Building Mackey's Great Wall

First appeared on December 17th, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

All told, China’s Great Wall is estimated to be around 13,000 miles long, or roughly the driving distance from Indianapolis to Evansville before the completion of the I-69 extension. After 2,000 years, the Wall still snakes across China like a wild river, the only manmade object visible from outer space. Built on the backs of prisoners and slaves, hopeless souls allotted only rice and water, it was the brainchild of a maniac and life preserver that kept Chinese society afloat until the advent of gunpowder.

It took the Chinese over 2,000 years and far too many empires to name here to finish their wall, it took Purdue Head Coach Matt Painter around 48 months to build his. But what he’s created is impenetrable. It is imposing. It is historic. It is the Great Wall of Mackey.

What the Boilers have in A.J. Hammons, Isaac Haas and Caleb Swanigan is the best kept secret in college basketball. For, despite an undefeated start, few are talking about Purdue, and Painter would seemingly have it no other way. When you’re blue collar to the core you don’t have time for praise, yours is a life dedicated to productivity and industriousness.

The Chinese were certainly an industrious bunch. They gave the world gunpowder, fireworks, whiskey and toilet paper and is there really anything else one needs come Friday night? But now your brother in law, staring across at you from the booth you're sharing at the Golden Wok Buffet, has you convinced the Chinese really do serve dog meat. And suddenly, next to your glazed beans and precious sweet bun, those pieces of chicken do seem oddly misshapen and far too large.

“Think of all the dogs you’ve seen in China, ever seen one wearing a collar?” He asks as you nervously push your General Tso around thinking this is the same guy who once told you cell phones cause testicular cancer and has numerous times offered to smash them with a hammer (and yes, we’re talking about cell phones).

The waitress is friendly, smiling ear to ear in the Chinese fashion, as she hustles your plates off to the back room. And, despite some incredible Lo Mein and silky-smooth Won-Ton, in the end you come to the realization you will most likely die having discovered there is nothing on Earth more fantastic than Chi-Chi’s cornbread.

If you’re going to beat Purdue there appears no obvious game plan. Their size is so glaring they look like forty year old men playing Biddy Basketball. They have athleticism and shooting and, yes, they’re going to play defense because their head coach is still named Matt Painter. And size, athleticism and shooting just happen to be at the top of any checklist for any coach trying to assemble any basketball team anywhere at any level.

So as the rest of basketball is busy going small, pushing the ball and relying on perimeter shooting, spacing and athleticism, Painter has remained true to his smash mouth style; he’s just upped the ante by adding a historic front line. Still, how such an unconventional approach can be hugely effective remains a mystery. Perhaps some things are just impossible to explain, like how Americans still maintain faith their government will address the real issues facing us, or why my four year old chose to draw a portrait of me with flowers for hands.

Purdue is good. Scary good. And, despite their high ranking, they’re still not completely on the national radar. They’re not sexy enough and they’re not exciting, but by mid-January most will recognize they’re going to be one incredibly tough out come tournament time.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Crean's Hoosiers in the Giving Mood

First appeared on December 9th, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

Tis the season for generosity and compassion and, as Americans, ours is a rich history indeed. From disaster relief in third world countries to the Peace Corps, we’ve proven time and again we’re far above recent headlines; no matter how ugly.

American’s give. From school groups organizing canned food drives to keeping the less fortunate warm by donating used coats, we care and we give. Even the blustery Donald Trump has embraced the holidays as, for months now, he’s been giving Republicans nightmares that he will eventually become their nominee.

Tom Crean’s Indiana Hoosiers have been in the holiday spirit as well, proving early on they’re absolutely committed to giving back to others. Whether it be giving up lay-ups or wide open three pointers, an uncontested jump shot or straight line drive to the basket, the Hoosiers have been one of the most generous teams in Division One men’s basketball so far.

Didn’t get the shot you wanted last time? Here, just let us try to pull a spin move while splitting three defenders and we’ll give you another chance. Generosity is a noble attribute in almost every setting outside of competitive sports. And Indiana’s generosity has resulted in a disappointing 6-3 start. It’s been a start Hoosier fans equate with finding a chunk of coal in their stocking or hearing Purdue is better than they were last year; like, a lot better.

So Tom Crean took his team to Hawaii and you were left at home shoveling out. In the flickering television light, you saw an endless horizon outlined by a rolling sea. Angry waves crashing ashore, raking away at sparkling sands dotted with tanned bodies. You saw it and you longed to be there. To feel the heat of a volcano, taste the Kalua pork, learn to cut a pineapple and succumb to the spell of a swaying grass skirt. You wanted Hawaii worse than the Republican National Committee wants anyone other than Trump.

And then you watched the first ten minutes of Indiana’s game with Wake Forest and decided your $5,000 was better spent somewhere else; anywhere else. As if caring were the last thing they were prepared to do, Crean’s Hoosiers appeared wholeheartedly apathetic, especially on the defensive end.

Unfortunately for the Hoosiers, Christmas is supposed to be the season of caring. For one month out of the year Americans do their best to pump the brakes on their busy lives in order to consider others. We want the holidays to be magical. We want to hear our favorite songs, pick out symmetrically flawless trees, give our children moments that will never fade and finally wrap a present that doesn’t wind up looking like it was done by someone wearing boxing gloves.

So you sit watching your neighbor jerking angrily at a tangled bundle of Christmas lights the size of a hay bale, and you find yourself thinking basketball isn’t supposed to be hard. You hear the extension ladder bang sharply off his house as the wife asks him to move the wreath three inches back to the right, and you’re left thinking how truly simple the sport is.

You pass the ball to your team, you know, the guys running around in the same uniforms. You work it around for the best shot and you keep your man from scoring. It’s really far less difficult than it sounds.

But the willingness to care is at the root of everything. Unfortunately, through 9 games, Indiana simply hasn’t cared enough for defense and, until they do, they’ll continue to give games away; tis the season after all.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Right or Wrong: Let us give thanks

First appeared on November 25, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

Let us give thanks. Thanks to the Pilgrims with their drab frock coats and blunderbusses. Thanks to the natives who showed this desperate band of immigrants the tricks they would need to survive a brutal winter. Things like how to grow corn and track deer and the best places to find cheap gas and cigarettes.

And let us not forget the turkeys. A bird so good we eat him only once a year. Poor souls, who will, by the millions, give themselves up for us to celebrate the legendary triumphs of our ancestors. So how can it be that all this pomp and circumstance could be based on one big lie?
How could it be everything you were taught as kid is wrong? Historical truths that seemed the cornerstones of a nation suddenly dismissed. George Washington cutting down his cherry tree and Teddy Roosevelt inventing the Teddy Bear or the fact Donald Trump’s hair is real.

And so historians, who apparently have nothing better to do than sit around trying to prove other historians wrong, tell us the Pilgrims, forever the stalwarts of purity and righteousness, were not all devout Christians. They weren’t all nice to the natives and, at least when it came to their wardrobe, they didn’t all favor fifty different shades of gray.

They spoke of a government of, for and by the people and yet early on theirs was dominated by a religious elite. There were no cranberries, sweet potatoes or pumpkin pie at the first Thanksgiving, which leads most 7 year olds to wonder why you just can’t order a pizza.

For you this means it’s all been for nothing. Thirty plus years of bad football and choking down dry turkey as your Uncle Randy recounts the free throws he made to win that sectional game, all this over the bass beat of your father complaining about gas prices. And for what? For what historians would have us believe is a fake holiday?

So we’re left to decide for ourselves what we accept as truth and what we question. And at 5-6, can we really believe in the Indiana Hoosiers? A team that could easily boast wins over ranked opponents in Michigan, Iowa and Ohio State and yet had dropped 6 straight before downing Maryland last week.

A team one win away from strapping on their bowling shoes. And there, at the bottom of the schedule, a familiar foe awaits. Instead of finding two teams limping into an Oaken Bucket game hoping only to finish their seasons on a high note, a victory Saturday sends Indiana to their first bowl since George W. Bush was the Commander in Chief of Strategery. Meanwhile, Purdue arrives at 2-9 trying to jab a needle the size of a javelin into Kevin Wilson’s balloon.

These are not uncharted waters for the Hoosiers. This is not a New World. Still, can up really be up and down truly down? Was the Revolutionary War really fought against the British? Or could it have been three-foot tall aliens who just happened to fight using conventional European military tactics? These are the questions we’re forced to ask ourselves when historians tell us its entirely possible Lincoln never eclipsed 5’11, using blocks of wood in his boots instead to compensate for rabid insecurities.

So on this Thanksgiving, get out there and be the master of your own destiny. Believe in the unlikely, embrace the magic of your childhood or accept the so called conventional wisdom. Either way, it’s still a free country and nobody can dispute that. In the meantime just be careful believing in the Indiana Hoosiers because, revisionist history or not, they’ve let us down one too many times before.


© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Time to let it linger, on Veteran's Day

First appeared on November 10th, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

Francis Scott Key penned the Star Spangled Banner after watching the British shelling Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. Fortunately for us Mr. Key didn’t have a Smart Phone or he’d probably have missed most of the rocket’s red glare. For you and I this means our national anthem would most likely be “YMCA” or something by Dylan we’d all be forced to mumble in unison.

