Sports Archives

March 18, 2015

Feelin’ Run Over

I’m rushing to get a bunch of stuff done before I pull the plug and start loading the van to head back to Cape Thursday. I feel sort of like this mud-covered football player- run down and run over.

I think he’s a SEMO player, but there was nothing on the back of the print to identify him. Click on the photo to make it larger.

I have Road Warriorette Shari with me for this trip. We’re going to take mostly back roads through Florida, Alabama and Mississippi, so I’m sure there will be adventures along the way. I’ll bag a couple of quickie subjects in case we end up someplace that communicates with smoke signals instead of digital 1s and 0s.

I understand Southeast Missouri State University just razed a landmark building and has another one in its sights. I hope there is some Cape left in Cape when I get there.

March 12, 2015

Scuffle in the Stands

By the end of basketball season, you start looking for different angles. I shot some floor action at the Regionals March 1, 1967, then went up into the stands to get some high shots.

At what looks like the end of a game, a difference of opinion broke out. I only had time to shoot three frames before it was all over.

It was such a nothing event The Missourian didn’t run a photo, and I don’t think the cops were even aware it happened. (You can click on the photo to make it larger.)

That’s the way disagreements were solved in the old days before everybody was packing heat and “standing their ground.”

Here was a scuffle at a stock car race where the police WERE involved.

March 12, 2015March 12, 2015

1964 or 1965 Football

This print of 1964 or 1965 Central High School football players wasn’t great when it was new, and time has faded it even more. Sylvester Johnson is third from the left in the back row.

Syl was one of the best athletes Central ever produced. After Principal Dallas Albers noticed the star player eying his suspenders during an assembly, he shot him a deal: he would award his suspenders to Syl at the homecoming dance if the Tigers won their homecoming game against Sikeston. Albers was so sure Syl was going to come through that he showed up at the dance wearing both a belt and suspenders so his pants wouldn’t fall down after paying off his obligation to Syl.

That’s Bill / Jacqie Jackson on the far left in the front row. I’m pretty sure I recognize some of the other guys, but I’ll let you tell me for sure who they are so I don’t have to run corrections.

Those blue marks

Those blue marks on the top and right margins are crop marks where the sports editor decided to tighten up the photo, probably because he wanted to be able to run the faces larger.

A couple of years ago, I hooked up with Don Gordon, my old Missourian mentor who confessed that he leaned on me whenever it came to doing page layouts. “I watched John Blue mark up pictures. He almost always put a crop mark on them. It might be just to whittle off an eighth of an inch, but he seemed to feel he hadn’t done his job unless he had touched the photo in some way. When I got a picture, I found myself doing the same thing. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I’d always take a little off the edges.”

“I knew that, Don. That’s why I always printed my photos with a little ‘air’ around them so that by the time you and jBlue got finished, the picture would be just right.”

March 10, 2015

Track Meet Taping

This was one of those technically challenging situations where I didn’t quite measure up to the challenge. The subject is leaning over with his face in the shadows, and the background is full of confusion and clutter.

It’s a nice moment, but I could have done a better job of capturing it. (If I was in one of my Fine Arts classes, I would have tried bluffing: “I made his face dark because I wanted to show him alone with his thoughts.”)

Still, I’m pretty sure it won at least an honorable mention in a photo contest, probably because it was different than most sports action shots.

Spring athletes got shorted

I’ve written before that the students who participated in spring athletics got the short end of the stick. By that time, everybody is focused on getting out of school, and the yearbook has already gone to press, so they won’t get recognition until the following year.

Here are some earlier track and field posts: