landed a short left to the jaw of the former champ.
Page leaned in for a clinch, and Crowe responded with a two-handed shove that sent him flying backwards into the ropes, where he hung a second before sliding down onto his butt. With his left arm still draped over a rope, Page tried to get up, slumped back down and did not move as he was counted out.
Patricia Page, his wife-to-be, scrambled into the ring and begged: “Baby, talk to me.” She said he just stared at her with “fixed eyes.”
She said it took a couple of minutes for the supposed ringside doctor — 75-year-old Manny Mediodia, whose license twice had been suspended in Ohio and who was not certified in Kentucky — to show up.
Patricia said Mediodia took Greg’s blood pressure, broke a couple of ammonia capsules under his nose and told her he’d be fine with rest.
Nine minutes after Greg fell, someone finally called 911.
Fight promoter Terry O’Brien had no ringside oxygen on hand, no ambulance outside and, as Patricia found out later, none of the proper insurance.
Patricia and others said Page lay in the ring some 45 minutes until help arrived. The medical crew that showed up then took him to an Erlanger hospital that had no trauma unit, so he was sent to University Hospital in Cincinnati.
Patricia said some three hours elapsed before doctors finally operated on Greg — he’d suffered a stroke by then — to take out a piece of skull and remove a blood clot on the brain.
“By that time,” she said, “the damage was done.”
Years of recovery and painful rehab followed and while Page made some gains, there were plenty of tough times. He was hospitalized and put on life support several times. Once, an inattentive medical crew let his wheel chair roll off an upraised lift and he tumbled to the pavement, where he hit his head.
I visited Page three times since he had been hurt — once at the Frazier Rehab Center and twice at his South Louisville home — and I was amazed how he still showed flashes of that humor he’d had before the injury.
“I want you to meet Lazy Bastard,” Patricia said when I last sat with Greg and her in their living room some 20 months ago. She walked to her husband’s wheelchair, reached into his lap and lifted up his leaden left hand.
The same fist he used to beat Scott LeDoux, Jimmy Young, Bonecrusher Smith, Renaldo Snipes, Quick Tillis, Tim Witherspoon and Coetzee was now useless.
Slowly raising his head, Page caught his wife’s eye and then directed both their gazes to his left leg.
She smiled and nodded: “And that’s Lazy Bastard’s Brother. He calls them that because they make his right side do all the work.”
Page sued the that state of Kentucky — whose inept boxing commission was completely overhauled after the 2001 debacle — and two years ago he was awarded $1.2 million. Part of the agreement was that the boxing initiatives adopted by the state be named the Greg Page Safety Initiative.
Because of Page — and the tireless efforts by his safety-conscious wife on behalf of other boxers — some of the changes now in effect in Kentucky include:
— The promoter must have health and death insurance.
— A licensed ringside physician must be present at ringside.
— Oxygen must be available, and an ambulance and EMT crew must be present at the fight.
— The nearest hospital with a neurologist on call must be notified that a fight show is taking place.
As I’ve been thinking about Page the past couple of days, I remembered one indelible image from my hospital visit with him a few months after his accident.
A therapist was wrestling and coaxing and cajoling him as he was strapped into a wheelchair with a trachea tube in his neck. He he had a blue bicycle rider’s helmet on his head and there was fear in his eyes.
I recalled the message he had scrawled on a big legal pad left next to his bed. Back then it was his only means of communication and he rarely used it. But this thought had been quite clear and remains forever haunting:
“Get me out of here…Please!”
Monday — after Page had done so much for other boxers since his injury — the Lord finally did just that.
TweetBengals’ Pick : “He hasn’t robbed anyone”
CINCINNATI — “Well, he hasn’t robbed anyone.”
As memorable draft day critiques go, none here in Cincinnati topped that line from Bengals running backs coach Jim Anderson about the team’s newest ball carrier, sixth round pick Bernard Scott from Abilene Christian.
And thanks to Scott’s completion of a diversion program that got a misdemeanor charge of stealing an iPod dropped, Anderson’s claim appears correct.
But Scott — who’ll be a 25-year-old rookie after being kicked off his high school team in Vernon, Texas and then bouncing through four colleges and sitting out a year to trim trees — did do quite a few other things.
Some were impressive: Last season he ran for 2,156 yards, 28 touchdowns and won the Harlon Hill Award, the NCAA Division II equivalent of the Heisman. The year before at Blinn Junior College he set NCAA Division II records with 39 touchdowns and 234 points
But others were not: According to Pro Football Weekly, he’s reportedly been arrested at least five times and served probation for giving false information to a police officer during a 2007 traffic stop.
According to PFW, he was booted from the University of Central Arkansas program for striking a coach who tried breaking up a fight. Sunday, April 26, Scott denied hitting the coach:
“That’s not true. I got into it with one of my teammates there in practice. A fight broke out. I felt somebody grab me from behind, and I just kind of turned around and pushed their hands away without realizing it was a coach. But I didn’t strike a coach or hit a coach at all.”
But UCA coach Clint Conque told the New York Times: “He hates school. doesn’t trust a lot of people and obviously has some anger issues.”
Speaking by phone from Dallas, Scott said: “I cleared up the issues in my past. All the mistakes I have made I have learned from and I’ve become a better person.”
Anderson seemed to agree: “I have thoroughly investigated the things and I feel comfortable. Give the kid a chance. I think that’s the American way.”
And though this pick harkens back to some of the days when the Bengals seemed to take in misfits by the net full — 10 players were arrested over 14 months beginning in April 2006 — it’s not a true representation of this draft class.
I think the Bengals had one of their best drafts in years,. They addressed lots of needs and landing Southern Cal middle linebacker Rey Maualuga in the second round was an absolute steal. And if first round pick Andre Smith maintains his weight, he could be a starter right off at right tackle. He’s a powerful run blocker and could be groomed to be the pass protecting left tackle of the future. And the little time I spent around him Sunday, I really liked him.
As for Scott, who knows how that will work out.
Naturely, Coach Marvin Lewis views it as a glass-hal-full scenario:
“He had some things in his past back in ‘05 and so forth and he’s bounced from school to school. I really liken him to T.J. (Houshmandzadeh) a little bit. I think at that point in the draft, it was worth the opportunity. He’s kind of gotten his life back together and is ready to play football.”
Yet it was something Anderson said about Scott that resonates most through this draft when you consider the Bengals package as a whole and especially the first five picks.
“I expect him to really produce and be productive for us this year and in years to come.”
TweetDraft Day — Golf, Fake Diamonds and Sweet Potato Pie
CINCINNATI — When the Cincinnati Bengals drafted him in the fifth round Sunday, punter Kevin Huber — a hometown product of McNicholas High and the Cincinnati Bearcats — was playing a round of golf at California Golf Course on Kellogg Ave. here in town
Meanwhile, Chase Coffman, the tight end out of Missouri, was anxiously sitting at home in Peculiar, Mo. for the second day in row when the Bengals selected him in the third round of the two-day NFL draft.
