Dexter Strickland and Paco

My wife had to work today while I had the day off, so she charged me to use our nearly expired coupon for T.C. Anderson's car wash in Durham. As I approached the counter to present the coupon, I heard a loud cackling noise coming from the back of the store. At first I thought it was an unruly child, but my curiosity grew when I saw a middle-aged couple calmly singing "You Are My Sunshine" into the corner of the room toward the commotion. They were engaging in conversation and song with Paco, a talking parrot.

"How long has that bird been here?" I asked the cashier.

"We've had him for 10 years," she said.

I finished my transaction and slowly walked toward the couple and caged bird, trying not to disrupt their rhythm. Paco danced to the song, alternately running in a circle and twisting his head like Stevie Wonder. His singing was only intermittent but awkwardly loud, like a call on speakerphone with terrible reception.

The couple must have sensed my presence behind them, so they backed away. It was my turn to talk with Paco. I approached the cage and silently read the posted instruction sheet while Paco eyed me with anticipation. It said that Paco liked to say hello and goodbye and would, as had already been demonstrated, respond to one specific song. Since I had been to T.C.'s many times but never heard anybody talk with Paco, I felt suddenly self conscious about talking to a bird in the presence of other people. Singing alone seemed even more embarrassing, so I turned to walk away.

"Bye bye," Paco said. I stopped and turned toward Paco to briefly reconsider, but I decided again to leave the bird alone.

And then, as I was watching NC State lose its bowl game on television in the waiting area, I noticed that UNC basketball guard Dexter Strickland was doing the same thing. An older gentleman also noticed Dexter's presence and introduced himself before asking when Carolina's next game would be. Dexter seemed happy to chat with the guy. They shook hands before Dexter left and struggled to shove what must have been a thick wad of singles through a slit in a wooden box labeled "tips."

Frustrated that I was too timid to be my friendly self around a Carolina athlete in public yet again, I walked back to Paco, who saw me coming from a mile away since his side of the store had cleared. He clawed at the front side of the cage as if to wave hello. I leaned in close.

"Dexter Strickland dunked on Miles Plumlee in 2011," I whispered, "but I still feel like I have nothing to talk about with him. Isn't that silly? Also, he is a tremendous tipper."

"Bye bye," Paco replied.

The 2001 Mr. Libertyville High School pageant

Last week I was having lunch with my colleagues when the topic of pi reciting arose. Pi reciting is the competitive task of reciting as many memorized digits of pi as possible while a witness holds the reciter accountable by silently reading the printed digits. I cannot call it a feat because simply saying “3.14” would qualify one as a pi reciter. The idea is to be able to recite an impressive number of digits or more than anyone else you know. 

My department chair’s student had announced to the school over the speaker system that his math teacher could recite the first 200 digits of pi. This was not actually true; apparently the student held a playful grudge and thought the public statement would embarrass his teacher.

“I think most of you already know that I was in a school-sponsored male beauty pageant in high school,” I interjected. “The guy who placed second recited the first 314 digits of pi. It was legitimate; he had distributed the 314 digits to everyone in the sold-out theater. His name was Roger Hsiao.”

What I did not tell them was that Roger stumbled in the middle of it, probably around digit 200, and then recovered only after a couple digits of help from a judge.

“I never forget pi,” he said as he shuffled off the stage, shaking his head. “I blew it.” The misstep had shaken him and probably cost him the title of Mr. Libertyville High School in the final interview.

I had watched his performance in the wings in swimming trunks and an Australian Outback hat, hating myself for choosing a talent that neither required rehearsal nor inspired awe. I had chosen to wrestle an inflatable crocodile into a garbage bag. I knew I would look foolish following Roger's effort, but I had no option to do anything except for what I had already barely planned. None of the contestants had divulged his talent to anyone prior to the big night, so nerves were high. I guess they got to Roger, and they were about to get to me.

I went out there, and the sound guy cued my techno mix track filled with Steve Irwin quotes like “IT’S FEEDING TIME” and “I HAVE NO FEAR OF LOSING MY LIFE.” My friend pulled on a fishing line that dragged the croc onto the stage. I was feeling too nervous to honor Irwin’s guile, so I decided to end it quick. I pounced, rolled around a bit and stuffed half of the pool toy into the bag. The other half wouldn’t fit. I quickly ran off stage to startled applause.

“Did you win?” my colleagues asked. “Did you beat Roger?”

“No,” I said. “Ben Polite won. I think he wore a Speedo in the swimwear portion.”

I resolved to find video footage of the pageant to surprise my colleagues, but LHS could not find it in its archive. Perhaps this blog post will stir the video to the surface.

A brief look at Carolina's football rivalries

Note: This post mentions Carolina football rivals in unflattering terms. Before you get bunchy underwear about something I wrote, remember that I'm not insulting schools. I'm insulting football teams and occasionally their fans and maybe, by extension, you.

Last night's matchup between the Heels and the 'Hoos got me thinking about Carolina's diverse football rivals. When I arrived on campus in 2003, rivalries were not evident because Carolina football was not evident. It took time for me to learn what my new friends had known for years about the five rivals.

I'll start with Duke, the proximity rival. I have to include the Devils in this post because they are eight miles away and culturally opposite of Carolina for many ugly reasons. Unfortunately, the rivalry suffers because Duke football suffers. Duke students have not supported their team for many years, so the game can feel like solitaire. That said, Duke did reclaim the Victory Bell this season. Perhaps the changing of hands will change the atmosphere of the Tobacco Road gridiron rivalry, but it probably won't. Fans make a football rivalry; a team only plays in it. All-time series record: 57-36-4.

NC State is the contemporary rival. The best part of playing the Wolfpack is its fanbase, a loud bunch that seems to root against Carolina more than it roots for its own team. Beating State is a joy, but the magnitude of that joy does not compare to the despair of losing to them unless, of course, you refer to the 2004 or 2012 victories. Current and past head coaches at both schools have hurled insults through local media and sometimes apologized. All-time series record: 64-32-6.

East Carolina is the rag doll rival. Awhile ago I read that the North Carolina General Assembly passed legislation requiring the continuation of the series. Fine, I say. East Carolina fans are passionate enough to care more about their own team than State fans. Game day in Greenville is a fun experience, but I suspect it is at its best when the Heels are in town. All-time series record: 11-2-1

South Carolina is the forgotten rival. Most Heels fans want to see this game as at least a biannual fixture, but South Carolina has no room for us because it already faces out-of-conference Clemson each year. At least that's what they would say. South Carolina fans have a football arrogance that can be found at most SEC schools, but the Gamecocks' 1971 departure from the ACC intensifies that arrogance. South Carolina narrowly escaped its last encounter in Chapel Hill. I hope the result will be different next August when the Heels and Gamecocks kick off the season on a Thursday night in Columbia. All-time series record: 34-18-4

Virginia is the classical rival. I think traditional might be too strong of a word since most Carolina football fans care more about beating ACC newcomer Virginia Tech. But Carolina and Virginia share the oldest rivalry in the South. If you have ever seen a black-and-white photograph of Carolina football fans, then you were looking at people who hated the University of Virginia football team. I have to respect that. All-time series record: 59-53-4

The source of my back pain could be Carolina's punt return team

I am taking today off work because of increasing back pain that started Monday night without apparent cause. I feel undue guilt for missing work since a lot of people depend on me every day, so I will list possible moments of injury to rationalize my absence.

1. I transported a heavy laptop case and two textbooks to and from work in the passenger seat of my car Monday morning and afternoon. I lifted them into my lap while sitting in the driver's seat before exiting the car.

2. My wife and I cleaned our house Sunday night in preparation for hosting her brother. As was her custom for the few months since our wedding, she pointed to our ottoman full of blankets, magazines and board games and said, "Please lift." As was my custom, I lifted.

3. NC State was tied with my Tar Heels with less than two minutes remaining when State head coach Tom O'Brien decided to eat all three of his time outs and settle for overtime with the ball inside the State 25. He figured he had an advantage in overtime since the State passing attack had toyed with our secondary for much of the game. Carolina head coach Larry Fedora decided to gamble on third and long when he called a time out to stop the clock. It could have been a disastrous decision if the Wolfpack moved the chains, but the Carolina defense made the stop. Fedora called Carolina's last time out with 30 seconds on the game clock, and the stage was set for the most unexpected if not the most electrifying finish in series history.

I was sitting with my dad, my wife and my friend Daniel in the upper level near the 50, a perfect location to watch a game-winning play that spanned 74 yards. Most of my readers know what happened next. The injured Giovanni Bernard substituted himself back into the game when he heard his favorite play call. Carolina faked a full rush and dropped back for the return. Gio beat the first man and crossed the field where a wall of blockers greeted him. Play-by-play voice Jones Angell lost his mind. Sixty-thousand fans lost their minds. Hundreds of thousands of fans not in Kenan lost their minds. Five years of futility vanished in 17 seconds.

My friend Daniel really lost it. His vocabulary shrinks to a set of 15 words, not all publishable, when the Tar Heels find themselves in this sort of elation or, as he demonstrated last year at Virginia Tech, dire disappointment. I did not lose my mind until Gio crossed the goal line because I was scanning the field for flags, but Daniel seemed to know what would happen as soon as Gio sprinted toward the NC State sideline. He jumped and used his words. When he saw I was not, he wrapped his arms around my waist and repeatedly thrust me into the air.

The remaining 13 seconds of game clock resulted in a botched PAT that turned into a two-point conversion, a kicking team fumble recovery and a victory formation. It was plenty of time and material to "Jump Around," a basketball tradition that I am happy to see has crossed over into Kenan. But my back might not be happy about it or Daniel's celebration.

Either work, family or Carolina football really tore me up. I know you can relate. I only have video footage of the football incident courtesy of GoHeels.com. Enjoy.

Note: You might need to press control+escape to exit full-screen mode.

A big chess win

Last week I earned the highest-rated win of my online chess career in a three-days-per-move game that lasted for four months. My opponent was a Carolina alumnus and football fan who was rated as an expert at 2027 before he fell. My rating was 1579. Any pairing separated by more than 200 points is supposed to be instructional and noncompetitive. But when he made an early mistake that cost him a pawn, I stopped scheduling other games to focus on clinging to my small material lead.

I would not have bothered to post this here, but chess.com had a nifty gadget that displayed the game and allowed me to narrate. My comments appear in the box below the board after certain moves.

What a thrill.

Nov. 20, 2012 addendum: I found a post on the North Carolina Chess Association's blog that correlates rating gaps to match and game results probabilities. I also found a page at ascotti.org that, according to the NCCA post, is not quite what it purports to be. 

My interpretation of the post and page is that I had a 3 percent chance of winning, a 6 percent chance of drawing, and a 91 percent chance of losing. These probabilities are based on the 448-point rating gap that existed at the end of this game. The rating gap at the beginning of the game would have been a better predictor, but I do not know what it was. I think it was smaller.

My opponent's rating has since fallen to 1906, which puts our current rating gap at 291. If we played again today, my odds would improve to a 7.5 percent chance of winning, a 15 percent chance of drawing, and only a 77.5 percent chance of losing. That is rosier but still daunting.

Looking for heroes after Penn State

A year ago Penn State football and Joe Paterno were evidence that morality and competitive revenue sports intersected and had done so for many more years than I had been alive in a place appropriately called Happy Valley. The Nittany Lions were a team worth cheering for even if you had no connection to the school because they reportedly did things right while the NCAA babysat other competitive programs.

This idea really settled in when the UNC football scandal broke my heart back in the summer of 2010 after a couple exciting seasons. I stuck with my Heels and still do. I thought things had to get better because they could not get worse. I was wrong, but most of the proof did not come out of Chapel Hill (although some of it certainly did).

My colleague John graduated from Penn State and, like most alumni, respected Joe Paterno before the Sandusky story broke. He smiled when he talked about Paterno’s old-school savvy and Coke-bottle glasses. He joked that he knew I was a good guy when I told him that I was jealous of his coach and the stability he offered Penn State.

John is one of the best high school teachers I have ever known from either side of the red pen. He is brilliant, patient and painfully modest. Teaching in the room next to his is the definition of humbling. I once watched him interact with his little daughter at an end-of-year faculty barbecue and commented to another colleague that he was such a good dad.

“John is good at everything,” she plainly said to me. She was right.

I could tell John struggled to discuss the Penn State news last fall during class changes. I tried not to push it. His dejection reminded me that he was once a kid who looked up to his elders like any other kid. Everybody knows that those feelings are lasting, but it didn’t matter for John.

“It turns out my hero wasn’t such a hero,” he wrote to me soon after Louis Freeh’s condemning report.

The Penn State tragedy reminded us to think for ourselves and question authority. Those of us who did not attend Penn State do not have to consider discarding our own personal heroes today, but maybe we should look for more of them.

Some are right next door.

Our losing season

The 2012 Chapel Hill men's softball season will put my pessimistic honesty to the test. I am already off to a challenged start. I could not figure how to start such a post, so I searched for my copy of Pat Conroy's My Losing Season, a memoir of his tenure as a college basketball player at The Citadel. I planned to find a suitable epigraph that would give me some direction and perspective. I evidently never found the book, so here is my own perspective.

I wanted to play on a softball team for years. A broken face and concussion interrupted and practically ended my high school baseball career in April 2002. That loose end annoyed me for a decade. In 2007 I socialized my way onto a decent team in Charlotte and enjoyed playing second and first base for a few Sunday-night games. My then-girlfriend-now-fiancee watched me play that season and decided she wanted to marry a man who owned a jock strap.

After moving to Chapel Hill in 2008, I either coached junior varsity baseball in the spring or forgot to register for the local league until it was too late. What I did not know then is that many of the teams had been in the league for longer than I had been alive and never forgot to fill the schedule to capacity by an early March deadline. Last winter, two years removed from my brief coaching career, I finally registered on time. I sent an e-mail to my friend Roddy to ask him to play and recruit other guys to field a complete team. We decided to compose a roster of our friends regardless of their skill level. Anybody with any experience would be a pleasant accident.

In preseason practices we found that about half of our guys were accidents. But even the other guys could hit a 12-inch, slow-pitched softball lofted to a mouthwatering height of six to ten feet. We figured that defense would be our primary weakness. Judging fly balls, throwing, catching and understanding game situations were all obvious concerns that we subconsciously ignored. This was easy to do because our least experienced players were also our most optimistic. As the team's player manager, I found this quite endearing. Our practices consisted of nothing more than batting practice and ball shagging. We christened our team with $3 uniforms, the name George's Pitches and the Pancake Batters, and a bat with the foreboding label "Freak Show." I anxiously awaited our first rundown.

I attended the preseason coaches meeting and discovered that the next youngest guy was at least 10 years older than me. Another fellow wore two knee braces. To the meeting. Things were looking up for the Pitches. One purpose of the meeting was to debate a couple flexible rules. The American Softball Association of America had recently lowered the maximum pitch height from 12 to 10 feet to make the ball easier to hit. To my surprise, all of the coaches wanted the ceiling to remain at 12 feet. The guy with two knee braces really wanted to keep the ceiling at 12 feet.

"Two years ago I pitched to a guy who broke my arm," another guy wearily said. "I didn't see the ball, but I felt it."

I was in the presence of older men without the reflexes to protect themselves against a 50-foot line drive. I felt a wicked urge to go against the grain on the issue and did exactly that, but my vote meant nothing. The ceiling stayed at 12 feet by a 7-to-1 vote. I left the meeting without making a single friend.

We opened the season against a church team composed of middle-aged men with scant athletic ability but more than 20 years of league experience. Some of them had children who attended the high school at which several of my teammates and I taught. I did not know it at the time, but some of those children attended that game to watch their daddies invoke the mercy rule on their sprightly, young teachers. A botched play at the plate saw one of those daddies run over our starting pitcher, whose shoulder turned a puffy yellow. He sat out the first half of the season while it healed. I saw the son of one of those opposing players at school a couple weeks and many consecutive losses later.

"I heard you have a softball team," he said to me.

"I do," I replied, still unaware of how he knew how I spent my Monday and Wednesday nights. "A few teachers play on the team." I went on to identify them by name.

"You have a young team," he said.

"Yup," I said. "We are young compared to the other teams."

"Don't you think it's strange that older guys beat you by double digits?" he fired.

"No," I said and proceeded to explain our plight. We discovered early that our defense, which actually improved as the season progressed, was not our only problem. Offense was our other problem. Optimistically speaking, those were our only two problems. Hitting a slow-pitched softball was easy, but we failed to hit it where the fielders were not. We had no guys with home run power and no guys with the patience to wait for a good pitch. They all looked good to us. The ball was big and yellow and slow. It was hard to miss but harder to resist.

To say that hitting was our only offensive problem would have been an understatement. We overran bases that could not be overrun. We stopped on bases that should have been overrun. We even took an illegal lead off and paid the price with an automatic out. If Yogi Berra was watching, he was also blushing. When I was about to introduce our defensive troubles to the bold 17-year-old, he tired of listening and interrupted my monologue.

"My dad almost killed your pitcher."

It was not long after that short conversation that I was running to second base on a fielder's choice and tore my hamstring, which had never happened to me before. Without a good reason to heal or someone to tell me otherwise, I decided to play the rest of the season with the injury. I pulled, strained or tore that hamstring at least a dozen times. I learned to run slow and play out of position to protect it, but fielding ground balls was painful.

One night my fiancee yelped when I turned around in my boxers. A large purple stain had suddenly appeared on the back of my leg above the knee. Worried that it was a dangerous infection or bite, I went to my doctor. He explained that my hamstring was bleeding from repeated tears. Somehow that made me deeply satisfied.

At some point we found ourselves with no wins, ten losses, another sidelined infielder and many bloody knees (and many bloody bedsheets and therefore many bulky, bloody loads of laundry). Those optimists I mentioned earlier still thought we could win a game. I was certain we would not. My fiancee often asked me whether we would win, and I invariably said no. Do not misunderstand. I played with a great attitude and cheered my teammates. I enjoyed every inning until we played a Sunday-night game against the second-worst team in the league and lost by 20 in three innings that lasted for 25 minutes.

The game was a makeup on an irregular night, so most of our best players were absent. Our defense was really something to see; I think we committed eight or nine errors in three plays. The game ended when the home-plate umpire spoke a few inaudible words with the scorekeeper and walked back to the field.

"Who is the coach?" he asked only loud enough for the infield to hear. I raised my hand. He dropped his head so that the brim of his cap covered his eyes. He gave me the grimmest come-hither gesture I have seen in 28 years. I jogged toward him with the awful feeling of knowing exactly what would be said and that it did not need to be said. It was insulting. I was suddenly the face of something I did not want to represent on my own.

"It looks like we've reached the third-inning run rule here," he said with eyes still directed downward. "I'm very sorry."

"OK," I said. I wished I had something better to say.

The dugout after that game was tense. Losing by the mercy rule was nothing new, but the 20-in-the-third rule felt quite fresh. Our earnest left-center fielder explained to everyone that we should be embarrassed. I already was only because of the umpire's odd gesture. But I also knew that our lineup was the weakest it had been all year. Even crazier than the humiliating loss was that we all knew we could easily beat the team that had just beat us by 20 in three innings.

"Did they cancel the game?" my fiancee asked when I walked in the door 40 minutes early.

"No," I said. "We lost in 25 minutes by 20 runs. We will beat them tomorrow."

I was not showing resolve. I just knew we would have a better lineup than them in 24 hours, and we did. We won by 2. They were surprised, but we weren't. Still, we celebrated on Franklin Street and recounted the game inning by inning. We thought it might be the only opportunity. A day later I refreshed the league results page a dozen times. I wanted to see a 1 in that first column. It was important to me. Winning is more fun when you're a loser.

We beat the same team a second time a week later to take two of three from them. Then we lost in the first round of the playoffs to the best team in the league. As was the case ten years ago, I did not want it to end. At least now I can regret this season instead of my lost season of 2002.

We will be back next year. And maybe with several strokes of good luck and good health we will be back in 38 years, which is exactly how long one of the current teams in the league has competed. Their roster has undergone a few makeovers, but their name is still McCauley Street and their two white-haired founding players are still swinging away.

Amen. 

How I feel about losing to Duke

I went to the Dean Dome last night and saw my favored Tar Heels lose to the Duke Blue Devils after earning a falsely secure 10-point lead with 2:38 to play. The comeback was the result of a perfect storm of missed free throws, turnovers, a player control foul and an own field goal. Duke escaped defeat with a 3-pointer only after the game clock had expired.

A mere 20 seconds earlier I had calmly explained to my mom that Tyler Zeller's first made free throw, which extended our lead to 2, meant nothing unless he also made the second. I knew that Duke would shoot a 3 even if they trailed by 2. Zeller missed his second. Duke rebounded. Austin Rivers dribbled down the clock while he enjoyed a mismatch with Zeller that eventually gave more than the space he needed to release the game-winning 3-pointer with less than a second on the clock. The backboard light went off a millisecond before the ball slipped through the rim like it was greased with Crisco.

It took the wind out of me. I felt like the bottom of my stomach had opened so that the cheese fries and Yuengling inside could spill to the concrete floor and onto the rows in front of me. I acted as cool as I could and sensed the rest of the 21,000+ fans doing the same, but I could not look. I was too miserable to be willing to see anyone's misery.

"We did not deserve to win," I said to my mom before I left. The walk up the hill, which I had expected to be a celebratory sprint to Franklin Street only minutes before, was laced with frightening screams of frustration from passing cars and high dormitory balconies. In any other situation I might have dialed 911. We walked in silence to Franklin Street. Disappointed students still filled the coffee shops and bars. The rush was off.

This game and that shot will be on ESPN Classic every time we play Duke, I thought. I will have to watch that shot on TV again minutes before we play them in Durham. 

I will close my eyes.

"I'm over it already," I lied to my fiancee to make her think I was more together than I was. We drove home. I read the few already published stories to try to understand what had happened in the last two and a half minutes of the game. I sent an e-mail to my closest Carolina friends to ask whether this was the most brutal loss in series history. I felt like I had to know. The e-mail's subject was "Honest question. Read when calm." I knew I would wonder whether my memory was a dream the next morning; I dreaded that futile moment of hope. My head hit the pillow, and I was almost asleep three hours later.

Morning was unkind. My alumnus carpool buddy canceled, so I drove the half hour to work with only my thoughts. I tried to count all the Duke fans I saw on a daily basis and was pleased that I could only think of two. I decided to be the first to mention the game to each one so they could not catch me off guard. Mike and Mike on ESPN Radio made only a brief mention of the game. They were more excited that Will Ferrell announced the starting lineups at the New Orleans Hornets game. The audio made me laugh, so I decided to e-mail the YouTube video to my closest Carolina friends. I could not imagine any of them smiling until at least noon, but maybe they could if I could. I worried about some of them. None had replied to my e-mail. Perhaps none had been calm enough to even read it.

We were on the better end of a game like that against Duke in 2005, I thought as I pulled into the school lot. But now I realize that even that game did not have a do-or-die buzzer beater without the calming influence of a timeout. This game was jarringly offensive. This game made me angry.

My instinct all day was to not talk about the game. My friends must have felt the same. A colleague who approached me about Carolina football's National Signing Day results last week barely glanced in my direction today, and that's fine. The only person with whom I discussed the game in person was a Duke fan at work. I congratulated him with a rough half hug.

You might wonder why I am writing about this. Of course Duke fans might read this and foam at the mouth, but that's fine too. I am writing this for Carolina fans who feel the same way I do. We all talk about how we come together during the game, but now we will stick together after the game. That is easier for me if I know someone else feels the same way I do. I should probably call those friends who did not reply to my e-mail.

Roy said the best thing about last night's loss was that it should tick off the team and make them more determined to work harder. The best thing about it from a Carolina fan's perspective was that it made the impending second match-up one of the biggest in the rivalry's history. Carolina fans will be way up for the game in their homes or out with friends. The world will not see that; they will have to settle for Cameron Indoor Stadium, which Duke students struggle to fill. The last two minutes of last night's game spilled gasoline on Tobacco Road. Now it is up to the Heels and us, their fans, to light a match on March 3 at 7 p.m.

I hope this video will make you smile in the meantime.