"Why do they [write] for their money? Why do they [work] for short pay? They ain't getting nowhere and they're losing their share. They must have gone crazy back there." — Michael Burton (paraphrased)
By MONTE DUTTON Carson Jones is one of 14 Paladins who have started (Furman photo). Click here. What challenges lie ahead. Furman’s Southern Conference champion football program has 14 players who have started, at least by recent calculations. Players who have started are not the same as returning starters. Duplicating the 10-3 records of the …
Continue reading Furmanology: It takes a village to raise a team
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. It’s great to have some time to write songs and edit fiction, but gosh, it feels good to get out in the heat and snap photos of cute kids tossing the old pigskins around. It’s almost impossible to take bad photos of kids. They were scattered around …
Continue reading County Signs: ‘In the summertime, when the weather is hot …’
By MONTE DUTTON Friday night lights (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. I probably would not have watched the NASCAR Xfinity Series race from New Hampshire. I discovered the Sci Aps 200 was starting on rain tires, which had never been used on an oval. The rain was clearing out. The teams only ran treaded tires …
Continue reading County Signs: ‘Just racin’ (for a while) in the rain …’
By MONTE DUTTON Tanner Finley was untouchable for three innings. (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. It was great to get out. After the usual – writing, assembling, choosing photos, playing guitar, sipping coffee and half paying attention to what’s on the tube – I went off whistle-stopping late Thursday afternoon. First was watching the Junior …
Continue reading County Signs: Post 56 encounters sparse resistance
By MONTE DUTTON FCA Camp at PC (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. I saw several games at Rickwood Field when the Birmingham Barons played there. The Barons have since moved twice and now play in a sparkling downtown stadium. The San Francisco Giants are playing the Saint Louis Cardinals there on Thursday night. One reason …
By MONTE DUTTON Clinton Family YMCA executive director Harold Nichols surrounded by champions (YMCA photos) Click here. I’ve been thinking about this since I heard the news of Willie Howard Mays’ death on Tuesday night. I think three athletes have made me cry. On the way from Fenway Park back to New Hampshire on a …
Continue reading County Signs: Saying bye to the Say Hey Kid
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. What an eventful weekend. Bryson DeChambeau won the United States Open in a tournament that was close from start to finish. The winner was really Pinehurst No. 2, which may be the greatest golf course in the world. DeChambeau tried to lose it, and Rory McIlroy succeeded. …
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. The United States Open is being played in Moore County, N.C., which is a golf principality. Just to the south is Richmond County, which is a onetime NASCAR duchy. Every time I wrote about a race at Rockingham, I stayed at the Holiday Inn in Southern Pines, …
Continue reading Furmanology: The need for speed(ing tickets)
By MONTE DUTTON Presbyterian's Daniel Eagen (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. When the United States Open is played at Pinehurst No. 2, I have a small degree of familiarity. I played it. Or, rather, it played me. Several times. Back when it was Winston Cup, and Rockingham hosted two races a year, an annual junket …
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. I washed my face in the morning dew / Bathed my soul in the sun / I washed my face in the morning sun / And kept on moving along Of course, Tom T. Hall wrote it. He didn’t have a morning of 7-on-7s at Clinton High …
Nightrider's Lament 