Recently, CENTAUR SEASONS went live and loud at the Varsity Letters Sports Reading Series in New York City. I read excerpts from a couple of CENTAUR SEASONS posts, answered a few questions, spread the Centaur gospel — and talked about CENTAUR SEASONS’ exclusive interview with UCLA coaching legend John Wooden.
With Michael Gluckstadt doing the honors as host, I shared the stage with Bryan Curtis of the sports web site Grantland and John Saward and Graydon Gordian of the online magazine The Normanthology.
(“Earning Those Varsity Letters” continues below.)
* * * * * * * * * * * *
WELCOME TO CENTAUR SEASONS. “Earning Those Varsity Letters” here on HoopsU.Com appears also on CENTAUR SEASONS, a “memory blog” of the half-good, half-bad, all-new Allentown College of St. Francis de Sales Centaurs in Center Valley, Pennsylvana. Forty years ago Steve kept a diary of his junior-year season. A blog before its time then, it is now an e-diary at CENTAUR SEASONS and here on HoopsU.com.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Varsity Letters is, as my wife, Noreen, noted, one of those fantastic little semisecret inside-baseball New York City things that you don’t want to tell anybody else about. You know: Because it’s the kind of deal that deserves to have way more people know about it, except that if way more people knew about it then it wouldn’t be quite so worth knowing about. You know? (Aargh! You do now!)
My entry into this world is Carl Bialik, a co-founder of Gelf magazine, “an online magazine about just about anything,” from which apparently grew the sports reading series. More directly: In 2001-2002 I was the original writer of The Daily Fix, The Wall Street Journal’s online sports column. When I stepped down, Carl replaced me. Wait. When I stepped down, Carl AND Jason Fry replaced me. Yes, it took two, as I still point out to them.
[[Carl is also “The Numbers Guy” for the Journal; read his columns.]] … [[Jason is a “writer, Brooklynite, baseball fan, Star Wars dork, genial malcontent” and can be got to here.]]
At last week’s ‘VL’ Bryan Curtis of Grantland read one of his stories about listening to overnight radio as the host talked to a guy named Bugs (Bryan: “Not. His. Real. Name.”), who told the story of the night he shot and killed Bigfoot (actually, shot and killed a Mr. AND Mrs. Bigfoot) out in East Texas. Seriously, that’s what Bryan read. Or maybe not seriously. Hard to tell. Which made it all the better. The sports connection? None. So what. Maybe you had to be there – again, in keeping with the ‘VL’experience.
Don’t worry, though, I asked the question you are right now asking yourself. “But Bryan, doesn’t Bigfoot live up in the Pacific Northwest?” To which Bryan replied, straight-of-face: “No. They are … everywhere.”
Alas, I couldn’t find Bryan’s Bigfoot biograph online. But you can find his Grantland page here. May I suggest: “THE END OF THE LOCKER ROOM OMERTA; How the Hard Knocks era vaporized the standards of clubhouse access,” if only for the old-school Howard Cosell and Jim Bouton references.
AND YOU CAN READ BRYAN’S ‘VL’ PROFILE AND Q&A HERE.
Also reading at ‘VL’ were John Saward and Graydon Gordian of “The Normanthology,” an online and now-resurrected print magazine dedicated to the dying art of long-form sports journalism. John read an introspective take on giving yourself over to a sports hero. Graydon read from a piece he wrote about bullriding. About how one of the main players in the contest – you know, the bull – even while being central to the outcome still has no skin in the game, so to speak.
YOU CAN READ THE ‘VL’ PROFILE AND Q&A OF JOHN AND GRAYDON (WITH CIAN O’DAY) HERE.
In related news, another New York reason to search out ‘VL’ is for the people you meet there, other like-minded reading-and-writing sports sorts.
… David Roth, the major domo of the sports web site The Classical (and a Daily Fix writer to boot)…
… Charlie Widdoes (recently of ClipperBlog, but it appears now of KnicksNow)…
… Wisconsonite Peter Bukowski — Packer fan, Syracuse grad and Bleacher Report contributor...
… Jeremy Gordon, writer (here on Tumblr) — and also a Daily Fix writer (you can’t dribble a basketball at ‘VL’ without bumping into a Daily Fixer)…
… and Andrew Kahn, prolific freelance sportswriter at www.andrewjkahn.com.