“When I talked to Chase, he had been sitting at home all day staring at the TV,” said Bengals coach Marvin Lewis. “Kevin was on the golf course. Obviously, he didn’t want to sit at home. I think the big tackle (Joe Thomas) in Cleveland who came from Wisconsin a couple years ago was out ice fishing.
“Everybody kind of goes through it differently.”
I remember when massive defensive tackle Jerome Brown was drafted out of the University of Miami in the first round by the Philadelphia Eagles in 1987, he was at a gala party of family and friends in a restaurant in the Coconut Grove section of Miami. So taken up by the moment, he went outside and bought some diamonds that day from a guy on the street. The stones turned out to be fake.
A few years later, I was over at the Dayton home of Ohio State linebacker Michael McCray for a draft day gathering of his family and friends. His mom had prepared a big spread of food. There was a lot of initial joy and anticipation, but as the day wore on, McCray got more and more nervous.
He wasn’t picked the first day and on the second, as the rounds went by and was still sitting at home, the mood changed. It was uncomfortable. He ended up retreating to his bedroom and never came out. I sat for a while with his family — notebook still at the ready — and finally just packed up and went home. He wasn’t drafted.
A long time ago, when Miami Hurricanes running back Ottis Anderson was drafted in the first round of the 1979 draft — the sixth pick over all by the St. Louis Cardinals — I was at the family gathering at his small home in West Palm Beach.
There was all kinds of down home food and at the end of the day — after a couple of meals and a lot of laughter and stories — his mom packed up a big box of fried chicken, greens, mac ‘n cheese, cornbread, sweet potato pie for me to take along.
That was my favorite draft day in three decades of covering the event.
TweetCOLUMN — Lucas Pfander: Gone, but still alive in hearts
As the Chaminade Julienne boys volleyball team broke from the pregame huddle for its match with Fairborn, the starters — all of whom wore orange headbands and bright orange shoe laces — went onto the court while a couple of the back-up players — similarly accessorized — carefully settled onto the bench.
Matt Shimp sat directly to the left of the empty chair, Mike Piekenbrock, to the right. Between then, the vacant seat was draped with a blue Eagles jersey bearing a No. 4 in white.
That’s Lucas Pfander’s jersey and the bold splash of orange — on a team whose school colors are green and blue — was Lucas’ favorite color.
And the orange — as it has been for every sports team at CJ this year — was everywhere Thursday night, April 23. Head coach Megan Marrinan’s dark pony tail was tied with orange ribbon and on her wrist — just like on the wrists of several CJ students and parents in the stands — was an orange rubber bracelet.
Lucas would have been the Eagles co-captain this year. He was one of the team’s two best players and certainly its most colorful character.
But last July 11, the 17-year-old died in a vacation accident on Lake Cumberland in Kentucky. He was staying on a houseboat with the family of teammate Charlie Jackson and some other people.
An accomplished swimmer — he was a life guard at Splash Moraine and held the CJ record in the mile swim — Lucas had spent the week there having a great time, Chalie said:
“He learned to wake board and ski. We got him up on anything you can do in the water. Lucas really lived life to the fullest.”
But sometime in the predawn hours of July 11, Lucas — who had been sleeping on an air mattress on the top deck — fell overboard. He likely hit his head on the bottom deck in the fall, tumbled into the water and drowned.
When he was discovered missing after daylight, a frantic search was begun and eventually his body was found near the boat in 19 feet of water.
“I talked to the coroner and he said there was a hit on the back of his head and it had bruised the front of his brain,” said Greg Pfander, Lucas’ dad.
As word of the accident spread here at home, everyone was numbed.
All of CJ knew Lucas. He had played five sports and stood out in three — volleyball, cross country and swimming. He had won the much-hyped Scrabble tournament in Honors English class, had been named the Top Chef — and awarded the tall white hat — in his culinary arts class. He was the incoming president of the National Honor Society, had done volunteer work everywhere from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina to here in Dayton at the House of Bread.
And while he wore shorts every day — even in the sub-zero, days of winter — he had had perfect attendance all through high school.
“When I first heard I just broke down,” said teammate Nathan Constable. “I couldn’t drive or work, I could barely function. All I could think was ‘Not Lucas.’ He was everybody’s friend. Just so full of life. He was such a big, big part of our school.”
HE WAS DIFFERENT
Dan Marrinan — a CJ senior volleyball player who had known Lucas since first grade at Holy Angels — was searching for the best way to describe his pal:
“He was very…aaah…flamboyant. He definitely had his own style.”
Ethan Klosterman, one of Lucas’ best friends and the team’s other captain, gave an example:
“One time for Spirit Day in grade school, Lucas shows up wearing clown shoes. Size 17. Who has clown shoes? Only a guy like Lucas.”
At the eighth grade talent show — as other kids sang and danced — he became the talk of the school when he jumped rope while bouncing on a pogo stick.
Some two years later he watched the Tonight Show with Jay Leno and saw a segment on oddball things people could do.
He e-mailed Leno about pogo stick trick, then sent him a demo tape. Within a week, he, his mother Daisy and older brother Travis were on their way to California, where Lucas got his own dressing room and ended up a big hit on a Tonight Show segment entitled Teenage Wasteland.
In typical Lucas fashion, he got the most out of the moment and ended up kibitzing with Leno, telling the host that, by the way, he had 70,000 dead neighbors back in Dayton.
The family lives at Calvary Cemetery, where they do night-time caretaker duties, a job that provided Lucas with fodder for stories and enterprise.
“He’d come and tell us he saw 15 deer the night before,” Ethan smiled. “And he’d gather the buckeyes he found there and string them into necklaces he’d sell at school.”
Yet, don’t think all that style eclipsed his substance.
In May of last year, Klosterman’s older brother, Isaac — a 2005 University of Dayton grad — was killed by a hit-and-run driver while vacationing in Florida.
“I was at the hospital in Florida and all of a sudden I get a random call from Lucas,” Ethan said. “It was surreal, but it came at the perfect time when I needed someone.
“I ended up missing a week of school and in that time Lucas had made up armbands with Isaac’s name on them and had the whole team wearing them. That meant the world to me and my family.”
Constable has a story, too: “I’ve just been at CJ two years. I came here from Florida and didn’t really know anybody. He was one one of the first people I met and he was just a good guy to me — to everybody.”
Megan Marrinan, in a voice that filled with emotion, agreed: “The coaching staff was talking about him and we all said, if you had a son you’d want him to be like Lucas.”
And that’s why Eagles’ cross country coach Chuck Bridgman took off his CJ Hall of Fame ring and slipped it into Lucas’ coffin.
SO MANY ARE MOVED
The wake was held in the Holy Angeles gym. Over 1,500 people signed the remembrance book and some 1,000 showed up for the funeral Mass where Travis, now a Princeton University student, delivered a touching eulogy.
Two weeks after the burial Greg’s cell phone rang:
“It was Jay Leno. Someone from here had notified his show and he remembered Lucas.”
Soon after, Leno sent some photos that had been taken of Lucas at the show. And recently, when he appeared at Miami University, Leno visited with the family at a pre-show meet-and-greet.
