Fairborn commencement
Badin graduation
Division I regional track finals
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 > July
July 2009
Venom Flows Around Wright State
Well, it’s been just over 24 hours since Matt Liddy and Matt Zircher were let go from the Wright State athletics department due to what is being called “the bad economy” and already the venom is flowing.
Both guys were long-time fixtures at the school.
Liddy, an assistant WSU athletics director and member of the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame, swam for the Raiders in the early 1980s and then was Wright State’s super-successful swim coach, winning 16 either men or women’s conference titles and 11 league Coach of the Year awards in his 16 years running the program.
Zircher, an associate sports information director, worked 16 years at WSU. He is a good guy and was a hard worker.
Both were deemed expendable by athletics director Bob Grant, who is trying to pare $1 million from the Raiders’ annual $10 million athletics’ budget.
Because both Grant and Liddy vied for the AD job when Mike Cusack retired last year, there are all kinds of conspiracy theories being floated by people responding — anonymously, I might add — to stories posted on the Dayton Daily News sports web page.
People get real brave — and sometimes quite reckless and hurtful — when they can fire away in secrecy and this is a perfect example.
Not only are Grant, Liddy and Zircher being targeted, but everybody from current basketball coach Brad Brownell to former coaches Ralph Underhill and Jim Brown have been splattered in the internet discourse.
In a day’s time, I’ve read people calling Grant a “back-stabber” and a “master manipulator.” He’s been said to feel threatened by Liddy. Someone wondered why he hadn’t been fired because he couldn’t raise money in his previous job as a WSU fund-raiser. Somebody even compared him to Hitler.
Liddy has been called an “idiot…a pouter…and dead weight.” Someone said he tried stirring a coup and turning people against Grant. Someone else countered that Grant can do that all by himself.
Someone suggested Zircher’s job could have been done “by a trained monkey.”
In the process of this mud-slinging free-for-all, Brownell was accused of only wanting a boss who was “a lackey. ” Underhill was painted as a thief and Brown was called a bad coach.
I know all these guys. I like them all — naturally, some better than others — and I know all of them to be dedicated to WSU. And most of these charges are flat-out wrong or nastily skewered.
Yeah, I think there was some friction between Grant and Liddy — that’s not surprising considering the history — but I don’t think it was debilitating and I wish things would have played out differently. But I also think the bum economy is a big factor here. Not just at WSU, but at so many work places in the Miami Valley.
I know Grant’s in a tough spot cutting his budget, but that said — if Liddy’s and Zircher’s positions were decided to be expendable — I wish the university would have found some other position for them after they pretty much gave all their adult lives to WSU.
As for the drive-by mudslingers on the Internet, have the courage to use your own name if you are going to smear the name of someone else. Better yet, just skip some of the most hurtful stuff.
TweetA Shocking Cut for a Wright State Hall of Famer
Wright State associate athletics director Matt Liddy — the longest tenured person in the department, the most decorated coach in WSU history and a member of the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame — has lost his job at the school.
A surprise victim of the massive budget cuts the school is facing, the 49-year-old Liddy — a popular figure on campus and the ultra successful former swimming coach — was given the news Thursday morning, July 30, by athletic director Bob Grant.
“I’m shocked…I’m just numb,” Liddy said Thursday afternoon. “Basically I was told they are eliminating my position due to budgetary constraints.”
Associate sports information director Matt Zircher — who had been at the school 16 years and, like Liddy, is a good guy — also was laid off from the athletic department Thursday.
“This was an awful day,” Grant said. “Through all this, I didn’t want to cut into any programs or people…but today that changed. It’s all about the economy and has absolutely nothing to do with job performance.”
Wright State is in the process of trying to trim $1 million of its $10 million athletics budget. It plans to cut some athletic scholarships and team travel. It is eliminating the men’s track and field team and is reducing the publication of media guides.
Liddy has been at Wright State — except for a three-year hiatus to coach age-group swimming after his graduation from the school — for 30 years.
During Liddy’s 16-year coaching career — in which he was named the conference coach of the year 11 times — the Raiders won seven league championships on the men’s side and nine on the women’s side. He had a combined 228 dual meet wins, developed 170 individual conference champions and 65 conference relay championship teams.
While an assistant under WSU Hall of Fame coach Jeff Cavana, Liddy helped guide the Raiders to five Top Ten finishes in NCAA Division II in a three-year span.
In his four years as an assistant AD, he has overseen several sports, dealt with human resources and currently directs the operation of the school’s facilities and manages the athletic competitions.
He had cleaned out his office by noon Thursday.
“This school is all I’ve known for most of my life,” he said quietly. “I’m just numb.”
TweetCOLUMN: Mike Brown does Brando
CINCINNATI — Asked if he was going to try to pump up or preen before facing the cameras, Mike Brown shook his head and sounded as if he was mirroring Marlon Brando:
“I’m bald. I’m fat. I’m old. I’m probably a little addled. If that’s how it comes across, that’s how it comes across.”
Isn’t that Colonel Walter E. Kurtz, the rogue character Brando played in Apocalypse Now?
While the look may be the same, the Cincinnati Bengals owner wants nothing to do with that title.
The Apocalypse — one winning season in the past 18, the rash of arrests a couple of years back, last year’s injuries and losses and dissatisfaction — he hopes is in the past.
And Brown believes that’s what people will see when the Bengals are documented by NFL Films this preseason and turned into HBO’s “Hard Knocks ‘09: Training Camp with the Cincinnati Bengals.”
Over 1,000 hours of film will be shot for the five-week mini-series whose first installment will air Aug. 12 at 10 p.m.
The Bengals report to camp at Georgetown College Thursday, July 30, and the cameras and microphones will be recording everything they can on and off the field.
Four other NFL franchises — Baltimore, Jacksonville, Kansas City and Dallas twice — have gone through the process in years past and, as Brown noted before the Bengals preseason kick-off luncheon Tuesday at Paul Brown Stadium, “they did it easily and it worked out well and I don’t see why it should be a problem for us.”
He thinks the show will help promote the team and the city of Cincinnati and not — as has too often been the case — become Bungalized and turn into a boomerang that circles back and slams them all in the head.
More than being just a bonding agent between the team and its fans, Brown said the show will “give us a chance to set the record straight…so everyone can see what our people are really like.”
He used the oft-arrested, but newly-resurrected Chris Henry as an example:
“If you only knew him by hearsay, you would think he’s some kind of ogre. But it’s not true. He’s a good person. When you see him up close, you’ll find that you like him. He’ll be a soft-spoken, pleasant person and people who understand him to be differently will now know better.
“We have a lot of good guys. They’re interesting personalities, as well as players, and if that comes through in the program I think that helps the Cincinnati Bengals.”
He said people will see how hard his players and coaches work and they’ll get some insight into the contract negotiations that go on in the front office. And, though he is often reclusive, Brown said they will get a glimpse of him “if it’s required.”
But the real thing Brown wants to happen this preseason is for his team to begin it’s reversal of last year’s fortunes:
“We disappointed our public last year…and we disappointed ourselves. We want to get out on the field and prove we are a good team, a winning team, a kind of team that could be a playoff team.”
Channelling Brando again — this time with a bit of a twist to that famous line — he wants to be a contender.
TweetMike Brown on Michael Vick
CINCINNATI — For Mike Brown, when it comes to Michael Vick joining the Cincinnati Bengals, it’s not about the dogs now…it’s about queen bees.
“When you have a situation like ours, he’s a very difficult fit,” the Bengals owner said Tuesday afternoon. “Quarterbacks are like queen bees. You can only have one of them before they start stepping on each other and we have ours.
“Carson (Palmer) is the guy.”
After serving 20 months in prison for his involvement in a dogfighting operation that maimed and killed many animals, the former Atlanta Falcons quarterback was conditionally reinstated to the NFL Monday by league commissioner Roger Goodell.
Once the highest paid player in the NFL — and now broke — Vick had been suspended from the league since August of 2007. He’s on three months probation and will be officially mentored by former Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy.
Goodell said the 29-year-old Vick can be signed by any team and is allowed to practice immediately. Providing he meets stipulations. he could be reinstated by the sixth week of the regular season. He would be allowed to play in the final two preseason games.
At the Bengals annual preseason kick-off luncheon at Paul Brown Stadium, Tuesday, Brown was asked about Goodell’s handling of the situation.
“I think he did exactly the right thing. I’m sort of proud of how he went about it. He split the baby in a pretty impressive fashion.
“I would argue that Michael Vick made a bad error, but what a price he has paid. He’s paid millions of dollars — millions. He lost his reputation and he’s gone to prison. I don’t know what more you could do to a guy than what has been done to him already.
“I’m not one of those who wants to beat on him when he is down. I hope he can reestablish himself and come back. I don’t think he should be forever denied a chance to get back as a productive citizen. I wish him well.
“We haven’t made any calls on him — it just doesn’t fit for (Vick) here in a football sense — but I would think that some team will be out after him and I think he would be signed fairly quickly.
“I hope a team will pick him up and give him a chance to play. Give him a chance to redeem himself. And I think it would be nice if it ends up a good story.”
TweetThird Boxing Champ in Month Dies Violently
The third former world boxing champion — in less than a month — has died violently.
Saturday night, Vernon Forrest — a three-time champion, former Olympian, regular church-goer and a guy who dedicated much of his life to the betterment of people with mental challenges, especially children — was murdered during an attempted robbery in Atlanta.
Two weeks earlier, 37-year-old Arturo Gatti, a two-time world champion best known for his bruising trilogy with Irish Mickey Ward — was found murdered in a hotel in Ipojuca, Pernambuco, Brazil.
His widow — who could not explain how she spent more than ten hours in the hotel room without realizing Gatti was dead — has been jailed after the strap of her purse was found stained with blood.
On July 1, 57-year-old Alexis Arguello — a three time champion and the current mayor of Managua, Nicaragua — allegedly committed suicide at his home.
Arguello was my long-time friend.
I barely knew Gatti, but I was familiar with Forrest. I first saw him fight at the the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. I covered his second welterweight title fight with Sugar Shane Mosley in Indianapolis in July of 2002 and my wife and I were there six months later for his first professional loss, a third-round KO by beer-drinking, cigar-smoking WBA welterweight champ Ricardo Mayorga in Temecula, California.
As an amateur, Forrest had a 225-16 record. He was 41-3 as a pro. In May, he had been forced to give up his junior middleweight title when an injury kept him from making his mandatory title defense.
In the days before his fight in Indianapolis — and immediately after it — I spent some time around Forrest and liked many of the things for which he stood.
Back then, Forrest not only ran, but helped finance a group home for mentally challenged people in Atlanta. He called it Destiny’s Child. For that Mosley bout, he had charted a bus for nine folks — ages 17 to 68 — who lived in the home so they and some staffers could come to Indianapolis and take part in his big night. He said he had done it as much for himself as for them. He said he drew inspiration from the way they tackled their struggles.
“He was a caring humanitarian who always stood up for what he believed to be the fairness of life — it was truly his calling,” said Kelly Swanson, his longtime publicist. “When he wasn’t boxing, it was his full-time job….He loved the (challenged) children When they would see him, they would just light up, and some of them couldn’t even talk. Vernon was very much involved. He’d have some of the kids over to his house on Sundays. They were part of his family.”
According to reports out of Atlanta Saturday night, the 38-year-old Forrest — with his 11-year-old godson in the car with him — pulled his Jaguar into a gas station in the Mechanicsville section of Southwest Atlanta about 11 p.m.
As the boy went in to use the restroom, Forrest began putting air in the tires when two men are said to have approached. Initial reports were that they attempted a car jacking, but Forrest’s manager, Charles Watson told reporters that one of them came up to the boxer asking for money. When Forrest pulled out his wallet, one guy pulled a gun, grabbed the wallet and started running.
Forrest gave chase. The guy and his accomplice had semi-automatic weapons. There are reports Forrest also had a gun.
“The guy turned the corner and Vernon didn’t see him,” Watson said. “He turned around to go back to the car. That’s when the they started firing at Vernon.’
According to Atlanta TV reporter Ashley Hayes, Forrest was shot eight times.
When I heard about him taking after the alleged thugs, it reminded me of another street incident I witnessed when I walked with him back to his room at the Marriott Hotel after he defeated Mosley in Indianapolis. It was past midnight and he wanted to visit briefly with family and friends and then go to bed. He had an early-morning flight because he wanted to make Sunday services at his Atlanta church.
As we walked along, he came upon another scene involving drawn weapons.
Here’s how I wrote it up:
They had their guns drawn and stuck in the rolled-down windows of a white SUV.
“What did you put behind the seat?” a tense cop yelled at one of the four guys in the SUV.
“Don’t move!” screamed another cop on the other side of the vehicle. “I said, do not move!”
It was just past midnight Saturday when welterweight champ Vernon Forrest came walking up on this volatile scene at the corner of Georgia St. and Capitol Ave. in downtown Indianapolis. With a few friends, he was quietly making his way through the tens of thousands of people who clogged the city’s sidewalks and streets for the Indiana Black Expo Summer Celebration.
As one of the cops shined a flashlight on one of the SUV’s backseat passengers, another armed policeman again yelled a warning: “Don’t f—-ing move!”
Passing just a few feet from the stand-off, Forrest said in a voice loud enough only for his companions to hear: “Anybody got a video cam?”
With that, he kept walking. He wanted no part of this nasty confrontation.
I wish it had been the same Saturday night.
TweetCOLUMN: Dubai Gets A Miami Valley Pearl
He played baseball for Centerville High and Sinclair Community College, but his fantasy of one day going to pro ball soon fizzled.
“That’s all I wanted to do, but I soon realized I just wasn’t good enough,” Doug Watson said with a shrug. “And then I wasn’t sure what I’d do next.”
He went on to college in Chicago — got a degree in finance — but then ended up back here in Dayton, selling lawn chemicals and “hating it.”
“Back then, nothing seemed to stick for him,” his long time friend Kevin Lavoie said with a knowing smile.
And when Watson showed up at the Arlington Park barn of veteran horseman Clint Goodrich in 1986 — only to be told there were no jobs available — he offered to work for nothing, a proposition that drew a double take… and quick acceptance.
Three months of him mucking stalls, washing buckets and cleaning up the barns for free, his family and friends were figuring this was just another false start.
But people find their calling on their own timetable and sometimes in the most unexpected of places.
And in a twist of that old axiom, Doug Watson has proved — in his case — life is not a marathon, it’s a sprint. More specifically, a horse race.
Talk about something sticking — for the past 16 years Watson has lived in Dubai, where he is now the head trainer at Red Stables, one of the leading thoroughbred and Arabian horse operations in the Middle East.
At present he and the some 75 people who work under his direction in a sort of we-are-the-world alliance — the riders are from Australia, South Africa and England, an assistant is from Ireland, foremen are from Belize, India and England, grooms from Pakistan and India — have nearly 130 horses in their stable.
Many are owned by Sheikh Hamdan Rashid Al Maktoum, part of the ruling family of Dubai, the Finance Minister of the Persian Gulf emirate and a man deeply involved in horse racing.
In the six years he’s headed Red Stable, Watson has been named Dubai’s top trainer three times and finished as runner up the other three. In the process he’s become part of the fabric of a place that embraces sports of all kinds — be it the PGA’s Dubai Desert Classic, the Dubai Tennis Championships or the $6 million-to-the-winner Dubai World Cup, the richest horse race on the planet — in a big and quite spectacular way.
“I’m just so proud of him,” said Lavoie. “How many people can say this? He gets up early every morning, loves what he does and has had great success. And he’s done it far from home.”
Speaking of home, Watson was back in the Miami Valley for a couple of whirlwind days last week. He stayed with Kevin’s brother Dennis, made sure he had at least one pie at Flying Pizza and ate at Elsa’s. He missed out on night at the Fraze with Merle Haggard, who cancelled due to illness, but he did sit down for a couple of hours at a Kettering restaurant and share some stories
“Every time he visits,” Lavoie smiled, “I just love to catch up on his exploits.”
xxxxxxxxx
NEEDING AN ATLAS AND A PASSPORT
Back when he was searching for a path to follow, Watson called George Smith, the dad of his friend Kep, and a well-established Miami Valley horseman.
He had gone to the races with the Smiths and said he had seen George’s “passion for the game.” He wanted to follow suit and Smith encouraged him to do so.
But after three months of gratis grunt work and then a $100-a-week job as a groom, Watson was “struggling.”
He ended up living on the track at Gulfstream Park in South Florida and finally returned to River Downs and Turfway Park.
“That’s when (trainer) Susan Anderson came back from Dubai and asked me if I wanted to work over there,” he said with a smile. “I told her, ‘Sure, I’ll try it for a year.’”
Then he went to an atlas and tried to find Dubai on the map. And since he’d only been out of the United States once — to Canada as a kid — he needed a passport, too.
“About 27 hours after I left Chicago I got to Dubai,” he recalled. “Back then you took a stairs off the plane and walked to a bus that got you to the terminal. It was 1 a.m., but I felt this instant heat. I thought it was the heat off the plane’s engine. But it was the outside temperature. The winters are fantastic — 80 to 85 during the day, no humidity — but this was summer in the desert and it was hot.”
For three years, he was a foreman for trainer Satish Seemar, then joined fellow American trainer Kiaran McLaughlin, who ran Red Stables and also trained part of the year in the U.S.
Watson worked as an assistant for seven years and eventually began running the operation in the off months when McLaughlin went back to America to race.
When McLaughlin moved to the U.S. for good, Watson replaced him at Red Stables and began to build his own reputation.
xxxxxxxxx
A PEARL FROM THE MIAMI VALLEY
Several times when he’s come back home. — whether it’s to see his dad in suburban Chicago or friends back here — Watson said he’s been asked: “You sure you’re okay over there? Is it safe?”
He shook his head and smiled: “It’s the safest place in the world. It’s a tourist destination for a lot of Europeans and it’s actually pretty amazing what’s going on there.”
Although it is a Muslim country and there are some strict rules of behavior — “the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue comes with shorts or dresses or something drawn on by the censors,” Lavoie offered — Watson said “you can go the the latest in malls, hotels and restaurants and you wouldn’t notice any difference from here.”
Well, actually you would.
One of the seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates, Dubai — with a population of 2.7 million — markets itself with real estate and tourism, while an emirate like Abu Dhabi banks on its oil.
And so Dubai has Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest skyscraper which rises a half-mile into the sky. It has the world’s biggest mall and the largest man-made harbor and the world’s most expensive hotel, the Burj Al Arab. where a room’s over-the-top opulence can cost from $1,000 to $28,000 a night.
There’s a man-made archipelago of 300 islands — called The World — just off the coast where people like Vijay Singh, Rod Stewart, David Beckham and Formula One champ Michael Schumacher are getting their own private fiefdoms.
And, there are the sporting spectacles like the Dubai Cup, which is accompanied by six other races that day where the international field of horses run for another $15 million.
In Dubai itself, there is no gambling though patrons can play a pick-six card. It doesn’t cost anything and the payout is from sponsors or the coffers of the royal family.
Horses aren’t allowed to race on drugs like lasix there and the tracks — turf or mixes of sand and oil — have been far safer than their American counterparts.
While he’s won several big races in the annual Carnival that leads up to the Dubai Cup, he has not won the big race — yet.
But these days, no one doubts Doug Watson, especially not in Dubai where his future seems promising and he has a link — with another twist — to the past.
A century ago, Dubai was known as one of the world’s foremost exporters of pearls. World War I and the Great Depression changed that, but now some of the treasure seems to have returned.
This time though, rather than exporting pearls, Dubai seems to have imported one right from here.
TweetCOLUMN: Castillo vs. The Prosecutor
t was a classic duel between a pitcher and a guy at the plate.
Tracey Ballard Tangeman, the assistant Montgomery County prosecutor, was on the mound Thursday, July 23, going through her repertoire — fastballs and enticing change-ups — trying to get Julio Castillo to say that the ill-fated throw he made exactly one year ago today was delivered in anger and had a specific target.
In turn, the former Peoria Chiefs pitcher — now on the witness stand and facing two felony counts for his actions during a brawl with the Dayton Dragons at Fifth Third Field — mostly fouled off her offerings.
Through a translator, Castillo claimed he was fearful when Dragons players began rushing the field. He claimed he was throwing a warning shot at an empty dugout spot to get them to retreat. No Dragons players were brought forward to rebut that.
He did admit he threw the ball “very hard” and it sailed off target, hitting a spectator, 45-year-old Chris McCarthy, who was taken to Miami Valley Hospital with a concussion and then sent home that night with a severe headache.
But Castillo didn’t strike out during his crucial testimony Thursday and because of it I don’t think the state of Ohio proved — beyond a reasonable doubt — the 22-year-old from the Dominican Republic is guilty of using the baseball as a deadly weapon.
With the three-day, non-jury trial completed , Common Pleas Judge Connie S. Price said she’ll render a verdict by written decision at a later date.
I’m no lawyer, but it seems to me — and others in the law profession I talked to — that Castillo was over-charged in this case. The possibility of eight years in prison on just one felony conviction — plus a fine, likely deportation and the end of his baseball career — seems overboard.
In an instant, Castillo made a horrible mistake, an innocent man was hurt and that deserves to be penalized. But he’s already paid a price. The Chicago Cubs, the Chiefs’ parent club, have not allowed him to play for a year and he’s personally paid part of the settlement McCarthy got from the Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds.
Whether there is more penalty, that’s up to Price. But I think he deserves a second chance.
Here are a couple of other things I’m left with:
— The two managers that night — the Dragons’ since-departed Donnie Scott and Peoria’s interim boss Carmelo Martinez — deserve some blame. They set the tone in the series allowing — maybe even instructing — six hit batsmen in just 10 innings. Then they ignited the brawl with their own physical confrontation.
— I think the Cubs need to be doing a better job with a young guy like Castillo, who, five years in their employ, still can neither read nor write in Spanish or English. Big league teams often get young talent cheaply out of the Caribbean. These kids quit school to chase a dream, but I think there’s a responsibility to equip them for life.
TweetCOLUMN: Ryne Sandberg makes his pitch at Castillo trial
>Throwing was not at top speed, says coach
This was not the first time he put on a show in Dayton.
“My daughter got married here four or five years ago,” Ryne Sandberg said. “Her husband’s from this area and we hosted her wedding at the Dayton Art Institute. It was a really nice affair.”
This one was not.
The Chicago Cubs Hall of Famer was in a Montgomery County Common Pleas courtroom Wednesday, July 22, to testify on behalf of Julio Castillo.
One of his former players, Castillo’s been indicted on two counts of felonious assault for throwing a baseball that hit a fan in the head during a brawl between the Dayton Dragons and Peoria Chiefs at Fifth Third Field on July 24, 2008.
Sandberg was the manager of the Chiefs, but was not in Dayton the night of the melee. He had gone to Cooperstown, N.Y. for Hall of Fame activities.
Now the manager of AA Tennessee Smokies — like the Chiefs, a Cubs farm team — Sandberg came to Dayton to talk about Castillo’s “good” character.
During his appearance — in a demonstration more theater than compelling testimony — he was brought from the witness stand onto the courtroom floor by defense attorney Dennis Lieberman to show the differences between a pitcher throwing from the mound and the way an infielder might throw a ball.
With Judge Connie Price — who’ll render the verdict — watching from the bench, there was one surreal moment.
“Were you an infielder?” Lieberman asked.
“Yes, I played infield,” Sandberg, one of the greatest second basemen ever to play he game, said without clarification.
And with that he uncorked a couple of imaginary throws for Lieberman. After showing how an infielder might throw to first base — and stopping to make sure his pressed pink dress shirt was still tucked into his cream-colored slacks — the tanned and still very fit Sandberg, who’s now near 50, went through a wind-up and throw as though he were on the mound.
The Cubs feel Castillo has been over-charged in this case — if convicted he could get up to eight years in prison — and Michael Lufrano, their general counsel and a vice president in the organization, addressed that:
“Julio knows he made a mistake and would have willingly pled guilty to a misdemeanor, but he’s not a felon. I don’t know why the prosector’s office is spending the resources of the Montgomery County taxpayers and pressing this. I’ve heard rumors it’s because the AP and ESPN and the national media will pick up on it and get them publicity and, if that’s the case, it’s unfortunate.”
The prosecution bristles at that and says Castillo’s throw — which sent Chris McCarthy to the hospital with a concussion and a headache when he went home that night — could have been deadly. And it says Castillo made the throw in anger.
In a private interview after his testimony, Sandberg questioned that and offered some other opinions about Castillo:
“He was always a very respectful young man and I never had any problem with him. I don’t condone any kind of retaliatory behavior — that’s not how I played and not how I teach the game — and I don’t think that was what he doing here.
“He made a mistake — you don’t throw a baseball — but I think he was throwing the ball at the dugout, trying to send a warning to the Dragons players to stay back. I don’t think he tried to hit someone and it is unfortunate that it did.
“I’ve seen a lot of baseball brawls over the years involving all kinds of incidents. Guys swinging bats, throwing baseballs, spiking people, punching them. Baseball has always dealt with these things, first with the umpires and then with suspensions and fines.
“It seems to me Julio was singled out here. I think he has paid a price already, both in sitting out a year and not being under contract any more. He has paid (some of McCarthy’s settlement with the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati Reds, the Dragons parent club) out of his own pocket. And he doesn’t make much. Now his career — his whole life — is on the line.”
Wednesday, the prosecution countered with its own Cubbie connection, Eduardo Priego, a former Montgomery County jail prisoner.
Born in Mexico and fluent in both Spanish and English, he grew up in Chicago and said he’s a life-long Cubs fan. He said he talked to Castillo in jail and the pitcher told him he threw the baseball at Dragons players because he was angry. He also claimed Castillo said he was a a big “partier” and had a “girl in every port,” points disputed by two of Castillo’s former Peoria teammates, both who testified Wednesday as well.
Under cross examination, Priego admitted he told no one of that conversation until several months later when he was in the Butler County jail facing deportation for moral turpitude.
Priego claims the prosecution did nothing to help him with his deportation problems. Last month — after 10 months locked up in Butler County on immigration problems — he was released from prison. He now lives in Marion and has a job at a local motel.
He said he still has the autograph he got from Castillo in jail and in the hallway after he left the courtroom, he said: “I’ll feel bad if what I said ends up really hurting him.”
That will depend on whose pitch — Sandberg’s, Priego’s or neither — impressed the judge Wednesday.
TweetCOLUMN: The curious case of Julio Castillo
Nothing was quite as dramatic as when she opened up the brown paper bag.
Not the video of the brawl, the five still photos of Julio Castillo making his ill-fated throw, the various shots of Chis McCarthy’s face. None of the props in this case had a similar impact.
When assistant Montgomery County prosecutor Tracey Ballard Tangeman reached into that bag and pulled out a Rawlings baseball — “a hard dense object,” as she called it — she made her point, by tapping it on the witness box near the microphone so the sound echoed through the third floor courtroom, Tuesday July 21.
Handing it to McCarthy, a 45-year-old mechanical engineer from Middletown, she asked him if it was the ball that had hit him. He pulled out his glasses, put them on and holding the ball up in front of him finally nodded yes.
Sitting some 25 feet away in a dark blue suit, white shirt and tie, Castillo quietly watched, as a woman sat next to him and interpreted the proceedings into Spanish.
You wondered what was going through each of the men’s minds. And knowing some of the surprising things that have happened behind the scenes, you wondered how this was going to play out.
The last time these two men were looking in each other’s direction and one held that same baseball was July 24, 2008 when the Dayton Dragons played the Peoria Chiefs at Fifth Third Field.
The Rawlings was in Castillo’s hand then — he was Peoria’s starting pitcher that night — as both team’s managers got into a heated argument on the field that became a shoving match. With players rushing onto the field from their benches, Castillo threw the ball at the Dragons dugout.
It sailed high and hit McCarthy — who was sitting with his family two rows behind the dugout — on the left side of his forehead.
He was taken to Miami Valley Hospital treated for a concussion — the seam marks of the ball imprinted on his head — and released. After nine days of headaches, he returned to his job.
Now Castillo, the 22-year-old Chicago Cubs minor leaguer from the Dominican Republic, is on trial before Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Connie S. Price, indicted on two counts of felonious assault. If convicted in the non-jury proceedings, he could face 16 years in prison, a $15,000 fine and eventually be deported.
In the year since that Rawlings ball went from Castillo’s hand to McCarthy’s, a lot has happened.
— Both managers and 15 players from the two teams were briefly suspended by the Midwest League.
— Although still in the Cubs farm system — a non-active player with Class A Boise — Castillo has not pitched since last July.
— Two days after the brawl, the Dragons Angel Cabrera, part of the melee, was released by the parent club Cincinnati Reds.
— After the season Dragons manager Donnie Scott was out of the organization, too, though how much the brawl was a factor isn’t clear.
— The incident is now a national story. And there is debate over both Castillo’s intent and whether, as prosectors say, a baseball is a deadly weapon.
— Then there’s the previously unreported revelation that McCarthy already has received a cash settlement from both the Cubs and Reds. That’s what Michael Lufrano, the senior vice president of community affairs and Cubs general counsel told the Dayton Daily News’ Marc Katez on Tuesday. He said that McCarthy had originally asked for $250,000, but had been paid less by each franchise.
Although Castillo’s lawyers tried to get the charges reduced to misdemeanors, the prosecutor’s office pressed on with the felonies.
Certainly this should not have happened to McCarthy and his family. No fans should have to worry about getting hit by a ball thrown during a fracas.
Castillo made a bad decision and he has paid a price already — both in a years inactivity and a fine, which he is said to have paid himself. Is it enough? Does he deserve to go to prison or is that, as many think, way overboard?
Defense attorney Dennis Lieberman told how Castillo grew up with nothing and is not able to read or write Spanish or English: “Baseball was his way out of poverty.”
Now that Rawlings baseball could send his life into a downward spiral like he never imagined.
That’s what Judge Price eventually will decide.
TweetErin Andrews and the Peeper
A voyeur has secretly shot a video through a hotel room peephole of ESPN reporter Erin Andrews when she was undressed and that has some sports bloggers and radio talk show yakkers yukking it up and dismissing it as a “boys will be boys” type of thing with a beautiful woman who is marketed, in part, using her good looks.
And so the always-quick-to-pat-itself-on-the-back-for-its -family-values Fox News Channel and the sensationalist New York Post, both of which ran photos taken from the video. Each place bars placed strategically to protect itself legally, but still show as much of Andrews as possible.
But the dismissers and the purveyors here are wrong. This was a crime.
And with the help of ESPN, Andrews and her attorneys are working with authorities to catch whoever put the video of her naked body on the web. Under legal threat, the video has been deleted now.
But the damage that already has been done. Andrews privacy has been invaded
This was a sexual assault.
TweetCOLUMN: Keeping harness racing from becoming a snoring pig
You could call them The Four Horsemen, though not really of The Apocalypse, and certainly not of Notre Dame. One did wear a Block O Ohio State cap though.
There was Jim MacFayden, the one-time golf hustler turned school teacher and small-time standardbred owner. And there was Richard “Tim” Sampson, a 53-year-old college student and race track junkie.
There was Paul Ciambro, who revived the harness racing efforts of his dad, a well-known Dayton auto dealer who was shot and paralyzed 34 years ago. And there was Tom Gray, the former tool salesman and tavern owner, who only lets Ohio State trained vets work on his horses.
Gathered outside stall 62 on the mostly-deserted, partly-dilapidated shedrow of the Montgomery County Fairgrounds, they gave life to the place with colorful tales of the past and hopeful dreams of what might lie ahead.
The present, though, was the problem and it was perfectly captured on the front of Ciambro’s faded white racing cap, which proclaimed: “If you’re not making dust…You’re eating it.”
And these days Ohio harness racing is caught in the dusty back draft of several other states, especially neighboring Indiana, Pennsylvania and New York, all which have racinos — race tracks that include casinos which funnel a percentage of the gambling take back into the sport.
Because of that, those states offer more racing opportunities, bigger purses and have lured away many of Ohio’s best standardbred owners, trainers, drivers and horses.
That’s part of what the four horseman — and a fifth, Ron Taubert, who was working in nearby Barn 17 — talked about the other morning. Here are some snippets:
MacFayden: “Here’s a harbinger of things to come. Last year Indiana had 3,000-and-some foals born. In Ohio, there were 605.”
Gray: “Just a few years ago, we were the largest standardbred breeding state in the country. Even a couple of years ago we had 95 studs. Now we’ve got 19.”
Sampson: “Scioto Downs used to race every night but Sunday. Now they race three times a week and by the end of the season, it’s usually just two. Lebanon used to run five nights, now it’s two.”
Ciambro: “Same with the county fairs. They’d have four days of racing — afternoons and evenings. Now they’re down to two.
“We’re so far behind the times now. Over in Indiana they’re living the good life while we’re racing for half the money and starving to death. If things don’t change here soon, we’re all done.”
And that’s why these local horsemen cling to the possibly of better times ahead now that the state legislature — with the prompting of Gov. Ted Strickland — has approved a budget that allows video lottery terminals at Ohio’s seven tracks.
But it’s a polarizing issue and for it to happen the county commission and city council or township trustees at each track site must agree to allow gambling in its jurisdiction.
Warren County officials have said they won’t allow slot machines at Lebanon Raceway and that has the owners of the financially-strapped track looking at possible other locations — including Montgomery County — to build a new facility.
“We’re not asking for a bail-out,” Gray said. “We’re just asking for an equal playing field with Indiana and Pennsylvania. Then we’ll train our horses and make our own money.”
In the meantime, what’s happening?
“It’s kind of like those Russian crop forecasts,” MacFayden, the 73-year-old Farmersville horseman said with a smile. “Worse than last year, but better than next year.”
xxx
OPPORTUNITIES DWINDLE, EXPENSES RISE
MacFayden played two years of college basketball at Ouachita Baptist in Arkansas. “I wasn’t very good at going to chapel and stuff and I got a few warnings,” he shrugged “So I transferred to the University of Florida. and played the last two years on the golf team.
“And when I came to Dayton, it was a pretty lucrative hobby to have. Then I won the City Amateur in 1961 and that pretty much ended all my bets.”
He became a math and science teacher and for the past 39 years has dabbled in racing. He has just one horse now and it’s among only 25 or so still stabled at the Fairgrounds.
“I remember coming in here from Toledo one year and I needed two stalls and couldn’t find any,” Ciambro said. “More than 200 of them were full. Now they’re almost all open.”
The 11 people who still stable at the fairgrounds may be small-time horsemen, but they know the sport’s problems as well as anyone.
Gray’s five horses are all claimers, a few of which have had some notable success.
“To pay the bills, each of these horses has to win once a month,” he said. “But the way racing is now — the way it’s scaled back in Ohio — that’s about impossible. It can be three weeks or so until you even get your horse in a race.”
But while opportunities dwindle, expenses go up.
“Just the stall, rent, feed, hay and sawdust to bed down on is $150, maybe $200 a month for each horse,” said Ciambro. “That’s not counting vet bills and $80 for (once-a-month) shoes .”
Gray has three guys working part-time for him and said its costs him, “with training and everything about $800 a month per horse.” Then there’s his travel to Scioto Downs, Lebanon and Hoosier Park north of Indianapolis: “My gas bill last month was $525.”
Meanwhile, he said purses are as low as $1,200 to $1,300 at Raceway Park in Toledo and just $400 more at Lebanon.
So why stick with it?
Taubert, a second-generation horseman from Miami Township who’s involved in other race-related businesses — including running a web site, LaHorse.com, that lists ads of people selling horses and offering training services — explained:
“I get a rush from this like nothing else. We bought these horses as weanlings and they’ve developed into beautiful animals. I love training them, driving them and there’s always that dream you might make more in one night than you could all week in your job.”
xxxxxxxxx
SAVING RACING JOBS
“I didn’t vote for Strickland the first time, but I will the next,” MacFayden said. “It took a lot of intestinal fortitude to make a stand like he has.”
Gray agreed: “There’s 12,000 to 16,000 jobs in racing in Ohio and what he’s doing could save them. And that’s not counting the related jobs like tack shops, the vets, farmers we buy the hay and straw from, the feed mills and equipment people.”
He brought up the casino jobs that would be added and the percentage of gaming profits that would go to various entities including racing.
The big question is what percentage racing would get. While many states give 11 to 15 percent and some just over 7, Taubert said he’s heard Ohio might give just 4 percent — not the windfall most are hoping for.
Still the guys at the Fairgrounds the other day embraced optimism.
“Yonkers (in New York) was ready to go under but because of slots it’s a premier race track again,” Ciambro said. “Same with Buffalo Raceway, Monticello, Saratoga. They’re all flourishing.”
Gray nodded: “There’s talk if the Lebanon owners build a new facility it might have a 7/8th mile track. That’ll draw a better quality of horses to watch and could give the place an opportunity to pick up a big pacing or trotting race.
“And if our Fairgrounds makes the necessary repairs, the place could fill up again from more people bringing in their horses and needing places to train.”
As the guys talked, their dreams soon were interrupted by reality when somebody mentioned the upcoming Dayton horse show at the fairgrounds. To accommodate the show steeds, the standardbred guys must vacate their barns and move to out-of-the-way stalls at the end of shedrow.
And then comes the Montgomery County Fair, where, MacFayden noted, his grandson from Brookville, will be showing a pig that he supposedly hypnotizes.
“It’s the darnedest thing to see,” MacFayden grinned. “He hypnotizes that thing and it falls right out. Pretty soon it’s just snoring away.”
And that passed-out porker — even more than Ciambro’s cap — seems to symbolize Ohio harness racing these days.
TweetHorsemen say slots will save Ohio’s racing
Paul Ciambro remembers his trip several years ago from Toledo to the Montgomery County Fairgrounds. with two race horses in tow:
“I needed two stalls and couldn’t find any. More than 200 stalls here and they all were full.”
The 66-year-old Ciambro was sitting along the mostly deserted shedrow on the backside of the fairgrounds the other day, his three standardbreds stabled behind him.
There’s no problem finding a stall now. Just a handful of small time horseman keep just over two dozen horses there.
The place serves as a microcosm of Ohio harness racing: Tracks are in financial trouble, racing dates have been reduced, purses are small and many of the best owners. trainers, drivers and horses have moved to states were the racing is more lucrative.
“We’ve got about five top drivers who started their careers at Lebanon now racing in Pennsylvania,” said Tom Gray, another horseman. “Over in Indiana they’re racing for more than twice the money we are….It’s because they’re all racinos.”
Those are race tracks with casinos which funnel back a percentage of their take into the sport.
Just recently the Ohio legislature approved a budget that allows video lottery terminals at Ohio’s seven race tracks.
While it’s a polarizing issue — Warren County officials won’t allow slot machines at Lebanon Raceway, prompting the owners of the cash-strapped track to look at building a new track possibly in Montgomery County — the fairgrounds horseman have some definite ideas.
They shared them — along with a symbolic story of a hypnotized pig — the other day and that’s the subject of my column in today’s newspaper, a story that’s also found on this sports web page.
TweetCOLUMN: Dayton’s Olympic Family
Over the past two months, Maurice Wignall has competed in the Netherlands, Qatar, Brazil, Spain, Poland, Germany and Jamaica.
Next week, the two-time Olympic hurdler, will leave for meets in Monaco, then Sweden and finally end up in Germany, where he’ll train for a week in Nuremberg with his Jamaican teammates, and then head to Berlin for the world track and field championships.
His wife, Janelle, herself a well-travelled, two-time Olympic swimmer and now an assistant swim coach at Wright State, leaves next week for Rome, where she will coach the Jamaican swimmers at the world championships.
So with their passports covered with more ink than a tattooed biker gang, where’s their favorite stop?
“Right here,” Maurice said as he and Janelle sat on their patio by the backyard swimming pool at their Washington Township home.
“When I’m travelling my sleep cycle gets all messed up,” Maurice said. “I bet I didn’t have one good night’s sleep from May until early this month….when I got back home.”
The Wignalls grew up in Kingston, Jamaica. Both were All Americans — Janelle at the University of Florida, Maurice at George Mason. Before moving here in 2007, they lived in Washington D.C.
“We’re more comfortable here than any of the other places we’ve been,” said Maurice.
Janelle nodded: “People here have been like a breath of fresh air.”
Maurice laughed: “One strange thing. We apparently speak with an accent. I say…apparently. But it’s not that difficult for Ohioans to understand us. Whereas in Florida or New York, we have to repeat ourselves…Maybe it’s the people here take time to listen.”
The best thing about being here, he said, is being with their two-year-son Max, who was out there in the backyard the other day, wearing swimming trunks and inflatable floaties around his arms, while practicing his dad’s burst from the starting blocks.
“He likes to pretend to be his dad,” Janelle smiled. “He’ll get down in a little squat and wait to hear ‘on your mark, ready, set, go.’ Then he’ll just run and run.”
Maurice is doing the same and, this year he’s doing it better than than last season when he made it to the finals of the 110 meter hurdles at the Beijing Olympics. He recently won the hurdles event at the Jamaica trials and he just had two strong meets in Spain.
“I never thought this long into the game — at age 33 — I’d still be a contender, but I am,” he said. “I really feel good about this year.”
Yet whenever he can, he slips home from the international circuit. And so one Sunday in May, he landed at Dayton’s airport two hours before his son’s backyard birthday party.
After Beijing — even though he’d turn right around for a meet in Shanghai — he came back to Dayton. That also meant skipping a week-long party back in Jamaica as the nation honored its Olympians.
“Here, there wasn’t a lot of fuss,” he smiled. “About the only mention was one day when I was out mowing our lawn. One of the neighbors stopped and said, ‘I watched you on TV. You did well.” And I said ‘thank you.’”
And that was good enough.
He was home.
TweetIs Ohio State recruit trying to get Staten to “de-commit” to UD?
Word is that Ohio State continues — covertly and overtly — to recruit Juwan Staten, who has verbally committed to the University of Dayton for the 2010 - 2011 season.
Other schools are still trying to lure Staten away from the Flyers as well, but none more so than OSU, which according to ESPNU already has the top recruiting class in the nation for 2010.
One of those future Bucks, 6-foot-9, 262-pound Columbus Northland senior Jared Sullinger — Ohio’s Mr. Basketball last season and ESPNU’s No. 4 college prospect in the nation — plays with Staten this summer on their Ohio All Red team, one of the best AAU teams in the nation.
All-Ohio Red just won the Nike Peach Jam U-17 championship in Augusta , Ga. by defeating the Philadelphia/South Jersey based Team Final, 62-53. Sullinger had 19 points and 21 rebounds. Staten had 13 points.
Sullinger is regularly in Staten’s ear trying to get him to “de-commit to UD and come to Ohio State” said one person close to the situation. He’s really trying to get him to back out of his Dayton agreement and become a Buckeye.
Of course that often goes on among basketball guys and Staten does it himself.
Uncommitted Jefferson High senior Adreian Payne — No. 26 on the ESPNU national list and still uncommitted — said Staten has often tried coaxing him not only to come to UD, but to transfer out of Jefferson High this upcoming season and join him at Oak Hill Academy.
Staten left Thurgood Marshall High this spring to play his final prep season at the national basketball power in Virginia.
Staten admitted last spring that regardless of his UD commitment, schools like West Virginia, Cincinnati and especially Ohio State were still vigorously recruiting him.
As Payne — who’s also on All-Ohio Red — explained it last month, Ohio State has all kinds of ways of getting word to you through second-hand sources and they do so quite well.
Along with Sullinger, the Bucks 2010 class has another top 10 prospect in small forward DeShaun Thomas — out of Bishop Luers in Fort Wayne — and there’s also Top 50 player Jordan Sibert, a 6-4 shooting guard from Cincinnati Princeton (another Ohio All Red player) and 6-5 guard Lenzelle Smith of Zion-Benton Township in Illinois.
As for Staten, he is ranked as the 41st-best player overall in the nation at Rivals.com and he’s 43rd on the ESPNU list.
While he and his family say he is still firmly committed to UD — and I think he’ll stand up to his word and become a Dayton Flyer — the whispers to “de-commit” will continue…covertly and overtly.
TweetOh Tweet !! — Chad Johnson Says He’ll Defy NFL
The “new, totally focused” Chad Johnson — Ochocinco, if you must — says he’s going to Tweet during Bengals games no matter what the NFL says.
At least that’s according to a video (seen below) by SportsFanLive. Of course, this just may be Chad again tossing out a little tongue-in-cheek, “ain’t I bad” braggadocio on a slow sports day, too.
Although the Cincinnati Bengals receiver previously had said he wants to post his musings on Twitter during games, that idea was recently nixed by the NFL in no uncertain terms.
He now says he plans to do it anyway…According to the hard-to-hear SportsFanLive video, he says this or something real close to it:
“There’s a lot of things they (NFL) don’t want me to do. I do it anyway. They know that. I don’t know why they even fussing about it. … When I say I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it, regardless of what they say.”
Twitter proponents will tell you you get unfiltered thoughts and insights from players and coaches and in many cases that is true.
That’s not often the case with Chad’s feed, where he gives you a triple helping of “child, please!” and “damn!’ and, when he really wants to make a point: “damn, daaaamn!!”
Then there was comparing the loss of Michael Jackson and Farah Fawcett to 9/11. When an uproar followed, he apologized.
With that in mind, I think he could use those three twitter-free hours on Sundays in the fall to concentrate on being Carson’s Palmer’s prime target again and also using those extra minutes to think about everything he’s going to tweet as soon as the final gun sounds.
He’ll have so much more to say if he starts catching the ball again.
Why be all atwitter…for nothing.
Tweet
Pressure on Obama tonight — baseball and presidents
Tonight when President Barack Obama throws out the ceremonial first pitch to St. Louis’ Albert Pujols at the All-Star game in Busch Stadium, he better hope he mirrors Bill Clinton more than Cincinnati mayor Mark Mallory or nine-time Olympic gold medal winner Carl Lewis.
In 1993, Clinton became the first U.S. president to successfully throw the ball from the pitchers mound to the catcher at a big league baseball game.
As for Mallory, well, everybody around here knows what a fiasco that was. It was Cincinnati’s opener at Great American Ball Park in 2007 and Mallory uncorked an incredibly spastic throw that ended up closer to going in the dugout than finding Reds great Eric Davis who was serving as the catcher at the plate.
Yet, I’d say the worst ceremonial first pitch ever — actually, make that two — came from Lewis, who along with his Olympic gold was an eight-time world champion. His first toss in Seattle looked like it came from an under-nourished pre-schooler. As the crowd hooted, he asked for a do-over and the second one was nearly as bad. Even though he made his name with his legs, not his arms, you expect more from someone as athletic as he.
As for presidents, the first ceremonial first pitch at a Major League game came in 1910 by 335-pound William Howard Taft, or, as the warm-up band who took the stage before Willie Nelson Friday night at Fifth Third Field called him — in a song they wrote for their Ohio visit — “The Fatty From Cincinnati.”
Every president since Taft has thrown out a first pitch at a baseball game, though only four others have had the honors at an All Star Game.
The first was Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937. As was tradition then, he threw the ball from his seat in the grandstand to someone waiting on the field. Three years later, his first pitch at a Washington Senators game missed its mark and smashed a camera.
Richard Nixon — maybe the greatest baseball fan in the Oval Office next to George W. Bush — was the second presidential hurler at an All Star game. It was 1970 at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium and Nixon ran up his pitch count.
He threw two ceremonial pitches, one to Reds’ catcher Johnny Bench and one to American League catcher Bill Freehan. After that he threw three balls into the stands, one, supposedly, that reached the upper deck.
Six years later President Gerald R. Ford — the old Michigan football player — put on a show, throwing a right-handed pitch to Bench and then switching left handed to throw to Carlton Fisk.
The last president to throw out a pitch at the All Star Game — in 1992 — was George H. W. Bush, himself a ball player at Yale.
Two other presidential baseball notes.
Although he was six months out of office, former president Ronald Reagan, showed up at the 1989 All Star game and rather than pitch, the old radio announcer for the Cubs went up in the broadcast booth and called Wade Boggs’s home run.
One of my favorite stories of presidents and baseball involved President John F. Kennedy, who signed an autograph for White Sox outfielder Jim Rivera in 1961.
The way the Chicago Tribune reported it, Rivera took one look at the indecipherable scrawl and, like Carl Lewis years later, asked for a do- over.
“Do you think I can go into any tavern on Chicago’s South Side and really say the president of the United States signed this baseball for me?” Rivera said. “I’d be run off.”
Kennedy laughed and signed again.
As for tonight, TWO QUESTIONS:
— When Pujols makes the catch, he will be flanked by the Cardinals six living Hall of Fame players. Do you know who they are?
— Obama is a left-hander. Do you know who the other presidential southpaws have been?
TweetBeauty and The Beast
If “Beauty and the Beast” — the old French fairy tale and more recent Disney movie — were being remade here in Dayton this summer and was given a sports twist, you’d have the story of Marie Rosche and Rocky Phillips.
It’s doubtful two more unlikely people have pared up here for a singular athletic pursuit.
Marie — a 6-foot-2 forward for the University of Dayton women’s basketball team the last four years and a Flyers captain this past season — has both drawn interest as a model and, in February, was awarded the NCAA Ethnic Minority and Women’s Enhancement Scholarship that now has her in grad school at UD.
Rocky — with his bulldog build and heavy punch — is the roustabout Dayton tough guy who once was muscle for hire around town and since 1987 has had an on-again, off-again pro boxing career that’s included a second-round knockout of former heavyweight champ Michael Dokes, who came into the fight out of shape and left with a broken jaw.
For the past three weeks, beauty and beast have been together at Neo Limits Fitness on Airway Road. That’s where Rocky is teaching Marie — wearing basketball shoes and pink Everlast mitts — to box. It’s made for quite a fistic show.
“She’s picking this up naturally and man, does this girl have power,” Rocky said. “To me, she’s at the level of someone who’s been doing this a year. I really think she could be a champ.
“And after she learns a little more, I think other girls would be intimidated when they got in the ring with her. She’d be taller than about anyone she fights, she’s got real muscles and there’s all that power. I’ll tell you, she’d be a tough one to deal with.”
Like a beast?
Rocky laughed: “Yeah, just make me the bucket man working her corner. She can play both parts — beauty and the beast.”
TweetCOLUMN: Rocky and Marie — Different worlds, same big punch
She speaks five languages. He said he speaks two, “English and hillbilly.”
Actually, it should be 1 1/2. He sometimes mumbles his English.
After living in five different African nations and travelling Europe, she came half way around the world to get here. For him, Dayton was just a two-hour trip up highways 23 and 35 out of rural Pike County.
Her parents are social activists back in Africa, she prepped at a Quaker boarding school, graduated from the University of Dayton with close to a 3.5 g.p.a. and now is working on her masters degree.
He had a tough childhood that included foster homes and a dad in prison, quit high school, had some brushes with the law himself, but lately has seemed to turn things around.
She’s 6-feet-2, is just 21 and has a model’s good looks. He’s 5-foot-10, 242 pounds, over twice her age and his Popeye forearms are covered in tattoos.
She had an Obama poster on her apartment door, he has a McCain bumper sticker on his SUV.
They say opposites attract and Marie Rosche and Rocky Phillips are one of sports odd couples. Not so much Reggie Jackson and Billy Martin or Allen Iverson and Larry Brown. More like Felix and Oscar.
Better yet, Beauty and the Beast.
That’s a fairy tale and this one could be, too.
“I don’t know how to put it, except that we are from different worlds that might not have met were it not for boxing,” Marie said.
The fistic world is Rocky’s favorite stomping ground. He’s the guy veteran promoter Don Elbaum once described as being “one of the greatest one-punch knock-out artists in boxing.”
He’s fought off and on as a pro since 1987 and his 21-14 record includes a second-round KO of bloated, former heavyweight champ, Michael Dokes, who ended up with a broken jaw. But the ledger also shows that since Dokes, Rocky has lost nine times in 10 fights.
Marie’s pugilistic pilgrimage is one of life’s ad libs. She played college basketball at UD the past four seasons and though always relegated to coming off the bench, she was a team captain.
There-in may lie their connection. Marie said her college hoops career wasn’t as fulfilling on the court as she’d hoped it would be. Rocky’s ring fortunes have been the same lately.
And so he’s dabbled in training boxers and mixed martial arts fighters. He saw Marie at the UDF store near the UD campus and with her size, reach and athleticism, he thought she might make a good boxer and had a clerk there who knows them both make the introduction.
“I wasn’t very familiar with boxing, but I was interested,” she said. “It was another form of a work-out and I wanted to try something different. And to my surprise, I’ve really liked it.”
Although she’s never seen a live boxing match, you find, with a little prodding, she’s not a complete stranger to the fight game.
“I was about 13 and in middle school back in Mali,” she said a bit sheepishly. “I was at a party and we were supposed to be play fighting like the WWF.
“But there was this girl who didn’t like me and she kicked me in the stomach and this playful thing turned into a brawl. I pretty much knocked her out. Four of the guys there had to pull me off her. They said I should stop hitting her — she couldn’t breath.”
Rather than following the “Let’s Get Ready to Rumble” clarion call of ring announcer Michael Buffer, she followed her mom’s lead and hit the books, while also taking part in a dance troupe, modelling clothing, playing soccer and finally, after moving to the U.S. in 10th grade, trying basketball for the first time.
Her ability to grasp things quickly now is showing itself as she makes her foray into boxing.
She’s been training with Rocky for three weeks at Neo Limits Fitness on Airway Road. In the process, they have opened up to each other about their lives and developed a bond.
“While we’re different we’re the same in some ways, too.” Marie said. “We both have a sense of humor. We both believe in loyalty and trust.”
And there’s that ability to throw “the bomb” as Rocky calls it.
When you watch one of her workouts, you understand why there’s been a bit of a buzz around the gym about her. Although she said she has two pins in her right hand — she broke it while she was a frustrated UD player — her pink-gloved right fist explodes into the leather punch mitts Rocky holds in front of her.
He asks her to fire off 20 straight punches, then 16 and 12.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” he grunts as she pops the pads over and over. When they’re done, he’s breathing harder than she.
“She’s picking this up naturally and man, does this girl have power,” he said. “To me, she’s at the level of someone who’s been doing this a year. I really think she could be a champ.”
Whether it gets that far — whether Marie even gets into the ring for a pro fight — is down the road. In the fall she’ll be taking grad courses again at UD. She’s working this summer at the Bomberger Center and Kettering Rec Center teaching youth sports, she’s playing basketball one night a week in a local women’s league and she still has hopes of doing some modelling or playing hoops professionally in Europe
“I’ll do this (boxing) through the summer and we’ll see where we’re at,” she said. “If we both see improvement and there’s an opportunity, I might turn pro.”
Some of her teammates know what she’s doing, but she doesn’t think her former UD coaches do. Nor does her father. But she did finally ‘fess up to her mom.
“She told me not to hit anyone,” Marie said with a laugh.
Across the room, Rocky rolled his eyes and mumbled.
Then she added: “But my mom also told me that my grandfather had been a champion wrestler back in his (African) village. So maybe it’s in my genes.”
That made Rocky smile.
Marie, too.
TweetThe Night Disco and Baseball Got Torched
As ill-conceived ideas go, today is the anniversary of the biggest promotional back-fire in baseball history. It’s even more moronic than the 10-cent beer night in Cleveland in 1974 that left Texas players using their bats to keep drunken fans at bay.
It was 30 years ago tonight — July 12, 1979 — that Chicago’s Comiskey Park hosted its ill-fated Disco Demolition Night.
The event was the brainchild of Chicago disc jockey Steve Dahl and Mike Veeck, son of Bill Veeck, owner of the Chicago White Sox.
Dahl had been let go at one Chicago radio station — when the format was made all disco — and it likely was that and his general dislike for the genre that fueled his plan, which he hyped from his new DJ job at another station:
Fans would get into the twi-night double-header between the White Sox and Detroit Tigers for just 98 cents if they brought along a disco record to be destroyed.
Between games, Dahl would go onto the field and blow up the bin full of the records that had been turned in.
According to Chicago newspaper reports back then, one of Veeck’s mistakes was that he had planned for a crowd of 35,000 — and that’s what he had security for — but more than 75,000 people showed up. For the most part, instead of baseball fans they were folks already in a full-blown party haze…and wanting more.
When the small bin was filled with records, stadium personnel quit collecting the records. which quickly became sharp-edged frisbees.
“They would slice around you and stick in the ground,” Rusty Staub, then the Tigers’ designated hitter, told the New York Times recently. “It wasn’t just one, it was many. Oh, God almighty, I’ve never seen anything so dangerous in my life. I begged the guys to put on their batting helmets.”
Beer and whiskey bottles became missiles, too, and fans who couldn’t get in stormed the gates.
“People brought ladders,” Staub said. “They were climbing in from the outside. It was like a riot.”
And when Veeck sent his limited security staff outside to deal with the gate-crashers, the knuckleheads inside had mostly free rein.
Chanting “Disco Sucks,” in his microphone, Dahl blew up the bin of records — leaving a big hole in center field — and then left the field by jeep. Whipped into a frenzy, the crowd poured onto the field.
“And then all hell broke loose,” Tigers pitcher Jack Morris told the Times. “They charged the field and started tearing up the pitching rubber and the dirt. They took the bases. They started digging out home plate….Whiskey bottles were flying over our dugout.”
The batting cage was pulled out onto the field and destroyed. Fires were set on the field and fans climbed foul poles.
Finally the umps had had enough — not to mention Tigers manager Sparky Anderson, who said he feared for his team’s safety and would not let his players on the field — and the plug was pulled on the second game. The official reason was that the field was unplayable. A day later, American League officials announced the Sox would have to forfeit the game to Detroit.
After his dad retired. Mike Veeck was blacklisted from Major League Baseball for many years.
In Neal Karlen’s book — “Slouching Toward Fargo: A Two-Year Saga Of Sinners And St. Paul Saints At The Bottom Of The Bush Leagues With Bill Murray, Darryl Strawberry, Dakota Sadie And Me,” — Mike Veeck said he knew there would be fall out from his promotional fiasco:
“The second that first guy shimmied down the outfield wall, I knew my life was over!”
TweetMellencamp Steals the Show
What a a great night to be in Dayton.
That might not be something NCR president Bill Nuti ever said, but then he wasn’t at Fifth Third Field Friday night for the Bob Dylan, John Mellencamp and Willie Nelson show.
Let me tell you this right off, Mellencamp flat out stole the show. He energized the crowd that jammed the field around the stage and filled many of the seating sections in the two-tier ball park.
I loved everything he did: “Pink Houses,” “Rain of the Scarecrow” and especially “Small Town.” Maybe that’s because I’m from a small town, too. One that’s a lot smaller than Seymour.
“Educated in a small town
Taught the fear of Jesus in a small town
Used to daydream in that small town
Another boring romantic that’s me.”
One of the best moments of the night was seeing Willie Nelson share the stage with his son.
I know Dylan was the headliner of the five-hour show, but a lot of people cleared out as he went through his set.
I hope they didn’t miss ” Highway 61 Revisited”:
“Oh God said to Abraham, “Kill me a son”
Abe says, “Man, you must be puttin’ me on”
God say, “No.” Abe say, “What ?”
God say, “You can do what you want Abe, but
The next time you see me comin’ you better run”
Well Abe says, “Where do you want this killin’done ?”
God says. “Out on Highway 61”.
That was a magical moment. A perfect night. not too hot, a breeze. This little man beneath a big white hat on the illuminated stage. The tower on St Joe’s Catholic Church lit up on Second Street with a bright burning cross on the top. The clock tower at St. John United Church of Christ gleaming through the darkness a block beyond that on Third.
People lining the top of the McCormick Building at Sears and First and up on the Requarth Lumber building across Monument from left field and all along the sidewalks that flank the ball park.
I saw John Drake at Fifth Third. He runs the boxing gym downtown and he told me Dylan’s bass player stopped in Friday to work out, then gave him two tickets to the show.
Although I got a Mellencamp T-shirt and my wife got one picturing Dylan, I saw some guy wearing the shirt I really wanted.
It read “Growing Old — Disgracefully.”
TweetCOLUMN: Blake LaForce — Mission Accomplished
The 20-month ordeal — that galvanized a high school and a community — was ending with one poignant scene.
The funeral service — actually a Celebration of the Life of Blake LaForce, the popular, 18-year-old Vandalia Butler High football star who died Friday, July 3, from the staggering complications that followed his battle with leukemia — was over.
Almost 1,000 people had packed into the Christian Life Center on Little York Road, Wednesday, for two hours of tears, shared loved and laughter, especially when Blake’s cousin, Jack, showed a video clip of he and Blake as toddlers, both wearing Cleveland Browns’ No. 19 Bernie Kosar uniforms as they took turns tackling each other.
Now Blake’s metallic blue casket — covered with a large spray of white orchids, roses and lilies — was resting on supports at his grave site beneath a big magnolia tree at Memorial Park Cemetery.
His family, classmates and Aviator teammates were gathered there for the final prayers and finally, after Blake’s mom, Linda, had come up and taken a flower, his dad, Mark, stepped forward.
“Good job, 41,” he said in a half whisper. “Mission accomplished.”
There weren’t many dry eyes by then, but there were nods of affirmation that later — at a reception at the AmVets on Brown School Road — were put to words:
“He brought our entire class together,” said Jennifer Schmitz, the president of Blake’s class of 2009. “Because of him, we all focused on one goal this year — life is precious.”
Jarrod Hamby, an Aviators defensive end, agreed: “He made us try to live life to the fullest. Made us closer to God, closer to our family and made us cherish our friends.”
These aren’t just hollow platitudes or overblown sentiments. Blake’s classmates, his community, his family — even complete strangers he touched — walked this talk.
Lauren, Blake’s older sister, recounted a hospital room conversation with her brother two days after his diagnosis in November of 2007: “He knew Lord had given him a mission.”
He believed it was to use himself as an example to change people for the better and he did it in ways small and big. Last Sunday at The NorthGate Church in Vandalia, 42 of Blake’s friends stepped forward and committed themselves to Christ.
Over the past 20 months the community — watching the courageous, stoic way Blake fought — held fund-raisers and rallies that drew thousands of people. Over 120,000 people followed the daily web journal his dad wrote. A scholarship fund is being started in his name.
As Blake’s brother John put it: “He made the community better and the community made us better. Blake touched everybody.”
And that’s when he remembered one mourner from the 1,500 or so who had come to the wake:
“There was this little boy, a peewee football player. He said he had followed Blake before he had gotten sick and said Blake was his hero. Then he just started bawling. And that got me going, too.”
Finally, it was the little boy who offered the perfect comfort.
“He told me he wears No. 41 now and that he always will,” John said. “He said he wants to grow up and be just like Blake.”
Mission accomplished.
TweetCOLUMN: Bob Dylan’s Miami Valley Connection
The first public hint that he was drawn to boxing came 46 years ago when he wrote a song about one of the Miami Valley’s most famous sports figures.
Bob Dylan penned “Who Killed Davey Moore?” in 1963, soon after the former Olympian and world featherweight champ from Springfield died from an injury he suffered defending his title against Sugar Ramos at Dodger Stadium.
In the 10th round, Ramos landed a series of uppercuts and stiff jabs, finally using a straight right hand to drop Moore forcefully onto his butt with the back of his head whiplashing off the bottom ring rope, which was an uncovered steel cable.
It caused a brain stem injury, though Moore made it to the end of the round before the fight was called. Afterward, he talked to reporters in the dressing room for 40 minutes before complaining of a head ache and then lapsing into a coma. He died three days later.
Dylan’s ode posed the question of responsibility to fight fans, Moore’s manager, the ref, boxing writers, gamblers and Ramos.
Afterward — following criticisms of the fight game by everybody from the Pope to several Ohio legislators — boxing did make some minor changes. After that ropes were padded and a looser fourth rope was added beneath the regular three to provide cushion.
Yet, don’t think Dylan was anti-boxing.
For years there’s been talk he’s owned a secret fight club beneath a Santa Monica coffee shop and though Dylan remains mum on that, Los Angeles Magazine slipped into the place a while back and wrote about it.
Sean Penn and Will Smith are said to have trained there. Quentin Tarantino has admitted getting caught flush by a Dylan punch and Gina Gershon claims to have knocked Dylan down once.
If that’s so, he should have drawn on the advice former heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey gave him at his Manhattan restaurant in 1961 when he mistook the poetic songman for a pug.
Recounting their meeting in his memoirs, Dylan said Dempsey told him: “You look too light for a heavyweight kid, you’ll have to put on a few pounds. You’re going to have to dress a little finer, look a little sharper…When you’re in the ring, don’t be afraid of hitting somebody too hard.”
When a music producer interjected — “He’s not a boxer, Jack, he’s a songwriter,” — Dempsey shrugged: “Oh yeah, well, I hope to hear ‘em some of these days. Good luck to you, kid.”
Dylan’s most famous boxing song was “Hurricane” in which he decried the plight of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the middleweight contender imprisoned 20 years for murder before the conviction was overturned.
Dylan also covered Paul Simon’s “The Boxer” and in 1964 his song “I Shall Be Free No.10” included: “I was shadowboxin’ early in the day. I figured I was ready for Cassius Clay.”
Recently, he told Rolling Stone magazine that boxing is his main training exercise and for a long time he worked out with “Mouse” Strauss, the colorful Omaha-born journeyman of the late ’70s and ’80s, who had as many as 250 pro fights — some 100 of them fought under other ring names — and three unsuccessful title bids:
“Mouse could walk on his hands across a football field,” Dylan said. “He taught me the pugilistic rudiments back a while ago, maybe 20 or 30 years. That’s not when I started though. Boxing was a part of my curriculum when I went to high school. Then it was taken out of the school system. I think maybe in ‘58 . But it was always good for me because it was kind of an individualist thing. You didn’t need to be part of a team. And I liked that.”
At a 1984 concert in Omaha, Dylan even gave Strauss a shout-out: “I want to say hello to my good friend, world boxing champion Mouse Strauss.. Mouse, if you’re out there, stand up and take a bow.”
While it’s unlikely he’ll make reference to Moore tonight, July 10, when he plays Fifth Third Field, Dylan could have visited Springfield if he had some spare time and seen where Moore is buried in Ferncliff Cemetery or met his widow, Geraldine, who he sang about.
He would not be able to see the public sculpture of Moore that Springfield planned to erect last year. The economic downturn has hit the city hard and the project stalled $37,000 short of its $92,000 goal.
But if Dylan can’t see Davey’s bronzed likeness, he could get an answer to that question he posed so long ago.
“Who killed Davey Moore?” said Geraldine. “No one. No one made him get in the ring. He died doing what he liked to do.”
Turns out, Dylan likes doing it, too.
TweetESPN Poll: Bengals near bottom of 122 teams, Browns bad, Reds better
ESPN the Magazine just unveiled its annual rankings of all 122 franchises from the four major professional sports leagues — NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB — in terms of how they reward the fans who spend their hard-earned money, time and emotion on them.
Before we go any farther, let me tell you that the Cincinnati Bengals ranked just about at the bottom — 118th of 122 teams — and in one of the eight categories in the poll — fan relations — the Stripes were dead last.
The Cleveland Browns didn’t fare much better. They were 114th over all.
Best of Ohio’s pro teams was the Cleveland Cavaliers, who ended up fifth. And that was before Shaq joined the fold.
The Columbus Blue Jackets were 31st, the Cincinnati Reds were 36th and the Cleveland Indians were 67th
The Los Angeles Angels were rated No. 1 in the Ultimate Standings and the Los Angeles Clippers were last at 122.
More than 50,000 fans were polled and that data, along with some other statistical analysis, helped the ESPN folks rank the teams in everything from stadium experience, fan relations and affordability to ownership, coaching, players, title track and bang for the buck.
You can find the entire poll at: ESPN.COM/INSIDER, but some of the highlights of Ohio’s teams — both the category rankings and an excerpt of the ESPN take on each franchise — are included below.
CINCINNATI BENGALS:
2009 Standing: No. 118 Last Year’s Rank: 115 Title Track: 107 Ownership: 113 Coaching: 84 Players: 118 Fan Relations: 122 Affordability: 99 Stadium Experience: 100 Bang for the Buck: 106
“How do you post a septuple-triple (of the seven ESPN polls, seven rankings in the triple digits)? By having an owner who hasn’t won a single playoff game during his 18-year tenure. By being the lone team out of the league’s nine worst last season that hasn’t made any changes in management since. By being so cheap that you skimp on scouts and hold the dubious honor of being the northernmost NFL squad without an indoor practice facility. Most of all, you post a septuple-triple by being clueless.
CINCINNATI REDS:
2009 Standing: No. 36 Last Year’s Rank: 59 Title Track: 52 Ownership: 57 Coaching: 73 Players: 52 Fan Relations: 58 Affordability: 14 Stadium Experience: 60 Bang for the Buck: 28
“Reds fans are a patient group. How else do you explain a 23-place improvement overall and a 44-spot spike in Players ranking despite eight straight losing seasons? ‘They’re great fans, and Cincinnati is first and foremost a baseball town,’ says former Reds first baseman Sean Casey. ‘They still talk about the Big Red Machine, but they’re craving a new face for the franchise.’
“Top candidates? Popular homegrown players Jay Bruce and Joey Votto, who have more than made up for departed Ken Griffey Jr.
“The economic downturn has hit Ohio hard, and in response the Reds have brought back $5 seats to the Outer View Level. The team also unveiled a Baker’s Dozen promotion that gives a free Friday, Saturday or Sunday ticket with the purchase of 12 weekend tickets. Hot dogs and soda are available for $1 each at two concession stands, and value meals of a dog, soda, chips and a baseball card for the kiddies can be had for $5. Even in the toughest times, Reds fans still see value in a trip to the ballpark.”
CLEVELAND BROWNS:
2009 Standing: 114 Last Year’s Rank: 64 Title Track: 115 Ownership: 110 Coaching: 98 Players: 120 Fan Relations: 119 Affordability: 95 Stadium Experience: 98 Bang for the Buck: 53
“Cleveland’s position in the Standings has cratered like the Dow (down from 64 in 2008), and you don’t need Ben Bernanke to explain why. Last season opened with a healthy QB controversy laced with AFC North division hopes and ended without an offensive TD in the final six games and a cellar view of the Steel City decorating its other thumb.”
“ESPN quoted one guy from Dawg Pound Daily: ‘Randy Lerner rushed to hire a head coach [Eric Mangini] that no other team was even interested in interviewing, then let that coach pick his own GM. That does not inspire confidence.’”
CLEVELAND CAVALIERS:
2009 Standing: 5 Last Year’s Rank: 49 Title Track: 37 Ownership: 6 Coaching: 23 Players: 1 Fan Relations: 4 Affordability: 30 Stadium Experience: 14 Bang for the Buck: 15
“The Cavaliers’ spike in the Standings is thanks to the best regular-season record in the NBA and an even better effort to soften the burden on fans’ wallets. While the club could have very easily upped the freight to see the most popular player in the league in Delonte West (we kid because we love), the team actually lowered the average fan cost per game this season by 12%. Cap costs were slashed from $16.75 to $13.99, programs from $10 to free, and average tickets inched down from $56.10 to $55.95.
“Remarkably, out of every team in this year’s Standings, fans voted Cavalier players the most likeable. Why? Maybe it’s because of the time Daniel Gibson and J.J. Hickson spent bowling with 18 Cleveland ninth-graders at Corner Alley last November. Or that February day when King James himself showed up to Holy Cross Elementary School and taught 26 lucky sixth-graders his yoga routine as part of the club’s Fit as a Pro program.”
CLEVELAND INDIANS
2009 Standing: No. 67 Last Year’s Rank: 16 Title Track: 108 Ownership: 84 Coaching: 101 Players: 76 Fan Relations: 70 Affordability: 42 Stadium Experience: 38 Bang for the Buck: 40
“The Stadium Formerly Known as the Jake (recently given the Soviet-sounding handle Progressive Field) doesn’t need much help feeling the love: It has never ranked lower than 46 in Standings history. But the team knows practical promos help maintain that status. Take Scarf Day, for example. Fans were given free mufflers before the second home game of 2009, which helped ease the pain of 42-degree temps and later cut the chill of the worst April record in the AL
“…..On the less-popular side, skipper Eric Wedge refuses to meddle with a blundering bullpen, resulting in more blown saves (nine, through Memorial Day) than any team in the Junior Circuit. That’s not progressive thinking.”
COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS
2009 Standing: No. 31 Last Year’s Rank: 52 Title Track: 73 Ownership: 31 Coaching: 9 Players: 51 Fan Relations: 9 Affordability: 29 Stadium Experience: 9 Bang for the Buck: 64
“Gone but not forgotten is late (1923-2008) owner John H. McConnell. Inside the popular Nationwide Arena’s Front Street entrance and before you reach the 12-foot, 1,600-pound working cannon — it goes off every time the home team scores — is a memorial honoring the man who brought pro hockey to Ohio’s capital in 2000.
“Among the tributes?
“The first Jackets jersey (McConnell 01) and a photo of the founding father from his football days at Michigan State. Sure, Columbus is Buckeyes country, but the Spartans pic gets love because McConnell is wearing No. 61, just like four-time All-Star Rick Nash, the face of the franchise. That face is morphing though, thanks to magicianlike young goalie Steve Mason (the ROY winner with a league-leading 10 shutouts), center R.J. Umberger (the team’s first Ohio Stater skater) and D-man Mike Commodore.”
TweetBlake LaForce Funeral Arrangements
Funeral arrangements have been set for Blake LaForce, the 18 year former football star at Vandalia High, who died Friday, July 3 after a courageous 19-month medical battle with leukemia and the complications that followed.
The family will receive friends at the Christian Life Center, 3489 Little York Road from 4 to 8 p.m. Tuesday.
A Celebration of Life will be held at 11:00 a.m. Wednesday at the church with Pastor Stan Tharp & Pastor Charlie Carroll officiating. Interment will be at Memorial Park Cemetery.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to the Leukemia Lymphoma Society or the Blake LaForce No. 41 Memorial Fund in care of National City Bank, Vandalia in Blake’s memory. Funeral arrangements entrusted to Marker & Heller Funeral Homes, Huber Heights Chapel.
xxxxxxxxx
Here’s more on Blake from a story I wrote that appeared in Sunday’s newspaper:
Blake LaForce — the 18-year-old former Vandalia High football star and state power lifting champion who rallied a town, a school and tens of thousands of other people as he fought his way through a herculean medical battle the past 19 months — has died.
Surrounded by his family, he passed away around 2 p.m. Friday afternoon, July 3, at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
“It was time,” Mark LaForce, his dad said Saturday afternoon. “I kissed him on his lips one last time, told him how much we all loved him and how proud we were of him and he went to meet his Creator.”
Initially diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblast Leukemia (ALL) in November of 2007, Blake underwent a successful born marrow/stem cell transplant in May of 2008 and seemed on the road to recovery last summer.
But in mid-August, he developed toxoplasmosis, a devastating infection in the central nervous system, that, as Mark put it, “shut down all his motor skills. All of a sudden he could no longer walk, talk, eat or drink. It’s been that way since.”
Even so, Blake had been slowly working his way back from that when, this past March 26, he had a pulmonary hemorrhage — bleeding lungs — and had been in the intensive care unit since then as he dealt with a series of medical issues. The latest was a severe problem with his ever-fragile skin.
Mark — who has written a daily journal about his son since the ordeal began (www.CaringBridge.org/visit/blakelaforce/journal) — described it in his July 2 entry:
“The skin is our largest organ and this is the major issue we have now. It happened upon him rapidly this week. Blake’s skin is almost like a burn victim’s skin now, so the risk of infection increases. It is another one of God’s miracles because Blake is actually very stable and not even on any pain medications, which is unbelievable. There are what seems an endless number of hurdles on Blake’s journey and we are in awe of his stamina, true grit and resolve….”
After Blake’s death Friday, Mark wrote: “The LaForce family is at peace and and rejoicing the fact that our strong son has a new everlasting life in a much better place.
“No more suffering, sorrow and pain.”
He then singled out TEAM BLAKE, the family members, friends Butler classmates and strangers who had taken up Blake’s’ cause over the past year and a half:
“We do not know how to thank you. Stay the course Blake started for us because he was a good servant and is (still) making a difference.”
To his son, he wrote:
“Dearest Blake, Mission Accomplished, Son. We will see you again and you are with us every minute of every day. Your smile and personality is etched in our minds forever. You are the ‘man’ in this family and have showed all of us the way. We love you so very much now and forever.”
TweetCOLUMN: Local family helps Votto when he needs it most
The phone rang in their Nutt Road home at 4 a.m.
First to awaken, Linda Trebnick reached for the receiver, listened to the familiar voice that on this night sounded so unfamiliar — so hesitant and wounded — and immediately woke her husband, Gregg, who remembers her saying:
“Joey’s in the hospital. He needs us.”
And with that began another chapter in a five-year saga of friendship, trust and unwavering support between a local family and the Cincinnati Reds first baseman, Joey Votto.
It has encompassed Reds off days and Trebnick family vacations together. It’s included nighttime respites sitting in the family’s swimming pool kibitzing and smoking Cuban cigars and, of course, that regular, Votto-instigated midnight ritual — heaping bowls of vanilla ice cream, brownies and watching “The Dating Game” on television.
There have been hours of light-hearted text messages and e-mails back and forth when the Reds are on the road. There’s always an open invitation and a room in the Trebnick’s Washington Twp. home for Votto — and then there was that pre-dawn plea for help.
Before making that call, Votto had been in his Cincinnati-area apartment trying to deal with his demons on his own.
As he described it, “It was the scariest moment I’ve ever dealt with in my life. It got to a point where I couldn’t take it. … I thought I was going to die.”
In the process of coping with respiratory and inner-ear infections, he suddenly had been overwhelmed by mental pressures that slowly had been consuming him for nearly 10 months.
When his 52-year-old father died last August, Votto tried to override the grieving process — the whole sense of loss — by immersing himself in an all-consuming cocoon of baseball.
It didn’t work, and the illnesses that prevented him from playing ball — and may have been prolonged because “he just doesn’t like taking medication,” Gregg said — gave him a lot of time alone, and his thoughts triggered his depression.
Back in Cincinnati and on the disabled list with what the team simply called a “stress-related” problem, Votto was holed up at home, not sleeping at night and finally found himself in the middle of a full-scale panic attack. He dialed 9-1-1 and was taken by ambulance to a Northern Kentucky hospital, where he was put on medication.
“I couldn’t have handled being by myself then and while (the Trebnicks) were my only option at the time, they really were — no matter what the circumstance — my best option, as well,” Votto said the other day as he sat at his corner dressing stall in the Reds clubhouse before a game at Great American Ball Park.
“Not taking anything away from my mom and brothers, but going across the border (to his home in Toronto) was pretty unrealistic, and besides, they were grieving, too.”
When the Trebnicks arrived at the hospital, Linda found the unfailingly polite Votto quietly talking to gathered staffers, giving in to autograph requests and then shaking hands and thanking everyone before he left.
“But I couldn’t believe how he looked,” Linda said with eyes beginning to glisten.
“In the car I teased him,” Gregg said. “I told him, ‘You are a mess.’”
It was the kind of good-natured jab the two often exchange and it helped deflate the moment.
“I’m the mom,” Linda said, “and I told him, ‘You know what Joey? I’m going to feed you, get some weight back on you and you’re going to get emotionally, spiritually and physically healthy.’”
The promise hit home.
“He hadn’t told anybody anything that had been going on, but in the car he started talking and didn’t shut up,” Gregg said. “He got everything off his chest and he felt better.”
The Trebnicks drove him to his place, stayed with him and for the first time in a long time he was able to sleep. After a day, Gregg returned to Trebnick Systems, the family business in Springboro, but Linda stayed for a few more days. She was joined by one of her two daughters — both of whom Votto treats like sisters — and eventually the family brought him back to their Nutt Road home to recuperate.
“The first thing I did was open the blinds and doors,” Linda said. “I said, ‘You can’t live like this. You’re going to have people in your life. We’re going to let some sunlight back in.’”
xxxx
HELPING THE GIRLS OUT
Back in the early years of the Dayton Dragons, the Trebnicks were attending Apex Community Church in Centerville. That’s where they read a notice that the local minor-league team was looking for host families who would take in ballplayers.
They figured they’d try it. They had a big home and, back then, three teenage children of their own — son Aaron (now 27) and two beautiful daughters, Amy (24) and April (20) — and while Linda is not sports-minded, Gregg had played small-college football and briefly in the NFL as a 6-foot-6 wide receiver with the Atlanta Falcons and New York Giants.
“Why did we become a host family?” Gregg grinned. “Let me tell you the joke version.”
“Wait, wait … that’s not for print,” Linda said with an exasperated look at her husband.
“You can print it,” Gregg said. Linda finally shrugged, “OK, but I just want you to know he’s full of it.”
And so with relish, Gregg explained: “Back then our daughters were maybe 12 and 16, and I didn’t want them to grow up naive. People said, ‘How could you let three ballplayers and the team trainer live with you?’ I said, ‘Well, the girls are kind of ugly. I’m trying to help them out.’ “
Linda shook her head and said the real goal was to provide “a good Christian home” for players who stayed with them. In the process, there also was a supportive, fun-loving environment.
Over the years, they’ve had about a dozen players live with them, including Votto, who spent his entire 2004 season with the Dragons at their home.
“Yeah, they had three rules,” he said with a laugh. “No drinking. No girls. Don’t mess with the daughters.”
Linda smiled when his recollection later was relayed to her: “He’s exactly right, but let me tell you something. Over the course of years, all of those rules have been broken, and one player broke all three at once.”
Gregg nodded: “She chewed them out, and the one player hasn’t talked to her since.”
But over the years, Votto’s relationship with the family has deepened.
“They’re a nice family,” he said. “They don’t smother you, but they enjoy spending time with you and they’d do anything for you. And there are no strings attached. Occasionally they’ll catch a game, but they don’t care one way or another about baseball. They just care about you. That’s what’s so comforting about them.”
In fact, Linda told how she heard the guys talking about RBIs and, with some puzzlement, finally said, “Why are you eating at Arby’s?”
Away from the ballpark, the Trebnicks said Votto was consumed by baseball and often watched videos of hitters and pitchers.
“One year he saw every pitch that was thrown to Barry Bonds — and he saw them all about 25 times,” Gregg said. “I call it perpetual learning.
“That’s why, when the players come in the door here, it’s like ‘pffffffff.’ It’s like a steam release.”
Gregg and Joey especially hit it off.
“I’m from the Iron Range of northern Minnesota — a little town called Bovey — and he’s from Canada,” Gregg said. “I guess we both froze our minds.”
After Votto moved on up the minor-league ranks and then onto the Reds near the end of the 2007 season, he stayed in close contact with the family and spent a lot of time in the Dayton area. Whether it was working out at Neo Limits, shopping at Kroger or hitting golf balls at Rollandia, he often went unnoticed.
“They played a round of golf at Yankee Trace with a doctor,” Linda said. “Afterward the guy told Gregg, ‘That kid looks like he could have been a good athlete. He really has something special.’”
Gregg just smiled: “Yes, I think you’re right.”
On the road with the Reds, Votto sometimes will play online Scrabble with Linda, who is back home.
“Last year he started text-messaging me before the Super Bowl,” Gregg said. “He was in Florida and I was in my room upstairs, and next thing I know, the game is over and we’re still messaging. Five hours straight. I missed the whole game, but we talked about everything.”
Votto has stayed with the family in the winter, he visits them on Reds off days or sometimes after a day game and, more than once, he’s invited himself along on the Trebnicks’ trips to Florida.
“We went to Universal Studio because he absolutely loves roller coasters,” Linda said. “I mean, he just loves a roller-coaster ride.”
She was talking about the amusement park kind.
xxxx
“NOW THAT’S CLASS”
When Votto reached out to the Trebnicks for help, he got the whole family. Even their dogs.
They’re Vizslas, velvety-brown Hungarian bird dogs named Aspen and Q, and it’s safe to say they love the Cincinnati slugger even more than the most ardent Reds fan.
They sleep with him when he stays with the Trebnicks, and when Gregg and Linda came back home from Votto’s place, they sent their two dogs to stay with him.
Votto brought the bird dogs to Great American Ball Park, where Gregg said with a laugh, “They’ve even been kicked off the field. They’ve been with Joey to the weight room, too, and they even stood outside the shower room waiting for him to clean up.”
Just as Aspen and Q were waiting for him, Votto knew the Reds were, too. The team’s top hitter when he left, he missed 21 games in late May and June.
“Here’s one scene I won’t forget,” Gregg said. “Joey’s lying on our couch here trying to get better and the Reds are on TV and he’s rooting for them. He’s really pulling hard for Jay Bruce and then Jay hits a home run. Joey texts him a message and Jay sends him one back.”
During this time, Linda made sure Votto focused on the right things:
“He worried people would think he was slacking and that his team felt let down.”
Gregg nodded: “But Mr. Castellini (Reds owner Bob Castellini) called him up and said, ‘Joey, you do whatever you have to do to get better and you do it at your pace.’
“I didn’t know anything about the Reds organization, but I thought to myself, ‘Now that’s class.’ They did everything from the top on down to help. They had two psychologists right here at our house with him. They showed true concern for Joey.”
Votto said the same should be said about the Trebnicks: “it’s been a big-time struggle over the last month or month and a half, but they were there for me.”
Linda smiled, but redirected the praise: “We were his support, but give him the credit. He did it. He knew he needed help and he got it. I told him one day, ‘You’re a very strong person physically and emotionally and you will come back.’”
Using humor for insulation, she said she also reminded him of an option: “For a couple of years, he took night classes online because one day he wants to teach.
“After we picked him up that first night, I saw he had a sense of humor, so the next morning I said, ‘Well, if baseball doesn’t work out, you can always be a teacher.’ He said, ‘I think I want to play baseball.’”
He proved it, Gregg said, by coming back faster than most people: The average guy would have needed two months at least.”
Linda said it helped when Votto finally shed the secrecy of his absence and opened up to the media 13 days ago while sitting in the dugout in Toronto: “It was like a weight was lifted off of him. He realized everybody has problems.
“I think he was really happy to realize his worst fears were not as bad as what he thought they’d be. He realized he was going to be OK.”
And now he’s showing it. When he joined the Dragons for a two-game test of his mettle two weeks ago, he hit a home run on the first pitch thrown to him.
After rejoining the Reds and pouring his heart out, he won the game for the team a couple of nights later with a home run. He did the same thing last Thursday, getting four hits, including the game-winning RBI single in the 10th inning against Arizona. And Saturday, again, he keyed the Reds 5-2 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals with a home run and a triple and two runs batted in.
And so it turns out that guy at Yankee Trace was right.
Joey Votto does have something special.
Actually many things — but especially a family that will answer his 4 a.m. call, share some late-night ice cream and brownies and then the next morning make sure the sun shines in on him.
TweetJoey Votto’s 4 a.m phone call — a story of an adoptive family and love
WASHINGTON TOWNSHIP — When he came home talking about RBIs — ribbies as runs batted in are called — Linda Trebnick didn’t have a clue what he was referring to.
“Why are you eating at Arby’s?” she asked.
When he finally was called up to the Cincinnati Reds in the 2007 season and told her about the legendary player he now was teamed with, she never could remember the fellow’s name.
She just called him “that Junior Guy.”
Linda admits she doesn’t know much about baseball, but she does know the importance of supportive family — be it adoptive or blood — and she knows friendship.
And she especially knows Joey Votto.
When the heralded Reds first baseman — suddenly fearful and lost — called the Trebnick’s Nutt Road home at 4 a.m. last month, she understood perfectly. She woke her husband, Gregg, who remembers her saying:
“Joey’s in the hospital. He needs us.”
And with that began another chapter in a five-year saga between a local family and the Reds slugging star. It’s the subject of the big story I have in today’s newspaper and it can be found on this web page, too.
Votto lived with the Trebnicks when he played for the Dayton Dragons in 2004 and has stayed especially close to them ever since. Although he had called with a lesser depression issue some three years ago Gregg said, this time — coupled with some physical ailments that had hampered his ability to play — was far more serious.
Votto has said the meltdown was triggered by his inability to deal with his father’s death last August.
“He said the baseball stress part was about this much,” Linda said holding her thumb and index finger an inch apart. “It was just like the tip of that iceberg that the Titanic hit.”
Beneath the surface, Votto endured growing depression and panic attacks that forced him to the bench midway through some games in May, then onto the disabled list and finally prompted his 9-1-1 call which put him in a Northern Kentucky hospital.
That’s when he reached out again to the Trebnicks and what has happened since, has been truly remarkable.
Thanks in a big way to the Washington Township family, Votto again is leading the Reds.
TweetBlake LaForce, Vandalia Butler football star, dies at 18
Blake LaForce — the 18-year-old former Vandalia High football star and state power lifting champion who rallied a town, a school and tens of thousands of other people as he fought his way through a herculean medical battle the past 19 months — has died.
Surrounded by his family, he passed away around 2 p.m. Friday afternoon, July 3, at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.
“It was time,” Mark LaForce, his dad said Saturday afternoon. “I kissed him on his lips one last time, told him how much we all loved him and how proud we were of him and he went to meet his Creator.”
Initially diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblast Leukemia (ALL) in November of 2007, Blake underwent a successful born marrow/stem cell transplant in May of 2008 and seemed on the road to recovery last summer.
But in mid-August, he developed toxoplasmosis, a devastating infection in the central nervous system, that, as Mark put it, “shut down all his motor skills. All of a sudden he could no longer walk, talk, eat or drink. It’s been that way since.”
Even so, Blake had been slowly working his way back from that when, this past March 26, he had a pulmonary hemorrhage — bleeding lungs — and had been in the intensive care unit since then as he dealt with a series of medical issues. The latest was a severe problem with his ever-fragile skin.
Mark — who has written a daily journal about his son since the ordeal began (www.CaringBridge.org/visit/blakelaforce/journal) — described it in his July 2 entry:
“The skin is our largest organ and this is the major issue we have now. It happened upon him rapidly this week. Blake’s skin is almost like a burn victim’s skin now, so the risk of infection increases. It is another one of God’s miracles because Blake is actually very stable and not even on any pain medications, which is unbelievable. There are what seems an endless number of hurdles on Blake’s journey and we are in awe of his stamina, true grit and resolve….”
After Blake’s death Friday, Mark wrote: “The LaForce family is at peace and and rejoicing the fact that our strong son has a new everlasting life in a much better place.
“No more suffering, sorrow and pain.”
He then singled out TEAM BLAKE, the family members, friends Butler classmates and strangers who had taken up Blake’s’ cause over the past year and a half:
“We do not know how to thank you. Stay the course Blake started for us because he was a good servant and is (still) making a difference.”
To his son, he wrote:
“Dearest Blake, Mission Accomplished, Son. We will see you again and you are with us every minute of every day. Your smile and personality is etched in our minds forever. You are the ‘man’ in this family and have showed all of us the way. We love you so very much now and forever.”
Exact details are pending, but Mark said the visitation will be late Tuesday afternoon and early that evening July 7. On Wednesday morning there will be a celebration of life service at the Christian Life Center, 3489 Little York Road. The telephone there is: (937) 898-8811.
TweetThe Greatest NASCAR Souvenir?… (and a cool Richard Petty video)
It was 25 years ago today that I got one of my most memorable sports souvenirs ever.
Or, maybe not.
As I used to do every year on the Fourth of July, I was covering the Firecracker 400 stock car race at Daytona International Speedway. And the 1984 race turned out to be one of NASCAR’s most celebrated moments ever.
Richard Petty won the 200th and final race of his long, legendary career that day as President Ronald Reagan watched from one of the speedway’s overhead suites.
Reagan had given the command to start the race while he was still airborne in Air Force One. And when his plane finally did touch down at the Daytona airport right next to the track, a classic photo was made of it landing in the background while Petty’s No. 43 Pontiac made its way around the track.
With three laps to go, I remember Doug Heveron lost control of his car just past the tri-oval. His Chevrolet went airborne, rolled and landed upright again. He wasn’t hurt.
Meanwhile Petty and Cale Yarborough were slamming their cars together at full throttle as they raced back to the start/finish line after the yellow flag was waved.
Petty beat him to the line by six inches and then cruised the final two caution laps on fumes. He actually ran out of gas before the checkered flag but coasted across the line.
“We all shook hands and then the President and I talked,” Petty would say later. “I think it blowed his mind that Cale and I were really running into each other at 200 m.p.h..”
I was outside his pits as the race ended and in the jubilation that followed, my fellow sportswriter and good friend, the late Shelby Strother joined me and we edged our way in with Petty’s crew and helped push the out-of-fuel race car into Victory Lane.
When Petty headed across the speedway to meet Reagan, we followed. Another sports writer — Norm Froscher from Gainesville — was somewhere up ahead of us. As we worked our way through the phalanx of security, we eventually were able to follow Petty — and a few yards behind him, Norm — up the the long flight of outer stairs to the press box.
Petty was smoking one of his trademark thin cigars as he started up the steps. Supposedly Norm — also known for his cigars — was puffing away, too.
Petty dropped his cigar on one of the top steps before going through the door to the press box and suites. Norm probably did, too.
A couple of minutes later when I got to that point on the stairs I saw the ground-out but still-smoldering stogie. I picked it up, tamped it out and carefully wrapped it in a napkin.
Today I still have that now-crumbled cigar in a sealed plastic bag.
Sportswriters aren’t supposed to get autographs and I never, ever do. Well, except for that day. Petty signed my media credential.
I have it with the cigar.
Of course the way Shelby used to delight in telling the story, I had really picked up Norm Froscher’s cigar.
I’m not sure.
But even if it is Norm’s, it’s made for a good tale all these years and, after all, that’s all a storyteller is ever looking for.
TweetCOLUMN: The Alexis Arguello I Remember So Well
It remains one of the greatest fights in boxing history. It featured two champions who brought out each other’s best for 13 punishing rounds and ended with a brutal barrage no one will forget.
It was one time I forgot I was a writer and reacted as a friend.
That’s how I remember Nov. 12, 1982, when lightweight champion Alexis Arguello met unbeaten junior welterweight champ Aaron Pryor in front of a raucous crowd of 23,800 on a warm night filled with salsa music and a big-fight edginess that swirled through the Orange Bowl.
As a Miami columnist, I had covered both fighters extensively leading up to the bout and had become especially close with Arguello, who mixed gentlemanly ways outside the ring with an executioner’s precision inside the ropes.
In his Hall of Fame career, he would win 82 of 90 fights, claim world titles at three different weights — he beat Ruben Olivares for the featherweight crown in 1974, Alfredo Escalera for the super featherweight title (also known as junior lightweight) in 1978 and Jim Watt for the lightweight championship in 1981 — and he’d get recognition as the greatest junior lightweight of the 20th century.
Over the years I covered several of his fights around the country, visited him at his Gables-by-the-Sea home — I spent Christmas Eve with him once when his wife left him — and went out fishing on his yacht, The Champ.
When he came to a function in Wilmington a dozen years ago, he told me a chilling tale, one that supposedly came to fruition two days ago in his native Nicaragua, where — at age 57 — he died of a gunshot wound to the chest. The initial report is suicide.
That night at the Orange Bowl, I was sitting ringside, right up against the canvas apron. The fight was a war and in the 13th round Arguello stunned Pryor with a withering right.
After drinking from a bottle handed to him between rounds by controversial trainer Panama Lewis, a reinvigorated Pryor landed 20 straight punches in Round 14 before the referee stopped the fight as the defenseless Arguello melted to the canvas, two feet in front of me.
People rushed to Arguello, whose eyes rolled back as he lay motionless for over four minutes. That’s when I grabbed the bottom ring rope and pulled myself closer, heartsick by what had just happened.
I remember his assistant trainer Don Kahn talking to him: “Alexis, hold on, you’ll be all right.”
The fight took a lot out of each boxer and neither was quite the same after, though Pryor would knock out Arguello again 10 months later.
After boxing, their lives sometimes paralleled each other.
They were both children of extreme poverty. Arguello’s family was so poor it made him quit school at age nine and work on a dairy farm. By 13, he’d hitchhiked to Canada and worked two jobs, which enabled him to give his parents $1.000 the following year. Within three years he was fighting as a pro.
Thanks to boxing, Arguello — like Pryor — made fortunes…and then lost them. He battled drugs and at times he struggled with family issues.
Over the years, he and Pryor became friends — at heart, Pryor is a good man, too — and whether they wanted it to be such or not, the two realized what the other had and what it meant to them.
Arguello, for all his historic accomplishment, knew that Pryor was the man who conquered him twice. Pryor knows that for all his triumph, Arguello was still the man embraced and adored by the crowds.
Each man had a piece of the other, a piece that helped them be complete.
Last year Arguello — after Pryor and his wife campaigned for him — was elected mayor of Managua.
That night in Wilmington, he quietly told me how, in 1984 — with life spiraling downward — he had snapped while out on his boat with his young son A.J. and had put a gun to his own head.
His sobbing son begged him not to kill himself and Arguello said he came to his senses: “I realized I had a lot to live for.”
If reports are true, that realization now escaped him.
And while Don Kahn’s words from that warm Orange Bowl night — “Hold on, you’ll be all right,” — have evaporated, too, one thing has not.
I’m again heartsick by what’s happened to my friend.
Tweet