As for me, reading from CENTAUR SEASONS was my second ‘VL’ rodeo. Four years ago I read some sports stuff from my memir, “My Father’s Heart: A Son’s Reckoning with the Legacy of Heart Disease.” At the time, Gelf magazine dubbed me “the unwitting father of the sports blog” for my nascent Daily Fix efforts.
[[AT THAT ‘VL’ I SHARED THE STAGE WITH CHARLIE LEERHSEN, FELLOW BROOKLYNITE AND AUTHOR OF ‘CRAZY GOOD: THE TRUE STORY OF DAN PATCH, THE MOST FAMOUS HORSE IN AMERICA.’ YOU CAN READ HIS ‘VL’ PROFILE AND Q&A HERE.]]
This time at ‘VL’ it was me and the Centaur. Our job – or at least part of our job, it seemed – was to skew the median age UP by a couple of decades. Geesh! I just turned 60, can you tell? And does it show that CENTAUR SEASONS took place forty years ago?
Anyway.
One of my goals for this CENTAUR SEASONS blog is to try to find the book in the story of this too-new college with it’s not-too-good basketball team and why in the world we signed on in the first place. And also, to find the story, too, in the 6-foot-8-inch pipe cleaner me trying to prove to myself that I should have played basketball in high school.
So in culling blog posts for ‘VL,’ I looked for a couple that spoke to these themes. I wound up reading edited version of these four:
COLLEGE OF CORNFIELDS: Why Centaurs Believe
CENTAUR REASONS: Why Playing for Allentown College Was My Chance of a Lifetime
WHERE’S THE CENTAUR (PART 2): Finding Little Allentown College in the big Basketball Picture
THE YEAR THE CENTAURS WERE HALF-GOOD AND THE TWO WHO MADE IT SO
Truth? I realized that while I might want to read all about (for instance) the game when we Centaurs beat Philly Pharmacy (last second shot! huge win! my, oh my!) what people likely want to hear about is why the win mattered and what it meant to us. Instructive. And then, while reading these selected words out loud, I liked the way they sounded. Encouraging.
Thank you, Varsity Letters, for maybe helping reveal the CENTAUR SEASONS beyond this blog — mmmm-m-a-y-b-e.
CENTAUR SEASONS can also be found at www.centaurseasons.com. The centerpiece will be the posting in "real time" of the diary that Steve kept of his 1972-1973 junior-year season, beginning on November 30. Prior to that (and after), Steve will be posting regularly about his freshman, sophomore and senior seasons, as well as about what it was like to be there at the beginning to help get a struggling college basketball program off the ground.
Steve was the original writer of The Wall Street Journal's popular sports blog, "The Daily Fix" in 2001-2002, and was even dubbed "The Unwitting Father of the Sports Blog" by Gelf Magazine, the online publication of the "Varsity Letters Reading Series. Steve was the Journal's sports editor for its original Weekend sport section and was involved in all of the Journal's Olympics coverage, Winter and Summer, from 1996 through 2008.
He is the author of three books, most recently "My Father's Heart: A Son's Reckoning With the Legacy of Heart Disease," which he is adapting as a one-man show. For his first book, "The Call of the Game," Steve traveled the country in search of sports events -- including the famous N.C. State Wolfpack victory over "Phi Slamma Jamma" of the University of Houston. For his second book, COACH, among the 150+ coaches Steve interviewed are/were college basketball coaches John Wooden (UCLA), Pat Summitt (Tennessee), Frank Layden (Niagara), Bobby Cremins (Georgia Tech), P.J. Carlesimo (Seton Hall), Bill Guthridge (North Carolina), Abe Lemons (Texas), Stan Morrison (USC), Kathy Rush (Immaculata), Jim Satalin (Duquesne), Charlie Thomas (San Francisco State), Butch Van Bredda Koff (Princeton), Bill Whitmore (Vermont) and LaDonna Wilson (Austin Peay).
For more, you can click on www.steve-mckee.com, where you can find a TODAY show appearance and an NPR interview.
- CENTAUR SEASONS: A new Inductee to the DeSales University Hall of Fame recognizes the contributions of the school’s orginal athletes … - September 18, 2013
- CENTAUR (OFF) SEASONS: A dozen ways to read the 97 posts in the scorebook thus far — until a new roster begins taking the floor in the fall - June 13, 2013
- CENTAUR SEASONS: In a ‘Carnival of Opportunity,’ One of Our Own Shines in an All-Star Game - May 14, 2013
You need to login or register to bookmark/favorite this content.
Leave a Reply