By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports

On the day Burke Alford was born, Eddie Lyons was already old enough to play on golf’s senior tour.

And yet there they were on Wednesday as they played a practice round together in preparation for this week’s Louisiana State Amateur, which begins today at Southern Trace Country Club.

It’s the perfect example of an event that takes all types.

There is the 70-year-old Lyons, the 1991 State Am champion, first played in this event in 1972 – almost even before Alford’s parents were born. That year it was played at Shreveport Country Club, which doesn’t even exist anymore.

The 20-year-old Alford, who just finished his second year on the UL-Lafayette golf team after graduating from Loyola College Prep, is playing in this event for the second time. Actually, Alford is trying to finish his first State Am after getting DQ’d last year following a mix-up on the back nine in the second round after it looking like he was on his way to making the cut.

But if you think the 50 years difference in their ages for Lyons and Alford would make for an unlikely pairing for a practice round, think again. It’s a learning opportunity for both.

“These kids hit it 40 yards past me … I can hit it 280 (off the tee),” Lyons said. “It’s just a different game now from what I am used to. But I get a look at what I am up against.”

“He’s obviously played in a lot of these events, so I’m just looking to kind of pick his brain on how he plays,” Alford said. “I like to see why he plays certain shots on certain holes and see what his perspective is.”

Alford had better get as much information as he can. “This is it for me,” Lyons said. “I still love to compete and I still get that feeling on the first tee. But I wouldn’t be even be playing (this year) if it wasn’t for it being at Southern Trace.”

“I’ve got a couple of years of amateur golf under my belt and this is a tournament at home so there’s a little bit of an advantage,” Alford said. “The first couple of days I’m just trying to put myself in position and hopefully on the weekend, I can try to be in it.”

This will be the sixth time for Southern Trace to host the event, but the first since a major renovation two years ago. That played a role in the State Am getting back to Shreveport for the first time since 2013, according to Jacob Oaks, the director of championship operations for the Louisiana Golf Association.

“That was a huge deal for us (for selection),” Oaks said. “First of all, they did an amazing job. It’s incredible what they did and it’s in almost perfect condition. If you played it a lot in the past, I don’t think you’d notice too much difference. Except for the greens. They are fair, but they really provide a good test. It’s going to be a treat for the players.”

Lyons, a member at Southern Trace, agrees with that assessment.

“It will be interesting because of the renovations,” said Lyons, who last played in the State Am in 2019 and made the cut at age 67. “The greens are fast and they are hard to read. It takes a while to pick up on what putts are going to do.”

There is a wide variety of participants in the 144-man field – including two former NFL players (Kyle Williams and Billy Joe Tolliver) – but Lyons thinks the winner after four rounds will come from the under-25 age category.

Winners typically haven’t typically come from the host city (though Shreveport’s Eric Ricard won in 2013, the last time it was played at Southern Trace).

If you add heredity into the mix of age and location, Shreveport’s Holden Webb should feel pretty good about his chances. The first-year LSU golfer (and a 2022 graduate of Loyola) is the son of Craig Webb, who finished second at Southern Trace in 1992 and went on to win in 1994 and 1999.

“He doesn’t talk much about it,” Webb said of his father’s success at the State Am.

“Everyone is always there to win,” Webb said. “I think that’s a given. I’m just going to try to stay in the present with each shot and just take it step by step and just try to let the results take care of themselves. But this is my first State Am, so I really don’t know what it’s going to be like.”

And if he drives back home with the 104^th State Am crown, his father might well remind him that he’s still one behind in their Webb household.

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

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They will be putting the shovels in the ground soon to begin the construction of the YMCA’s Youth Baseball and Softball Complex. When they do, they will also shovel away a small part of my heart.

Please don’t get me wrong: I am all in favor of this project. Those who have made it happen are to be applauded and congratulated. It’s a giant step forward for youth sports in this area. Its potential is off the charts.

This didn’t just happen; it’s been in the works for quite some time. Knowing that, I knew I needed to take one last look at what it was before it becomes what it’s going to be.

