Quote of your career...

One of our SE Alabama schools was set to send its girls basketball team to the Final Four to face a school from the Appalachian Mountains, where the population tends to be as white as a Utah school.

Since these schools were separated by hundreds of miles, I asked one of the girls what she knew about her opponent.

"They're tall and white."

Yes, it ran.

 

Two gems
"I'm neither an excuse maker nor an excuse acceptor."
- The aptly named South Florida Community College baseball coach Rick Hitt. That's on my wall.

"Our defense was running around like a covey of quail on opening morning," said Hardee County football coach Derren Bryan, imitating the sound of fluttering wings perfectly.

 

Pun intended?

 

with the local DIII school playing their biggest century old rival on Saturday, I'm doing a lot of stories about the events of the week leading up to the game. Tonight was an ultimate frisbee game between the schools on what turned out to be a cold, snowy evening. One player didn't have the right color sweatshirt on and chose to play shirtless, despite the 30 degree temperature, so I asked him about why he chose to play in that weather with no shirt.
"It was mainly alcohol," he said. "Alcohol was the main factor in me coming out here today."

 

Very early in my career, so this one will probably get supplanted soon

Get told to cover my first A&M football press conference and Joe Kines is talking about how his defense will match up against Colt McCoy and the like.

"Well, it's like if I put my wife in the Miss America pageant. I love 'er to death, but I don't think she's gonna stand much of a chance."

 

April, 1997 - USA Today Baseball Weekly sends me to Atlanta to do a story on Kenny Lofton, who is off to a huge start with the Braves after being traded by Cleveland.

Braves are playing the Padres and I figured it would make sense to go talk to the greatest leadoff man in history about his impressions of Lofton's start. So I approach Rickey Henderson, who is fumbling around for bats in his locker, and I'm not sure if he's listening to me or not when I ask, "Rickey, the way Kenny Lofton is playing right now, does it remind you a little of how you were playing at his age?" (Rickey is 38 at this point).

Rickey keeps rummaging in his locker, finally finds the right bat, turns to face me and says, "Aint but one guy who reminds Rickey of Rickey, and that's Rickey."

He smiled and walked away -- a walk-off quote.

Kicker is that the quote got edited from my story. Someone thought it wasn't particularly relevant. Maybe...but still...

 

Catholic school girl, doesn't have the day she expected in the state cross country championships.

"Plus, I had my period and that didn't help."

The best ever, though was a colleague who wrote a lead off a quote from a sage American Legion coach's comment of, "We lacked Christmas out there today." Built the whole lead off the quote.

Which would have been OK, but he said "crispness."

 

I've got a good Hugh Durham quote. Fans had been clamoring for off-the-bench player X. After a game someone asks Hugh why X hadn't played more in that game. "Gimme that stat sheet. It says here X played 11 minutes, was 1 for 5 from the field, 1 for 2 from the line, had two rebounds, no assists and three turnovers. You asking me why he didn't play more? You oughta be asking me why he didn't play less!"

 

This reminds me of a great Schnellenberger quote from when he was coaching at Louisville in 1990. He brought an undefeated UL team in to play Southern Miss, and got blind-sided as USM scored three TDs in the first five minutes, one on a fumble return and another on a punt return, and won pretty easily. Afterwards, he blamed, "the moon over Hattiesburg."

 

local high school football team is facing the 2-time defending state champ this weekend. About to interview a player and the coach warns him "Just don't give them any bulletin board material."
I ask the player about the other team's experience playing deep in the tournament and he said, "I just kinda think of it as a weakness almost. I think they might lay down or not take us too seriously, not know what we're capable of doing and we'll get 'er done."

 

This isn't a quote but it's a situation that I've never gotten out of my head that needs to be shared.

I'm a young reporter, more than 20 years ago, working at a small daily and I'm covering the local high school. It's my first year on the beat and my first dealing with the local boys' basketball coach. He's an old guy that doesn't care about anything as far as what people see or think of him. He had to be 72 or so.

Game is over, the hometown boys lost by 20 or so on their homecourt. I go to the locker room to interview said coach. I wait like 20 minutes or so, when he finally lets me in. The gym is now empty and so is the locker room. He says have a seat, what do you want to know. Then out of nowhere the guy walks into a stall, stall door open, and proceeds to drop his pants. I stand up a bit dumbfounded and confused. He looks up and says something to the effect of "Oh, don't worry about this. The old sports editor used to interview me all the time while I did this. Go ahead with your questions." ... He then proceeds to rip out a loud, metamucil-induced fart and takes a monster shit. Between farts, crackles and crunches, I get in a few questions. After three or four questions, I go silent. All I could think of was what was happening in front of me. At that point, I told him thanks and got up and left.

I never went down to that locker room to interview him again. Courtside interviews only until he retired.

Good God that was horrific for a guy fresh out of J-school. Now that's my story.

 

Here's one of my favorites: A few years ago, I was interviewing the mom of a prominent NCAA player, after he hit the key 3-pointer that led them to victory in the NCAA tournament. When I asked about her reaction when the shot went in, she just looked up wistfully and said "When I see (Player X) make a shot in a situation like that, all I can think is that he's got..., well, he's got big balls."

Not exactly a quote my mom would make. Too bad the editors didn't have big enough "balls" to get it in the paper.