The first time I realized the flag was special was watching my older brother playing varsity basketball. The way a gym packed to the gills would rise together in silence, the energy of the impending contest and eager conversations of the blustery hayseeds suddenly tamed by a sober reverence for the flag.

And when the people sat down and the ball went up, I watched my brother throwing himself around on the floor, playing his guts out and he became a hero. November is reserved for heroes of a different lot. Those who personified honor, sacrifice and duty. The words often fall short for those of us on the outside looking in.

However, the flag bridges those two worlds. An omnipresent reminder that the duty of those who never served is to honor those who have. The flag is a one dimensional time machine capable of dropping you onto a battlefield in Gettysburg where you’re asked to charge across a vast open plain with nothing more than a blade of grass to hide behind, all the while a hailstorm of hot metal rains down upon you. And above the din of cannon fire and muskets, the piercing cries of men surround you, haunting and final.

It can take you to Normandy, where you’re shoulder to shoulder with a kid a country mile from the prime of life. And, when the panel of that landing craft drops, he glimpses for the first time the insurmountable odds awaiting him. The flag stands for the courage he showed to vault himself into the waist-deep tide. Water stained pink from the blood of friends, Nazi flak buzzing and ricocheting around him.

So you catch your eleven year old fooling with his phone during the Star Spangled Banner and, oh say, you can definitely see you’ve failed as a parent. This was it, your Final Exam and you just posted the old one legged A.

Mortified, you tell little Johnny he won’t see his phone until he’s 25 before throwing him in the car. You tear out of town, barreling east across the Ohio, pointing your wheels towards D.C. And somewhere around Harrisburg you find yourself hopelessly lost and have to ask Johnny to Google a new route.

By dawn’s early light you find yourself at the intersection of history, architecture, tradition and new ideas, the seat of change and heartbeat of freedoms continued evolution. But Washington is also a living celebration of those Americans who dared to defend our ideals. Stone figures with strong jowls, faces racked with determination, men who gave themselves up for a nation, a nation of people they would never come to know.

Old dead men who today find themselves surrounded by hot dog vendors and tee-shirt hockers, googly eyed tourists lost in a jungle of copper, bronze and limestone. And the limestone, my god the limestone, walls and halls and corridors, benches and arches, cornices, balustrades, everything we so proudly hailed carved from limestone.

Streets choked with slow moving tour buses carting anxious, pimply faced pre-teens. Kites of bright red and yellow, tails dragging in the wind, waving high above the rangers in broad-brimmed hats. Brave men and women charged with corralling the interest of these precocious pre-teens.
Bleary eyed, over medicated and restless children who don’t know George Bush from George Washington. And all this exploration and congestion and protestation rages before the watchful eyes of Honest Abe from his perch at the end of the Mall, his brow bent with uncertainty over the scene before him.

So stately upon his throne, high overlooking the reflecting pool, Lincoln has become the poster child for standing up for ones ideals. And as great as he was, how easily we forget Honest Abe’s line in the sand was defended by the hearts and souls of thousands.

We have to find a way to stop our lives, forgo the order and rigid scheduling and prioritized lists that shape our time. We owe this to all who’ve protected the freedoms we as Americans cherish.

So there you stand, in the shadow of Lincoln. You and little Johnny and little Johnny’s Smart Phone. And you linger as the pimply faced pre-teens race up and down the steps before an incredulous Ranger. You linger as the kites race higher and higher. You linger with little Johnny’s hand in yours. You linger so that these dead shall not have died in vain.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Time for Manning to kick the Colts

First appeared on November 6th, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

So your Colts are 3-5 and one person lighter on the payroll. They are a listing ship that has strayed far, far from course. A storm is brewing on the horizon, skies of dark blue and orange threaten as a power struggle has erupted at the helm.

Suddenly Jim Irsay, Chuck Pagano and Ryan Grigson are busy trying to elbow each other out of the way. Of course the bad news for Colts fans is, at this point it really doesn’t matter who grabs the wheel because nobody seems to know where they’re going anyway.

Pep Hamilton was forced off the plank, but don’t worry he didn’t see it coming. His face was buried in his poster-sized play chart hunting up another long pass play and he simply sunk like a stone. And now Rob Chudzinski has been handed the Scotch Tape and Superglue, so as to piece together what’s left of Andrew Luck’s ego. Meanwhile Luck, the once promising and unquestioned Captain, has been relegated to the hold, where he huddles in a dark corner, shell-shocked and shivering, mumbling to himself like a half-wit.

And the storm closes in as the ship rolls uncontrollably. An undefeated team, a tremendously talented defense and the future Hall of Famer the Colts gave up on four years ago are about to swamp what’s left of Indy’s half-submerged deck.

But he was done, his arm a noodle, no feeling in his hands. He can’t throw the deep ball anymore, look at his numbers. Manning isn’t what he used to be, Bob from Quality Control says, which is true, but he has a world class defense behind him you counter, one that has led him to an undefeated start. This is a point Bob is quick to shrug off as if he was the one who invented the Jet Sweep or Nickel Defense, which of course means conceding anything football to you is therefore forever beneath him.

Still, tired as he may appear, Manning’s Broncos are not the defenseless gazelle that has strayed from the herd, the one the Colts so desperately need to pounce on right now. Instead, they are a rabid she-wolf with superhuman strength and play every down as if you just kicked one of their pups in the teeth.

And so the greatest mind ever to play the sport sails in to town at the same time one of the games brightest young minds appears to have lost his. In the world of the NFL, the quarterback discussion will begin and end with Peyton until we are all dust in the wind, or Brett Favre attempts yet another comeback, whichever happens first.

So come on in Denver, everything else has gone wrong. Colts nation should embrace their impending beat down. They should open their arms and welcome the absolute skull-rattling thrashing their team will take Sunday. Here’s hoping the skies open up and it rains touchdowns. After all, the storybook years Peyton gave us deserve a Hollywood ending. One that includes his vanquishing the team that quit on him. And we all know a good vanquishing is not a true vanquishing without complete and utter domination.

Somehow it seems fitting that, for once, we should realize the fate so many suffered at the hands of Manning’s Colts for lo those many years. Don’t let the firing of Pep Hamilton fool you, this season is lost. With that in mind, let’s go out and set a new NFL record for points allowed. Let’s send Peyton out with more than a bang. Let’s send him out with an eruption of Krakatoan proportions.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Note to Cubs Fans: Beware, Curse Ahead

First appeared on October 14th, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

It’s not every day you find a goat blocking rush hour traffic. Still there he was. Standing right in front of your car, trying his best to train a wary eye on you while maintaining focus on the grass in his mouth. He chews on, wobbly-headed and busy reading you like a book.

A Cubs fan your whole life, you’ve suffered through forty plus years of futility. Forty plus years of aimlessly wandering a postseason desert. Forty years of this hairy little guy owning you. From those undersized horns and empty eyes down to his distinguished tassel, you know full well he’s just another bitter soul. Bitter for playing second fiddle all these years to his superstar cousin the sheep. And for what? When’s the last time anyone wore wool after all?

Your Cubs have National League Rookie of the Year, Manager of the Year and Cy Young in the bag, but somehow it’s not enough. After 40 years, you want more. And here they stand, four wins away from their first World Series appearance since 1945.

The expectations of failure have haunted you since the All Star Break. They’re quick with a bar of soap first thing in the shower and from the passenger seat on the way to work, they grumble that maybe this new talk radio phase of yours has gone on a bit too long. They trudge beside you up the stairs, through a maze of cubicles all the way to the tiny one you share with Ed from Accounting, the one prized for being closest to the Men’s room, the same one littered with pictures of Ed’s nine year old son, the future Noble Laureate.

In 2007 you drove all the way to New Orleans and paid a Voodoo Lady $500 to lift the curse. And, after verifying your personal check numbers with her roommate, a part-time soothsayer who moonlighted as a bank teller, Madam Zydeco took the picture of the Bartman Catch you brought along, set it on fire, spread the ashes in a bowl of milk and told you to drink it. Three months later the Cubs were swept by the Diamondbacks in the NLDS.

Now, as you sit behind the wheel with a barrage of blaring horns reigning down on you, you’re seriously thinking about running this goat over. The Russian’s elbowed us out of Syria, why shouldn't you be able to nudge a brazen Bovidae out of the road?

Your belief ran hot and cold all season. Between Rizzo’s 30 home runs and 100 RBI’s, Bryant’s Franchise Rookie Record for homers and Jake Arietta’s inhuman second half stretch, it was all coming together and yet you resisted the urge to become fully invested. After all, you’ve seen the end of this one far too many times.

The experts say this was never supposed to be the year anyway. Its Maddon’s first season and the Cubs, despite being loaded with talent, are just too young. “Don’t put yourself through the pain of the NLCS,” Ed advises, shoulder to shoulder in your cubicle, “Why don’t you come watch Ed Jr. instead? He’s doing a public performance at the community theater, a solo piece on the Abacus he wrote himself.”

Seventy years ago a ticket taker outside Wrigley did what any right thinking human would do and refused to let a goat into a baseball game. Since that time it’s been total darkness on the Northside. And now, the chance of a lifetime presents itself. The chance to erase 70 years of futility with a pair of squealing of tires. After all, they’ve come this far, just a nudge is all they need.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

An open letter to the Indianapolis Colts

First appeared on September 30th, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

Dear Indianapolis Colts,

I just wanted to drop you a line to say thanks. Thank you Jim Irsay for not coming out of the stands at halftime Sunday in Nashville to fire Chuck Pagano, despite the fact every single Colt Fan, and probably a few who’ve spent time at a Pagano family reunion, fully expected you to do so.

Thank you Andrew Luck for deciding at some point in the Fourth Quarter that "spreading the ball around" doesn't mean sharing it with the other team. And while I’ve got your ear, rumor has it you were one pick away from Fans starting a movement to sign Out of Control Beard Andrew Luck to the roster. This means I’ll need you to keep hitting your targets, because Out of Control Beard Andrew Luck is so creepy a cheesy commercial is the only place I ever want to see him.

Thank you coaches for drafting Phillip Dorsett to electrify the return game only to make the decision to play Griff Whalen in front of him. I understand it’s common practice for rookies to learn from vets, but I’m fairly certain taking a knee and fair catching a football are both things Phillip learned at a very young age.

Thank you front office, coaches and players for not squelching the talk of dysfunction within the brass of the franchise. For, if you were in fact planning to go 0-16 before Sunday, at least those lonely, tortured and completely inadequate souls in the part-time-pretend sports media would have something interesting to write about.

Thank you offensive line for mixing up your strategies of drawing a holding penalty on any play that garners more than five yards with blocking absolutely no one. We understand this is a delicate balance and hats off to you for maintaining it for a full 60 minutes.

Thank you Pat McAfee for both being Pat McAfee as well as taking a chance on Sunday when everything was going completely wrong. And while your converted fake punt was almost immediately rendered irrelevant by another Luck interception, we still applaud anyone willing to stick their neck out while everyone around is busy shoving their heads in the sand.

Thank you Robert Mathis for enduring 10 surgeries and a grueling rehab schedule just to get back on the field. For even when all I had hoped for was crumbling down around me in a fury of turnovers, missed tackles and holding penalties, just seeing 98 getting after the quarterback again was enough to give me a spark of hope.

Thank you Dwight Lowery for being the only defensive player to actually get off the bus before the Fourth Quarter on Sunday. Your Pick six fooled me into believing my old team was back and then, upon returning to the belief my old team was in fact still enjoying quiet time in a lounge chair on a private Mexican beach, you intercepted another pass and saved me.

Finally, thank you to all the Colts. Despite waiting until the fourth quarter to do so, thank you for finally showing the fight, toughness, grit, execution and emotion I’d been expecting to see from you in the first two games. And while it remains unclear how people will remember me, one thing’s for sure, because of your efforts Sunday nobody has given up on me yet.

Thanks Again

Your Season


© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Colts Season off to Inharmonious Start

First appeared on September 17, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

Abraham Lincoln once said “a house divided against itself cannot stand”. And while that crusty old history teacher, the weird one whose short in the leg slacks were funnier than his jokes, told you Honest Abe was speaking about the unraveling of the United States, for all we know he could have been talking about the Republican Party in 2016 or Caitlyn Jenner’s closet.

Those in the non-part-time pretend media would argue Lincoln was editorializing about the Indianapolis Colts Front Office. And as rumors swirl over West 56th, the little people get wind that Grigson hates Pagano and Pagano loathes Grigson while, at some point, Jim Irsay sets his pail down long enough to tweet “all is well” from his flooding deck.

Yet, here in the cheap seats, we’re left struggling to understand why it really matters if Pagano and Grigson hate each other, neither one of them catch, throw or run with the ball after all. It would seem we’re beating the bushes for someone to blame, some underlying issue or the dreaded “circumstances beyond our control”. Something to explain why those things we want most from life continue to elude us, for an American life is not complete without a handful of convenient excuses.

Unfortunately for fans of the Horseshoe, harmony isn’t available online, even for Amazon Prime members. Harmony is a warm summer evening, standing bare footed in cool grass, spraying the petunias and coneflowers as the soft sounds of Wheel of Fortune drift through an open window. And beyond fluttering lace curtains, the wife ponders a tricky crossword as the children share space, shoulder to shoulder on the couch, each completely absorbed by some non-electronic form of entertainment; perhaps Jenga, a deck of cards or maybe even a book, if those even exist anymore.

And for every flower sprinkler out there, there are a half dozen or more tossing cups out their window in a parking lot, mean faced monsters screaming profanities across an interstate lane or mocking a strict teacher in front of their children. Harmony isn’t free and it isn’t cheap and it isn’t easy to find, which is why most Americans are of the belief it doesn’t exist.

Harmony doesn’t win Championships and it doesn’t help nail that interview. The power of harmony should never find itself in question however. Harmony is greater than the rush of a new speedboat and more welcoming than a vacation home, and yet for most of us it lingers in the shadows, just beyond our reach.

Rex the big Royal Blue Dinosaur doesn’t exactly exude harmony but he does win football games. Sunday was an unfortunate witch’s brew of Luck’s inability to perform in season openers, the energy of Rex Ryan’s first game as Buffalo Head Coach and a dash of Pagano’s teams always laying an egg once or twice a season.

As for front office chasms, if a rift between the Colts Head Coach and General Manager is only a myth, the good news is Jim Irsay will likely tweet about it just to let everyone know and, if a rift does in fact exist, the good news is Jim Irsay will likely tweet about it just to let everyone know.

Yet they say where there’s smoke, there’s likely fire. And anytime your performance is best compared to that of a team that has never played the sport before, there will always be questions. Questions like “Who taught the Colts’ secondary to tackle?” and “If Lincoln was so important, why did we put him on the least valuable coin?” And even Honest Abe, who boasts being the tallest president, would have been unable see what the end of this season will bring; though he probably could have done a better job tackling and fielding punts.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Harbaugh for President

First appeared on September 3rd, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

If Jim Harbaugh had been your First Grade teacher he would have told you to stop crying and get back to work. At recess he would have told everyone Billy can cross the Monkey Bars faster than you and at lunch he’d have made it perfectly clear trading your corn for another No Bake Cookie will only make you fat. His is a world devoid of Band-Aids and hugs.

And far away from the bright lights of Ann Arbor, a line forms before a weary coach, plastic smile pasted on. He shakes every hand of his little team, congratulating them on their 13-0 loss. Later, somewhere beyond left field, a Mini-Van Mom passes out juice boxes and treats she put together with love. Individual Ziplock baggies, each labeled in Sharpie because Tommee doesn’t like pretzels and Earin likes extra trail mix and don’t forget Mikel has a wheat allergy so he’ll most likely need a block of cheese or maybe a coloring book.

And as the little warriors inhale their snack, the coach mumbles something about growth and how proud he is of the effort they gave despite losing every game. All this before doling out the exact same trophy to everyone, including Rico who was the only kid to reach base or record an out or show any tangible signs of improvement all season.

If Jim Harbaugh were that Pee-Wee coach he would have told everyone to take a long hard look at Rico. “If you want to win games you need to work as hard as Rico. If you want to win games you’ll put down the game controller and play catch with your dad. And if you don’t have a dad, you’ll throw a ball off the roof of your house and catch it. And if you don’t have a house then you’ll ask one of the people living under the bridge with you to play catch.”

Jim Harbaugh would blast his team for losing. Blast them for not being better, not working hard enough. And he would do this because he knows every second grader in India and China wants to bury the U.S. and the more we hand out trophies and pat people on the back for losing, the faster it will happen. That’s why I’m asking Harbaugh to resign his position at Michigan and run for President.

What this country needs is more honesty. We need to be able to look others in the eye and tell them exactly how we feel and, when necessary, tell them maybe they can find a little room for improvement after all. And this includes everyone from your seven year old to the guy pretending to be a sports columnist in the local paper.

I’m no expert on motivation, just ask my wife, my boss, my parents or my kids. Still, it doesn’t take a professor boasting hours of research, countless articles published and dozens of agonizingly dry speeches given to recognize if you constantly tell someone how great they are, they tend to see no reason for improvement.

As President, Harbaugh would make loyalty, hard work and discipline the foundation of every child’s education. Anyone caught whining about political correctness or asking why their daughter only got one smiley face on her paper when Johnny got four would be given a pair of Dockers and a one way ticket to Siberia.

A history of demanding perfection and grinding on those around him will follow Harbaugh to Ann Arbor. And often, despite success, that history has a history of leading to his demise (see 49ers, San Francisco). So while Harbaugh appears ready for Ann Arbor, the million dollar question remains, is Ann Arbor ready for Harbaugh?

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

As the Cubs tempt fate, fans brace for the inevitable

First appeared on August 18, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

With Donald Trump still leading in the polls, Hillary forwarding Top Secret emails and the Cubs winners in ten of their last eleven; its official, the end of the world is upon us.

Turns out that uncle, the one with the ‘Licensed Sasquatch Hunter’ bumper sticker, was right all along. The world will end before Washington starts making sense. For years he took you out to the woods and showed you how to hunt and fish, claiming when the end comes, only the strong, those who can build fires, find fresh meat and tie a barrel hitch, will survive.

By firelight he told you how the moon landing was filmed in a California basement. A two-bedroom ranch owned by the Night Manager of a Denny’s in the San Fernando Valley. “Surprisingly huge basement for a Ranch.”

He swore the Soviets killed Elvis because there was a hidden capitalistic agenda in his lyrics and that cheeseburgers in American schools are green because the FDA was injecting them with human growth hormones. “Reagan was tired of losing to East Germany in the Olympics.”

But that was thirty years ago and not only are you older now, you are also wiser. You know the world most likely isn’t going to end anytime soon. You are also smart enough to realize the Cubs can’t win the World Series this year because this is the year of the sheep, which is basically a goat, and we all know how that’s worked out so far.

Still, the Northsiders are stirring the hearts and minds of this great nation and that’s the part the rest of baseball loves most. The rest of baseball, lounging in their monogramed Turkish bathrobes, sipping Arnold Palmer’s while leafing through dog-eared copies of an ‘Idiots Guide to Dealing with Post-season Success.’

And there they linger, in only the way they can, pretending to read but all the while waiting. Waiting with baited breath for that priceless moment the Cubs fall apart, crushing the hearts of millions, the eternally downtrodden, yet again. A train wreck indeed.

Meaningful baseball has become an oxymoron for Cubs fans, a mythical figure most have spent the better part of a lifetime searching for. There have been glimpses. Grainy images of a foul ball being prematurely snatched up from the stands and a black cat scurrying across an infield. For generations it has loomed on the horizon, just close enough to tease, yet somehow always gone by September.

It’s been over 100 years since a championship last came to the Northside. That magical run was witnessed by then U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt. You know Teddy, the Rough Rider who charged up San Juan Hill, a feat so lasting he remains the answer to the most popular question posed to every Ranger stationed at Mount Rushmore. Exhausted families, sunblock pasted faces, herded together in khaki shorts and loud print shirts, cajoling their restless young ones to take in the powerful artistry that is Rushmore, all the while wondering aloud, “Who’s the one next to Jefferson again?”

But despite the Cubs’ newfound fortunes, don’t expect to find the four horsemen galloping down your street anytime soon, it is after all only the third week of August. There is still plenty of time for a full-blown collapse. One so monumental it triggers widespread earthquakes. Cataclysmic tremors that move mountains and cause rocks to fall down upon those hiding amongst them.

And while you’re thinking we’re in trouble either way, just remember the Cardinals are so far ahead of the rest of the National League they could take a couple weeks off and still wake up in first place. This means, Armageddon or not, the Cubs are once again destined to leave fans feeling undeniably inadequate.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

America's Pastime and her grand search for emotion

First appeared on August 4, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

When Wilmer Flores took the field before 50,000 screaming fans, he wept. He wasn’t a World Champion and he hadn’t just thrown a No Hitter and his wife hadn’t yelled “It’s a boy!” from the stands. The uncomfortable scene was begat by Social Media.

Twitter, Facebook, push notifications, text messages flying furiously through the air, invisible yet infinitely powerful. Word on the street was Flores had been traded, jettisoned like space trash from the only Major League team he’d ever played for.

A passing glance across a crowded room, a friendly wave, two people sharing a look that says far more than just hello. Emotion is glaring. It is unmistakable and powerful and can make you seem qualified for a job you have absolutely no business getting. It’s also noticeably missing from Baseball.

Like an image of a great mastodon stomping across the frozen tundra, his burly frame and impressive tusks the definition of raw power, we see a video of Pete Rose running over Ray Fosse at home plate and think “who would do such a thing?”

Today’s stars play hard, they play to win but despite some exciting young talent and the sudden rise of the greatest franchise in professional sports (we’re talking about the Cubs here in case your Google search returns something different), real emotion remains Baseball’s Ivory Billed Woodpecker.

Of course George Washington bears the brunt of the blame. With the size of today’s contracts, it doesn’t take a baseball insider to explain to we little people why playing with pure emotion and worrying over a career ending injury are by nature mutually exclusive.

Your scoutmaster said you wouldn’t get anywhere without a little emotion but you didn’t believe him because he smelled of stale beer and wore a really bad hair-hat your best friend said looked like the tail of a Pomeranian and he couldn’t even get the fire started for crissakes!

So you drifted after crossing that stage in High School and waited for the hand of fate to reach out and give you something to validate your existence, meanwhile that cousin, the one your mother always dotes on at Christmas, got that promotion in Milwaukee and there’s a lion loose in Milwaukee and a not so small part of you is rooting for that big cat to hunt your cousin down and gnaw his face off. That’s what emotion is. Sometimes it takes a successful cousin to give you a little kick in the pants.

In the end Flores wasn’t traded. Turns out 50,000 Woodward and Bernsteins could be wrong. But it's too late for Flores, thanks to our instant gratification-"hey look at this" world, Flores could hit a Grand Slam to win the World Series and pull a pregnant lady from a burning car on his way to home plate, and he will still always be the guy who cried at shortstop.

And while the real, not part-time-pretend media, is busy blasting the Mets for leaking a trade that hadn’t been fully consummated, we are once again missing the trees for the forest. Flores cares.

He’s not a machine powered by million dollar paychecks. He’s not a mindless robot detached from those dedicated to him most. He is a human being who loves his job and efforts to give something special to the fans every night. Something to the Construction Workers and Policemen, the Sailors and Cowboys and Indian Chiefs who pay their hard earned money to watch him. That’s why Flores cried.

And for that we should stand and applaud, for he is a great American, though your mother would probably argue not as great as your cousin from Milwaukee.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Surviving the British Open

First appeared on July 22, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

As a young boy I remember watching the British Open with my father. The driving rain sweeping down over a lifeless moonscape, hurricane force winds ripping at the flagsticks and forty degree temperatures in July, all foretold of a bleak existence and instilled in me early on a fierce determination never to visit.

England, where the beer flows warm and shirty people tell you to buck up when its monkey’s outside. A Fantasy Island for the downtrodden where, instead of Mai-tai’s and leis, the women greeting you hand out cricket bats and ponchos.

From the comfort of his chair, my father slipped peanuts into his Coke while miserable men in flapping rain gear braced themselves against a treacherous wind, a howling fury battering every shot. All this as I caught myself taking in the warmth and comfort surrounding me, wondering why I would ever even leave the room.

This is of course what we Americans are. For ending the Big One and giving the world a cheap automobile and airplanes, we deserve a little pampering. We make cars with heated steering wheels and we want extra fries with that and faster Internet service and somebody to put our shopping cart away at Wal-Mart once the car is loaded.

We see St. Andrews on the telly and cringe, thinking Scotland as a vacation destination could only appeal to a grizzled Polar Explorer or the English. An angry sea throwing itself against the rocky shore sending giant curtains of mist exploding into the air. A sky the color of concrete under which jaded locals with ashen faces huddle, the collars of their Pea coats turned up, speaking fondly of that magical Thursday when they were school children and a strange round object filled the sky and warmed their world, if but for a short time.

Every year at this time the golf world descends upon this barren rock in the North Atlantic, a place so forbidding that more than 300 years ago our forefathers packed up all they had and ran for the hills. Embarking on a trip where, compared to the near constant dreariness of England, they were willing to brave small pox, scurvy, a dangerous sea voyage into the unknown and a mob of angry natives armed with bows and arrows and hatchets carved from stone fixed to sticks using the hide of the deer, an instrument of death so skilled with were they that it could be thrown from great distances and still split the hairs upon your head.

So from near and far they journeyed to the Old Course in St. Andrews Scotland, which is not England you say. And this is true, if you are also willing to argue that Illinois is not Nebraska. Even ESPN, whose power is so great a SportsCenter commercial with Putin and the San Diego Chicken sharing an elevator would surprise no one, couldn’t dress Scotland up for, despite filming in HD, she still came through your television appearing black and white.

The American spirit, albeit portly and somewhat self-serving, is no stranger to the Open having won half of them since 1990. In the end two Americans found themselves in contention late as their countrymen could only watch from the comfort of their living rooms while St. Andrews gnashed her terrible teeth and rolled her terrible eyes and showed her terrible claws.

Ultimately, the award for hanging on the longest in the 144th Open Championship went to Zach Johnson, who seems bright, talented and well spoken, though we’ve no way of knowing if he corrals his own shopping cart at Wal-Mart.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

"Progress" comes to Clark and Addison

First appeared on July 11, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

A day spent at Wrigley is a day well spent. Forget Florida and its meandering rivers of traffic, or the great outdoors and its fabled tranquility, mosquitoes and near constant threat of bear attacks. Wrigley Field is another world, one you long to visit more and wish others knew less knew about.

So you stand shoulder to shoulder, sharing a prolonged silence with this mass of humanity fate has thrown together in a steel Velveeta box on rails. You avoid eye contact, conversation and interaction of any kind, best not to invite the one you suspect is seriously considering jabbing you in the stomach for your wallet.

Meanwhile the El goes on, listing from side to side while clacking down its tracks. As if you’ve traded an Abraham Lincoln for a ticket back in time, the alleyways and fire escapes of the Brownstones roll past. The homes huddling together and muscle of the trestle that splits them are ripped from a Sinclair novel. Your mind is busy tucking all these images away for later, as your nose has serious questions about the availability of warm water and soap in the Windy City.

For you, this is more than a train ride. It’s therapy. For nothing takes the sting out of a rant from your boss like reminiscing about Wrigley. Forget the overpriced vendors, long lines at the John and warm beer, the only souvenirs you’ll take home are the nostalgic sights and sounds. Lasting images such as the silhouette of downtown cast against an ocean blue sky, or a young father teaching his daughter how to jump a turnstile.

And when your stop arrives and the doors shoosh open, you turn to embrace a scene you didn’t want to leave in the first place. However, instead of an old friends smile or slice of Grannie’s Apple Pie, you’re greeted with something from a Third World Country racked by devastation.

Dump trucks lumber back and forth, navigating a minefield of port-a-potties. With all the synchronicity of a Broadway show, construction workers move seamlessly around each other. It’s the scourge of renovation. A cancer that threatens all you hold dear.

No matter the form, we as humans struggle with change. It’s in our DNA, just ask the boys over at Coca-Cola. Our lives become so choreographed and photocopied that change has a way of reaching out and slapping us every time. A flag goes up, a flag comes down. A presidential candidate who doesn’t tell us what we expect to hear. Renovating Wrigley is like putting lipstick on the Mona Lisa grumbles the old timer behind you.

For whatever reason, your mind is drawn to Millard Fillmore. A stuffed shirt who did little of consequence aside from sleep in the White House for four years, old Mill’s on record as saying one shouldn’t accept change as progress. And as you bask in the glow of the jumbo-tron that now towers over left-center, you know that no truer words have ever been spoken.

Your eyes used to marvel at the hand-operated scoreboard or wander along the bricks until they got lost in the Ivy. Now they’re blinded by 3900 square feet of LED. If this is progress, they can have it. You have satellite TV, microwaveable meals and a one-car detached waiting for you at home.

Not unlike a bad sunburn, we’re often reminded that progress for some is a kick in the shin for others. And yet, it remains our destiny. In the end you’re left to realize that perhaps, not unlike beauty, progress too lies in the eye of the beholder.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

LeBron James is no Luke Skywalker

First appeared in the Lebanon Reporter
on June 24, 2015

When I was seven my family took me to see Star Wars. The movies were a new world. One where things appeared larger than life, including the bottomless buckets of popcorn that were strapped on like feedbags. Everything was covered in chocolate or coated with sugar or came in a container no human should be expected to eat alone.

For the last thirty years every movie I’ve seen has fallen short of that first experience, but at the time I had no idea what I was watching. There were swordfights with lasers, talking robots, space monsters and a main character who flirted with his sister and tried to kill his dad.

Surprisingly, this year’s NBA Finals were no different. For you found yourself bloated with a bag of microwave popcorn in your lap and a warm two-liter of Tab at your side, debating whether or not to eat something off the floor, all the while wondering just what am I watching here? Was it really about Golden State proving the doubters wrong by winning small or was this more about LeBron James?

And just as everything in Star Wars revolves around Luke Skywalker, so to does the NBA with King James. And though one is a fictional character and the other a freak with out- of-this-world talents, parallels do exist in their lives. Young Skywalker resisted the Dark Side unlike James. LeBron gave his heart and soul to Darth Riley when bolting for Miami.

But, when that didn’t reap the passel of championships he promised, he threw himself from a sky bridge over a Death Star reactor chasm only to have a garbage chute spit him out in Cleveland, where he dusted himself off while proclaiming his goal all along was to bring a title there.

On a completely unconnected and somewhat random side-note, few have recognized just how difficult leaving the comforts of Miami for Cleveland must have been. After all Miami is a utopia where everyday is sunny and 78 and beautiful women in string bikinis walk down the street handing out free drinks, tart ones with little umbrellas in them. Meanwhile the people of Cleveland, who have been floundering through a championship desert for low these 40 years, welcomed James home as if he were C-3PO and they a tribe of Ewoks.

However, instead of becoming a leader amongst the Rebel Alliance LeBron chose to preach about leadership while treating his head coach as if he were a domesticated animal somebody had staked to the Cavalier bench. Dismissing him during time outs, failing to credit him in post game interviews and then, wham, just like that Darth Vader had cut his hand off.

Between the roster he had by the end of the Playoffs and the fact he kept David Blatt at arm’s length, LeBron charged in to the Finals with both hands behind his back. The fact alone he put up ridiculous numbers (numbers which warranted a Finals MVP nod) and had Cleveland in the drivers seat three games into the series only proves he’s the best player in the world.

But for this thing to work, LeBron has to have both feet in and doing so will be more mentally challenging than a workout with Yoda in the bogs of Dagobah. Skywalker was a hero who threw himself in wholeheartedly when things got tough. The sooner LeBron realizes that even Luke welcomed help in the form of Han Solo, Chewie and Princes Leia, the sooner Cleveland can rock once again. Until then, King James will be left to forge ahead alone, relying upon an ultra-rare combination of his own freak talents and the Jedi Force to get it done.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Ode to the Junkyard Dog

First appeared on June 10, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

By nature a Junkyard Dog is an uninviting creature. An amalgamation of various pieces and parts, he is not the stately Doberman, loyal Labrador or feisty Yorkie; rather he is all three.

He is a crude beast, unkempt, foul smelling, hard on the eyes and prone to fits of unusual behavior. Their single-minded mission in life is protecting the lot. They prowl their automotive graveyards, determined to mark every tire and drooling for that highly coveted opportunity to run down anyone desperate enough to scale the fence at 2 a.m. looking to steal a carburetor.

Nobody wants to be a Junkyard Dog and nobody wants to face a Junkyard Dog, but in the basketball world, everybody needs a Junkyard Dog. Stephen Curry is a league MVP who is currently flirting with basketball immortality, but he also might be the furthest thing from a Junkyard Dog there is. Klay Thompson, with his machine like shooting form and lightning quick release, can put a lot of things on his basketball resume but Junkyard Dog is not one of them. Even LeBron James, Earth’s best player and one who routinely dominates multiple phases of the game, can’t boast being a Junkyard Dog.

Color commentators don’t typically slobber over the Junkyard Dogs. And, unless they are standing next to LeBron James during a time out or are on the business end of a massive, ‘drive straight down the lane and slam the ball so hard a guy nearly dislocates his wrist’ type of dunk, the Dogs don’t typically find themselves on the Jumbo-Tron either.

With no microphones to dodge, they can be found lurking in the shadows during postgame interviews. They are the unsung and often unknown, but don’t think for a moment they are unimportant. Golden State doesn’t reach the Finals this year without Draymond Green and Cleveland is on a beach somewhere if Tristan Thompson is wearing a different uniform.

Green and Thompson are Junkyard Dogs. Important cogs in a giant wheel rolling down the freeway of basketball life. They are part of a relentless breed, renown for their hard fouling, hustling, board-hogging, sacrifice your body at all costs demeanor.

SportsCenter inundates us with spectacular passes, unbelievable dunks and an endless supply of high scorers. Meanwhile the Junkyard Dogs are there, grabbing key rebounds, scoring timely put backs and throwing themselves on the floor with no regard for the science that lies behind force meeting immovable objects.

They are the closest thing the NBA has to a punter or utility infielder and they’re just as popular. No kid hits the driveway pretending to be Draymond Green. No rabid, beer guzzling thirty something is going to walk the streets howling obscenities and photobombing the local newscaster in a post-win fervor wearing a Tristan Thompson jersey. And yet the paradox remains.

With them you have a chance, without them, you struggle.And yet they remain largely unappreciated. The faceless, chain-smoking powers that be in the control booth shove one spectacular play after another down your throat, hoping your brain turns to mush and you rise each morning longing for more. But you are a well-informed fan of the game, albeit one who was never picked first at the park or had machine like form.

Unlike the faceless powers that be, you understand the value of the Junkyard Dog. In fact you've always identified with them. When your boss took Stevenson from Accounts to Vegas for that huge conference instead of you, he was quick to say the office needed you to stay back and "do the dirty work".

Your Seventh Grade coach suggested Backgammon before cutting you, but deep in your heart you know their failure in the 1993 Montgomery County Tournament ran deeper than just the other team’s Division One recruit. That historic loss, your mother always maintained, could have been easily avoided with you, the Junkyard Dog, scrapping and flailing around on the floor.

So rest well ye Junkyard Dogs for you may not be the prettiest or most desirable beasts alive, but amongst those who know the game well, and a few overbearing mothers, you will always have a place in the basketball world.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

The Big Lessons behind Tom Brady's Smallish Hands

First appeared on May 21, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

So Tom Brady has little hands. Or maybe the Patriot equipment managers have metric pressure gauges. They can spin it all they want but nothing will change the fact 95% of football fans, and nearly every person outside a 2 hour radius of the Metro Boston area, consider the Patriots dirty.

This just in, Robert Kraft has another Title, Brady another ring and the NFL is happy because it’s almost June and people are still talking Football. The real issue in Deflategate has been lost amongst the noise, overshadowed by the shock jocks and buried in the claptrap. This isn’t about whether a few underinflated footballs could have made any difference in the outcome of an incredibly lopsided AFC Championship game. The real issue is the message being sent to young people everywhere.

Cheating is no longer reserved for American politicians or the East German Olympic team. Like it or not, cheating is in vogue. Steroids, Spygate, cutting a baseball, greasing your jersey, corking your bat, none of it matters as long as you can hide it and ride it to the top. What we’ve really learned here is that a guy can cheat in front of millions and millions will still buy his jersey, name their first born for him and plaster his Fathead on their walls.

