It’s a shame it came down to that play where that should never happen; a play that breaks your heart. I was proud of how our guys played for 59 minutes and 59 seconds.”
But there was no explanation for not snapping the ball into the stands or setting up plays to throw down field. No one knows if taking a knee was an option or if there were discussions about simply running around the back of the end zone. There was no clarity on what message Bailey received before the final play.
“It really, really hurts when you lose a game like that where the guys went all in and did a lot of good,” Doeren said.
I want to focus on that last line, “I was proud of how our guys played for 59 minutes and 59 seconds.”
For NC State, they played their game for 59 minutes and 59 seconds.
Two weeks ago, Michigan played their game for 60 minutes and 1 second.
It is baseball that is said to be a game of inches (even though a few years ago the folks in charge of baseball added three inches to the size of base to get rid of the band-bang play, not realizing they only moved the bang 3 inches further away from the bang) and it is good to remember that, baseball, there is no clock.
So it is in football, that it is a game of seconds.
Time.
Clock management.
Charles Taylor raises his ugly head and with that stop watch in his right hand, and calls for the d handled shovel shoveler to get a little more coal out of each movement.
Football is the American Game and we are the only country in the world to call football, soccer.
The columnist George Will once wrote that “Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.”
Now I will add, that it’s not whether you win or lose, or how you play the game, but how did you watch that clock that matters.
To update Mr. Will, Football combines three of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings while watching the clock run down.”
Truly the American way.
I should, in all transparency, since pointing out that Michigan won on an extra second two weeks that according to USA Today, Before those stunning final seconds in Nashville, teams leading with the ball in the final 10 seconds were 1,046-1 over the past 20 seasons. The only loss during that time was Michigan’s 2015 defeat against Michigan State in the legendary “trouble with the snap” game, but who wants to remember that?
So maybe you will ask, how do defeat the clock in football mentallity?
I point out to you the famous football movie, Remember the Titans and the game where it is revealed that the fix is in against the Titans to lose.
The Defensive Coach destroys the conspiracy with threats of going public … then he turns to the head coach and says …
Run it up Herman … LEAVE NO DOUBT!
Seems my whole life of watching Michigan football, coaches and teams have conspired to play a game they won’t lose instead playing a game to come out and win.
Instead of playing a game where they Run it Up!
Instead of playing a game where they LEAVE NO DOUBT.
Sure you don’t have to play that way.
So long as you are happy to leave the game … in the hand of a clock.
one second left twice not over ’til fat lady reviews video
Screenshot
Some items without dispute from the Michigan – Western Michigan football game in Ann Arbor on September 5.
Western outplayed Michigan.
Western deserved to win.
Michigan earned the loss all on its own.
Michigan has a drug problem as Western drug Michigan up and down the field.
Bryce Underwood is not answer and may be the problem.
Michigan’s game plan over the last 50 years and multiple coaches of playing to not lose rather than playing to win produces unwatchable television and unnecessary hardship.
And …
On the next to last play of the game, a Western Michigan defender went out of bounds and returned to the field of play and touched a live ball, stopping the clock with one second left.
As reported in the New York Times, “A couple of hours after the Wolverines’ 13-12 win, the Big Ten released a statement explaining the decision, along with the video that replay officials reviewed and audio of them talking through the decision. The video, from an angle that was not shown during the broadcast, appeared to back up the decision that a defender — after he stepped out of bounds — touched the ball when there was a second left on the stadium clock.” )A couple of hours after the Wolverines’ 13-12 win, the Big Ten released a statement explaining the decision, along with the video that replay officials reviewed and audio of them talking through the decision. The video, from an angle that was not shown during the broadcast, appeared to back up the decision that a defender — after he stepped out of bounds — touched the ball when there was a second left on the stadium clock. (Why Michigan got 1 second put back on clock before controversial win vs. Western Michigan By Ralph D. Russo and Justin Williams – Sept. 5, 2026 Updated Sept. 6, 2026 8:08 am EDT).
Full disclosure, I did not watch.
Pretty much at the end of the line with Sport anyway, that first half with the latest edition of the Next Great Michigan Coach and the resurgence of the Next Great Michigan Quarterback had me shaking my head and turning the game off.
The wife and I watched our regular Saturday night Detective drama, Death in Paradise.
I admit I kept my phone handy and glanced at the score from time to time and the scoreboard showed 0:00 WMU 12 M 7 and I swiped the screen off.
Our show ends before 11 p.m. as it airs on PBS without commercial breaks so it lasts less than 1 hour and before I could stop her, the wife switches back to the game.
