Pirate Pitching Staff
by Bryce Martin
All-time major league baseball 12-man pitching staff, worthy of ruling the high seas:
Jerry Davie
Sam Jones
Bob Locker
Bob Walk
Ed Plank
Ed High
Fred Waters
Mike Parrott
Dave Jolly
Steve Rogers
Lem Cross
Ricky Bones
Manager on the Deck: Sparky "Captain Hook" Anderson
Side coaches: Johnny "Patcheye" Gill, Jay Hook
Tell them how the weather was... -- Ernest Hemingway bryce_martin_1@Lycos.com
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Friday, November 16, 2007
Tex Cobb: 'Bad body' bad boy (Part 1 of 3)
by Bryce Martin
In Tex Cobb's world, the sport of boxing was hindered by the rules of the ring. He affirmed a last-man-standing approach.
It was the same routine every morning. He would come in alone about 7 a.m., round up a discarded morning newspaper and order coffee, for which he would need about 100 purple packets of artificial sweeteners. He always sat in the wall booth next to the jukebox and always played the same songs, sometimes carrying a book. It would always be a book filled with a collection of classic, philosophical insights.
I was already acquainted with Randall "Tex" Cobb, boxer-cum-actor, when we crossed paths for around three hours every morning during several months in 1989 and 1990 at the 24-hour Steak 'n' Egg Kitchen on West End Ave. in Nashville. Getting to know more about him proved interesting.
He would read some mornings but would not absorb himself in the material if it meant distracting someone who wanted to carry on a conversation. Once, I asked about his famous comment regarding sportscaster Howard Cosell… actually about the bout he had with then-champion Larry Holmes in November 1982 in Houston with the World Boxing Council heavyweight title at stake that led to the comment. Cobb was referred to as "Randy" in those days.
"Holmes didn’t whip me," Cobb said. "He beat me in fifteen rounds. If we’d kept on going I would have won. That’s in the ring. Outside the ring, in the street, I would have handled him like a pussycat. He knows it, too."
Holmes pounded Cobb savagely during the ABC-televised contest, never knocking the challenger down in winning a unanimous decision. Cosell pronounced it a travesty and never again broadcast another boxing match.
Cobb’s fabled rejoinder: "If I had known that’s what it would take to get Cosell to quit doing boxing I would have fought Holmes a long time ago."
But, back to Cobb’s opinion on the fight, the part about him not losing to Holmes.
"I was in the best shape of any heavyweight who ever fought," he said. "It’s not about how hard you can hit. It’s about how many punches you can throw. I was a ‘bad body’ fighter, probably in the top three all-time. Those who judged me on how I looked didn’t see the whole picture."
So, given more time, Holmes would have eventually toppled for the count?
"I’m a gladiator. I’ve never trained just for boxing. My workouts go way beyond what any boxer has even attempted to try. You can’t kill someone who wants to die."
A death wish, is it?
Then came the Cobbian laugh, the one you could never be prepared for, best described as some short honks delivered in meticulously punctuated intervals. Customers from faraway booths turned heads to target the eruptions, smiled, and repositioned themselves.
"Give me a broad-axe and a club. That’s the way I wish it could be."
I knew that he had played football at Hardin-Simmons in Abilene, Tex., left that for kick-boxing, a sport not nearly as popular then as now and one in which he excelled, and in later years I had read an article about him in a fitness magazine that described his workouts, incredibly grueling and torturous in description. He began a professional boxing career in 1977 at age 22.
Each morning, he would be wearing a bulky sweatshirt, either jeans or sweatpants, scuffed white athletic shoes and usually a sock hat to cover a bushy head of hair. He was not one to put on airs. "Whatcha see is what you get," he liked to say.
It was not uncommon for him to disappear for lengthy intervals. Those were the times he would be doing movie work or television commercials. He was best known for his biker role in "Raising Arizona." A second movie, "Uncommon Valor," provided a prominent role as well.
"Yeah, they let me run my mouth some in that one," he smiled.
He had worked with the likes of Richard Pryor, Nicolas Cage, Chevy Chase, Gene Hackman, and several other big names, but he never talked about movies or himself unless someone asked, then he would usually turn it into a joke and steer the conversation elsewhere.
"They had me playing a psycho…rip off your arm and wrap it around your head and not blink twice about it… It was a stretch but I think I handled it."
He would then add his loud and deranged laugh, which somehow did not make him any less likable. Usually polite, a good listener and with the smiling, open manner of one who enjoys life and wants those around him to do the same, Cobb seemed natural in making friends with all those he met.
His nose was that of a boxer’s, flat and broad; yet other than the defacement of that most prominent feature, a stranger to his existence might not tab him as being a fighter. I can’t help but try to picture how he might have looked had he chosen a more regular profession. I find it impossible to form any other image.
Married, he would call his wife, Sharon, from the restaurant phone and discuss their plans for the rest of the day just before leaving.
END PART 1
By Bryce Martin
Published: 4/30/2001
-30-
by Bryce Martin
In Tex Cobb's world, the sport of boxing was hindered by the rules of the ring. He affirmed a last-man-standing approach.
It was the same routine every morning. He would come in alone about 7 a.m., round up a discarded morning newspaper and order coffee, for which he would need about 100 purple packets of artificial sweeteners. He always sat in the wall booth next to the jukebox and always played the same songs, sometimes carrying a book. It would always be a book filled with a collection of classic, philosophical insights.
I was already acquainted with Randall "Tex" Cobb, boxer-cum-actor, when we crossed paths for around three hours every morning during several months in 1989 and 1990 at the 24-hour Steak 'n' Egg Kitchen on West End Ave. in Nashville. Getting to know more about him proved interesting.
He would read some mornings but would not absorb himself in the material if it meant distracting someone who wanted to carry on a conversation. Once, I asked about his famous comment regarding sportscaster Howard Cosell… actually about the bout he had with then-champion Larry Holmes in November 1982 in Houston with the World Boxing Council heavyweight title at stake that led to the comment. Cobb was referred to as "Randy" in those days.
"Holmes didn’t whip me," Cobb said. "He beat me in fifteen rounds. If we’d kept on going I would have won. That’s in the ring. Outside the ring, in the street, I would have handled him like a pussycat. He knows it, too."
Holmes pounded Cobb savagely during the ABC-televised contest, never knocking the challenger down in winning a unanimous decision. Cosell pronounced it a travesty and never again broadcast another boxing match.
Cobb’s fabled rejoinder: "If I had known that’s what it would take to get Cosell to quit doing boxing I would have fought Holmes a long time ago."
But, back to Cobb’s opinion on the fight, the part about him not losing to Holmes.
"I was in the best shape of any heavyweight who ever fought," he said. "It’s not about how hard you can hit. It’s about how many punches you can throw. I was a ‘bad body’ fighter, probably in the top three all-time. Those who judged me on how I looked didn’t see the whole picture."
So, given more time, Holmes would have eventually toppled for the count?
"I’m a gladiator. I’ve never trained just for boxing. My workouts go way beyond what any boxer has even attempted to try. You can’t kill someone who wants to die."
A death wish, is it?
Then came the Cobbian laugh, the one you could never be prepared for, best described as some short honks delivered in meticulously punctuated intervals. Customers from faraway booths turned heads to target the eruptions, smiled, and repositioned themselves.
"Give me a broad-axe and a club. That’s the way I wish it could be."
I knew that he had played football at Hardin-Simmons in Abilene, Tex., left that for kick-boxing, a sport not nearly as popular then as now and one in which he excelled, and in later years I had read an article about him in a fitness magazine that described his workouts, incredibly grueling and torturous in description. He began a professional boxing career in 1977 at age 22.
Each morning, he would be wearing a bulky sweatshirt, either jeans or sweatpants, scuffed white athletic shoes and usually a sock hat to cover a bushy head of hair. He was not one to put on airs. "Whatcha see is what you get," he liked to say.
It was not uncommon for him to disappear for lengthy intervals. Those were the times he would be doing movie work or television commercials. He was best known for his biker role in "Raising Arizona." A second movie, "Uncommon Valor," provided a prominent role as well.
"Yeah, they let me run my mouth some in that one," he smiled.
He had worked with the likes of Richard Pryor, Nicolas Cage, Chevy Chase, Gene Hackman, and several other big names, but he never talked about movies or himself unless someone asked, then he would usually turn it into a joke and steer the conversation elsewhere.
"They had me playing a psycho…rip off your arm and wrap it around your head and not blink twice about it… It was a stretch but I think I handled it."
He would then add his loud and deranged laugh, which somehow did not make him any less likable. Usually polite, a good listener and with the smiling, open manner of one who enjoys life and wants those around him to do the same, Cobb seemed natural in making friends with all those he met.
His nose was that of a boxer’s, flat and broad; yet other than the defacement of that most prominent feature, a stranger to his existence might not tab him as being a fighter. I can’t help but try to picture how he might have looked had he chosen a more regular profession. I find it impossible to form any other image.
Married, he would call his wife, Sharon, from the restaurant phone and discuss their plans for the rest of the day just before leaving.
END PART 1
By Bryce Martin
Published: 4/30/2001
-30-
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Asscuseame, Yahoo search you, what? Can't find it?
by Bryce Martin
Jassacksophone.
What is it? What does it mean?
What is intriguing is that you won't find the word or variations of it going through Yahoo search. That's highly unusual since almost any random selection of keys in that long box will produce a result.
Jassacksophone was a word coined by western sidekick actor Smiley Burnette. Coined is likely not correct here, since I am, I'm sure, one of probably less than a dozen people on this planet who knew this in the first place and among an even smaller group who would remember it at all. On screen, Burnette was sometimes in character as Frog Millhouse, a slightly bumfuzzled pal to Gene Autry, and he rode a jackass instead of a horse. (That's a totally different side issue since Burnette usually rode a screen-favorite white horse with a black circle around one eye.) When he was Frog Millhouse on the big screen Burnette had a jackass that liked to bray. Frog, a singer with a frog-like voice, was able to tug on an ear or tail to manipulate the braying sounds in such a way that he could get the animal to provide a sort of musical accompaniment to the squeeze-bulb horn and other noise making contraptions tied on the animal.
He called his braying musical beast a jassacksophone (think "bassackwards" for "ass backwards.")
I searched the word while on a nostalgia binge, seeking to tie the past to the current for some reason known only by certain cranial crevices. By adding it here, I hopefully have added it to the multitudinous list of searchables.
-30-
by Bryce Martin
Jassacksophone.
What is it? What does it mean?
What is intriguing is that you won't find the word or variations of it going through Yahoo search. That's highly unusual since almost any random selection of keys in that long box will produce a result.
Jassacksophone was a word coined by western sidekick actor Smiley Burnette. Coined is likely not correct here, since I am, I'm sure, one of probably less than a dozen people on this planet who knew this in the first place and among an even smaller group who would remember it at all. On screen, Burnette was sometimes in character as Frog Millhouse, a slightly bumfuzzled pal to Gene Autry, and he rode a jackass instead of a horse. (That's a totally different side issue since Burnette usually rode a screen-favorite white horse with a black circle around one eye.) When he was Frog Millhouse on the big screen Burnette had a jackass that liked to bray. Frog, a singer with a frog-like voice, was able to tug on an ear or tail to manipulate the braying sounds in such a way that he could get the animal to provide a sort of musical accompaniment to the squeeze-bulb horn and other noise making contraptions tied on the animal.
He called his braying musical beast a jassacksophone (think "bassackwards" for "ass backwards.")
I searched the word while on a nostalgia binge, seeking to tie the past to the current for some reason known only by certain cranial crevices. By adding it here, I hopefully have added it to the multitudinous list of searchables.
-30-
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Drinking coffee from a saucer
by Bryce Martin
My grandmother drank coffee from a saucer. She experimented with different brands but usually brought home Folger's' mountain grown. She bought the two-pound tin for economy. It was a red can that opened with a metal key wind. My grandfather liked his cut plugs of Tinsley chewing tobacco so he would claim the empties and convert them to spittoons. Grandma poured the steaming hot liquid from her percolator into a cup sitting on a saucer but she didn't drink it out of the cup. She would add a little Milnot or Pet evaporated milk and sugar, stir and then she would leave the cup off the plate and set it aside. Next, she would dip a spoonful of the still semi-raging hot brown liquid and blow on it. You could see a slow wave go from one edge of the spoon to the other. Her lips would get close enough to the spoon to gauge the intensity of the heat it emitted. After two or three blows, she emptied the spoon's coffee onto the saucer, picked up the saucer, carefully tilted it downward and drank the coffee. Other of my older relatives secretly wondered if it was a habit picked up from old world relatives. I wondered too so I asked her one day. She seemed surprised that I would ask. "It's hot," she said. "I like to cool it down. I don't want to scald my tongue." As she got older, she switched to Postum. She still, though, drank it from a saucer, except when it cooled to her liking in the spoon and she drank it from that.
-30-
by Bryce Martin
My grandmother drank coffee from a saucer. She experimented with different brands but usually brought home Folger's' mountain grown. She bought the two-pound tin for economy. It was a red can that opened with a metal key wind. My grandfather liked his cut plugs of Tinsley chewing tobacco so he would claim the empties and convert them to spittoons. Grandma poured the steaming hot liquid from her percolator into a cup sitting on a saucer but she didn't drink it out of the cup. She would add a little Milnot or Pet evaporated milk and sugar, stir and then she would leave the cup off the plate and set it aside. Next, she would dip a spoonful of the still semi-raging hot brown liquid and blow on it. You could see a slow wave go from one edge of the spoon to the other. Her lips would get close enough to the spoon to gauge the intensity of the heat it emitted. After two or three blows, she emptied the spoon's coffee onto the saucer, picked up the saucer, carefully tilted it downward and drank the coffee. Other of my older relatives secretly wondered if it was a habit picked up from old world relatives. I wondered too so I asked her one day. She seemed surprised that I would ask. "It's hot," she said. "I like to cool it down. I don't want to scald my tongue." As she got older, she switched to Postum. She still, though, drank it from a saucer, except when it cooled to her liking in the spoon and she drank it from that.
-30-
Friday, October 05, 2007
Barry Bonds: Getting His Just Undue
by Bryce Martin
The "Satan of Swat," the guy who cheapened the most hallowed record in all of sports, how do you measure he? This way:
Feature flash from Yahoo:
One of our favorite ways of measuring the popularity of sports stars is to check jersey searches. If a player is cool enough for fans to wear his or her name on their back, the athlete's status in buzz is cemented.
1. David Beckham Jersey
2. Marion Barber Jersey
3. Tony Romo Jersey
4. Walter Payton Jersey
5. Tim Tebow Jersey
6. Brett Favre Jersey
7. Michael Vick Jersey
8. Hope Solo Jersey
9. Devin Hester Jersey
10. Vince Young Jersey
11. Randy Moss Jersey
12. Patrick Willis Jersey
13. Reggie Bush Jersey
14. Tom Brady Jersey
15. Peyton Manning Jersey
16. Larry Bird Jersey
17. Joe Montana Jersey
18. Craig Biggio Jersey
19. Steve Nash Jersey
20. Mia Hamm Jersey
My point is not in providing the list, but to remind that of the 20 named Barry Bonds is not one. Only one baseball player is, the now-retired Craig Biggio. The puffball who claims the career home run record does not have enough residue from that to even make the top 20?
I'll claim that as a certain amount of justice.
-30-
by Bryce Martin
The "Satan of Swat," the guy who cheapened the most hallowed record in all of sports, how do you measure he? This way:
Feature flash from Yahoo:
One of our favorite ways of measuring the popularity of sports stars is to check jersey searches. If a player is cool enough for fans to wear his or her name on their back, the athlete's status in buzz is cemented.
1. David Beckham Jersey
2. Marion Barber Jersey
3. Tony Romo Jersey
4. Walter Payton Jersey
5. Tim Tebow Jersey
6. Brett Favre Jersey
7. Michael Vick Jersey
8. Hope Solo Jersey
9. Devin Hester Jersey
10. Vince Young Jersey
11. Randy Moss Jersey
12. Patrick Willis Jersey
13. Reggie Bush Jersey
14. Tom Brady Jersey
15. Peyton Manning Jersey
16. Larry Bird Jersey
17. Joe Montana Jersey
18. Craig Biggio Jersey
19. Steve Nash Jersey
20. Mia Hamm Jersey
My point is not in providing the list, but to remind that of the 20 named Barry Bonds is not one. Only one baseball player is, the now-retired Craig Biggio. The puffball who claims the career home run record does not have enough residue from that to even make the top 20?
I'll claim that as a certain amount of justice.
-30-
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
They Don't Unmake 'Em Like They Used To
by Bryce Martin
Excerpt from a 1915 obit regarding a former Cookeville, Tenn., citizen:
(name omitted) as he was familiarly called by his large circle of friends, who were limited only to the extent of his acquaintance, was the very embodiment of the whole-souled, hospitably natured, generous-hearted Southern gentleman, and will be as greatly missed by all classes of people in his town and community as any other one man who could have been taken away.
Not a bad inscription:
Here Lies
Ded Ingone
Whole-Souled
Hospitably Natured
Generous-Hearted
-30-
by Bryce Martin
Excerpt from a 1915 obit regarding a former Cookeville, Tenn., citizen:
(name omitted) as he was familiarly called by his large circle of friends, who were limited only to the extent of his acquaintance, was the very embodiment of the whole-souled, hospitably natured, generous-hearted Southern gentleman, and will be as greatly missed by all classes of people in his town and community as any other one man who could have been taken away.
Not a bad inscription:
Here Lies
Ded Ingone
Whole-Souled
Hospitably Natured
Generous-Hearted
-30-