Blackie Sherrod, who was voted Texas Sportswriter of the Year 16 times when he worked for papers in Dallas and Fort Worth, had a column called Scattershooting and used that title for a book.
Larry King said in a piece he did on Sherrod that he was the most plagiarized writer in the country. I’m borrowing some of Blackie’s best lines today but will give him full credit for them.
Blackie came to mind when somebody asked me recently if I planned to retire any time soon. Sherrod had a great response to questions about retirement.
When he finally quit the journalism business at age 83, he told folks, “Retirement is like a steam bath. Once you get used to it, it’s not so hot.”
Blackie wrote about a boxer once, “He has everything a boxer needs except speed, stamina, a punch and ability to take punishment. In other words, he owns a pair of shorts.”
In another story, he wrote, “After indulging in some heavy, late-night research with scholarly friends, Bobby was driving back to his hotel, innocently enough, when he was sideswiped by several empty cars lurking at curbside.”
Another classic observation was, “In a perfect world, a fair world, Bob Hayes should be forced to carry a small calf on his shoulder when he runs the dashes…Mark Spitz, in all fairness, would swim with a sea anchor and Ella Fitzgerald must sing every note with a mouth full of Tootsie Rolls.”
There’s not much writing like that these days…
The first thing that grabbed my attention in the recent Wall Street Journal magazine profile of country music star Dolly Parton was that she is 75-years-old.
My most vivid memories of Dolly go back to the weeks she spent in Natchitoches filming the movie Steel Magnolias. That was 1988 when she was in her early forties.
Dolly accepted without hesitation an invitation to sing at a Northwestern football game and helped attract a capacity crowd to Turpin Stadium.
She requested that the Northwestern Marching Band accompany her on her hit song 9 to 5 and would not even discuss the possibility of any kind of compensation for the performance.
Dolly, who has remained physically fit over the years, said she keeps her “motor running” by doing a lot of shouting and jumping around in the house praising the Lord.
That gave her the idea to come up with some easy exercises “that people who are older or sick can do” and to combine some praise-type music with a physical activity program.
So Dolly’s joyful, musical workouts are likely to be available to the public soon. But she says, “That’s the extent of my exercise. I’m not big on going to the gym, and I’m particular about who I sweat with.”…
All those fans of LSU and other schools that try to keep up with Alabama in football must be in a funk now that Tide coach Nick Saban has signed a new long-term contract.
The agreement will keep him at the helm of the Alabama dynasty at least through the 2028 season when he will be 77-years-old.
If there had been no pandemic, Saban would have been in Natchitoches last summer to be inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.
He was selected for the honor in 2019 based on his success as head coach at LSU and was scheduled to be here the following June for the induction ceremonies.
COVID wrecked those plans, and scheduling conflicts kept Saban from being here this summer with others who were selected with him for the honor. His induction is set for next June.
Saban had a 48-16 record at LSU from 2000 through 2004, went to bowl games all five years and won the national title in 2003.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES