By MONTE DUTTON Gaffney's Brady Smith is safe at second (Monte Dutton photos). Click here. A remarkable facet of baseball is how often lifelong fans, veterans of thousands of games, see things they have never seen before. Naturally, on Wednesday night in the bottom of the sixth inning at Clinton High School, a full moon …
Tag: humor
Months and days and watches
By MONTE DUTTON A man looks stressed while managing multiple devices and documents at a busy desk The waitress had her back turned. She was doing something at the grill. “How many days are there this month?” she asked to no one in particular. I’ve a little in common with those guys in the commercials …
Young leads Devils, 15-1
By MONTE DUTTON Coach Peyton Spangler greets Camden Finley at third base (Monte Dutton photos). Click here. Surprising no one, Clinton (21-2, 9-1 Region 3-2A) turned Eau Claire every which way but loose on Friday evening after the Red Devils honored their seniors at their valley baseball park. The region has been utterly dominated by …
Clinton dispatches Eau Claire with aplomb
By MONTE DUTTON Luke Young strikes again (Monte Dutton photo). Click here. Clinton High hit the capital city like it was changing planes on Tuesday. The Red Devils took batting practice against Eau Claire, winning for the 11th time in a row with a 15-0, happy-hour annihilation of the Shamrocks. Led by catcher Luke Young …
Clinton drives Southside Christian to distraction
By MONTE DUTTON Luke Young takes one deep (Monte Dutton photos). Click here. This wasn’t just another 13-3 runaway. It was, however, a runaway, gradually building and intensifying, executed by the long ball and the crafty bunt, moving runners a base at a time and circling them as if it were a stock-car race. Southside …
Continue reading Clinton drives Southside Christian to distraction
All’s well that ends well at PC spring practice
By MONTE DUTTON Max Holtzclaw fires (Monte Dutton photos). After Presbyterian College’s spring football game on Saturday, I asked the new head coach, Matt Rahl, why the fans called better plays than the coaches. As Dudley Moore once asked in the role of Arthur Bach, “Isn’t fun the greatest thing you can have?” Rahl walked …
Continue reading All’s well that ends well at PC spring practice
Not a whole lot of close competition
By MONTE DUTTON Avery Barnes drives in a run (Monte Dutton photos). Click here. It seemed too fast for a baseball game. With one out in the bottom of the third inning on Friday evening, Clayton Kyko reached base on an error by Fairfield Central’s Caden Brown. Graydon Watkins, who had doubled, scored what was …
A place frozen in space and time
By MONTE DUTTON Click here. Martinsville. The only NASCAR track I ever wrote a song about. The basis of the song was actually a time when I got some musician friends from Kentucky tickets to the all-star race at Charlotte. Martinsville just fit the story better. I always thought Martinsville Speedway had the sport’s most …
In dreams and reality
By MONTE DUTTON When I awakened this morning, nature called. Nothing unusual about that. It’s my interior alarm clock. I keep forgetting to buy a new one. Last night I spent an hour talking with an old NASCAR chum. The first Darlington race of the season was Sunday. My friend and I laughed at stories …
Baseball is just what we need
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. The country has gone crazy. On that we can all agree. Most folks are mad. What we cannot agree on is what has made us mad. An old folk song comes to mind. It’s about the collapse of a musical group. Well, the one on the right …
Nightrider's Lament 