Author: Frank Murtaugh

A LIFE AHEAD

Sportswriters spend countless hours trying to convince, first, ourselves, then the rest of the world, that games matter. That there is a deeper, more poignant subtext to every box score, checkered flag, or Grand Slam final. The idea is to examine the diversions of life in a manner that allows reflection on the people, places, and things that truly shape us, that really matter. Once in a blue moon, we actually pull the trick. More often than not, though, a dose of real life places a sportswriter’s craft where it belongs . . . somewhere around Section D.

As I was brainstorming ideas for this column — on September 6th to be precise — a dose of real life hit me like a seven-pound, six-ounce Nolan

Ryan fastball that got away. My second child — my second daughter, no less — arrived in a healthy, pink, wrinkled bundle of beauty. Elena was born just in time for one of the biggest sports weekends of the year . . . and I found that this mattered to me just about as much as it mattered to Elena.

She was born merely minutes after the amazing Williams sisters finished off the rest of the U.S. Open field so they could go ahead and settle their latest family tennis squabble. I found myself wondering what kind of relationship Elena would have with her older sister, hoping– nay, praying — that the relationship would be defined without computer

rankings or John McEnroe’s commentary in the mix.

Elena was born in time for another University of Memphis gridiron disappointment at the hands of Ole Miss. The Tigers’ new, explosive

offense, their blue-chip quarterback, their season-opening win . . . none of it mattered against Eli Manning’s Rebels. I found myself

wondering what kind of struggles Elena will face in the years ahead. What kind of frustrations will she have to wrestle with in establishing her position in a social, academic, or even athletic pecking order? My hope is that she’s able to remind herself that another chance will always come, and next time the score will begin, as it should, even-Steven.

Elena was born in time for the NFL’s opening weekend. More highlights, timeouts, penalty flags, fireworks, spandex, video-game commercials, and Chris Berman than any one nation of free men should be able to handle.

But this is America. On any given Sunday — or Monday night — a team that has never so much as taken the field (the Houston Texans?) just might whip the over-hyped, silver-helmeted five-time world champions. I found myself wondering if Elena will ever know the difference between a

flanker and a split end, a slant and a screen. And if she’ll be a Texans fan.

Elena’s first Wednesday was September 11th. Talk about a dose of life. How the heck to you factor that date into the hopes and dreams you have for your newborn? No diversion here. No hype. And the fireworks are ghastly images from a horrific mass-murder. Thoughts of sports? Like I said: Section D.

I was left with a rather pleasing thought last Wednesday. It had everything to do with Elena, and nothing to do with the games we choose

to play. The more I wondered about what her future held, the more I was reminded how this in itself was a victory of sorts. The evil that bared its fangs last September is out there, and will likely be there in some form as Elena grows into adulthood. But the fact that she is here now, the fact that innocence still exists, that unconditional love can still be created . . . well, it means we all have a chance. And if you’re keeping score, that’s a win — maybe a title even — for the good guys.

FOOTBALL FOR A SONG

What’s a pretzel-juggling, remote-tapping, keg-wielding fan to make of these new divisions in the National Football League? Eight divisions? What is this, boxing? The powers that be did the right thing and managed to pay homage to all four geographic directions in coming up with the NFC (and AFC) North, South, East, and West. And you know what? The new divisions actually make some sense. (No more Atlanta, New Orleans, and Carolina in the NFC West, for Pete’s sake.) With the 2002 season upon us, I’ve been inspired to attach a song to each of our eight new football quartets. Perhaps an easy way to remember just who’s zooming whom.

Residents of downtown, HarborTown, and Mud Island will no longer have to travel long distances for gasoline and other items once a new convenience center is completed next spring.

Uptown Place, developed by Jim Curtis of Tri-State Contractors and built by Guy Payne & Associates Architects, will offer many of the conveniences of everyday life. The mixed-use building, planned at 150 Auction Avenue between Main and Second streets, will contain a ground-floor convenience store with a BP/Amoco gasoline island and retail outlets, including food chains like Subway and a drug store. The second level will consist of 10 loft-style apartments.

“We are trying for a quality development with this project,” says Curtis. “We’re trying to set a standard in downtown for high-scale developments.”

“The Center City Commission [CCC] is delighted to see the project, which is a larger part of the Uptown Memphis development project,” says Jeff Sanford, CCC president. “This will change a dilapidated area into a vibrant, mixed-income area.”