The screen shows an empty Michigan Stadium and the field packed with screaming fans.
I figured the visiting Western fans had rushed the field … but there were too many of them.
The fans were all in maize and blue.
What goes on here, I wondered.
After what seemed like a long time, the announcers found their voices and started to try and explain, as the New York Times put it, “Where exactly did that one second come from for Michigan?”
This morning every major news outlet is reporting that Western was robbed.
Then the BIG 10 officially announced that “As shown in the provided video of what was viewed during the replay process, a side-by-side view of the play and the game clock, using a direct shot of the game clock in the stadium, was used to determine the final ruling.”
So Michigan wins.
The video replay says so.
Boy Howdy!
It’s the sporting equivalent of when Senator Al Gore once stayed overnight at monastery back in the day and along the way accepted a large campaign donation and responded to questions saying, My lawyers say I did nothing wrong.
Not picking on Mr. Gore here, its the thought that counts.
But somehow this game and its outcome and how we arrive at this outcome, is just a microcosm of life in general on so many fronts.
Life is changing and for the worse all around it seems.
The new season is here.
Let the games be played.
And always remember that in this modern era, it’s not whether you win or lose, but how the video replay can be intrepreted.
It’s not over until the fat lady reviews the video.
Anyway, on that 2nd last play, Western should have been flagged for roughing the passer.
still be remembered in the end as man who sent midget up to bat
Bill Veeck had a track record for designing some of the most elaborate marketing promotions during his four stints as a Major League Baseball owner, including an exploding scoreboard in 1960. But his most outlandish publicity stunt was sending 3ft 7in inch pinch-hitter Eddie Gaedel to the plate at a game 75 years ago Wednesday.
Sporting uniform number 1/8, Gaedel was greeted with a standing ovation at Sportsman’s Park in St Louis as he came to bat in the second game of a doubleheader on 19 August 1951 for the St Louis Browns. A famous AP photo shows Detroit Tigers catcher Bob Swift sitting on his knees with a ball in his glove, towering over Gaedel and his tiny strike zone. Not surprisingly, he walked on four pitches, and was immediately lifted for a pinch-runner.
At one point in time, the American League voided the contract and Eddie Gaudel was removed from the record books.
At another point, the contract was recognized as valid and Eddie’s stats are part of the official canon of Major league baseball.
Here the box score. See Gaedel with the “b” for pinch batter. (As a side note, growing up in West Michigan where everyone followed the Detroit Tigers, long time Tiger TV announcer George Kell played in this game … though not once do I ever remember that in the long long career of commentaries and rain delay stories, he ever mentioned it.)
Veeck writes:
Eddie crept back into the record books and remains there today. When he died, he got a front-page obituary in The New York Times, a recognition normally accorded only to statesmen, generals and Nobel Prize winners.
I did not recognize at the time that Gaedel’s moment was my moment too. I knew it was a good gag. I knew it would delight the fans and outrage the stuffed shirts. I knew, in other words, that it would be a lot of fun. It never entered my mind, however, that it would be the single act with which I would become permanently identified. Even today, I cannot talk to anybody from St. Louis without being told that they were there the day the midget came to bat. If everybody was there who says he was there, we would have had a tidy gathering of 280,000.
But no one has to tell me that if I returned to baseball tomorrow, won ten straight pennants and left all the old attendance records moldering in the dust, I would still be remembered, in the end, as the man who sent a midget up to bat. It is not the identification I would have chosen for myself when I came into baseball. My ambitions were grander than that. And yet I cannot deny that it is an accurate one. I have always found humor in the incongruous. I have always tried to entertain. And I have always found a stuffed-shirt the most irresistible of all targets.
I’m Bill Veeck, the guy who sent a midget up to bat?
Fair enough.
That was Veeck writing in his Autobiography, Veeck as in Wreck, which I read as kid at probably too young an age and I felt a real affinity for Mr. Veeck, maybe not the best hero, (but then my Dad didn’t like me reading biographies of Thomas Edison either as it was the story of a ne’er-do-well who made good) and I started following the Chicago White Sox.
This led me to talk my friend Doug, to drive down to Chicago from Grand Rapids, Michigan to see a Tigers play the White Sox on a Thursday, stay overnight, spend the next day in Chicago and then go the game on Friday night and drive home late.
It was announced that Thursday would be a double header to make up a rained out game so we would get to see three games.
Little did we know that on Thursday, Veeck had scheduled a promotion called Disco Demolition where fans could get in for 98 cents if they brought a disco record with them.
