meta name=”robots” content=”index, follow” Meschery's Musings of Sports, Literature, and Life Meschery's Musings on Sports, Literature and Life: 2017-10-22

What my musings are all about...

Blogging might well be the 21st century's form of journaling. As a writing teacher, I have always advised my students to keep a daily journal as a way of organizing their thoughts for future writing projects, a discipline I have unfortunately never consistently practiced myself. By blogging, I might finally be able to follow my own good advice.

The difference between journaling and blogging is that the blogger opens his or her writing to the public, something journal- writers are usually reluctant to do. I am not so reticent.

The trick for me will be to avoid cluttering the internet with more blather, something none of us need more of. If I stick to subjects I know: sports and literature, I believe I can avoid that pitfall. I can't promise that I'll not stray from time to time to comment on ancillary subjects, but I will make every attempt to be interesting and perhaps even insightful.

Saturday, October 28, 2017

Al Attles Fashion Statement

Huge applause for Golden State Warriors' Coach Steve Kerr's imitation of Coach Al Attles Championship garb pm the night the team was honoring him A floral shirt collar over the top of the jacket collar was all the rage in the Seventies. Thank God, he didn't wear bells.

As well as the Wizards were playing in the first half of last night's game, shooting at over 50%, I never felt the Warriors were going to lose. If you've been in the game as long as I have, you can tell if a team is rattled, and the Warriors always seemed to me reasonably composed, albeit sometimes frustrated with their own performance.

Talking about composure, Bradly Beale lost his. Then Draymond Green lost his and his jersey, which Beale had ripped in half. Not sure what that was all about? Uniform envy? Given the league's stand against violence on the court, I suppose Draymond had to be ejected, but surely the NBA's eagle-eyed observers in New Jersey had to have seen that Beale started the ruckus with a hammerlock on Draymond's head, not to mention defiling Dray's uniform. My fine suggestion: Beale=$25,000; Green $999,00, Referees: $5,000 each for not seeing where the D & B trash-talk was leading.

Jim Barnett, the Warriors color commentator, quipped that if Al Attles, the great Warrior guard and HOF coach had been attacked by Beale, the Wizard guard would have been SWIFTLY dispatched by a few of Al's well known and lightening quick punches. Let it be known, Al Attles was pound for pound the second toughest player in the league back in the day. The first was Wilt Chamberlain, both terammates of mine. I never had to worry if I got in a fight, which I often did, that my back was not covered. Truth be told, their presence probably provided me with fool's courage.

In today's Life portion of my blog, how about this to ponder: Why is it that all these vile predators of females are creepy dudes? Like Harvey Weinstein, Bill O'Reilly, our creepy looking president, and this California Assembly creature, Bocanegra accused of groping in this morning's newspaper? I use the word creepy rather than ugly, which they are, but there have been saints who were ugly, and I don't want to give ugly a bad name. Back to the creepy dudes. Without their power or money, they couldn't find a date in a Sultan's harem.

With my upcoming birthday, I've been perusing old jock poems and found this. I may have posted this one on a previous birthday blog, but most poetry is better re-and-reread.

Ulysses    by Claude Clayton Smith

There is yet some elastic
in this tired old jock,
enough to toss the ball
around and teach my son
Telemachus the subtle art
of looking left - while
thinking right. To catch
the opposition napping,
to cross them up and leave
them guessing. Elastic
yet to flip the pages of 
faded clippings and narrate
tales than live as legends:
the hours of practice,
the hard-fought game,
the occasional moments
of glory.