The new facility will replace the existing Little League facility, which was built a little more than 30 years ago. Much has changed in youth baseball and softball and what Little League was that long ago hardly even resembles what it is now.

I was fortunate to be a part of Shreveport Little League during its heyday of the mid-to-late 1990s and even a few years afterward. On a personal level, I don’t exactly remember those years very fondly – we all have periods in our life when things aren’t exactly rosy – but being a part of what was going on at that facility brought me joy when I needed it most.

So I took one last walk through the Little League Complex while I could still see it for what it was. It was a very personal walk.

I still saw a T-ball game in which I realized it was next to impossible to keep five or six defensive players from all running after the ball at the same time … while the kid closest to the ball just stood there and watched.

I saw the spot where the coach of the opposing five-year-old team and I argued as to whether the final score was 23-21 or 22-21 (even though “we don’t keep score”). It got a little heated.

I saw the parking lot behind the left field fence where my father, who was getting on in years, sat in his lawn chair and watched his grandson play. It would be the last athletic event he would ever witness.

I saw the place on the Coach Pitch field, where the teenaged umpire, who had grown tired of my a-little-too-intense coaching style and was looking to get me in trouble, asked one of my players, “Does your coach ever hit you?” and the seven-year-old answered “Sure. All the time.”

Thankfully, before the arrest warrant was issued, it was realized that my player was innocently talking about how I would hit them with a ball when I was pitching and they couldn’t get out of the way. (You try pitching to a little bitty strike zone.)  Everyone had a good laugh. Me? Not so much.

I saw the right field foul pole on the Minor League field, where a 9-year-old hit what would have been the greatest home run in recorded history had it been two feet to the left of the pole instead of two feet to the right in the league championship game. Over the fence. Waaay over the fence. Definition of a long strike.

I saw the walkway behind the first base dugout, where I was sacking up the bats after we won a 12-year-old State Tournament semifinal playoff game against Alexandria and got cussed out by an opposing mom for having the gall to intentionally walk their team’s best player with two outs and a base open with the game on the line. (It worked, by the way.) “We are driving back tomorrow night and cheer for Lake Charles,” she told me. “I’ll save you a seat,” I told her.

(Spoiler alert: She never showed.)

I saw the coaching box where I stood in the final game of the State Championship game and couldn’t decide whether to run the first-and-third play in the bottom of the sixth inning with a trip to the Regionals in Florida on the line. While trying to figure out what time would be right, and a quick pop up and a ground out led to the heartache of leaving the tying run only 60 feet away from scoring. I’ve always wonder what would have happened if I had pulled the trigger.

And that’s about one percent of the memories I will take with me.

But what I saw most of all is the parking lot behind the center field fence – the Skybox – where we all gathered as 30-somethings to watch our kids play. We’d show up even when our own kids weren’t playing. Every night felt like another World Series game. Almost three decades later, hardly a day goes by when we don’t recall a game or, even better, an incident from those years.

Parents getting white-knuckled mad while grabbing the fence. Shortstops already crying before the ball had stopped rolling after it had gone through their legs. Umpires trying to explain the infield fly rule. Over-the-fence home runs. Left-handed catchers. Seeing a curveball for the first time.

They’ll take the current Little League facility and make it into something truly special. But what I’ll remember is also truly special. Maybe not the facility as much as the people who spent countless hours making countless memories.

I’m not sure who grew up more during that time – the Little Leaguers or me. 

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

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Abner Doubleday didn’t invent baseball – some historians say the only thing he started was the Civil War – but even if he had, there are a few things I don’t think he had in mind when it comes to the National Pastime.

It’s actually not the National Pastime anymore; it’s the National SaveTime. And while I’m all about it – one major league team recently hosted a night game that ended before actual nightfall – there’s something you’ll be seeing more and more as the College World Series cranks up Friday.

Lots of pitchers are appearing to check their watch, so much so that you’ll think they are either waiting for a train or wondering if it’s time to take their medicine.

Actually, the answer is neither. Instead, they are getting the signal on what they are supposed to throw on the next pitch. It’s a wristband with a digital read-out that the dugout sends directly to the pitcher. For example “1-1” could mean “fastball, away.” Throw a pitch, get the ball back from the catcher or infielder, check the wristband, throw another pitch and hope the catcher hasn’t fallen asleep. It’s (unfortunately) that simple.

