"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)
(Monte Dutton photo) Click here. The summer sports doldrums are ending. The football teams are hitting the practice fields. Scrimmages begin in a week. Laurens Academy gets a head start with a game on Aug. 16 against Cambridge Academy in Greenwood. The Laurens and Clinton seasons begin a week later, both at home in big …
Continue reading County Signs: August sweat breeds autumn success
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. When Steve Englehart arrived at Presbyterian College, in the spring of 2022, amid the ruins of the Year of Living Dangerously with Kevin Kelley, about 30 football-playing warm bodies greeted him. On Wednesday morning, Englehart greeted his third team of Blue Hose, now numbered 117. None of …
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. Practice makes perfect. Doesn’t it? It’s not without its hazards. Injuries happen. An ancient television show known as Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In used to hand out the “Fickle Finger of Fate.” My view is that luck intervenes only in the short term. It all evens out. Click …
Continue reading County Signs: Legends of fall begin with August work
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. For no particular reason, I awakened reminiscing on Sunday morning. It wasn’t Christmas, New Year’s or the Fourth of July. It wasn’t Thanksgiving, Memorial or Labor Day. It was just Sunday morning coming down. Or waking up. The great sportswriter Red Smith once wrote a book, Absent …
Continue reading County Signs: Memories of absent friends, etc.
By MONTE DUTTON (Pixabay photo) Click here. Things kids don’t do anymore because there’s so much else to do: I’ve never read about it or seen a film, but when I was in college, I discovered that almost everyone had played in their youth what I knew as ‘thump football.” Kids could play it on …
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. On Friday morning, I awakened, and for about 30 minutes, thought it was Saturday. Until I made coffee, I thought I still had Sweet ‘n’ Low. The tipoff was that TCM wasn’t running a silly comedy or a crime serial. (Inexplicably, I have grown fond of old …
Continue reading County Signs: Turns out it isn’t the weekend yet
By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. Sensations keep us going. They keep us ambling up stadium steps long after we’re capable of running them. We remember how it feels, from a distance of decades, to lie on one’s back, the sun overhead, squinting, while raising the legs six inches … and holding them …
By MONTE DUTTON Coleman Coker (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. I heard, almost accidentally, words of a political analyst that struck me as useful for young athletes. “Hope alone will not win, but despair will lose every time.” Three American Legion Senior baseball teams have Laurens County players. All three had their playoff series stretched …
By MONTE DUTTON Click here. Friends, are you anxious every time you turn on the TV? Are you developing an emergency aversion, which is to say, an aversion to emergencies? Football starts next. What could go wrong? At the very least, athletes learn how to manage anxiety. Many even excel amidst it. I love so …
Continue reading County Signs: What we can learn from the young
By MONTE DUTTON (Pixabay photo) Click here. I’m out of big thoughts, so I’ll string together some little ones. The Open is a Russian novel. By the time one gets the names straight, there’s a whole new cast. “The secret is how he looks at the putting line with his eyes.” As opposed to his …
Continue reading County Signs: Schauffele rides with Captain Kirk
Nightrider's Lament 