The 25,000-square-foot development is a $3 million project that Sanford describes as “more than your usual strip shopping center.” The CCC’s finance corporation has issued Uptown Place an 18-and-a-half-year property-tax abatement initiative.

“Many people have a misconception about tax abatements,” says Sanford, referring to questions that have been raised about what are usually called freezes for developers. “Since 1979, there are only 141 active downtown abatements, and there are 6,000 total commercial projects in the district. Every project does not receive an abatement, only those projects the [CCC] knows will be completed with or without the tax freeze.”

With the CCC’s support, Payne says there should be no problem leasing the retail and residential spaces. Curtis says construction is scheduled to begin in early October.

GRAB YOUR SHOULDER PADS

Ahhh . . . September in the Mid-South. The temperature drops into the low 90s, kids hither and yon return to the classroom, and the spit-flying collision of helmets and shoulder pads can mean only one thing. Let’s play some football! (Word is, there were some college games that counted last month. I can no more pay attention to football in August than I can fat, bearded men wearing red suits in April. In the name of Knute Rockne, let these big men have a summer!)

Am I the only one who recognizes the seismic shift in expectations of Memphis Tiger football this season? An established (though young) quarterback in place. An offense with a higher performance ceiling than the defense. And a coach who has claimed his team will pass first and run, well, later. Is this the University of Memphis or the University of Florida? I’ll tell you one thing: I can’t wait to see them play.

Based on last Saturday’s drubbing of Murray State Ñ be they a I-AA opponent or not Ñ it’s going to be an intriguing season at the Liberty Bowl. The 52-6 victory was the program’s first season-opening win since 1993 and the most lopsided Tiger triumph in 33 years. Here are a few questions for the months ahead, based on the Tigers’ first 60 minutes.

DESTINATION UNKNOWN

Jim Rout won’t say yet where he’s going, but he’s happy to talk about where he’s been in 30 years of county government.

Rout leaves office at the end of August, having completed two terms as mayor of Shelby County plus stints as a county commissioner and county coroner.

“I don’t anticipate being on the ballot again,” said Rout, who turned 60 in June. He’s headed for a job in the private sector but doesn’t want to disclose his plans until the end of this week. He announced his retirement last year. In an informal meeting with Flyer reporters this spring, he said his „ at that time „prospective new employer was not anyone or anything that would pose a potential conflict to him as mayor.

Rout came to the mayor’s office in 1994 as a commissioner known for happily immersing himself in the details of county government. He has spent most of the last two years, however, dealing with former corporate CEOs Pitt Hyde and Ron Terry on the NBA arena and Shelby Farms.

Friends say the long hours have taken a toll on him, and Rout doesn’t disagree.

“No question, it has been a tougher period,” he said. “When you work as long as we all did on the arena or as long as Ron Terry and I did for almost two years only to see [the Shelby Farms proposal] go down the tubes, sure, it is not as much fun. It’s always more fun when you first start. That’s why you see a lot of entrepreneurs move on after four or five years.”

The failure of the Shelby Farms proposal, which Rout thinks will resurface next year, was the low point of his mayoral career, he said. He blamed “bad timing,” although the proposed $20 million infusion of private money into the park failed to catch fire at the grassroots level, allowing several commissioners to safely change their yeas to nays.

The highlight is no surprise either.

“Less than two years ago, no one would have thought we would have an NBA team, a new arena under construction, and Jerry West living here,” said Rout. Controversy be damned, “you’ve either gotta be big-league or bush-league.”

The enthusiasm of Rout, a Pyramid opponent, for the publicly funded arena has to run a close second to Gov. Don Sundquist’s support of a state income tax when some diehard Republicans talk about betrayals. But where Sundquist foundered, Rout succeeded, with the help of Hyde and Memphis mayor Willie Herenton as well as the commission and city council.

Rout and Herenton had “a little brouhaha” over toy towns in Rout’s first term, but “we’ve gotten in rhythm” in the last few years. Yes, and Memphis has been having a little humidity lately. The conflict highlighted all of the fundamental problems with split government, suburban versus urban interests, and school funding which are still around five years later, despite the efforts of two special committees to resolve them. There was no open warfare, but there was no resolution either. Rout predicts there will be single-source funding for schools within the next two years. You might want to take some of that action if you run into him.

Rout and his family know firsthand the suburban growth that is putting pressure on politicians to come up with something. They moved from Parkway Village and Fox Meadows to the Richwood subdivision in southeast Shelby County 13 years ago when it was still uncrowded, even rural in places. Today, it is surrounded by new schools and homes, and by the end of this year, it is supposed to be annexed by the city of Memphis.

“Sprawl is a fact of life,” he said. “We probably didn’t do as well as we should have to attach appropriate fees or requirements on new development as it applies to schools. This is America, and people are going to live where they want to live. Maybe we need to tweak what we require to do development there.”

Rout won his first election in 1972 (as coroner), but he traces his political involvement to 1967, when he helped organize his Parkway Village neighborhood in opposition to a plan to build 2,400 apartments on a site that would become the Mall of Memphis instead. He sold memberships to the upstart Cottonwood Civic Club for $3 by going door to door. When they needed a president, somebody said, “Jim, you’ve been real active. You run for it.”

In a somewhat similar way, that’s what happened again in 1994 when good old Jim got the nod from the Republicans by a two-to-one margin to run for mayor, then prevailed in a six-candidate free-for-all general election. Democrats got their act together after that and started having primaries themselves. But then Republicans like Rout and Sundquist started occasionally acting like Democrats and supporting new taxes and public subsidies to pro-sports teams, and the lines blurred again. Mayor-elect A C Wharton, a Democrat, comes into office by the same three-to-two margin as Rout did in 1994.

“It’s been good. I’ve had a great run,” Rout said. “I don’t mean it as a reflection on anyone else, but there will never be, at least for a long time, a campaign like 1994, when we were able to win the primary two-to-one and the general 60-40 against six opponents.”

At least not for Shelby County Republicans.

BACK ON THE HILL

Finding it hard to root for baseball players these days, what with all the discussion of steroids and strikes? Well, I’ve got a diamond in the rough for you. Andy Benes is a St. Louis Cardinal pitcher with more than 150 wins but with more recent heartache than any opera would dare present. The big righthander — who turned 35 last Tuesday — suffered a career implosion halfway through the 2001 season when he essentially became a batting-practice pitcher . . . for Cardinal opponents. His ERA ballooned to 7.38 and St. Louis manager Tony LaRussa shut him down for the last two months of the season as his club roared toward the playoffs.

Benes appeared to have regained an edge last spring and earned a spot in the St. Louis rotation as the season opened in April. But once the lights were turned on, he reverted to his 2001 form, shelled for 12 earned runs in only 10 innings pitched before announcing his intention to retire (due ostensibly to an arthritic right knee). Benes was a key player in this space several weeks ago as I examined “The Curse of Ol’ Diz,” the inexplicable history of woes and ailments suffered by St. Louis pitchers, from Dizzy Dean to Rick Ankiel. (Ace Matt Morris is on the disabled list now, having strained a hamstring running out a ground ball, for crying out loud.) And that was before June 22nd, when the leader of the Cardinal staff, Darryl Kile, was found dead in a Chicago hotel room. As the fates would so randomly have it, that dark weekend

was almost precisely when Andy Benes found his pitching life.

The day after Kile’s death, Benes took the mound for the Redbirds here in Memphis. With his heart in Chicago — and Kile’s number 57 on his back — Benes pitched four solid innings in sweltering heat against the Tucson Sidewinders. Right after that Sunday afternoon game, Benes drove up I-55 to join his Cardinal teammates in time for Kile’s memorial service at Busch Stadium June 26th. He rejoined the Redbirds for two more starts — including a win over brother Alan and the Iowa Cubs on July 3rd — before finally being promoted to St. Louis when LaRussa and pitching coach Dave Duncan simply ran out of arms.

It should be remembered that there was a time Andy Benes was the lead dog in the Cardinal rotation. He won 18 games for the 1996 division champions, another 10 in ‘97. When contract negotiations exceeded a signing deadline before the 1998 season, Benes was forced out of town. After two years in Arizona, though, he happily re signed with St. Louis, claiming it had felt like home all along. He was the only Cardinal hurler to hold his own in the 2000 National League Championship Series, beating the Mets in Game 3 of a series St. Louis would drop in five games.

Beyond his accomplishments on the mound, Benes is by all accounts one of the truly good guys in professional sports. He’s active in the St. Louis community, an articulate, willing interview, and a guy who never made excuses, even when he was doing a rather nice bobblehead imitation in following the flight of countless gopher balls. Which makes his comeback all the more pleasing to fans soured on the spoiled-rotten culture of Major League Baseball.

Benes opened eyes August 4th, when he held the world-beating Atlanta Braves to one run over seven innings. He won three games over the next three weeks, including seven innings of shutout ball against Pittsburgh the day before his birthday. LaRussa has gone so far as to say the Cardinals would not be a first-place team without one Andrew Charles Benes. And to think four months ago he was being fitted for a gold watch.

Considering Kile’s tragic fate, it’s inappropriate and borderline offensive to speak of Benes as a baseball Lazarus as some scribes have. He has merely found a way to pitch — successfully, and differently — instead of calling it quits. He has put together the biggest singLe-season turnaround in recent Cardinal history, and one would have to presume Darryl Kile is part of his inspiration. Andy Benes is a 6’6”, 245-pound reminder that nice guys don’t finish last after all. They just finish what they started.

Sometimes the world of sports takes you for a ride . . . and sometimes it’s the other way around. Over 16 recent days, I attended two weddings, a Hall of Fame induction ceremony, walked on the rink where the Miracle

On Ice took place, said a gloomy goodbye to two more St. Louis Cardinals (what a year!), and survived a week without Sports Illustrated. All stretch required was eight plane rides, two ferry trips across Lake Champlain, and several miles of driving in rural Vermont and upstate New York. Not bad for a sports nut badly in need of a grip on what really counts in life.

Twenty thousand baseball fans in Cooperstown, New York, to honor your boyhood hero seems like an emotional pinnacle. Until, that is, you see your one and only sister escorted down an aisle by your dad . . . and she’s dressed in white. omeday I’ll remind Liz that she married the most wonderful Philadelphia Phillies fan on the planet almost two weeks to the day after Ozzie Smith entered the Baseball Hall of Fame (along with, incidentally, Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas). When I do, I’m sure her answer will be the same as it would have been at the end of that aisle? Hall of Who??

As if a central-Vermont chapel isn’t wedding enough for one person, I hopped the Charlotte Ferry (the morning after my sister’s big day) on my way to Lake Placid, New York, as my best man\ (of eight years ago, mind you) tied the knot a few two-irons from the arena where the last great amateur sports moment — ever — took place on February 22, 1980. That of course, was the date when miracles were indeed made believable, when he U.S. Olympic hockey team, behind captain Mike Eruzione and goalie Jim\ Craig, beat the might Soviet Union and reminded the world that

Cinderella was born, raised, retired, and bronzed as a Yank. I managed an unauthorized stroll on the ice surface, goose bumps the size of corn kernels. Yet by the time I left the wedding reception that evening — having caught up with more high school mates than I’ve seen in any one

place in years — the rink shuffle was merely the second biggest highlight of the day.

Games played on as I traipsed across the northeast. The Cardinals suffered their longest losing streak of the season — seven games — and I almost felt rotten. But then I learned Darrell Porter — the troubled catcher who earned MVP honors for the 1982 world champion Cardinals — was found dead in a Kansas City park. With cocaine in his blood. I’m not sure if the latter knowledge makes his premature death more understandable, or just more terribly sad.

Barry Bonds hit his 600th home run while I was a time zone away from Memphis. Say what you will about his personality . . . Bonds is the greatest player of the last 30 years. The only real question is, who’s second? (My vote: Johnny Bench.) Wouldn’t you love to see the player Bonds would have been had he been born with Enos Slaughter’s fire? (If there is footage of Barry Bonds going from first to home on a double —

as Slaughter so famously did to win the 1946 World Series — I want to see it.) Cardinal Nation was left to grieve one more (last? please??) time August 12th when the Hall of Fame outfielder known as “Country” died at 86. Slaughter’s death didn’t match the headlines of Ted Williams’ passing, and that’s understandable. But as more and more fans yearn for the days of “old school” baseball, Slaughter’s position in the

sport’s history should be solidified.

It’s nice to be back in Memphis. (How about that race in the PCL East?!) Back to a more rhythmic pace and a more steady take on what’s happening in sports. My 16 days of travel sure were a fun reminder, though, that while we’re enjoying the games we love, cheering the heroes we adore . . . real life is happening all around us. And quite honestly, there’s nothing more exciting.