What? No more “1” finger by the catcher for a fastball, “2” for a curve? Abner (or somebody) must be rolling over in their grave!

It’s done for two reasons; only one of which I hate. The first is for the speed of the game. Let’s not even get into how great it was when catchers – even if they were in the fifth grade — actually called the pitches because that’s how you learned the game. But with this new technology, the signs don’t have to be relayed six times before it gets to the pitcher.

These days, coaches at every level want to be in total control. And, to be honest, pitchers and catchers can now just worry about pitching and catching. Though I always loved it when a junior varsity kid would shake off the catcher signs six times before throwing a pitch (really? You’ve got that many in your arsenal?) I guess it’s OK in the name of saving time.

But what I don’t like is another element it has taken out of the game – stealing signs. Somewhere along the line, stealing signs has taken on the same implication as cheating on your taxes or chewing with your mouth open.

I think stealing signs is a great part of baseball and eliminating it is penalizing someone for being just a little bit smarter than the dudes on the other team.

The use of this product from a small tech company in Virginia named “Game Day Signals” – another investment opportunity I failed to act on — was approved by a number of conferences for use this year. LSU’s pitchers prominently use it and they are far from the only ones.

One current college coach told me that his team will be using it next year and he is very excited about for one main reason – eliminating sign stealing.

Of course we should have seen this coming, once batters began coming to the plate with some Pythagorean matrix printed on their sweatband. (Isosceles triangle means drag bunt.) Forget about checking with the third base coach to see if he gave the double hat touch for the indicator. Now it’s just stand there, get a number and do whatever the chart says.

I’m all about change and making the game faster. But to me, it seems like this is just making the game dumber.

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

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There are a lot of reasons why, but old baseball scorebooks are something that I hang on to. They are from which I played, coached, or covered. From Little League to high school to minor league, even semi-pro games I once played when I refused to believe I was too old to give it up.

It’s not enough to say that these are stories of a game – a mini-history you might say — played out on two pages of a spiral notebook. If that’s all they were, that would certainly be enough.

But what these scorebooks represent to me – and I have more than 40 years worth — is much more than that.

They are treasures.

Every time I look at one, it brings back a memory. Something that might be long since forgotten or something I remember like yesterday.

So when I found out that Ronnie Coker had passed away this week, I went straight to my old, dusty scorebooks. He was known for many accomplishments – a successful coach, a leader in high school athletics, and lately, a powerful force in the lives of the people he loved and for people he had never met.

I was fortunate to know Coker in three of his “lives,” all three thankfully still accessible in one way or another.

The old scorebooks reminded me of what I already knew; he was a tough out for Minden’s American Legion team in the summer of 1982. He was a really good player surrounded by two really great players, but you never could afford to look past Coker. In one game, he came to the plate five times against us and reached base all five times. In another, he had a two-run single in the eighth inning and in another he had a sacrifice bunt to set up the go-ahead run.

Whatever he needed to do.

I remember Coker being a part of one of the most storied games in local state championship history – one ended by a two-out, eighth inning, walk off three-run home run to give Minden a win over Catholic High.

What I didn’t remember was that he was the losing pitcher in one of the most incredible games I have still ever seen. Minden’s two best players were gone (one was the catcher) and so the team I coached stole 18 bases. But even with that, we still couldn’t put Minden away as the game moved to the 13^th inning. Being the bulldog he was, took the ball after playing in the field for 12 innings and went to the mound. We ended up winning on a single by one of my players whose life, sadly, also ended way too soon.

The next year, he was playing semi-pro ball and there in another old scorebook it was shown that he was the starting pitcher against the team on which I was playing. All I could manage was a fly out and ground out against him, so I bunted the third time up. At least I did something.

When I became a sportswriter and he became a coach (at Parkway), the first article my search engine took me to was dated April 30, 1993. It was a feature I wrote about how the Panthers were preparing to open the playoffs. It was a story about motivation; how Coker had taken the team’s best catcher and made him into a pitcher and how he had decided to play four freshmen among his top players.

