The Weekend in Review

The local sports scene was kicking again this past weekend and the stir off the field is causing just about as much talk as the on-field activities.

The hot topic seems to be the job lay-offs at the News and Record. How many of the pink slips were handed out in the sports section? I honestly haven’t heard, have any of you out there in blog-land got any news? This would be a good place to lay it all on the line.

Will the layoffs hurt the N&R Sports Department? The N&R Sports is already suffering. Look at the editing of the sports news. In Sunday’s sports and I have it right here in front of me as I type and hack away, the score of the Grasshoppers game from Saturday night is listed as a final of 18-3. In the story the score is again is listed as an 18-3 shellacking. The Hoppers won the game 18-6 but the score was 18-3 until the top of the ninth inning. It made me wonder if the N&R writer Matt Brooks left the game early. In the wrapup and boxscore the correct 18-6 score is listed. Maybe Matt was only being paid to cover 8 innings because of the budget cuts and the final score was called in later.

The N&R has some fine writers but why isn’t Jeff Carlton being utilized to help cover the Hoppers this season? Last year the N&R went with the dynamic duo of Jeff and Rob Daniels to cover the Grasshoppers. Matt Brooks is an intern but he got chopped up by the editing department on the 18-6 vs. 18-3 numbers. At least I hope that’s what happened. Are the people that run the Sports Department listening to the readers?

Ed Hardin did a cover story Sunday on a kid down in Mississippi that shot and killed a huge pig in Alabama. Did any of you get anything out of that story? The 11-year old shot the pig with a small hand-gun and this is now cover material here in Greensboro, N.C.? I must be totally out of touch but I don’t get into the dead pigs stories. Maybe this could have been moved back to the semi-outdoors section on page C 10. To give it to you straight-up, the picture of the dead pig on the cover of the Sports Section looks sick. The more I think about it, the entire feature had to be pushed back to C 10, get it off the cover.

Dead pigs in the summer heat, can you smell a BBQ story cooking here? Our resources here at greensborosports.com include a library card number and a tank of gas so we better strike up some sports or we will be loading trucks out back on the dock at the N&R offices down on East Market.

The Grasshoppers took two from the Kannapolis Intimidators this weekend at First Horizon Park. The Saturday final was 18-6 and Sunday saw the Hoppers grab a 4-2 win. The Hoppers were hitting homers like crazy on Saturday with 3 from Adam Howard and on Sunday pitcher Graham Taylor turned in another fine performance. The Hoppers are still battling in the first half(34-29) and will take on the Lexington Legends this evening at FHP.

The Greensboro Revolution won again, this time 66-0. The Revolution beat the Columbia S.C. Stingers and I heard there were fights breaking out on the field and in the stands. Somebody needs to choke team owner Tony Pewonski. Is he just making this football thing up as he goes along? This entire league is the nuttiest deal to ever come through Greesnboro. The Stingers didn’t have enough players so they hired two members of the chain-gang to suit up and play so they could field a team. The coach for the Stingers, Earl Rose was hired the day of the game. Rose told Darrick Ignasiak of the N&R,“I got a call today to get some ball players together. It’s not like we’re throwing anything together”. Pewonski owns both the Revolution and Stingers. I would have to say that either these people are crazy or that I have completely lost it when it comes to my evaluation of sports. If you’re out there Matt, we need you to cover this fiasco for greensborosports.com. I wasn’t there, all I can go by is what I read in the paper and see on TV.

The quiet team of our region, the Carolina Dynamo, tied the Atlanta Silverbacks 2-2 Saturday evening at Macpherson Stadium out at Bryan Park. The Dynamo are 4-2-2 and will play at home again this Saturday against the Palm Beach Pumas.

The North Carolina Tar Heels stopped South Carolina in Chapel Hill in the NCAA baseball Super Regional two games to one. This was some pretty interesting stuff with the ESPN coverage giving us up close and personal action. The Heels will go for the NCAA title in Omaha, Nebraska. I know we have a lot of North Carolina and South Carolina haters out there. My uncle said that nothing good ever comes out of South Carolina except for watermelons.

Charlie Gamble Jr. from NC A&T and Southern Guilford High School was selected in the Major League Baseball draft on Friday. The N&R had Gamble listed as coming out of Southeast Guilford but his dad was from SEG and Jr. played at Southern. Chris Jacobs out of Kernersville Glenn HS also went in the draft on Friday. Jacobs the first baseman was taken by the LA Dodgers and Gamble the third baseman went to the Houston Astros.

To close and sticking with the News and Record theme, did anyone see the comment in last week’s N&R where former editor and sports writer Irwin Smallwood was saying that they need to tear down the entrance-way at the old Memorial Stadium and move the facade if you will out to the Greensboro Coliseum? That has got to be one of the worst ideas that I have ever heard of. Why not spend some bond money and fix up the old Stadium on Yanceyville and Lindsey Streets? Why does everyone want to destroy the old baseball stadium? They need to fix it up and let it remain as a tribute to the fallen soldiers. How about all those kids that saved up their money to help build the stadium back when a milk jug full of pennies meant something? Fix up and save the old stadium. This should be an historical landmark. Do you want this part of our city history to look like a dump. I say Save the Old Stadium. David Hoggard and Ogi Overman need to get to work on this and the rest of the community needs to help out. Why would Mr. Smallwood want to move part of the city’s history to another part of town? Get the Hogg and OG on this one.

What about your local newspaper and it’s sports section? What about your local teams and the crazy Revolution at the Greensboro Coliseum? What about we move Memorial Stadium out to the Coliseum on High Point Road? What do you say we just up and move History? Is it that easy? Can you just re-write history with a jackhammer and bulldozer?

This is a long Jim Ross-type blog, but I hope you enjoy it and have something to say about it.

12 thoughts on “The Weekend in Review

  1. The greatest writer in the history of the News and Record is a man that they refuse to embrace today. Al Thomy. If more people would research and read his works then the sports education level would go up dramatically for all of us. We need to take up an offering and bring back Al Thomy to the News and Record for one last run. We simply can’t afford his asking price here at greensborosports.com. Who does the News and Record need to bring back, is it Al Thomy or another writer? I’ll stick with Thomy.

  2. What ever happened to Charlie Atkinson? He used to write the minor league baseball for the local newspaper and he did a great job of covering the Greensboro Bats and then he was gone. He used to talk to the fans in the Grandstand after the games and Charlie really did a good job of covering the local sports. Any chance you think they would bring him back, we miss his coverage?

  3. Charlie works as a copy editor with Sports now. He no longer covers games. He’s also the one who puts together the Outdoors page.

  4. What time did the game end? What is the city edition deadline for the sports department these days? It they coincided, I can see where there might have been an issue with accuracy. The editorial assistant got the box right, so at least someone was doing their job, even if they were just barely getting mimimum wage.

  5. A good writer the News and Record let get away was Kellie Dixon. She covered the preps and the Carolina Panthers. Does anybody know where she is now? Does the News and Record employ any female writers? In days days gone by there was Helen Ross and Elizabeth House but I believe it a man’s world down there now and come to think of it there was another girl Katie Hairston or something like that and if I remeber correctly she left for Dallas or Houston. Not too many women roaring at the paper these days. Where did all these women go and are their any left? Who covers the female sports or are all the activities considered encompassing?

  6. Kellie Dixon, while a sweet person, was not a good writer. Her stories took at least 1 hour of solid editing and rewriting. The finished product that made the paper looked little like what she originally sent in. Her Panthers stories had to be combined with AP copy because she often missed vital details and the central point of the story.

  7. City edition is 12:25. The person who typed the box was not the person who edited the story, and there lies the problem. There isn’t enough staff, or enough time between first and second edition (55 minutes), for one person to handle all of the Hoppers copy. If one person would have handled it all, the error would not have happened. To make matters worse, the paper just went through a DTI upgrade and software problems are running wild.

  8. Allen, what about the Pig Story? People are wondering why it ran on the front page of Sunday’s sports. Can you give us the inside? Was it filler or whole hog? Front page, outdoors, or no go? What can you tell us?

  9. If I’m not mistaken, John Robinson (editor of the entire paper) was very high on that story and wished the News & Record had been one of the first to run it. Check out one of his past blogs. He talks about it there. The rumor is – and this is just what I’ve heard; I don’t know it for sure – is that JR loves “Hey, check this out!” stories, and the pig was def. one of those.

  10. Allen, I enjoy your insights into the News and Record. Do you work there? What are your thoughts on the writers there. Who’s good and who’s a waste of time reading? What would you do if you cold be editor? Thanks

Comments are closed.