One of Lucas favorite songs was Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” and that tune accompanies a photo collage of him on YouTube done by CJ track athlete Corwin Pope. The La Vida phrase also appears on those orange bracelets that have been sold with proceeds going to a scholarship fund for CJ students.
Daisy and Greg have been escorted by Eagles athletes onto the fields at Welcome Stadium and Fifth Third Field, as well as the CJ basketball court, for fall, winter and spring Senior Night celebrations.
A buckeye tree is being planted near Lucas’ grave at Calvary Cemetery, where, among other things, you’ll find a statue of St. Francis of Assisi — wearing an orange lei.
And then there was Constable’s very permanent salute of his friend.
He lifted his shirt above his left rib cage and revealed the tattoo he’d gotten on Brandt Pike. Done in calligraphy and using his nickname for Lucas, it said: “Lu Lu Pfander… 7-11-08.”
“I was just 17 at the time and couldn’t sign for it myself,” he grinned. “I told my parents, ‘This really means something to me, so either help me get it or I’ll go out and get it myself from some guy just out of prison or something.’ …They took me.”
THE FINAL WORD
At the volleyball match the other night, Daisy and Greg — who wore an orange polo shirt — sat in the midst of a dozen other parents in the bleachers.
“We’ve had a lot of people say, ‘I don’t know how you do it, I wouldn’t be able to get through it,’” Daisy said. “And yes, the worst thing you can have is to lose a child, but as far as getting through it, we don’t have a choice. We could stay home and hibernate or we can go out and support the kids and be with our friends. You take it one day at a time and some days one minute at a time.”
Greg said “as parents we don’t have a life of regrets saying we wish we’d been there when he did this or that. We went to everything we could and we encouraged him to try everything.”
Daisy said when they see the CJ kids wearing orange it makes them smile: “We know Lucas is still alive in their hearts.
“And sure it’s hard coming to the games, but I think it helps us to be with everyone here and it helps the kids to see us. It’s a healing process for both of us.”
When the first Lucas Pfander Scholarship is awarded later this spring, Greg said he may tell this story:
“In the Catholic Mass, right before communion, you say this thing: ‘Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.’
“Well, ever since he was five or six, Lucas would look over at me at say, ‘Dad, what is the word?’ And I’d say, ‘Lucas, I don’t know.’
“And , it became this running game with us. If he was next to you, he’d elbow you. When he was a Mass server, he’d stare at you until he caught your eye and then just smile.
“So now since he’s gone, we’ve gotten to reaching down and tugging on our bracelets at that point in the Mass. We still don’t know the word, but now I am sure Lucas does.”
He’ll have worked the Lord, just like he worked Leno.
TweetCOLUMN: UD Star Now Xavier’s First Lady
CINCINNATI — One thing for sure, Christi Hester — now Christi Mack — has not forgotten her past.
From the time she was a preschooler right through high school in Louisville, she took dance lessons. “Over 14 years — everything from jazz to gymnastics,” she nodded. “Even when I was going to UD, I was able to flip all the way across the gym floor.”
And the other day, she did it again.
“So do you consider yourself a Flyer or a Muskie?” she was asked as she sat in a Xavier athletic office at the Cintas Center.
That same trademark smile from her Dayton Flyers days lit up her face, but for a few seconds she was silent. Then she began dancing all around the question.
“I’ve been able to experience the best of both worlds…and just as much as I love Dayton, I love Xavier, too, and I …”
So, she was asked again: “Flyer or Muskie?”
This time she just grinned and flipped right over the question: “I’ll leave that one blank.”
While her charisma and sass made her one of the most popular women’s basketball players in Dayton Flyers history, she now been dubbed by some “The First Lady” of Xavier basketball.
Last week, Chris Mack — her husband, the father of their two daughters, three-year-old Lainee and two-year-old Hailee — was named the new Xavier men’s basketball coach following Sean Miller’s jump to the University of Arizona.
The Musketeers are the Flyers biggest rival and Christi knows what that means, especially when Xavier makes its annual trip to Dayton. She believes UD Arena may be a tougher place for opponents to play in than even Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadiu, where she went when her husband was as Wake Forest assistant.
And because she remembers the past, she knows Chris likely will get a lively reception from students at UD Arena next season.
Some 19 years ago, Mack became Public Enemy No. 1 with some Flyers fans when he was playing for Evansville. Back then, Aces coach Jim Crews thought the Flyers overplayed the ball when Evansville tried to inbounds it, so he instructed his players to bounce the ball off the noggin’ of the Flyer defender in front of them.
First Scott Schreffler caromed the ball off UD’s Wes Coffee, who ended up with a bloody lip. Later Mack, who was trying to rifle the ball over the 7-foot center, instead hit him square in the nose again. Coffee was dazed and bleeding. UD Arena was in an uproar and Mack was branded — a bit unfairly.
No one knew of Crews’ orders or that later Mack — who soon would transfer out of Evansville for Xavier — was so bothered by the incident that he wrote a letter of apology to Coffee.
Last week, though, some UD fans — on website discussions and radio call-in shows — again were on Mack’s case.
“I told Chris, ‘Dayton people really love me so maybe they’ll have a change of heart and like you because of me,’” she said with a laugh. “I teased him and said, ‘I might be your only hope with them.’”
A MATCH MADE AT X
The runner up for Kentucky’s Miss Basketball, Hester chose Dayton over hometown Louisville because she liked the school and especially then-Flyers coach Clemette Haskins — who had been a three-time All American at Western Kentucky University.
Once in a Flyers uniform, Hester became the Pied Piper of UD women’s basketball. She had fan clubs on campus and off. Little girls began showing up at games wearing their hair and socks — pulled high to the knees — like Hester. Older fans would invite her over for Sunday dinner.
She was the team’s leading scorer three of her four UD seasons. Her junior year was wrecked by a preseason knee surgery that became infected, initially went untreated — after blood tests were lost, she said — and almost cost her her leg.
She said it was her dad who finally rushed her to the hospital. “That’s the only time I ever remember him crying,” she said quietly. “He came in to tell me they were going to try to save my leg.”
Jaci Clark was the coach then — Haskins had resigned in June — and didn’t grant Hester a red-shirt season. Although she could have transferred to Louisville, Hester stuck by her UD commitment and hobbled through the last 14 games of her junior season, averaging few minutes and just 4 p.p.g. Healthy again as a senior, she averaged 15.1 p.p.g. and now ranks 11th on UD’s all-time scoring list with 1,268 career points.
After a brief WNBA tryout, she was hired by Xavier as its director on women’s basketball operations. And that’s when people at XU started playing matchmaker — telling her how she and Mack would make a good couple.
Although Mack had left his assistant’s position at Xavier to join former Muskie’s coach Skip Prosser at Wake Forest, he eventually asked her for a date and three months later proposed.
SO, MUSKIE OR FLYER?
Like so much in their lives, their wedding party was a mix of UD and Xavier. Prosser was a groomsman, as was former Muskie assistant Pat Kelsey. Hester’s teammate Janette Jaques was a bridesmaid.
After they wed, Christi gave up her Xavier job and moved with Chris back to Winston Salem, N.C. where she became a seventh grade girls basketball coach. A year later Mack returned to Xavier to join Miller’s staff and Christi began coaching at Colerain High School. This past season — her first as the Cardinals head coach — her team went 18-5.
Yet, as her life has gotten rooted in Cincinnati, she has not forgotten her Dayton ties.
She stays in contact with Barb and Bob Mitman the retired Miamisburg couple who befriended her when she was a Flyer. She still gets e-mails from girls who were in her fan club or were tutored by her at UD basketball camps.
She and some of her former teammates remain close and she’s been especially impressed by current UD women’s coach Jim Jabir, who called the other day to congratulate her.
“We’ve talked in the past and he really wants to make the alumni a bigger part of the program,” she said. “He’s really a nice guy. His heart is in the right spot and he truly cares about his players.”
She takes in a couple of UD women’s games each year and the two Dayton-Xavier regular season men’s games. At UD Arena she said she’s gotten a couple of double takes from some fans who don’t know she’s married to Mack and wonder why she’s sitting behind the Xavier bench.
With that in mind — especially now that Chris is the new Xavier head coach — she was pressed again.
Muskie or Flyer?
Finally, that old moxie showed.
“I’m a smart girl,” she said with a grin. “I do know who pays our bills.”
Just as she remembers the past, she knows the future.
TweetDayton-Xavier Hoops Never More Intertwined Than Now
CINCINNATI — She showed up for our interview wearing a black windbreaker with a red cardinal on it and a Colerain High T-shirt.
“Didn’t want to insult you wearing my Xavier stuff,” Christi Mack said with a laugh as we sat down to talk for the story I’ll have on her in Thursday’s newspaper.
She also wasn’t going to try to curry favor by wearing any of her old Dayton Flyers’ stuff from her Christi Hester days. After all, the interview was taking place at the Cintas Center.
“Sometimes,” she grinned, “it’s smart just to go neutral.”
UD and Xavier basketball have been intertwined for 89 years, but never more so than now. Last week Xavier assistant Chris Mack was named the Musketeers new head coach following Sean Miller’s departure for the University of Arizona.
Mack’s 30-year-old wife — now dubbed “The First Lady” of Xavier basketball — remains not only one of the most prolific scorers in the history of University of Dayton women’s basketball, but one the most popular and beloved Flyers players ever.
In less than 3 1/2 seasons — a knee injury and serious infection wrecked much of her junior year — Christi Hester scored 1,268 career points and was celebrated by fan clubs on and off campus.
While she’s always maintained her ties with UD — even as she raises the couple’s two young daughters and coaches the Colerain High girls basketball team — her two-school relationship suddenly has gotten a lot more scrutiny.
That’s especially the case with some rabid Flyers followers who — with only partially-feigned dismay — see it as sleeping with the enemy.
And there are those who try to paint Chris — unfairly, I think, when you know the whole story — as a villain over something that happened 19 years ago at UD Arena.
Back in 1990, Mack was playing for the Evansville. Aces coach Jim Crews thought the Flyers continually overplayed the ball when his team tried to inbounds it, so he instructed his guys to bounce the ball off the noggin’ of the Flyer defender in front of them.
First Scott Schreffler caromed the ball off UD’s Wes Coffee, who ended up with a bloody lip. Later Mack tried to rifle the ball over the 7-foot center and instead hit him square in the nose again. Coffee was dazed and bleeding. UD Arena was in an uproar and Mack was branded — a bit unfairly.
No one knew of Crews’ orders or that later Mack — who soon would transfer out of Evansville for Xavier — was so bothered by the incident that he wrote a letter of apology to Coffee.
Last week some UD fans — on website discussions and radio call-in shows — were on Mack’s case.
With that in mind, a smiling Christi gave her husband a coaching tip of her own the other day:
“I told Chris, ‘Dayton people really love me, so maybe they’ll have a change of heart and like you because of me.’ I teased him and said, ‘I might be your only hope with them.’”
Sometimes, it’s smart not to go neutral.
TweetCOLUMN: Day and Night, A Diamond on the Defense
She had just come from a sentencing hearing on a felony drug conviction and now — as she sat in a hallway outside a Montgomery County Common Pleas courtroom before heading off to another pretrial hearing on a weapons and drug case — she was talking about knocking someone on their rear end.
“Yep, all day long,” she said with smile, “I’m on the defense.”
A Washington Township-based criminal defense attorney by day, Virginia “Jenny” Crews spends many of her evenings this time of year as a linebacker and defensive end for the Dayton Diamonds, one of 38 teams from across the nation in the Women’s Football Alliance.
The Diamonds — who opened their eight-game regular season schedule Saturday night against the Indiana Speed in Indianapolis — are made up a collection of women from all walks of life.
Most are from the Miami Valley. The are white and black, college students, a grandmother, women who played other competitive sports in high school and college and a few who are in their first-ever serious athletic venture.
Among the Diamonds players are a barber, a baker and a horse trainer. There’s a medical school student, a grade school teacher, occupational and physical therapists, a Sinclair fitness instructor, an Air Force officer and Crews, the 33-year-old lawyer who lives in West Carrollton.
This past week she was involved in everything from drug possession and assault cases to a custody hearing and an abuse and neglect case in juvenile court.
But Thursday evening, April 16. — after a a day in the downtown Dayton courtrooms — there she was at John Wolfe Park in Trotwood, wearing a mud-stained white practice jersey over bulky shoulder pads, black padded pants, long black stockings and high topped black shoes. A pair of sure-grip gloves covered her hands and her long hair cascaded out the back of her black helmet.
The Diamonds were having their final preseason practice and though she also worked some as a fullback, Crews primarily — and preferably — played defense.
“It’s a lot more fun tackling someone than being tackled,” she grinned. “It’s just so much fun to come out here, run around and hit someone.
“During the day my job is generally very stressful and the schedule is demanding,. So coming here is just a great stress releaser.”
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She said she was folding laundry at home last year while watching the news on television with her husband, Jeff, when they both heard mention of try-outs for the women’s professional football team being formed in Dayton:
“I got all excited and said, ‘Now that looks like a lot of fun.’ He kind of looked at me like I was a little crazy, but underneath he couldn’t be surprised.”
Once a soccer and tennis player at Wayne High, Crews calls herself “adventuresome,” a qualifier that helps explain her eloping when she was just 18 — she and Jeff are now married 15 years — deciding to become a lawyer after getting a biology degree from the University of Arizona and working three years in a genetics lab and several years ago joining a bruising, all-woman’s rugby team here in Dayton.
After going through tryouts and making the Diamonds team last year, she still had to explain to people just what she was doing:
“They’d go, ‘Oh, isn’t that nice. You play touch football or flag?’ And I’d go, ‘No, real football. We wear pads and we tackle people.’
“At first my mom was worried. She said, ‘Can’t you just be the team attorney?’
“But once I got my family to a game, they were hooked. Now my parents, my in-laws, everybody goes to the games. My mom and dad have their own business and with a shirt press, they made T-shirts with my No. 38 on them for everybody. My dad made caps with my football picture on them, too.
“My little niece, Lilly, she’s just four, wears a shirt that says ‘My Aunt’s a Linebacker.’ And my little nephew (John Jackson) is our team’s water boy. For all of us, it’s become a real family affair.”
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Crews said some of her family and friends are still learning to appreciate her work as a defense attorney.
“They see some of the cases I take and they say, ‘How can you represent the people you do?’” she said quietly. “They have the wrong perspective about what I do. They think I’m just trying to get people off, but it’s not really that.
“I make sure all the rules and procedures are followed by the police and the prosecutor. And I do enjoy helping people — sometimes it’s helping them from themselves and getting them into treatment and programs that make them more productive and able to realize the opportunities out there.”
The flip side of her daytime defender’s job — her evenings with the Diamonds — is about seizing opportunities, as well.
“Once women get out of high school — and certainly when they leave college — the opportunity for competitive team sports for them is almost non existent,” she said. “Hopefully, this will open some doors for women and maybe down the way the sport will grow just as basketball has.”
As for now, women’s football still is emerging from the fledgling stages. Players don’t get paid, they must pay their own way to play. Their two games jerseys, uniform pants and pads cost each of them close to $400.
When the Diamonds take a charter bus to away games — this year they play in Indianapolis, Toledo, Fort Wayne and near Kalamazoo, Mich. — they help pay travel costs and buy their own meals.
Yet the expenditures are worth it, Crews said:
“We spend loys of hours each week together with practice and bus rides and games — and they’re important hours to give up, our free time — but we get so many different things out of it.
“There’s great camaraderie with a bunch of women from all walks of life — people you likely wouldn’t have met were it not for this.
“And on the field you may find a confidence you didn’t know you had before. Maybe some abilities, too. And it’s really fun.
“Yet, maybe best of all, is that experience of playing under the lights on a Saturday night. It’s an experience you’re not going to get anyplace else in your life.
“And that is a real adventure.”
TweetCOLUMN: “It Makes Me Feel Like A Rock Star”
In the world of cornerback Pisce McCoy, clipping can cost you 15 yards…or $12 without a tip.
The Dayton Diamonds defender is a master barber at KJ’s Barber Styling on Salem Avenue.
The place reminds you a little of the Ice Cube movie “Barbershop.” There are some old schoolers who perch on the chairs along one wall and hold court. Prime among them is Horace Chisholm, the former Michigan school teacher and record producer, who KJ barbers call “the black Forrest Gump,” because of all of his incredulous life experiences.
At KJ’s there’s a good chance there will be rhythm and blues on the sound system, and, of course, there’s the usual barbershop banter.
“Barbershops are pretty much country clubs for the guys,” the 31-year-old McCoy said with a grin. “Doesn’t matter who’s here, they just talk away.”
Prime topics at KJ’s, she said, are “sports, politics and women.”
And thanks to her they get two topics in one independent and outspoken person. “A firecracker” she calls herself — and to some thats an understatement — she was a multi-sport athlete at Troy High and then played basketball at both Edison and Sinclair community colleges before her foray into football a few years ago.
She played a season with the Toledo Reign, then one with the now defunct Dayton Rebellion before joining the Diamonds in their inaugural season last year.
Among her supporters is her brother Kalen, a football player at Troy High, who used to wear her No. 24 Rebellion jersey to school. As for the other family and friends who follow her, she teasing calls them “my groupies …it makes me feel like a rock star.”
And with six interceptions in eight games last season, there has been enough stardom to give her fodder to join the “country club” conversations of the KJ’s men.
“No problem,” McCoy smiled. “I can hold my own with them, too.”
TweetDiamonds — The No Strip Club
When she was trying to come up with a name for her football team, Tanya Jackson said her line of thinking went like this:
“I thought Dayton Diamonds was perfect because we’re all women and we all like diamonds. And this is The Gem City… I’m old school.”
And, with that, the colorful owner of the Women’s Football Alliance team started to laugh:
“The name got me some criticism, too. Some people said, “You know there’s a strip club in Dayton called Diamonds?’ I said, ‘Yeah, but that’s got nothing to do with us. We’re the Dayton Diamonds. We’re the gals who keep our clothes on.’”
Over the years there have been a few brief attempts at women’s football in Dayton. Back in the 1970s, Jackson played for the Dayton Fillies and she was a defensive coach for the Dayton Rebellion when it was around a short while a few years ago.
In their second year, the Diamonds — who are opening their season Saturday night, against the Indiana Speed in Indianapolis — have some 35 women who come from all walks of life. Among them are a barber, baker, horse trainer, nurse, school teacher, occupational and physical therapists, Sinclair fitness instructor, Air Force officer and a Washington Township attorney, Virginia “Jenny” Crews.
In Sunday’s newspaper — and posted later some place on this web page — I’ll have a couple of other storties on the Diamionds. One is on Crews, the criminal defense attorney who last week had a full slate of drug and assault cases. Another story is on Pisce McCoy, Salem Avenue barber and self-described :”firecracker” who holds her on on the football field and in the male bastion of the barbershop.
When she started playing, Crews, a linebacker and defensive end, said men would say ‘That’s nice. You play touch or flag?’ And I’d go, ‘No, real football. We wear pads and we tackle people.’
“And then most of the guys would get excited about it. They’d start telling me about the position they played, the injuries they had, all the high school stories. All of sudden I was like one of them. Kind of like they let me into their men’s club.”
That would be the one, as Jackson said, where the gals keep their clothes on.
TweetBobby Martin in Jail
Bobby Martin is in trouble again.
Turns out, the guy with no legs also has no valid drivers license.
And that’s why — after appearing before Municipal Court Judge Dennis Greaney and pleading guilty to four charges of driving with a suspended license — Martin has been in the Montgomery County Jail since Friday, April 10, serving a 60-day sentence
No Miami Valley prep athlete — not Keith Byars, Curtis Enis, Chris Wright, Tamika Williams, no one — ever had the kind of international fanfare and universal acclaim that Martin once did.
The former Colonel White football player and homecoming king — who was born with no legs, but possesses an over-abundance of grit and survival skill — won an ESPY in 2006 as the nation’s Best Male Athlete with a Disability.
First — and often — he was chronicled in the Dayton Daily News and soon his story was picked up by newspapers and TV crews around the world.
The Cleveland Browns had him give a pep talk in their dressing room and the famed Jim Brown became his sidekick. He was on the game-day sidelines of the Cincinnati Bengals, the Green Bay Packers and the Oakland Raiders.
But lately he seems to have reverted to old ways. He had several scrapes with the law as a juvenile and then last December, the 21-year-old was in the Dayton Municipal courtroom of Judge Dan Gehres, on a domestic assault charge.
He supposedly hopped off that skateboard he uses to get around and used it to clobber the mother of their 18-month-old child. — one of two children he now has.
He’s often found trouble when he gets behind the wheel of a car. He started driving by breaking the head off a golf club and using the shaft as a rod to work the gas and brake pedals — not exactly legal.