“The biggest thing we have is leadership,” Coke said in the feature. “We really don’t have the greatest offense or defense around. But for some reason they don’t give in.”

But for some reason they don’t give in. Little did I realize how those words would have an impact 30 years later.

And then there is the modern way of archiving – the cell phone.

One day last summer, I was sitting in the Querbes parking lot waiting to cover a golf event and Coker was a-calling me back. Trying to casually let him know that this would be quick, I began by saying I only had a couple of questions about the quantum leap improvements that have been made over the years to local high school baseball fields.

The conversation lasted 17 minutes.

Once Ronnie got started, you couldn’t stop him. Listening to that conversation, it was evident of the passion in his voice, even though he had been stricken with cancer a couple years earlier. He had thoughts on what had been done and thoughts about what needed to be done and wanted to share them with me.

Also on my phone, I also checked last text I ever received from him. It was about a project for his foundation and he was wanting to drum up interest to show what was being accomplished by young athletes – and to young athletes.

Just like he did with thousands of other people he knew, he ended it with “WTD.”

Win The Day.

That was his signature, in more ways than one. It was how he played the game, it was how he coached the game and, until he couldn’t do it anymore, it’s how he lived his life.

He had 21,540 days to win on this Earth. Ronnie Coker gave every one of them his best shot.

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

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Coming back from Houston last week, I was about to make the loop around Lufkin and just happened to notice a rotating billboard flash a message: “Always a Panther.” The picture that went with it was of a high school baseball player.

My first thought was that it was a graduation message by a proud parent, but of course it wasn’t. As I passed by Lufkin High School, the flags were at half-staff, so I began to do the research and found out the ugly truth.

Lance Modisette had been killed earlier in the week. He was driving a car that was traveling at a high rate of speed and struck a vehicle making a left turn into a private driveway on a hill just north of Nacogdoches.

Modisette had been a member of the Lufkin team – famously known as the “Thundering 13” — that won the Little League U.S. Championship in 2017. He went on to be a member of the Panthers baseball team. The words in the media account of the accident read: 

“He was scheduled to graduate next Friday with the Class of 2023.”

A few days later, Cameron Robbins, a pitcher at University Lab in Baton Rouge, was on a senior trip in the Bahamas. There was a sunset cruise involving a number of the trip participants. For whatever reason – reportedly on a dare — he jumped into the water and never surfaced. The Coast Guard called off the search two days later. The words in the media account of the story read: 

“Robbins had graduated just days earlier from the University Lab.”

Both are horrible, devastating events and a reminder of how precious life is. But for a couple of days, I couldn’t stop thinking about either one of them.

And then I realized why. It was the word “graduation.” One was about to graduate; one just had.

We think of high school graduation as one of the happiest times of a young person’s life. It is such a transition moment and a signal that the rest of your life is about to begin. Maybe it’s college or a job or the armed services, but for those who are about to graduate (or just have), there is no feeling like it.

Admittedly without knowing all of the details, it does appear that both made decisions that cost them their life. And in the case of Modisette, it also cost a 71-year-old woman in the oncoming vehicle her life as well.

Think about those fellow students on the Bahamas cruise who had to witness the events unfolding right in front of them. As a sign of times we live in, there is also a video of it.

Because his name sounded familiar, I went back and checked my scorebook from 2022 and discovered that I had actually seen Robbins pitch in a playoff game for the Cubs.

And I had watched the Lufkin Little League team – only about 100 miles from Shreveport — win the U.S. Championship that year (before losing to Japan in the finals).

The loss of life – no matter what the circumstances – for an 18- or 19-year-old is always tough to comprehend. Two young men — baseball players who had probably just played their last games on the diamond – were in the midst of such a joyous time in their lives.

It was a time to celebrate. Instead … 

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

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If there’s one sign no golfer wants to see when they walk into the pro shop, it’s “Cart Paths Only.” Nobody ever says “All right! We get to stay on the paths all day, never have any idea what club to hit and get to walk as far as possible!”

But a close second is the notification that there is a temporary green on the course. Course officials will shave down an area by the actual green and try to make it a manageable putting surface, but it’s not anywhere close to the same. The fairway is the fairway; the green is the green. No amount of close cropping is going to change that.

So if finding out that one hole has a temporary green is something of a nuisance, how would you feel about 36 of them? Because that’s what local golfers are about to get.

Dates haven’t been officially announced, but here’s what’s about to happen: The Club at Huntington Park will be closing down its regular greens in the first week of June and will begin using temps. A few weeks later (probably at the beginning of July), Querbes Park will do the same.

Can you say “automatic two-putt”?

There is someone to blame, of course, and it is someone golfers are quite familiar with – Mother Nature.

Remember those six-degree nights we had during the winter? Then a few weeks later, those 11-degree nights? In the middle of April, the temperature got down to 42. In each of the next two weekends, it was as low as 51 degrees.

“It was terrible,” says Querbes pro Nathan Barrow. “At Huntington, the poa annua (grass) had become resistant to any kind of chemical. It just wouldn’t go away. The cold temperatures didn’t allow the Bermuda (grass) to grow.”

The simple formula is this – you need about 150 degrees to grow grass. When the daytime and the nighttime temperatures add up to 150, you’re in business. This region didn’t even come close to that in April, which is why it should be no surprise that the city courses are in this spot.

“This is something everybody throughout the South is dealing with,” Barrow says. “But I’m excited that we are actually doing something about it.”

And let’s be honest. If you’ve been to Querbes, for example, there are only three greens that are worth putting on. The rest are just mounds of some combination of dirt and sand. Strange as it may sound, temporary greens are actually a better alternative.

Huntington will be fumigating the greens this weekend and begin cutting in the temporary greens while the course is closed. (Do you really want to be anywhere near greens that are being fumigated?) Then, those greens will have grass sprigs installed on June 8-9. Querbes will repeat that process.

So what does it mean for Joe MuniGolfer?

“We will be open,” Barrow says. “What we will do is have something like a twilight fee all day. We will have other reduced prices. But we want people to still be able to get their exercise, play golf and work on their games while the greens grow in.”

Which leads us to the question everyone with a 5-iron wants to know: How long is this going to take?

“We estimate 6 to 8 weeks of growing time,” Barrow says. “So at Huntington, that’s an estimated re-opening around July 20 or early August.”

Also, the greens are not just being re-done. There is an entirely new type of grass that will be installed. It’s a hybrid Bermuda named Calcutta. “It’s a newer strain and a healthier grass,” Barrow says. “We’ve got a great story to tell with Querbes celebrating its 100^th year next year. We have a record number of rounds and we are going to keep them coming with new greens by Labor Day.”

Might even ease the pain when it’s Cart Paths Only.

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

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When you are making your list of Things That Have Been Ruined, be sure to have “grade school Field Days” on your list. Might want to make it fairly near the top.

The late April/early May corridor is always riddled with Field Days – for the love of God, don’t try to drive on a street anywhere near one – and if you haven’t picked up on the seismic shift that has taken place, then you obviously don’t have any children. Or grandchildren.

And the future is not bright. At the rate we are going, Field Day for your great grandchildren will consist solely of face painting and sno-cone eating. (We are dangerously close right now.)

One of my men recently had his first Field Day and I asked his mother how he enjoyed it. “Kinda hacked there wasn’t any competition,” she said.

That’s my guy!

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see the Pizza Box Relay Challenge being an Olympic event any time soon.

Speaking of Olympics, that’s basically the idea of Field Day. Well, at least it was the idea.

Line ‘em up! See who can run the fastest, jump the highest/farthest, and throw in a feat of strength and/or dexterity. You want to mix in a ball throw? Have at it! We got time! Better yet, we have ribbons for the winners!

Look, I get it – some kids aren’t cut out for that. Coming in last in the 40-yard dash isn’t exactly their idea of fun. But nobody is mandating that they line up and run.

For those who want to compete, let them compete. For those who want to at least give it a try (I was embarrassingly bad at chin-ups), come on and give it a shot. For those who just want to enjoy the day off from school, we got stuff for you too.

That’s a nice concept, but that’s about as far as it goes.

If you want to know who can get it done when it comes running to the hula hoop, changing into clown pants, doing three swings of the hoop and then racing back to tag a teammate with a Frisbee, go ahead and leave open a Friday in April or May next year.

I know it’s not a basic tenet of our educational system, but I have always held to the belief that in every grade level, everyone should know who is the fastest kid. Everybody knows who the smartest kid is, so what’s the diff?

Instead, we are getting all these made-up events that are masquerading as competition. Oh look, Timmy is trying to run around the cone without dropping the egg and then he’ll hand it off to Janie!

Next time you see a stopwatch or a measuring tape, let me know.

I’d love to be at a Field Day planning meeting one time, just to hear how they come up with some of the events. First on the agenda, obviously, is “what color T-shirt each class will be wearing?”

Next would be to determine who is going to call and reserve the table for 40 at Superior Grill.

It’s right after that when I would raise my hand and suggest “How about three rounds of boxing?” 

End of meeting. At least for me.

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

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It has been a line I have used and re-used ever since I’ve been involved in baseball, either as a  player or as a youth coach. It speaks to this: No matter how good and complete of a team you think you might have, there’s always one thing you have to worry about from the opposition.

“… As long as Vida Blue or James Rodney Richard doesn’t show up.”

The great thing about baseball is that it is the defense, specifically the pitcher, that controls the action. The other team might not be able to play catch before the game without injuring a few teammates, but that doesn’t matter if the guy who takes the mound is better than the rest of the team — his and yours — combined.

This was particularly true before baseball scouting became so precise. You could be playing an opponent from a small town you’d never heard of, but when you saw those first warmup pitches from the guy on the mound, you knew what you were up against. And there was a really good chance it wasn’t going to be pretty.

For you.

You can’t win, as they say, if you can’t score.

Blue (DeSoto Parish) and Richard (Lincoln Parish) were two great examples because they played high school baseball in North Louisiana before integration and their prep careers were largely unknown. But within a decade, they would become two of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball; the classic flame-throwing country kids.

There’s no doubt that the LHSAA high school coaches around here were glad they didn’t have to worry about Blue or Richard, who played in the LIALO, showing up in the other dugout.

But what about a day in which Vida Blue and James Rodney Richard both showed up?

For years, I’d heard the story of how Blue and Richard played against each other in high school. The timeline offers the possibility – Blue’s last year at Mansfield’s DeSoto High was 1967 when Richard was a sophomore at Lincoln High (in Vienna, just north of Ruston).

No kidding: I thought that one day I could literally write a book about this epic game. Imagine getting these two baseball greats together to talk about what that day was like. Sadly, Richard passed away in 2021. Blue, who won the Cy Young and the MVP for the Oakland A’s four years after playing for DeSoto High, died last weekend at age 73, so my opportunity has come and gone.

But you can do like I have done for years and imagine what that scene was like – scouts from every MLB team in attendance behind home plate, fans lining the field all the way around. Batters helplessly flailing at pitches they couldn’t see, much less hit.

After all, it is documented that Blue did strike out 21 batters in one game in his senior year. However, he did give up a foul ball that day.

One.

So go ahead and think about what it must have been like to see a game like that between two future major league stars before anyone knew a thing about them. It’s one of those I-would-have-given-anything-to-see-that events in local high school lore.

There’s only one problem.

It didn’t happen.

At least there is no proof that it ever took place.

If y’all only could understand how much I wanted it to be true. I just knew that I was going to find something, somewhere in the archives, but I couldn’t make it happen. Search after search, newspaper after newspaper, keyword after keyword … nothing.

But I kept symbolically fouling off pitches, hoping that I could find that nugget hidden away somewhere. And then I realized that there was this thing called the internet, which means you could find just about anybody anywhere.

After a week of research, it took about 15 seconds to find one of Blue’s DeSoto High teammates living in Mansfield. I called, he answered.

(“Please, please say you have great memories of that game and that it was fantastic and you even have a scrapbook filled with memories.”)

No, he said, no memory of ever playing against James Rodney Richard.

There were no more pitches for me to foul off. Legend had given me hope, but reality struck me out.

Vida Blue is expected to be buried next week in Mansfield. You can bet there will be plenty of great memories shared during that time.

But I can’t help but imagine how great it would be if there were just one more.

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

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To paraphrase a very wise man, the only thing I know less about than “track” is “field,” but in case you haven’t noticed, ‘tis the season for high school meets all over the place.

Allow me to assure you of one lead-pipe certainty – if you go to one, you’d better pack a lunch.

And dinner.

Nobody has ever called me “Mr. Track,” but give me about a day to figure it out and I’d have these meets running on time like Mussolini did with the trains in Italy after World War I. If you think Major League Baseball had a problem with game length, high school track would like a word.

It’s a good thing graduation season is coming up or they might have to start handing out diplomas between the girls and boys 4×400 relay.

All of that notwithstanding, the thing I like about track is its simplicity. The events aren’t very hard to figure out.

In track, it’s basically this: You start here, you run to there, and whoever is first wins. (They might ask you to jump over something along the way, but that doesn’t seem to be too complicating.)

And field isn’t all that tough, at least for the most part. I mean, I look at the javelin or shot put and figure I could do that if I were (1) younger (2) stronger (3) had a better arm and (4) knew how to yell when I threw it.

High jump and long jump? Doesn’t take a rocket scientist: Run, then jump. (However, I would like to add whoever thought of the triple jump probably had a screw loose.)

Which brings me to the most fascinating event in all of track and field – pole vault.

Quick question: Are you (expletive) kidding me?

I’m being totally honest here when I say that I have NO IDEA how they do it. There are few athletic events in which I would be concerned about dying, but pole vault is one of them. Yes, I think I could avoid death at Talladega easier than I could at pole vault.

We all know how this would go. I’d saunter down the runway, plant the pole, rise up about four feet, then fault flat on my back before ever reaching the pit and suffer a massive head injury.

I realize there is a large, foam mat awaiting at the other end, but that doesn’t do anybody any good if you can’t get there.

Who in their right mind grabs an abnormally long fiberglass pole, looks up at the bar that seems way too high and says “Gimme a shot at that.”

And I found out earlier this week that it’s even more complicated than I had previously thought. Not only are there horizontal settings for the cross bar, there are also vertical settings for the standards that hold the bar. You can move them closer or farther away.

I’d want them moved into the equipment room.

Full appreciation for the technique, strength and athleticism that goes into it, but you people are crazy.

About as crazy as the people who put out a schedule of events and expect the meet to run on time.

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

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There was a nine-year-old boy living in the Broadmoor neighborhood of Shreveport who was fascinated with an athletic achievement he had just seen on television. 

So he went outside, put together a makeshift practice area, and tried to copy what he had just seen. And tried. And tried some more. 

This was something different. This wasn’t a center fielder crashing into the wall or a running back bowling over a linebacker. This was something he had never seen at a major sporting event. In fact, almost nobody else had either. 

When you look back on it, this may have been one of the seminal moments in the history of sports. It was a technique that no one had ever done, much less even thought about. And if it was going to be introduced to the world, the nine-year-old boy wanted to be the first to introduce it to grade school Field Day a few months later. 

In the Mexico City Olympics of 1968, Dick Fosbury changed an entire sport with his technique of going over the high jump bar “backward” instead of the established way of the straddle or Western roll. The “Fosbury Flop” resulted in a gold medal and the high jump event has never been the same since. 

Fosbury died last week at age 76 and it received little notice. That’s a shame, because he is one of the few in sports history to completely revolutionize a competition. 

Don’t give me Michael Jordan; there was Julius Erving and Elgin Baylor before him. Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus didn’t revolutionize anything – they just played their sport better than anybody else. There were players hitting home runs before Babe Ruth came along; he just hit more of them. 

Muhammad Ali certainly changed things in boxing, but not everybody immediately started floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee. 

Wilt Chamberlain and Rick Barry shot underhanded free throws, but that hasn’t exactly caught on. 

You might argue Notre Dame’s Gus Dorais and Knute Rockne “invented” the forward pass against Army in 1913, but it had actually been around, though sparingly used, for a while. It’s just that nobody had used it like the Irish did in that game. 

Who else has completely changed the way something was athletically done? 

Somewhere out there, Pete Gogolak probably has his hand up. In 1966, he became the first soccer-style kicker in the NFL, now the universally-accepted way to kick.  

But other than that, it’s not a long list. 

After Fosbury set an Olympic record in Mexico City, far more than half of the competitors in the 1972 Olympics were using that technique.  

Fosbury began using the “flop” because he just couldn’t figure out how to make his body work with the preferred method of the time. He couldn’t even jump five feet in high school, so he began to experiment. It took a couple of years to perfect before it all came together. 

Another reason the Fosbury Flop caught on was because, up until that time, high jump pits weren’t exactly a soft place to land. You try landing on your back on sawdust from seven feet in the air and see how quickly you get back in line. Deep foam matting brought in more possibilities. 

Thankfully, the father of that nine-year-old knew a place where he could get some foam padding. A car repairman friend had some extra back seats that he had ripped out and let him use the padding that was left.

It made for a unique Christmas present – who asks Santa for a high-jump pit? – but after that, it was game on. The boy then set his sights on St. Joseph’s School Field Day 1969. Lo and behold, it paid off.  

And I still have the first-place ribbon to prove it. 

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

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NCAA tournament brackets are like the 79 you shot in your latest round or the new car you just bought.

Your friends are happy for you, but no one really wants to hear any details about it.

We are about to enter the “How’s Your Bracket” season and I’m here to tell you that it’s the definition of a rhetorical question. An answer isn’t really necessary.

It’s not like somebody at work will get on the intercom and announce, “Hey everybody, Joe picked all the winners in the second round and is leading in the company bracket pool!”

What’s worse are the television announcers who let us know they have only two of their Final Four picks remaining after the opening weekend. What are we supposed to do? Send you a fruit tray and offer our condolences?

NCAA Tournament brackets seem like scorecard playoffs in golf – somebody else always wins. Someone who is not named you.

There’s no doubt that playing the NCAA bracket is fun and adds excitement to the Creighton-Utah Valley game. But no matter how well you think you are doing, there’s always someone out there who is doing better. What’s worse, they might not even know a basketball from a pumpkin.

I’m about 1-for-20 in bracket pools and I consider myself among the elite because I actually won one. It was 2010 and early in the season, I had seen Cornell go to Allen Fieldhouse and beat Kansas. That nugget landed somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain for a few months, knowing that it would need to be recalled come March.

One night during that same season, I couldn’t sleep so I found myself watching West Coast basketball and thought that St. Mary’s team wasn’t bad.

So when the bracket time came, both were double-digit seeds but I figured they were worth a shot. You know why? Because I didn’t care. I didn’t bother analyzing FanGraphs or KenPom; I realized that I didn’t know any better, so I took the morsel of information I had and went with it.

Not only did I pick Cornell and St. Mary’s to win one game; I picked them to win two. That was enough points to sock away the winner’s prize before the Final Four even started.

But if I were so smart, how come I haven’t even sniffed a title since? When I won the cash in 2010, I figured I was playing with house money for the next eight years. The house money ran out five years ago, proving that I am just like the rest of y’all.

A loser.

This year, they are claiming that there are 20 teams that can win the championship, but history does not bear that out.  Despite all of this talk about “Madness,” the tournament has been won by a No. 1 seed the last five times it’s been played. Overall, a No. 1 has won it 65 percent of the time, so you really don’t have to go fishing in a very deep pond to find a winner.

But the actual Final Four isn’t where the fun is. No, that comes when some guy from Northern Iowa with a last name so long it takes two jerseys to fit all the letters on it beats No. 1-seeded Kansas in the second round (that also happened in 2010). Unless you are related to Ali Farokhmanesh, you would have no reason to think that was possible.

So close your eyes.

Or throw a dart.

Or decide which mascot name would beat up the other mascot name in a fight. (That would rule out the Centenary Gentlemen if they were Division I.)

Choose however you’d like, because it doesn’t matter.

And whatever you do, keep it to yourself. 

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com

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