So you sit your seven year old down to explain that copying answers from Sally’s spelling test is called cheating and cheating is a very bad thing we shouldn’t do. “The American Dream was built on the backs of hard working people who didn’t take short cuts.” You explain as he sits quietly, wide eyed and longing for more, “Men who built barns out of logs hewn from trees they fell by hand. Men who didn’t cut corners because cutting corners only created more work in the long run. These were real men, men who didn’t wear protective padding and didn’t have time to waste doing interviews or hocking glorified Kool-Aid.” And he shakes his head as if he were thinking the exact same thing and you pat him on the back, feeling satisfied by your Clark Griswold-“Good talk son” moment.

But then, breaking news hits the TV screen. A shot of Tom Brady backing an SUV from a garage larger than the Governor of North Dakota’s mansion. His Supermodel wife waves through a tinted window as they head off on their six week hiatus in Tahiti. And all this, the images of private jets and Gucci suits, lavish estates and Lombardi Trophies, flash across the screen above a banner reading “Deflategate: NFL says Brady cheated”

We all want our children to achieve great things, to go farther than we did. And the beauty of being an American is the fact they will have every opportunity to do so. Yet amidst all the compassionate pushing and prodding, it becomes so easy for a parent to get bogged down and lose their bearings.

A well rounded kid will become their own toughest critic. For when the crowds fall silent and the stands empty out, they will be left alone with their thoughts. Forget the Little League trophies, job titles and bank statements, when it’s all said and done, we’ve failed as parents if our children don’t like the person looking back at them in the mirror. So the NFL cries foul, fingers get pointed and time marches on and you are left to watch your son grab his bat and head for the on deck circle; all the while hoping the values you’ve worked so hard to instill follow along.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Ready or Not, the NBA Playoffs are Here

First appeared on April 29, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

Like it or not the NBA Playoffs are here. An epically all too long crescendo to a painfully all too long regular season. Unfortunately for you the Playoffs are like a really bad movie you paid forty bucks to see in a drafty theatre dotted with unhappy toddlers and one gravel throated chain-smoker hacking up a lung. The hormones in the teenager behind you are telling him “must kick hole in back of seat” as a couple nearby snickers their way through a very dark and ultimately critical scene.

Still you hang on, through the four game sweeps, twenty point blowouts and inconsistent officiating, the predictable plot twists and token kiss between main characters who never saw themselves together. Others walk out when an unforeseen plot twist turns out to be a dream, but not you, you have invested so much time and money that even the great Chicago Fire wouldn't keep you from seeing the end.

You find no tangible reason for watching other than sports have a way of washing the stink of the real world off us; that and the latest season of “The Bachelor” is over. You fail at explaining to your wife that the Playoffs are a necessary evil because they’re the only truly reliable way of crowning a champion. Still, outside of elimination games, the NBA Playoffs fall well short of installing the heart pounding drama of March Madness.

The totality of the NCAA Tournament’s allure lies in its ability to capture those game seven moments in dozens of match ups spread out over a month’s time. Compare this to the NBA Playoffs which have you wading through two months or more of stagnant basketball peppered with small traces of suspense (see: the last two minutes of the Fourth Quarter). Still, it’s just enough to keep a sucker like you coming back time and time again.

March Madness plays well to Americans for its all you can eat qualities. It’s a buffet of basketball, a cornucopia of competition. And so you sit as only an American can, three day beard, pants unsnapped, gorging yourself until your hollow leg explodes and it looks like a freight train has hit a food truck in your living room. And then your wife suggests getting off the couch to spend more time with your son because when his teacher asked what his parents do for a living yesterday little Johnny stood up and told the class that his daddy watches basketball.

That’s what March Madness is. It’s death by basketball and the NBA Playoffs simply can’t stand next to it. Sure they dress the Playoffs up. Pipe in louder dance music and give out free tee-shirts; an adult large that won’t fit your three year old after one wash.

But there simply isn’t enough lipstick in a Macy’s warehouse to spice these things up. The NBA would be smart to offer a mid-season tournament. A single elimination affair set up exactly like the NCAA Tournament without openly admitting they’re trying to create something exactly like the NCAA Tournament.

They could call it the “February Frenzy” and sell millions in advertising. Instead of “One Shining Moment” they could offer fans “One Really Bright Moment”. Give the winner a first round bye in the Playoffs or the overall number one seed should they make it. For those that don’t, maybe an all expense paid trip to the Final Four would make sense, or at the very least a tee-shirt that fits.

In the meantime tuning into the Playoffs will remain just like a trip to the movies. There are absolutely no guarantees and no chance of getting your money back.


© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Thoughts from the Bottom on Earth Day

First appeared on April 22, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

Anniversaries have a way of creeping up on us like a Russian sniper or unexpected gas. And so you sit, surrounded by the soft clinking of silverware on porcelain, candlelight shimmering off a glass of Merlot as the misses considers her plate of Linguini Alfredo. You toast before turning your attention to a delicious plate of Pickled Herring when a man in an army jacket, Woody Allen glasses and pair of hush puppies made of hemp, stops at your table with the warning that your precious dinner grew up ingesting micro-particles of plastic in the Pacific Ocean.

It may seem overly simplistic to believe the Earth’s problems could stem from something as simple as throwing a Little Debbie wrapper out the window because you can’t risk smudging your well pressed pants on the way to work. After all, your bosses boss is in town and even though you made him enough dough last year to buy a vacation home in Cabo for his second wife, a really nice bungalow just down the street from the one his first wife now owns, everybody still has to look like they just walked off a GQ photo shoot or heads will roll.

So Little Debbie zips out the window and out of sight and a small part of you aches for knowing its wrong, but you find balance in the fact you’re not texting and driving. Besides you don’t have time to think about carbon footprints or the death of future generations, you drew the short straw and have to tell Crazy Bob in accounting he’ll have to put the Hawaiian shirts away for a week since the Big Kahuna is flying in. And normally this would be no big deal except in this case “crazy” isn’t a term of affection.

So Little Debbie flutters away in the morning breeze before falling to rest gently on the double yellow line you just left behind. And as a single solitary ant inches his way towards a surefire glucose induced coma, an eighteen wheeler thunders past sending the wrapper swirling into the air. Debbie tumbles helplessly over the Queen Anne’s Lace and Purple Aster twisting and turning like a Monarch butterfly until falling to the bottom of the ditch where she finds herself in a stream of muddy water snaking from the interstate.

Slowly she winds downstream before plunging into a larger river. On a rippling current wide and deep, Little Debbie swirls through a city where the water grows congested with displaced gasoline residue, a gift from overflowing storm sewers, and various unwanted bi-products generated during the assembly of that 55 inch flat screen your wife surprised you with on Father’s Day. The one you first watched An Inconvenient Truth on.

So she twists and turns and bobs along, crossing state lines and dodging old car tires, and the occasional set of rusted bed springs, until the river grows wider still upon reaching the delta where it gives all it has to the sea. On the ocean your wrapper joins the tide as dolphins chitter with curiosity at Debbie’s faded smile and the occasional sea turtle nibbles at her curly locks.

And after a month or two, Little Debbie finds herself joining a garbage patch wider than 50 football fields, locked in a South Pacific gyre, circling for perpetuity. And there she stays, riding the waves and floating in the sun for years and years and years. An artifact from a busy morning and a relic that will tell future archaeologists what made us tick, the little Debbie wrapper from the N and Out, the one with your fingerprints on it.

Wednesday is Earth Day. Take a moment to do your part by checking out 50 things everyone can do to save the Earth at: http://www.50waystohelp.com/


© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

A Smashing Start to "Next Year"

First appeared on April 11th, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

I don’t ask for much. I’d like a good hot dog and at least one of my children to follow directions the first time. I’d also like flushing toilets in Wrigley and the sports world to stop heckling her like she’s the subject of a Comedy Central roast.

I’m not in construction. The only thing I build are sentences and that’s done on a part time basis and somewhat pedestrian level. But I am a sports fan and I know enough to realize when Opening Day rolls around its best to have your ducks in a row. It’s not like the boys in Chicago had a short off-season after all.

So you pack yourself into a car and point it north for a little slice of heaven the outside world knows as Wrigley Field. You do this knowing full well the baseball gods will shine on you even though it is April and April in Chicago can sometimes require great bravery, or at the very least polar survival gear.

But Ernest Shackleton you are not, you are a Cubs fan and you don’t ask for much. You want a cold beer and a warm dog, a spot out of the wind and a toilet that works. The radio is alive with stories of civil wars fought in countries devoid of natural resources and any qualitative reasons for living there. And while you depart with the full understanding your journey is likely to end in heartbreak and misery, you harbor strong faith in the front office, despite their inability to hire a qualified plumber, and besides, this is ‘next year’ and you want to be able to tell your grandchildren you were there.

But an unexplained postponement leaves you flustered because, not unlike Washington, you are left choosing between a woman who hid her emails from the public and a man so elitist he believes everyone in the U.S. should be above accepting a helping hand. Talk about limited options indeed.

The Action 2 News broadcasts shots of construction crews delivering plastic outhouses to Wrigley, which only brings more inspiration to those jeering her. The jokes keep coming faster than Republican presidential candidates and while she may be undeniably stunning and the closest thing the sports world has to historical perfection, she remains incredibly fragile and self-conscious in the face of her multimillion-dollar renovation.

The Action 2 guy says something about the postponement being linked to a malfunction in the bathrooms on Opening Day before making a joke about a goat and you wonder if his hair is real and try imagining Shackleton’s crew using plastic toilets while crossing the Antarctic. Why can’t they just open the doors? You drove two hours and would be happy to just sit and watch the grass grow under the lights; after all games at Wrigley have always been more of an unavoidable distraction anyway.

So ‘Next Year’ is off to a smashing start as you take a twenty dollar cab back to the parking garage you had to move some stocks around and mortgage your house just to use for a couple hours. And as you limp out of town with your NXTYR vanity plate and Ernie Banks bobble head wobbling on the dashboard, you do so realizing ‘pottygate’ has made the Cubs the laughing stock of baseball. And while it’s not an entirely unfamiliar position, it is one they don’t normally assume until the first or second week of June.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

The End of the World as Hoosier Fans Know It

First appeared on March 31, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

According to Prepper Shows USA, the essentials for surviving the end of the world are shelter, water, food and communication. Apparently they don’t know its March, or basketball would have made their list as well. I don’t know about you, but I don’t spend a lot of time prepping for the end of the world. When I was a kid, the end of the world meant nuclear annihilation at the hands of the Soviet Union, but I suppose today the thought of Kentucky going 40-0 carries about the same meaning.

If you’re like me, you’re wondering at what point politicians forgot they work for an electorate, why there’s a Preppers Shows USA to begin with and how in the world Notre Dame lost to Kentucky Saturday night. Notre Dame did everything they needed to do to win. They played together. They played fearlessly for forty minutes. They got scoring from all five positions.

There was also no shortage of examples where smaller players defied the laws of nature. Riding the wings of pure heart and guts far up into the stratosphere, to the point where the outsized Irish found themselves looking down from the roof of the world. A perch that allowed Notre Dame to snatch many a timely rebound. Rebounds that were hovering just beyond the outstretched arms of Kentucky’s freakishly large front line.

In short, Notre Dame did everything they needed to do to win, everything but score once in the last 3 possessions. And then an Aaron Harrison three pointer from twenty-five feet sent the Irish down to a knee, grasping the rope as the judge began his count. But Irish coach Mike Brey called time out, rallied his troops and opened the door for his senior stand out Jerian Grant to bury a shot from South Bend to put his team back up by 2. And just as every person on Earth living outside ‘Big Blue Nation’ seemed ready to celebrate an Irish victory with a poorly executed jig, Notre Dame lost.

So now the Big Blue Train chugs on. On towards the end of the world. Next stop Indianapolis, land of the free and home of the intolerant. A place where lawmakers would have you believe friendly farmhands will stop slopping hogs long enough to greet you with a smile and save you a seat, provided you share the exact same values and religious beliefs as them that is.

And now derailing the Big Blue Train and saving the world from the aforementioned annihilation falls to Bo Ryan. And if there’s one thing to be said for Ryan it’s that he won’t shy away. He won’t back down. He will stand on the tracks as the Big Blue Train bears down on him and chuckle at the thought of his group being overmatched.

But in the end will it be enough? Will Ryan’s fiery glares and eternal scowl, his old school no-nonsense approach to playing the game, share the ball, stop the ball, protect the ball, be enough to counter Kentucky’s athleticism and historic length? Does a team built mostly of in-state kids tackling a traveling team of AAU All Stars stand a chance? Ryan would say yes.

To beat Kentucky you have to protect the ball and make shots and its hard to argue anybody does this better than Wisconsin. And now, with the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Kentucky and Wisconsin will meet Saturday night. And as the young Badgers race out to defend all that is good and proper in college basketball, let the rest of the world lock arms and sing, “On Wisconsin! Fight! Fellows fight, fight, fight! We’ll win this game!”

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

An open letter to IU Fans

First appeared on March 18, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

Dear Hoosier Nation,

If you don’t mind, I’d like to take my Part Time Pretend Sports Columnist hat off for a moment and talk to you one Indiana basketball fan to another. I grew up in a house where Indiana Basketball took center stage. I saw Knight toss the chair and remember the shirt I was wearing when Keith Smart beat Syracuse. I grabbed my socks at the foul line in Junior High School and screamed at the television while Ted Valentine fouled our four best players out of the National Semifinal in 1992 against Duke. I was in the Georgia Dome when we flirted with banner number six and will maintain forever that Calbert Cheaney was the best college basketball player I ever saw.

I was also in the stands two weeks ago when 17,000 booed the Hoosiers during the Iowa game and read with great horror what happened to Tom Crean’s son later that week. We’re better than this. For as long as I can remember, Hoosier Nation has demanded excellence, but there are boundaries.

I understand these boundaries are invisible and thus really hard to see, but Americans still seem steadfastly determined to push them further than ever before. Two weeks ago, Hoosier Nation obliterated them by booing 18 and 19 year old kids over a coach. Booing a group of kids who turned down numerous other schools in order to play for you is counterproductive and just plain dumb.

And, if it’s true some high school students chanted “Tom Crean sucks” when his son took the floor during a Sectional game, we should all stop following sports right now. Cancel the Big Ten Network, box our gear up and ship it off to some needy Third World country like the Central African Republic or Kentucky.

It’s true the actions of a mass of high school students have forever been largely amateurish and entirely unpredictable, but these are presumably the children of Indiana fans. The same sons and daughters who’ve heard their parents cursing Tom Crean in the kitchen, in the car, on the phone and between the pews.

As far as fake nations go, we used to be a standard bearer. Taking our candy striped pants and down home Hoosier values from sea to shining sea to watch our beloved team play. All the while laughing, smiling and remaining gracious in the face of back-handed compliments like “I’ve always said, somebody has to farm.”

Now we risk spiraling into some dark chasm of ill mannered temperament. A freefall destined to bottom out amidst the doldrums of sportsmanship, stranding us in a place inhabited by the worst the sports world can offer (see fans of the Red Sox and Ohio State Football). I’m fairly certain Thomas Paine had never seen an Indiana game when he wrote “These are the times that try men’s souls”. Still, no quote is more fitting for Hoosier Nation at this moment.

If you don’t like Tom Crean, rise up. Rise up and send Fred Glass a sharp-toned email. Rise up and write a letter to your local editor. Rise up and post your scathing thoughts to a message board hiding behind the handle ‘Hoosierdaddy87’. Rise up and shout it out on sports talk radio. Rise up and refuse to go to games.

Whatever you do, leave 18 and 19 year old kids out of the equation. Show the rest of the world what Hoosier Nation is about. Show them we bring a lot to the Sports World Table, including a rich history of tradition, sportsmanship and, above all else, class.

Yours in fandom,

Eric Williams


© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

'Easy way out' no option for the Blue and Gold

First appeared on March 5th, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

When two Tennessee girls’ high school teams met recently, each hoped to fulfill their lifelong goals and dreams by losing a game. This unconventional approach would have afforded one an opportunity to avoid a tournament match up with a local national power. A game that would have proven there are in fact three surefire things in life; death, taxes and total obliteration at the hands of Blackman High.

To avoid this fate, fans were treated to a bevvy of intentional turnovers and not-so-believable bricks. In short it was a performance capable of making even the Washington Generals blush.

And while the game should have been a convenient lesson in sportsmanship, it is perhaps an indicator of a larger issue. Between the Internet, Smart Phones, fast food, Twitter, programmable thermostats, plastic grocery bags and the Roomba, American culture has become about embracing the easy way out.

When Paul George destroyed his leg in a Team USA scrimmage in July, the Indiana Pacers could have taken the easy way out. Put David West on the shelf for a year and let Roy Hibbert work on developing his post game while the team floundered through a 20 win season.

Enter Larry Bird. Yes, he of the unfortunate too-short-shorts era, who also taught us about brilliant shot making and never taking the easy way out. It’s only fitting the Legend’s franchise would assume his demeanor. Kick me when I’m down, I’ll just get up and come back for more. And that’s exactly what the Pacers have done all year; come back for more.

Conventional wisdom had the Blue and Gold resigning themselves to mediocrity. Package Hibbert and George Hill for a new team bus and some fresh linens, take your lumps and hope the lottery balls bounce your way. Instead the Pacers have circled the wagons all year finding inspired play from one unlikely source after another. The formula is simple. Forget the place and time, forget the predictions and expectations and just play hard, play together and play with an edge.

In the middle of it all is the winningest coach in franchise history; Frank Vogel. From the start, Vogel has remained steadfast in his faith that this team can win. This despite dozens in the national media opining the solution to all of Indiana’s problems could be most easily found at the end of a Kim Jong Un missile.

But the Pacers are Blue Collar for a reason. Sure they may prove to be a punching bag for Cleveland in the first round, but they’ve at least shown the sports world there are alternatives to the easy way out. A championship may not be in the cards for everyone, so relish the moment instead and be the best you can be wherever you are.

So perhaps the next time some young girl in Tennessee thinks about shooting a lay up that scrapes the ceiling of the gym or throwing a pass to their mom in the stands, maybe they’ll stop and think about the 2015 Indiana Pacers instead. Maybe then they’ll understand there are alternatives to the easy way out.

Meanwhile, we go on plodding through life as our cable bill is automatically deducted from our bank account, which will automatically transfer funds if we’re overdrawn. We gripe about a half hour wait at a restaurant while using their complimentary Wi-Fi to chart a course to a different place to eat, one 45 minutes away with a far less wait. Check-in-Buddy puts our name in as we open a different app, one that shows us traffic times and 27 alternate routes.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

IU and Purdue: Finally this game means something

First appeared on February 18, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

I grew up hating Purdue. And we're not talking your run of the mill spinach tastes like you’re licking the soiled lid of a Styrofoam bait cooler you found on the floor of your grandfather’s barn kind of hate. This was an "I don’t want you asking her out son, her family roots for Purdue" kind of hate. It was a "We’re not stopping the car to help that stranded motorist because God is punishing him for having a Purdue window cling" kind of hate.

But, as with most things, boiled spinach aside, tastes and perspectives change. Today I find myself pulling for the Boilers when they're not playing Indiana; though I haven't found the courage to share this news with my father yet. I imagine his disappointment mirroring the time I told him I didn’t need to take the SAT because I’d decided to become a Rodeo Clown.

Thursday night all bets are off. Thursday night there will be no moonlighting as a Boiler fan. Thursday night Indiana and Purdue will renew their rivalry once again in Bloomington, only this time there will be more than just pride on the line.

For the first time in a long time this game will actually mean something. It will be more than just two mediocre teams fighting to keep their heads above water while dying a slow death in the middle of the Big Ten pack. There is more than just bragging rights or revenge on the line. In short, this is the most important game in the history of the rivalry (or at least since they met in the 1980 NCAA Sweet 16).

It could be said the outcome of Thursday night’s game will alter the course of one of these programs forever. It could also be said blue is the new black and “Indiana General Assembly” is a synonym for out of touch, but those are columns for another time.

There are clear implications riding on Thursday night’s game. For the last 10-15 years the state of Indiana has provided the basketball world with some mega-talent and far too often these players have opted to venture outside her borders to attend school. With both programs struggling for solid footing in the recruiting world, Thursday night could mark an opportunity for Purdue to make a powerful statement to potential recruits.

Both schools also have an opportunity to earn one of the top four seeds in the Big Ten Tournament. Considering expansion has added two new teams to the conference and another round to the tournament, the double-bye the top four seeds are granted is destined to become a much coveted advantage. Beyond this, neither team is a surefire lock for the NCAA Tourney. Thursday night would go a long way in keeping Purdue’s hopes alive, while it could also open another gash in Indiana’s ship, which last we checked was still busy taking on water.

It could be argued the fate of both head coaches hangs in the balance as well. Should Crean get swept by an in-state rival on his way to another season that ends without tournament play, things in Bloomington could get ugly fast. Conversely it would appear Painter is already coaching for his life and a loss Thursday night could force his team into a kind of full blown “win the Big Ten Tournament or else” desperation mode.

So don’t fool yourself, while you won’t see any jackets tossed into the stands or chairs spinning across the floor, this is a huge game. And while Indiana probably won’t offer half-price seats to anyone leading a jackass in a Purdue hat through the turnstiles, don’t fool yourself, this game means everything.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Indiana and Purdue heading in opposite directions

First appeared on February 6th, 2015
in The Lebanon Reporter

Short people unite! Unite in an effort to reach items from the top shelf in the grocery store without knocking five other things off in the process, unite in the spirit of the young Eddie Gaedels’ and Herve Villechaizes’ everywhere, unite for the common defense of your kingdom full of mushroom shaped houses and half naked blue people.

Unite as the Purdue Boilermakers continue waging their war upon players blessed with inferior size. In a game that has mimicked the NBA by becoming increasingly smaller and more athletic, Purdue is quietly finding success going against the grain. While staying true to his core principles of a strong perimeter defense, Matt Painter has also ripped a page out of yesteryear by fielding a team with Wooden-like size.

Despite some early stumbles, Painter’s bunch seems to have finally embraced the role of bully on the block. Against Indiana especially, AJ Hammons and Isaac Haas looked out of place; almost like a tag team duo of Andre the Giant and Godzilla. Bullying their way to the basket with defenders bouncing off one after the other, the dynamic duo absorbed so much of Indiana’s defensive attention that several other Boilers, the ones who don’t look like Yao Ming stunt doubles, were able to worm their way to the goal with ease.

What Hammons and Haas did to Indiana a week ago was almost inhumane, bordered upon cruel and is illegal in 49 of the 50 states (last we checked the Ned Beatty Bill was still being debated in the Georgia State Senate). The impressive win also seemed to wake a sleeping giant (pun fully intended) as the Boilers have gone on to win three straight, including Wednesday night’s victory over another nationally ranked opponent in Ohio State.

But it all started a week ago by drumming Indiana in a game that kept Purdue’s season alive. It was also a victory Painter likely needed to avoid finding an email in his inbox with the subject line: “Pick up change of address form”. And while Hammons and Haas have anchored the interior, off-season transfer Jon Octeus has been a pleasant surprise as a defender with length and athleticism as well as a point guard who brings an attitude to the floor.

And while the win has injected life into Painter’s team, the opposite can be said for Tom Crean’s Indiana Hoosiers. Losers of 3 out of their last 4, Indiana suddenly finds themselves in a similar position to Purdue a week ago. In fact, it’s almost as if the two have passed each other on an escalator.

Indiana had spent much of their year riding the up escalator, but for some reason have changed their minds and hopped the rail. The Hoosiers knew coming in to the season their lack of size would present challenges. Unfortunately this has never been more apparent than this past week as Purdue manhandled the Hoosiers before Wisconsin flirted with embarrassing them. Things were so bad that, five minutes into the Purdue game, short men everywhere quietly slipped into the restroom to stuff more folded up paper towel into the bottoms of their shoes.

So now Indiana finds themselves fighting to get off the down escalator. Sunday’s date with Michigan suddenly has ‘must win’ written all over it with a road trip to Maryland and home date against Purdue looming on the horizon.
With all eyes on the up escalator, one has to wonder where it leads. It could be the NCAA Tournament, it could be the home house wares section of Kohl’s. The down escalator is a far different story. The down escalator is crowded with empty wallets, angry shoppers and screaming kids. The Down escalator is a comfortable ride to nowhere and remains the one place Tom Crean and Matt Painter can’t afford to be.

© 2015 Eric Walker Williams

Can we take the 'Super' out of this Bowl Please?

First appeared on January 28th
in The Lebanon Reporter

The beat down the Indianapolis Colts suffered in the AFC Championship came as a public service reminder to Colts fans everywhere that the New England Patriots remain evil personified. The long faces, missed opportunities and inability run, throw, catch or even stop the football seemed strangely familiar. Perhaps more maddening than the Colts performance was knowing the eternally perplexed Bill Belichick had found yet another slimy way to push NFL rules to their limit.

Colts fans found solace in the fact Belichick appeared so miserable that surely he, along with every other person who’s ever worn clothing since the dawn of time, had decided his old friend the hooded sweatshirt was in fact a bad choice. This epiphany arrived only after a torrential rainstorm swept over Gillette Stadium during the third quarter of the AFC title game. Of course a rainstorm on a January night in New England also served to prove to a national television audience that global warming is in fact real and that, after all these years, the Colts still can’t run the football.

So as the Colt equipment managers were busy collecting the stray pieces of their team’s pride from the field, you found yourself attempting to shatter the awkward silence that had consumed your viewing party by asking if anyone wanted more nachos or felt like driving the fourteen hours to Foxboro in order to crush Belichick’s kneecaps. But in the end you realized, that as a Midwesterner, violence just isn’t in your blood so you microwaved another corndog before chewing on the same question fans of 29 other professional football teams are asking themselves; “What do we do now?”

What do you do when the Super Bowl offers a completely unpalatable match-up? New England will be playing in the sixth Super Bowl of the Belichick Era while Seattle will seek to become the first team to repeat as World Champion since Belichick’s Patriots a decade ago. For most, choosing between the Seahawks and Patriots will be like choosing between a punch in the stomach and a kick to that one place your Third Grade teacher told you was very special and only for you.

This leaves the average fan conflicted. For when you’re dog is out of the fight, it’s human nature to back the scrappiest one remaining, to root for the man in the white hat to ride in swiftly on his trusty steed and overcome evil in a generically non-violent, yet oddly believable way. The problem with Super Bowl XLIX is that it will be played indoors; therefore the forecast calls for a 100% chance of no scrappy dogs or white hats.

The Hoodie and Seahawks front man Pete Carroll both arrive with unwanted baggage (see Reggie Bush, Spygate and the proper inflation of a football per NFL rules). Furthermore its widely known the Patriots torture unwanted kittens in their free time and the Seahawks are in essence the same guy who stole your girlfriend in seventh grade and then again in high school; twice. In short, these two deserve each other.

So we as fans are left to wonder if it’s in fact possible for both teams to lose the Super Bowl. And while it may seem unlikely nobody will win, it remains a hope many Americans will cling to come Super Bowl Sunday; 100% according to one unpublished and highly unscientific poll conducted minutes before writing this column.

So fear not disgruntled Colt fans for you still have time to lobby the NFL to enact a rule change that will allow each team to lose this game. It shouldn’t be all that controversial really, considering the Shield has a history of ignoring their own rules anyway.

© 2014 Eric Walker Williams