Tidbits - June 1, 2023
- Details
- Category: Archives
- Published on Tuesday, 30 May 2023 21:44
- Written by Ralph Shealy
- Hits: 834
TIDBITS by RALPH SHEALY
REVERSE CONTINUES
The Carolina-Clemson reversal of fortune in baseball continued this week.
In a period of one month, Carolina went from being ranked number three in the country to unranked.
Clemson went from being unranked to number six in the country.
Clemson is the fun to watch team Carolina once was. The Gamecocks are currently unwatchably cringeworthy.
I’ve heard some say Carolina lost all momentum, because of exams eliminating the mid-week game. With no mid-week game, the Gamecocks went from awesome to awful.
The downfall began the weekend after exams and bleeding hasn’t stopped.
Clemson’s resurgence may have begun when Saluda County’s Billy Amick started playing more. In the first 20 or so games, Billy only appeared in a few of them.
Then he hit a big, game winning home run, and he’s been the spark of the offense ever since.
All of Carolina’s offensive sparks have been extinguished.
Don’t give up. Gamecock fans, however.
Read this fact I saw on Twitter:
“Baseball is a weird sport. Ole Miss finished 14-16 last year in the SEC and lost the 8/9 seed game in SEC Tournament and went on to win the National Championship. They were 32-22 and the last team into the NCAA tournament.”
Carolina’s current record is better that the numbers put up by Ole Miss last year, so maybe the Gamecocks can regain their early season form in the tournament.
Speaking of Ole Miss, there were two teams that did not qualify for this year’s SEC tournament, Ole Miss and Mississippi State. Those teams happened to be the last two World Series champions! The SEC is a tough baseball league....
REMEMBERING
Congratulations to the Class of 2023, high school, college and higher degrees.
I wish you all the best.
I look back to the days when I graduated from Saluda High School, 54 years ago.
I’m sure many of you have heard “The Cracker Box,” the classic old high school gym, cannot be saved in the new school project. I has to do with cost prohibitive utilities problems.
It will be sad to see it go, as I’ve put many a mile in the old gym.
It was not just a place for sports, PE, pep rallies, assemblies and graduations, it was also the gathering place before school, at recess and lunch.
It was here that I learned the late Bernard Horne could shoot the daylights out of the basketball. Pick-up games would be played on both ends of the court during recess and lunch break, and some players stood out. Bernard weighed around 300-lbs. in high school, but you better not leave him open. Funny the things you remember.
That point was in the text conversation I had with my old Carolina friend, Debe Greenway Randolph, after Tina Turner died.
We both remembered going to the Ike and Tina Turner concert at the Carolina Coliseum on April 6, 1972 (I looked it up), but we couldn’t remember if we went together.
Debe said she recalled trying to get back stage at the Dave Clark Five concert in Greenville when she was in high school, but didn’t remember if she tried the same trick at Ike and Tina.
I let her know the one thing I cannot forget about her was when we were going out one night, walking in front of her dorm, when a pigeon flew over and left a deposit on the top of her head.
“Get it off!!! Get it off!,” she yelled.
I couldn’t get it off, because I was rolling on the ground laughing.
After I picked myself of the ground, I reached in my pocket an got my handkerchief (Daddy always carried a hankie, and I’m his son), and I “got it off.” That handkerchief went in the next trash bin.
Yep, some things our don’t forget, even after 50 years.
STARTING OVER
There is a great R&B song from the early 70s by Mel and Tim called, “Starting All Over Again.”
I use that analogy when I talk about this fall’s Saluda Tiger football team.
The SHS Class of 2023 contains the last members of the 2019 state championship football team, so this coming season they’ll be no championship ring wearers.
The Class of 2023 players won the state championship as freshman and played for the upperstate championship as seniors. I would say they had quite a legacy.
The fall of 2023 begins fresh, with new players out to make their own mark.
I attended the “Spring Showcase” last Thursday, and while the Tigers will be young in places, they have plenty of good talent.
With the players coming up from the middle school, the Tigers will have 90 jayvee and varsity members in the fall, the most in history, I would guess.
It’s going to be exciting.
Paraphrasing the old song, “Starting all over again without the state championship players is going to be rough ... but we’re going to make it!”