Wikipedia states … so blandly … Disco Demolition Night was a 1979 Major League Baseball promotion at Comiskey Park in Chicago that ended in a massive riot. Fans who brought a disco record got admission for 98 cents. Between a doubleheader, a crate of records was blown up, causing thousands to rush the field and force a game forfeit.
My friend Doug and I had box seats for the Chicago Riot Police in action and it was well worth the price of admission.
As Veeck would point out later, much like the midget batter, Disco Demolition it is still talked about today so how, from the point of view of media attention, could it have been a failure?
The Guardian article ends with ….
The Browns lasted just two more seasons in St Louis, before moving to Baltimore to become the Orioles in 1954.
By then, Veeck had sold the team, but he would return with two stints as owner of the White Sox, in the late 1950s/early ‘60s, and 1970s. After selling the team a second time, he would sit in the bleachers at Wrigley Field, to watch the Chicago Cubs, where his father had been team president early in the 20th century.
Veeck would wear an old pea coat and greek fisherman’s hat and sit in the bleachers behind the rails over a bleacher entrance so he would have an unobstructed view of the games.
When he spotted him, Harry Carey, the Cubs radio announcer would tell the fans at home that Bill Veeck was in the stands.
I went to a Cubs game one day and my Dad had the game on the radio back home and they heard Caray relay the information that Veeck was in attendance.
When I got home, my brother-in-law Bill asked if I had a chance to meet Veeck?
loved true things but knew it could be a very dangerous mistress
It took Doc longer to go places than other people.
He didn’t drive fast and he stopped and ate hamburgers very often.
Driving up to Lighthouse Avenue he waved at a dog that looked around and smiled at him.
In Monterey before he even started, he felt hungry and stopped at Herman’s for a hamburger and beer.
While he ate his sandwich and sipped his beer, a bit of conversation came back to him.
Blaisdell, the poet, had said to him, “You love beer so much. I’ll bet some day you’ll go in and order a beer milk shake.”
It was a simple piece of foolery but it had bothered Doc ever since.
He wondered what a beer milk shake would taste like. The idea gagged him but he couldn’t let it alone. It cropped up every time he had a glass of beer.
Would it curdle the milk? Would you add sugar?
It was like a shrimp ice cream.
Once the thing got into your head you couldn’t forget it.
He finished his sandwich and paid Herman.
He purposely didn’t look at the milk shake machines lined up so shiny against the back wall.
If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he’d better do it in a town where he wasn’t known.
But then, a man with a beard, ordering a beer milk shake in a town where he wasn’t known—they might call the police. A man with a beard was always a little suspect anyway.
You couldn’t say you wore a beard because you liked a beard.
People didn’t like you for telling the truth.
You had to say you had a scar so you couldn’t shave.
Once when Doc was at the University of Chicago he had love trouble and he had worked too hard. He thought it would be nice to take a very long walk.
He put on a little knapsack and he walked through Indiana and Kentucky and North Carolina and Georgia clear to Florida.
He walked among farmers and mountain people, among the swamp people and fishermen. And everywhere people asked him why he was walking through the country.
Because he loved true things he tried to explain.
He said he was nervous and besides he wanted to see the country, smell the ground and look at grass and birds and trees, to savor the country, and there was no other way to do it save on foot.
And people didn’t like him for telling the truth.
They scowled, or shook and tapped their heads, they laughed as though they knew it was a lie and they appreciated a liar.
And some, afraid for their daughters or their pigs, told him to move on, to get going, just not to stop near their place if he knew what was good for him.
And so he stopped trying to tell the truth.
He said he was doing it on a bet—that he stood to win a hundred dollars.
Everyone liked him then and believed him.
They asked him in to dinner and gave him a bed and they put lunches up for him and wished him good luck and thought he was a hell of a fine fellow.
Doc still loved true things but he knew it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.
From Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (Viking Press: New York, 1945 – There is a note in the frontpiece that states: THIS EDITION IS PRODUCED IN FULL COMPLIANCE WITH ALL WAR PRODUCTION BOARD CONSERVATION ORDERS).
People didn’t like him for telling the truth.
And so he stopped trying to tell the truth.
Doc still loved true things but he knew it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.
If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he’d better do it in a town where he wasn’t known.
Way back when I lived through the summer of Mark Fydrich.
IYKYK.
It was the summer of 1976.
Also known as the bicentennial.
A local guy from Grand Rapids who had graduated from my Mom’s old high school, was President of the United States.
And it was the summer of Mark Fydrich.