The police first found out about that because he was speeding. From there, driver’s license problems have continued to plague him.
This time Greaney sentenced him to 180 days on each charge and then suspended all but 60 days on each and ordered Martin to serve them concurrently. After his release, he will be on probation for five years.
TweetMark Fidrych: Beers and champagne corks with The Bird
Mark Fidrych took me along to a party once at a big-time businessman’s place at the start of spring training in Lakeland, Fla. back in 1978.
The host had a big indoor pool and as the night wore on — and the drinks flowed — he began to boast about what a great swimmer he was. So good, he said, he thought he could whip anybody at the party.
Fidrych — the gangly, right-handed Detroit Tigers pitcher known as The Bird — finally had heard enough and said, if no one else would challenge the guy, he might give it a try.
“But I don’t got a suit,” Fidrych said.
The guy scoffed” “Don’t let that be an excuse. I’ve got plenty of towels.”
And so Fidrych peeled off all his clothes right there and jumped in the pool. The guy soon joined him and to make it interesting, he put down a $100 wager that he’d beat The Bird in a sprint to the end of the pool and back.
Fidrych smoked the guy by several lengths, collected the C-note and on the way home, stopped and bought a few six packs of beer and a bag full of of burgers. We had our own little party with a couple of his buddies back at the Lakeland motel where we all were staying.
Back in the day, Fidrych was one of my favorite athletes. He was an eccentric character with some high-amped energy, a touch of naivete, a bigger dose of sincerity and a a lot of rock ‘n’ roll lingo delivered with a Boston accent.
He started 1976 as a non-roster player and ended up the toast of baseball. He started the All Star Game, finished the seasaon with a 19-9 record and was named the American League Rookie of the Year.
Every time he pitched some 20,000 more fans showed up at Tiger Stadium to watch him talk to the baseball, manicure the mound on his hands and knees and, best of all, baffle batters with that hard slider.
Everybody was drawn to him from blue collar types who recognized his kinship to guys like the Beach Boys, Kiss ad Elton John — all who had tried to get him up on stage with them.
Although he admitted, “That’d be the bomb, Man,” he had declined each time, a bit stage struck.
That’s what I liked about Fidrych. He didn’t put on airs. A pro athlete taking a sports writer along to a party would never happen now. Times have changed.
But working for the Miami News back then, I was doing a series of stories on Fidrych and he figured I might enjoy myself. Later in the season, when a sore shoulder plagued him even more and got him sent him back to the minor leagues — to the Lakeland Tigers, a Detroit farm club then managed by Jim Leyland — I spent another 10 days with Fidrych as he travelled the Florida State League with the team.
During that time we talked more about music and his life back home than baseball. He never did recapture that magic he had in 1976 and these days, he was living back on a 106-acre farm in Northampton, Mass with his wife and daughter.. He had as 10 wheel dump truck and a commercial license and often worked with a constriction crew there.
He died Monday at age 54. He was found pinned beneath his dump truck, which he’d been working on. His passing truly saddened me, but the more I thought of those long ago times the more I began to smile.
And that reminded me of another accident he’d had.
I showed up at Lakeland’s Joker Marchant Stadium one day when Fidrych was having a semi-private work-out. The park was deserted except for a catcher, a trainer, a couple of grounds crew guys and The Bird.
He was throwing on the sidelines wearing nothing but a pair of underwear that were turned inside out, his baseball spikes and some old floppy white socks that crumpled down onto his shoes Pistol Pete Maravich style.
He had a gold baseball charm and religious medal of the Virgin Mary around his neck. His golden Harp Marx curls were damp with sweat. His right eye was bruised purple. And if you looked closer, you saw a red spot the size of a pencil eraser on his top eyelid.
“Got hit in the eye with a champagne cork,” he said matter of factly. “I was standing next to this girl at a party and she wasn’t paying attention. She popped the cork right in front of my face. Got me square. It sure hurt.”
He started laughing: “But, hey, that’s life.”
And that’s the guy I remember today.
TweetCOLUMN: Benzinger Gives Dragons A Big Dog Example
The Cincinnati Reds had been on board the charter for a while — ready to fly off to Oakland and the third game of the 1990 World Series — but the plane wasn’t budging from the gate.
“We couldn’t figure out why and then, all of a sudden, coming down the aisle is Marge and her dog,” Todd Benzinger said shaking his head. “She was having each player touch Schottzie for luck. Some guys were like — ‘naah’ — but we all had to do it.”
Such was life playing for Marge Scott, the eccentric Reds owner, who doted on her ever-present, always-slobbering St. Bernard.
“But hey,” Benzinger said with a smile, “you can’t say it didn’t work.”
The underdog Reds swept the Oakland As in four games.
Before making his professional managerial debut in the Dayton Dragons season opener Thursday night, April 9, at Fifth Third Field Benzinger said he wouldn’t be borrowing any of Marge’s stunts.
Maybe he ought to reconsider.
The Dragons had a rough night, giving up 17 hits and making three errors in a 14-3 loss to the Great Lakes Loons.
Then again a Schottzie tale wouldn’t strike a chord with his players — most were toddlers in 1990. But another remembrance from that trip sure might.
The fact that Benzinger, the Reds first baseman in 1990, has a bulky World Series ring — not to mention a big league resume that spans nine years and five teams — carries weight with the Dragons.
“They want to be where I was,” he said quietly as he sat in his clubhouse office before the game. “When I was in their shoes, I wanted to soak up anything I could from someone who had big league experience.
“I remember when I went to spring training with Boston and I’d see guys like Carl Yastrzemski, Ted Williams and Johnny Pesky — there was something about how they handled themselves and what they said that made you want to listen. Now don’t think for a second I’m putting myself in those guys’ category, but there are some similarities.”
After he was released by the New York Yankees in 1995, he was mostly removed from the game except for brief instructional stints with the Kansas City Royals and the Reds and then, last summer, managing a team of college players, the Cincinnati Steam.
His main sidelines job the past decade has been coaching high school girls basketball in the Cincinnati area.
While he said he’s gleaned some things from several of the big league managers for whom he played — including Lou Pinella, Pete Rose, Hal McRae, Tommy Lasorda and Dusty Baker — he said one thing has carried over from girls hoops.
“Guys will find out, for a baseball manager, I don’t do a lot of cussin’,” he said. “I never did a whole lot anyway, but when you’re coaching girls basketball you cut it way down.”
More outings like Thursday night and that may change.
TweetCOLUMN: Dragons’ Sappelt can’t love like he used to
Dayton Dragons fans are going to love him, but he’s not going to love them back.
Well, at least not a certain segment…in a certain way.
We’re talking about the young women of Dayton who like athletes, not to mention the groupies, flirts and come-hither hearts — all who like to see a ballplayer not only make a catch, but become one, too.
“Sorry, I was known to be a ladies man, but no more,” David Sappelt said with a grin. “I’m married. I…aah…what do they call it?… I eloped.”
As he said his pals back at Coastal Carolina University put it: said: “Wow, Sap… Not you.”
Sappelt laughed: “That’s what happens when you go to the college library. Yep, one of the few times you could have caught me there and I meet her.”
Three years — lots of baseball games and only a few library stops later — Sappelt and Amna Anjum now are married.
When the Dragons open their season tonight, April 9, at Fifth Third Field, the 22-year old Sappelt will be their starting center fielder, their lead-off hitter and the guy, said manager Todd Benzinger, whose give-no-quarter personality the whole team could take on.
At 5-foot-9, Sappelt is short on size, but towering when it comes to personality. At close to 200 pounds, he’s sturdy, has some swagger and some of that down-in-the-dirt Pete Rose style.
And there’s also that willingness to tutor his teammates in love — of the game.
“To be honest, I want to be a leader of this team,” he said. “I’ve always been vocal, but last year was my first in pro ball and I didn’t want to stand out too much until I earned some respect. Now I see guys look to me and I want to lead them and say, ‘Alright, let’s go out there and whup some tail.’”
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Although he’s only been around Sappelt a couple of weeks. Benzinger already has noticed one thing: “Every day he seems to play the game like he has something to prove. Like he’s saying, ‘Don’t you dare label me because I’ll show you otherwise.’”
In other words, don’t be fooled by his size.
“I got some old timers — guys like Rickey Henderson, Kirby Puckett even Hammerin’ Hank (Aaron) — I like to compare myself to,” Sappelt said.
“I look at my size and say it’s a plus. My strike zone is smaller. I’ve got an advantage because my arms aren’t long, I can stay short on the ball and keep my swing compact.
“Hey, everybody can’t be Adam Dunn.”
And yet like the former Reds slugger, he was a multi-sport prep star who especially excelled in football. He lived in Buffalo until he was 13 and his family moved to Graham, N.C. After three years at Coastal Carolina, he was surprised when he was drafted by the Reds in the ninth round of the 2008 draft.
“I hadn’t heard from them all year, but in one of our last games against Georgia Tech, I hit two home runs and (Reds scout) Steve Kring was there.”
Playing 62 games of rookie league ball in Billings last year, he hit .299, the third best average among Reds’ minor leaguers.
“Every at bat with him is a battle and the the pitcher better find a way to keep him off the base paths,” Benzinger said. ‘He’s very disruptive. He’s always bluffing to go to second or he’s actually stealing, taking the extra base, trying to make something happen.
“In the field, he’s always moving guys around, captaining the situation. A lot of times — especially when the guy is likeable like he is — the team take’s on the personality of a guy who is outgoing and sets himself apart.”
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Of the field — as a married man of less than one month — Sappelt is also following his own drumbeat.
“I used to be one of the guys out there living the life, but after games now, I’ll be going back and hanging out at the hotel or at home,” he said. “I’ll get on-line and surf the web. From bar hoppin’ to web hoppin’ — that’s me now.”
He lives with teammates Cody Puckett and Curtis Patch in an apartment here, but calls Amna daily. She stayed in Myrtle Beach, S. C. where she has a marketing job with Marriott International.
She’ll visit when possible and after the season they plan to hold a big wedding celebration and go on a honeymoon.
“Before I left for spring training, we just said our vows and made it official,” he said.
“So what day was that? When’s your anniversary?” he was asked.
Sappelt thought for a second, then made his first bluff: “Why it was …aaah…March…wait….That’s a good question….Let me think when spring training was….aaah….It’s slipped my mind…I think it was March…aaah…”
Ten seconds, turned to 20, then 30 and finally he dug in: “Oooh, this could be bad. Wait…it was…it was March 10th.”
Benzinger was right. The guy does make things happen.
Just when it looked as if he’d made the first big error of the season, David Sappelt made a save-the-day, diving catch.
Tweetblog: WSU’s Grant deals with Brownell “Madness”
Wright State athletics director Bob Grant recently spoke to the Agonis Club and when he finished, he said the first question he got from the crowd was a familiar one:
“How are you ever going to keep Brad Brownell?”
And now — with Sean Miller announcing Monday he was leaving Xavier to become the new basketball coach at the University of Arizona — the Cincinnati Enquirer has started running an on-line poll asking people to vote for the best replacement among a list of nine successful coaches.
One of the nine is Brownell.
“There’s a four to six week period this time of the year — and especially this year — where I joke with my friends and say, ‘Put your seat belts on — this is when our version of March Madness happens,’” Grant said. “This is a stressful time for any athletics director with a successful coach.”
And Brownell has been extremely successful.
In the seven years he’s been a head coach — four at UNC-Wilmington, three, now, at Wright State — he’s had five teams win at least 20 games, never had a losing season and has taken three clubs to the NCAA Tournament.
“Brad’s done an unbelievable job for us,” Grant said. “His three years here — (all with 20 wins or more ) — are something we’d never done since moving to Division I.”
Last summer, Wright State awarded Brownell a new six-year contract — at $365,000 per year — which extended his deal with the university through the 2013-14 season.
After last season, Miller signed a 10-year contract extension with Xavier that was worth $850,000 per year and grew to around $1 million per season with incentives. That made him the highest paid coach in the Atlantic 10 Conference.
At Arizona, the 40-year-old coach has a five-year contract that will pay him $2 million per year in base salary and also had a $1 million signing bonus.
Among the favorites for the now-vacant Xavier job is Musketeer assistant coach Chris Mack, who has become rising star among assistants in the college hoops world. He’s the guy who did most of the recruiting to land XU freshmen Bred Redford, Brian Walsh and Kenny Frease, and sophomore Dante Jackson.
Another name being floated for the Xavier job is Ohio University coach and former Xavier assistant John Groce, who recruited Justin Cage and Stanley Burrell. Current ESPN analyst and former Manhattan and St. John’s coach Fran Fraschilla has also been mentioned.
I believe Brownell can more than hold his own with any of those three, but — as he’s done in the past — he declined talking about any other job prospects, Tuesday.
“At the end of each season,” Grant said, “you always hear certain names come up: ‘John Calipari in one, Rick Pitino another. Someone can always come in and pay them more money — whether it’s the NBA for some , the elite basketball schools or for some other BCS school.
“That’s why this time of year I watch the (coaching) news like a hawk and try to imagine thedomino effect a couple of chess moves ahead.
“We don’t have deep, deep coffers at Wright State, but we do all we can. And I can show confidence and an emotional investment to our coaches. I think that all pays off, though it might mean keeping someone just six weeks longer … or maybe six years.
“If Xavier plays the bully on the block and comes offering triple what we pay Brad — and he is interested — I’d understand as a friend. And I’d understand as an athletics director, too, but it still won’t make it less painful,.
“Some people see this time of year for coaches like it’s the Hot Stove League in baseball. While fans might like it — athletic directors do not.
“But I guess it’s a better problem to have than the other one — the one where no one wants your coach. If people are interested in your guy, something’s got to be going right at your school.”
Tweetblog: The Most Unexpected Cincinnati Red
CINCINNATI — He’s been in professional baseball 12 years — has now played in 1,277 games — and yet he had never had a moment like this one.
When Darnell McDonald took the field Monday, April 6, for the Cincinnati Reds, it was his first Opening Day ever with a big league team and only the 22nd Major League game of his well-travelled, roller-coaster career through baseball’s minor leagues.
There was no more improbable story on the field at Great American Ball Park Monday, April 6, than that of the Reds’ 30-year old center fielder, whose shaved head and heavily tattooed body where eclipsed by his heartfelt glow of appreciation.
Some 24 hours before the opener against the New York Mets, he seemed almost certain to be one of the last five players the Reds would cut to make the 25-player roster limit.
Instead, in a move that surprised many, Johnny Gomes was designated for reassignment and McDonald not only was kept, but then elevated to the starting lineup when Willy Tavares was felled by the flu.
Before the game, McDonald quietly admitted being excited “beyond words.” And although he opened the game with a strike out and a throwing error when a wet baseball from the game-long rains slipped from his hand, he finished with one of the just three hits the Reds managed on the day and scored Cincinnati’s only run in what would be a 2-1 Mets victory.
“For me this has been a long, grinding journey,” he said. “I always knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel, but a lot of times it got pretty dim….Today though was different.”
On the grayest of Opening Days, Darnell McDonald finally found the bright lights of the big leagues.
Tweetblog: Could Reds’ Arroyo end up on DL?
While the Cincinnati Reds future of the next few years was on display Saturday at Fifth Third Field — as the big league club took on the franchise’s top minor league prospects in the final preseason exhibition called the Futures Game — it was the immediate future that manager Dusty Baker and GM Walt Jocketty had on their minds:
They both reflected on the soundness of pitcher Bronson Arroyo’s right hand.
Arroyo is dealing with carpal tunnel syndrome. One of the two veterans of the Reds starting rotation, he was hit hard by the minor leaguers in Friday’s Futures Game in North Carolina and had similar outings in spring training in Florida. He was being examined by a physician in Cincinnati Saturday to determine the extent of his problem.
That diagnosis may effect not only Arroyo, but pitchers Homer Bailey and Micah Owings who are battling for the fifth starters spot.
Arroyo is scheduled to start Thursday, but if things are more serious than expected it’s possible he could start the season on the 15-day disabled list. If the DL stint could be back dated into spring training he might not be out the full time though.
“Number one, I hope he’s OK,” Baker said. “And number two, I had carpal tunnel, too. I had that operation when I was with the Giants, but I didn’t have to pitch.”
He was the manager then.
No one was talking about an operation Saturday, but Jocketty did express optimism should Arroyo be temporarily sidelined:
“We’ll see where that goes. The great thing about where were are right now is that we have depth in our rotation and depth in our bullpen. If something happens to one of our starters, we feel very confident we have somebody we can reach to who will be very competitive at the major league level.”
Tweetblog: Is UD’s Thomas Leaving?
Saturday, two websites dedicated to Dayton Flyers basketball, had reports that UD’s back-up guard Stephen Thomas is leaving the program — transferring to another the school.
There was also speculation among local media Saturday at the Reds Futures game that Luke Fabrizius might be looking elsewhere. I don’t believe that.
Fabrizius, a 6-foot-9 freshman forward with a long-range shooting touch, is from Brian Gregory’s alma mater in Arlington Heights, Illinois and has always said he loves it here.
Thomas’ leaving seems more possible, but I’d hate to see it for a couple of reasons and especially from the personal side. He’s a good kid. A real gem. And I think he’d be an asset here the next two years. Court-wise he had some shining moments this season and forced himself back through the pain and into action during the A-10 and NCAA tournaments after he dislocated a rib in practice.
I’m not going to say he’s getting nudged out as the one website hinted. I speculated that last year with Thiago Cordeiro — who did depart — and Gregory and others in the program, let me know that’s not how he operates. After hearing everything I believe them. And Cordeiro didn’t take any shots at anyone at UD when he left either.
While he may be candid with his players about their playing time — and that’s the way he should be — Gregory looks out for his guys well being. I really believe that, too.
Meanwhile, the Thomas-to-transfer idea first appeared on The Blackburn Review and later had someone echo the thought on UDPride.com
The post from The Blackburn Review that’s entitled Stephen Thomas Will Hit the Bricks begins: “Just got word from an deeply embedded on-campus source that Stephen Thomas is indeed transferring out of the U of D at the end of the year….”
Thomas, a 6-foot-1 sophomore from Indianapolis, played in 29 games last season, averaged 8.8 minutes a contest, 2.0 points and 1.3 rebounds.
TweetCOLUMN: UD’s Obrovac in a fight for his life
It’s probably the most famous Flyers’ photo in University of Dayton basketball history.
It shows Dan Obrovac, UD’s sophomore center, incredulously getting the opening tip in the 1967 NCAA Championship game from UCLA’s 7-foot-2 Lew Alcindor, college basketball’s player of the year and one of the basketball’s greatest players of all time.
The importance of that game — even though UCLA would win, 79-64 — and especially that whole glorious season is monumental. As then athletics director Tom Frericks told UD coach Don Donoher after the Flyers had knocked off North Carolina in the NCAA semifinal: “We just built an arena, tonight.”
UD Arena was built without public funds two years later and since then the building has kept the school connected to the big time basketball scene.
If you walk into the northeast entrance of UD Arena now, you’ll find a 10 foot-by-10 foot photo on the concourse wall of Obrovac out-jumping Alcindor as Flyer teammates Donnie May and Gene Klaus look on.
And should you walk back out that door and go a few blocks north on Edwin C. Moses Drive to Albany Street, you’ll find Obrovac trying to pull off an even more meaningful rise-to-the-moment feat.
For over three months, he’s been mostly confined to a bed at the Arbors at Dayton nursing and rehab center on Albany. Last September he was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus, lymph nodes, stomach and brain and just as he began that battle, he was felled by a ravenous staph infection that got into his bloodstream and joints.
I visited Obrovac this week and we talked for a good while about both Flyers basketball and his battle with cancer. That’s the subject of my column in Friday’s newspaper. It’s also posted here on the website.
I wasn’t Obrovac’s only visitor this week. His former teammate Jim Wannemacher came to see him, as did Donoher, who over the past few months has brought him things like detailed stats not only of his games, but of many of his practices going all the way back to freshman year. That’s right, Donoher has stats on all his players — even from practice.
Donoher also brought a DVD featuring various game film. Incidently, the 1967 title game, Obrovac said, was broadcast live only to the Greater L.A. area and the Miami Valley. Everybody else got it via radio.
As the Final Four approaches this weekend, you see how some things are so much different than the 1960s.
And yet when it comes to Obrovac — a blue collar achiever on the court and a blueblood in the classroom — other things are still the same.
“The first time I visited him, I went with Donnie May,” Donoher said. “And Dan just said, ‘I’m rolling up my sleeves and going to war with this thing.”
And he has, so much so that by next hoops season, he hopes to be right back in UD Arena.
Not just on the wall, but back sitting in his regular seat in Section 110.
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