Welcome to Next Year

First appeared on April 19, 2016
in The Lebanon Reporter

In case you haven’t checked the calendar recently, let me be the first to welcome you to next year. Sure your phone says it’s 2016, but history will remember this as ‘next year’. Archaeologists in the foothills of the Andes recently unearthed a scroll containing an original version of the Mayan calendar. In addition to calling for the end of the world in 2012, this new document includes a small asterisk next to a phrase loosely translated as: “And if life should somehow continue, a small bear will conquer the world in 2016”.

For over 100 years now, beleaguered Cub fans have found solace in the battle cry ‘wait till next year!’ Let me be the first to say this excuse has run its course. Gone the way of the dinosaur, Ivory Billed Woodpecker and any hope Donald Trump had of becoming our next president. Welcome to next year friends, the year your Chicago Cubs finally get it done.

Did I write this same column last year at roughly this exact date? Sure, but we in the part-time-pretend sports columnist business don’t dwell on the past. We look to the future, because the future is rife with fodder for columns, commentary and, thanks to the information age ushering in the age of short attention spans, ridiculous predictions nobody will remember in three months anyway.

So next year turned on the calendar and you decided action was necessary, considering you’ve spent the better part of 30 years waiting for it. In your haste to squeeze as much as possible into the only next year you’re ever going to see, you threw the kids in the car and headed north as the rest of humanity was thinking south. Your goal? To see all five Great Lakes in one week by car, and return home alive and un-divorced.

Fueled by your desire to provide an invaluable learning opportunity for the hatchlings, you made your way from the angry shores of Superior down to Lake Michigan only to have your four-year-old ask if people in Michigan always swim wearing mittens and scarves. Then it was on to Lake Erie where your eight-year-old had the epiphany that it doesn’t really matter where you go, all the Great Lakes are probably going to look pretty much the same.

Basking in the manufactured world of Shedd’s Aquarium, you failed as a father when trying to explain the importance of the Stinkpot Turtle’s role in the ecosystem. This was only compounded after you found yourself unloading on the twenty-something guide who wasted half your tour building a case for Abba’s inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Still, you somehow survived it all, undaunted and filled with the hope only a next year can bring.

The Cubs have great pitching and incredible offensive firepower. They have the brightest front office mind in baseball and a manager who boasts the perfect balance of baseball knowledge and weirdness. Of course baseball knowledge is a necessity for, you know, winning games. It’s the weirdness factor that is so undervalued in the search for managerial talent today. And it is Joe Maddon’s exponential weirdness that should help a young team navigate the minefield ahead. A minefield dotted with the pressures of a World Series, and the mental fatigue a 162 game season will undoubtedly bring.

The result of all of this is should be a fully loaded steam train barreling down the tracks come October. One doing so with so much force there isn’t a goat, cardinal or Kansas City Royal strong enough to derail it; for this is it, there are no more next years friend.

© 2016 Eric Walker Williams

The race for a Big Ten Title is on!

First appeared on January 8, 2016
in The Lebanon Reporter

The Big Ten men’s basketball season is upon us. Let us rejoice together. Let us sing for joy and shout it from the mountaintops. Let us speak with the voice of a Trump so that all may hear, no matter where they are and no matter if they really don't want to hear it at all.

The gates are down and the horses are off. There’s Bucky Badger, usually a heavy favorite, limping his way into turn one. Bruised and beaten, Bucky has lost his jockey, a normally fiery taskmaster who chose to jump ship in midrace. Bucky came so close to the winner’s circle last year, so close the taskmaster went all Brett Favre on the college basketball world. I’m done, I’m back, I’m done again.

Meanwhile, after many years reigning king over the middle of the pack, Purdue Pete was an early favorite until he stubbed his toe at home Saturday against Iowa. And this was no run of the mill, dark house, middle of the night toe stubbing. No, this one came after amassing a seventeen point halftime lead on the day the school honored the most iconic Boilermaker of all time. Nice timing Pete.

Compounding matters for the Black and Gold, Purdue’s sworn nemesis, the Hurryin’ Hoosiers of Indiana, are in a full gait, galloping out to a 3-0 start in conference play. Largely a product of the scheduling gods, Indiana’s fast start has them sitting atop the standings with four other unbeatens.

Unfortunately the Hoosiers fortunes turned bleak when news of talented scorer James Blackmon Jr.’s season ending surgery broke. This, coupled with Indiana’s reluctance to enter into a committed relationship with the defensive end of the floor, will make it hard to win consistently. In fact, Tom Crean’s Hoosiers competing for a Conference Title this year would be a lot like a Presidential candidate openly bad mouthing women, slandering an entire religion and masterfully deflecting attention away from every question he’s ever been asked. I mean, no chance, right?

So the Hoosiers knock off the Badgers in one of the ugliest games since the birth of the shot clock and you decide that was so bad you're swearing off basketball; if only you could turn the channel. Lying on the couch, your arm extends for a remote that lingers just out of reach and a small part of you fully believes that, if you concentrate long and hard enough, the force will allow you to raise it up and bring it into your hands. The talking heads in their sharp cut suits and ridiculous ties bloviate unabashedly about Michigan State. “They’re 14-1 for a reason”, “They’re the best team in the conference and the country!” No matter where you turn, it would seem you simply can’t escape Sparty.

Throngs appear on the television, screaming for more. They wear his tee-shirts and stand in long lines waiting for him, all the while refusing to acknowledge there are other teams in the conference. Other teams that may be just as good and just as qualified, perhaps some more so, but Sparty drowns them out every time.

Let the late night guys drag him through the mud like a tractor pull sled, Sparty will march on undaunted as the crowds swell, clamoring for more. Poor Minnesota and Rutgers can barely get people through the door as Sparty is busy playing to a packed house every night.
And with Sparty jet-setting his way through the college basketball world, you’re left stuck in the muck and mire of post game analysis, wondering if Sparty isn’t just a product of media hype as the remote remains in the middle of the coffee table, thumbs in its ears and tongue sticking out. Disgusted with the world, you’re left to roll over, turning your back on that elusive remote and all this incessant Sparty talk.

© 2016 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

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