He was this kid who pitched for the Detroit Tigers who would have ordered a beer milkshake regardless of where he was if that was what he wanted.
He pitched and just acted like he would have if he had been playing catch on a beach or in Tiger Stadium and because he won, the crowd fell in love with him.
He ran to mound and got down on his hands and knees and smoothed out the dirt.
He ran around and thanked everyone for everything.
He talked to himself constantly on the mound and since no one else was around to be talked too, it was reported in the papers that he must be talking to the ball.
He would say things that he didn’t like using a ball that had been hit.
He wanted that ball to go back in the ball bag and goof around with the other balls and loose the desire to be hit.
Back then, growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, my Dad subscribed to the Detroit Free Press.
Though the paper was written and printed in Detroit, 150 miles and 3 hours away by car, it was somehow written and printed and driven to Grand Rapids where our local paperboy had it on our front porch by 7 A.M.
I fail to see how the digital age has improved on this.
Dad’s routine was to get up, start the coffee then open the front door and take a deep breath of outside air, regardless of season.
He said it cleansed his lungs and got him ready for his day.
That was the extent of his exercise regime.
Then he would step out on the porch and pick up the paper.
He would get his coffee and go through the paper and who ever else was up would wait for him to finish and it wasn’t until he announced, “here you go”, did we have a shot at the sports section.
This one summer morning it was my brother Pete who got the paper first.
Most likely Dad had already announced that Fidrych won again last night but we needed details.
I was 16 and drinking coffee by that time so I would have poured a cup and maybe I grabbed the front section of the Free Press while I waited for the Sports Section.
I always suspected Pete of reading extra slow with me sitting there, including going over ever line of the box scores so I made a big deal of being interested in the front page and the editorials.
We were sitting next to each other on high stools along the kitchen counter.
Pete finally sat back and folder the sports section back together and slid it over to me.
“It say’s,” said Pete slowly, looking at me, “that after a game, Fidrych can’t wait for his favorite post game meal.”
I looked at him and waited, a little perturbed that he was telling me something I would soon read for myself, but still listening and looking at him.
Dad, looking over back sections of the paper with his coffee, paused and looked over from where he sat at the table.
“It say’s, said Pete slowly, looking at me, “that his favorite post game meal is a bottle of ice cold beer and a glass of ice cold milk.”
For some reason that statement hit me, Pete and Dad just the right way that morning and we all burst out laughing.
Milk and Beer!
Only that Fidrych.
It was one of those summer mornings where nothing was wrong and everything was funny both between ourselves and the whole world.
Miss mornings like that.
It was just normal, the way it was the day before and the next day.
They don’t seem to happen anymore.
Is it me?
Is it this crummy news cycle?
Maybe I need to order a beer and some ice cold milk.
If a man ordered a beer milk shake, I thought, he’d better do it in a town where he wasn’t known.
Doc still loved true things but he knew it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.
all the summer world was bright fresh – brimming with life music at the lips
Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air.
From The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (Hartford, Conn: American Publishing Co., 1884).
I am keeper of the calendar where I work and we keep the next three months of those big desk calendar pages pinned to the wall with significant dates marked up.
I took down June today (as the last week of June is also on the July page) and put up September.
I outlined the important dates of Labor Day, 1st day of NCAA football and 1st day of NFL season and marked the ‘end’ of the summer season here on the Island where I work.
I thought about and thought that something was missing and I noticed I had not included the back to school dates for the area.
This is important for us as it marks the end of the family vacation cycle for the summer.
I looked up the dates for the South Carolina county where we are and the neighboring Georgia County.
Beaufort County, South Carolina starts school … on August 7th.
On a Friday!
Chatham County, Georgia starts school on Monday, August 3rd.
I do not want to get into the school year and extended fall breaks discussion or how if you want to have weeks of High School Football playoffs and still end your football season on Thanksgiving weekend you need to start school earlier and end earlier.
I want to talk about my summer as a kid at Crestview Elementary school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I grew up.
We would get out early in June.
Looking at a calendar for June, 1967, when I was in 2nd grade, most likely we got on around June 15th or 16th.
I do remember that Memorial Day was, 1) a day off from school and, 2) a day off anywhere in the week as it was May 30th and if it happened to fall on a Saturday or Sunday, that was too bad.
After Memorial day, there would be another 2 weeks of school in hot rooms with no one able to concentrate on any type of school work.
It was during these two weeks that at some point I would put on my most saddest, mournful face and walk up to the teacher’s desk and ask about final report cards.
I would say, “Guess I’ll be seeing you next year,” and shuffle away.
Somehow I was always passed to the next grade.
The only thing that happened in that last two weeks was field day.
To us kids, field day was the Super Bowl, World Series and Olympics all rolled into one and I thought it was the only one held anywhere in the world.
It wasn’t until years later that I was reading a book about WW2 POW camps in Germany where British soldiers would organize a yearly field day in the spring.
About the same time I also came across lots of references of any number of books and short stories that took place at boarding schools and colleges where field day was a fixture in the schedule.
It had all the great events like standing broad jump, vertical high jump, soft ball throw and running.
And here’s the thing.
Everyone was in it.
No one was left out.
And …
AND … at the end of the day, little medals would be handed out to the winners.
THERE WERE NO PARTICPATION AWARDS!
It was do or die on your own except for the last event which was a relay race between mixed gender teams selected from each grade, 1st thru 6th.
It wasn’t a 100 yard dash or even a 60 yard dash but a dash for as long as lanes could be laid out in the big field behind the school.
As I remember it, someone from the City parks and recs would show up and a race track was laid out with white chalk lines.
The only competition in this relay race was if the 5th grade might pull off the upset and win over the 6th but otherwise those big 6th graders always won.
I always approached field day with enthusiasm and and a level excitement.
I could imagine winning a ribbon or two or, maybe … all of them.
There is an episode of The Andy Griffith Show were little Opie day dreams about winning so many ribbons at field day, they have to turn him around to pin more on his back.
Boy! Howdy! but could I relate to Opie.
Then Field Day would come and it always seemed to be a hot day.
Our playground field was grass but a grass of a kind that didn’t grow anywhere else in my world.
It was sparse and wide blades and prickly and when you ran on it, more dirt and dust came up out of the ground in a way that didn’t happen on any other grass anywhere else that I knew of.
The dirt had a sweet sickly smell to it.
On a hot day with hundreds of kids running around, a cloud of gray hovered about six inches off the ground and your shoes and socks turned an odd dirty gray.
I also remember that in that day and age, no shorts were allowed so we were all wearing long, hot slacks as blue jeans weren’t allowed yet either.
It was hot and stuffy and smelly.
From enthusiastic anticipation I became more and more anxious.
Thinking first what am I doing here to thinking HOW DO I GET OUT OF HERE.
The events would start and I would take my turn and though I might jump kind of high or through my softball kind of far there was always a Don Gagnon or Ross Dornon who jumped higher or throw farther.
It wasn’t humiliation because so many other kids where at my level but every once in a while someone like Donny Gray would go nuts and unleash some super jump or record softball throw and take home a medal.
It didn’t take long for the magic and excitement of field day to wear off and all I wanted was for it to be over.
The relay race would be run and we would all be herded into the gym for the Awards Ceremony but we all had a chance to line up at the drinking fountain from the sink in our classrooms.
The lower EL classrooms also had a small restroom and after looking at the long line at the sink, I went into the restroom and cupped my hands under the sink in there to get a drink.
Which I thought was pretty smart and biblical (thinking of Gideon and his 400 men who drank water from the stream with a cupped hand) and I did this for years until someone caught me and yelled “Mike’s drinking bathroom water!”
Off to the gym to here the names yelled out for kids to come up and get their ribbons.
I could have listed them before we started.
They all would have been those big kids in school.
When you were a little kid, you knew who the big kids were and you knew the law of the jungle.
This was their day.
At least my name wasn’t Opie.
But my day was coming, that last day and when that last day came, it was usually a half day.
Our desks would be empty.
The blackboards were clean.
Because it was spring the windows would be open and the rooms smelled better then they did the rest of the year.
Our gym shoes that hung from our desk seats would have been brought home which also might have contributed to the cleaner smell.
There was nothing we had to do, that final bell would ring and summer would start.
We knew we had the rest of the month of June.
And we had the entire month of July.
And we had the entire month of August.
And somewhere in the far far future, away in September, after some holiday called Labor Day, we would have to be back in school.
But until then, there was NOTHING we had to do.
It was summer break and it seemed like we were off the entire summer and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life.
There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music issued at the lips.
There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step.
The locust-trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air.
Freedom.
A freedom you don’t get to experience too often.
I looked at those school schedules today and I thought August 3rd? August 7th?
Those poor kids.
A modern view of our playing field. The playground and basketball courts are new and we didn’t have soccer nets in those days.
The run down ball diamond is gone.
But that grass and the dirt is still there and I can smell and feel the heat and drama of field day.
