At 2:57 p.m., the smallest player who had been on the field during the Michigan–Ohio State game hopped on top of the Wolverines bench during a timeout at the start of the fourth quarter. Michigan, which hadn’t won in Columbus since 2000, clung to a 24-20 lead. It’s no stretch to think that the only people among the 106,797 in Ohio Stadium who didn’t expect the Buckeyes to rally and defeat eight-point underdog Michigan were dressed in all white on the Wolverines sideline.
But what all those other people thought didn’t matter. Certainly not to the player with the gold-tinged hair peeking out from a yellow Jumpman headband known to everyone inside the Michigan program as “Mikey.”
“I want all you guys to take a look at their sideline. Look at them!” Mike Sainristil, Michigan’s wiry nickelback and team captain, yelled to his teammates gathered around him, as he pointed across the field to the Buckeyes sideline. “They have their heads down.
We know who the f— they are!
They are exactly who we thought they are! Let’s keep our foot on the gas. Keep executing.
Don’t give them anything.
Keep taking everything.
“Y’all wanna win the natty?
It starts right now!”
Each fall, there are hundreds of speeches that players make in-game during college football Saturdays to fire up their teams. But what happened on the Michigan sideline late in The Game felt different, perhaps because what followed over that next hour best illustrates just how much the balance in the Big Ten has shifted — and why Michigan football has re-emerged as a national powerhouse.
The Wolverines went on to shock the crowd in Columbus — and to make a point to the rest of the college football world — in the fourth quarter.
They outscored Ohio State 21-3 and piled up 174 rushing yards. Sainristil made the biggest defensive play of the game, flying across the field to swat a sure touchdown pass out of Buckeyes tight end Cade Stover’s mitts on a third-and-4. Michigan also intercepted Heisman hopeful quarterback C.J. Stroud twice.
The Buckeyes were ready to break, and they did. Michigan blew out Ohio State, 45-23.
I don’t know about you but this made me cry.
And I don’t care if you believe me or not because I feel, despite the playoff, the Natty is as mythical as a unicorn and the old style of voting for Number 1, and I just don’t care if Michigan wins out or not.
But there is no myth of what happened back in November.
The Buckeyes were ready to break, and they did. Michigan blew out Ohio State, 45-23.
And that is good enough for me.
The article winds up with: Sainristil said the player-led accountability started last season with a simple commitment to clean up the locker room every day, a responsibility the players took on independently.
This year, it extended to the way players arrange their shoes in the weight room, stacking them in a neat row to conserve space.
It’s a tiny detail, but that’s the whole point.
“If you can take care of these little details and make it a habit, the habits that really are important, the ones that matter the most on the football field, will be so much easier,” Sainristil said.
brilliant sunny day cloudless December blue skies but can’t see the cold
We were out and about on Christmas Day in the Low Country of South Carolina, it was a brilliant sunny day.
The December sky was a deep blue.
And it was COLD!
I was standing on the bluff overlooking the May River, thinking of the hot hot hot days in the past that I have stood there.
I stood there in the Bluffton Breeze that is always blowing across the river to the Bluff.
It was for the Bluffton Breeze that people moved to Bluffton South Carolina in the first place with many of the area families building summer homes here to catch the refreshing breeze off the river.
Standing there on this brilliant sunny Christmas Day, I felt frozen.
I felt frozen and it came to me that, you can’t see cold.
Or can you?
I was reminded of the Weatherball of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I grew up.
The Weatherball was this giant stainless steel ball on top of a bank building in downtown Grand Rapids.
It changed color with the weather.
And you could see it from all over the city.
There was a little rhyme that everyone in Grand Rapids could recite.
Weatherball red – warm weather ahead
Weatherball blue – cold weather in view
Weatherball green – no change foreseen
And it worked, though maybe not in the way the designers designed it.
I what I mean is, take for example, August in Grand Rapids, a soupy humid month.
80 degree days with 90% humidity is the norm.
When I was kid and my family would drive into Grand Rapids from the west on Lake Michigan Drive and get on the freeway that came across John Ball Park, the entire downtown would open up in front of us like a panorama.
The city would be hidden in a thick, humid haze.
And shining in this swampy morass was the Weatherball.
Glowing a smoky red in the haze, somehow the Weatherball made it seem warmer, stickier and more humid.
In the winter time, we would go sledding on a hill at Crestview School.
Nighttime the sky would be crystal clear and Orion would stretch over and all around us, from the top of the hill, we could see the lights of the city.
And shining above on the lights was the Weatherball.
Glowing a bright light blue, somehow the Weatherball made it seem colder, crisper and more freezing.
Perception drove reality and you could see warm and you could see cold.
At some point, the Michigan National Bank that owned the building where the Weatherball was located (the letter M N B blinked just below the Weatherball) made the decision that the Weatherball had to come down.
Somewhere along the line, I met someone who told me that it was their Dad, as a brand new-in-town Michigan National Bank Vice President, made the decision.
This person told me that their Dad was told that the giant tower on top of the building was starting to sway and when it rocked in high winds, the roof of the building was showing signs wear and tear and there was good chance the Weatherball could come crashing down.
This person said that their Dad made the decision to take down the Weatherball and spent the rest of his career with Bank being known as the ‘Man who wrecked the Weatherball.’
He may have been one of the most, well, I was going to say hated but that is a too strong term, yet anyone who heard the story did hate the guy so I will say, one of the most hated men who figured in the List of Great Things Grand Rapids Lost.
Other things on this list include the Grand Rapids City Hall which is almost more famous for an incident during its demolition when a young lady hand cuffed herself to a wrecking ball.
A lesser know incident that took place during the demolition was that two guys took sledgehammers and made their way up to the old bell town of City Hall and with the sledges, range the City Hall Bell one last time.
You can see this bell to this day outside the entrance to the Grand Rapids Public Museum and if you look closely you will the surface dotted with circles the size of 50 cent pieces where the sledge hammers made contact.
I had done some research on that bell when I worked for the Local History Collections of the Grand Rapids Public Library and I remember talking about to Bob, one of the security guards at the Library who was retired from the Grand Rapids Police Department.
I told Bob the story of the guys with the sledgehammers and he responded, “Do I remember that I night! I was the first cop on the scene and I had to make my way through the half demolished building and up the bell tower stair way with no railing using a flash light! It was crazy! I thought I was going to fall of the stairs or that the place was going to come down.”
I told my boss, then City Historian, L. Gordon Olson, that we had to make a oral history interview with Bob but nothing came of it.
And speaking of Gordon Olson, he WAS the most hated man who figured in the List of Great Things Grand Rapids Lost.
It was Gordon, you see, as Assistant Director of the Grand Rapids Public Museum, who had the whale removed from the original Museum building on Washington St.
Around 1900, the Public Museum acquired a complete whale skeleton (the origin of which is a little murky but chances are it was purchased from the State of Florida when Florida shut down their pavilion at the Great Columbian Exposition in Chicago).
The whale bones were on separate stands and the Museum would pack the whole thing off the Kent County Fair in Comstock Park and wrap the bones in canvas so you could take the Jonah experience and walk through the whale.
When a new building was built during the depression, the whale was proudly hung in the main gallery of the museum until the late 1970’s when Gordon had it taken down.
Gordon told me that if ever he spoke anywhere at any city function or gathering, and that fact that he was the guy who removed the whale was mentioned, he would get booed.
The boos might have toned down once the new museum was built and the whale skeleton was restored but for anyone who grew up with the old museum and pitching pennies on the whale’s tail from the 2nd floor gallery, Gordon was not well liked.
Gordon told me that he was caught in a bad spot and that the whale bones had started disintegrating and falling to the floor and it was only a matter of time before some one got hurt.
The funny part of the story is that Gordon told me how a giant scaffold had to be built at some expense to remove the skeleton.
Gordon said that about a month after the whale came down and the scaffold removed, he noticed a guy walking around the gallery, looking up at the ceiling.
Gordon knew what he was looking for but went up to him and asked anyway.
The man did indeed ask if there had been a whale hanging there at one time.
Gordon told him yes and that it had just recently been removed.
The man nodded and then asked how did they take it down?
It turned out the man was the guy who had hung the whale in the first place.
He pointed out some ring bolts still in the ceiling and showed Gordon how the skeleton had been suspended in such a way that had ropes been tied up through those bolts and PULLED UP, the entire frame was designed to then unlock and be lowered to the floor.
As I said, the whale was saved and can seen to this day at the new Grand Rapids Public Museum.
I am also happy to say that when I worked at WZZM, a co-worker did some research and found that the original Weatherball was sitting in a scrap metal yard and the station was able to buy the Weatherball, have the neon fixed and the restored Weatherball returned to the Grand Rapids skyline from a cell tower next to the WZZM station.
Maybe on brilliant sunny days in December in South Carolina you can’t see cold.
But I know what cold looks like.
It’s light blue and glows in a clear colder, crisper and more freezing way than you could have imagined it.
And because of that blue light, the coldness is clear and colder, crisper and more freezing way than you could have imagined it.
And if you are in Grand Rapids, Michigan in December, at night and you look west, you can see it too.
good to be children sometimes – Christmas, its founder was a child himself
When this strain of music sounded, all the things that Ghost had shown him, came upon his mind; he softened more and more; and thought that if he could have listened to it often, years ago, he might have cultivated the kindnesses of life for his own happiness with his own hands, without resorting to the sexton’s spade that buried Jacob Marley.
But they didn’t devote the whole evening to music.
After a while they played at forfeits; for it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.
Stop! There was first a game at blind-man’s buff.
Of course there was.
And I no more believe Topper was really blind than I believe he had eyes in his boots.
My opinion is, that it was a done thing between him and Scrooge’s nephew; and that the Ghost of Christmas Present knew it.
The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker, was an outrage on the credulity of human nature.
Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping against the piano, smothering himself among the curtains, wherever she went, there went he!
He always knew where the plump sister was.
He wouldn’t catch anybody else.
If you had fallen up against him (as some of them did), on purpose, he would have made a feint of endeavouring to seize you, which would have been an affront to your understanding, and would instantly have sidled off in the direction of the plump sister.
She often cried out that it wasn’t fair; and it really was not.
But when at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his conduct was the most execrable.
For his pretending not to know her; his pretending that it was necessary to touch her head-dress, and further to assure himself of her identity by pressing a certain ring upon her finger, and a certain chain about her neck; was vile, monstrous!
No doubt she told him her opinion of it, when, another blind-man being in office, they were so very confidential together, behind the curtains.
Christmas in work ‘ouse paupers ‘earts full of goodwill bellies full of beer
When I was in high school, I watched a Christmas TV movie titled The Gathering with my Mom.
The movie starred Ed Asner who, at that time, was at the top of his fame has the News Director on the Mary Tyler Moore show.
There were a lot of scenes in that movie that stayed with me like when Asner sets off a big box load of fireworks on Christmas Eve.
Another one in particular though was when the Asner character and his buddies gathered in the back of the kitchen for a recitation by Asner of what was claimed to be a poem titled, Christmas in the Workhouse.
It was bawdy and for the off color words, Asner would pause and his buddies would clink their glasses instead of saying the word.
For some reason I always thought the poem was by Charles Dickens.
But I was unsuccessful whenever I went looking for such a poem by Mr. Dickens.
For some other reason this scene came to mind recently and I dove into the Google to see if I could track it down.
First I was able to find the scene in question.
Watching the scene again for the first time since 1977, I caught that the buddies attributed the poem to Rudyard Kipling.
So into the google goes Kipling and Christmas in the Workhouse.
And what I got back was, a poem that appeared in The Gathering, a 1977 TV movie starring Ed Asner.
Full circle and the magic of the World Wide Web.
But there were other links, including a Wikipedia page for Christmas Day in the Workhouse or In the Workhouse : Christmas Day, a dramatic monologue written as a ballad by campaigning journalist George Robert Sims and first published in The Referee for the Christmas of 1877.
This is the Wikipedia version:
It is Christmas Day in the Workhouse, And the cold bare walls are bright With garlands of green and holly, And the place is a pleasant sight; For with clean-washed hands and faces, In a long and hungry line The paupers sit at the tables, For this is the hour they dine.
And the guardians and their ladies, Although the wind is east, Have come in their furs and wrappers, To watch their charges feast; To smile and be condescending, Put pudding on pauper plates, To be hosts at the workhouse banquet They’ve paid for—with the rates
Wikipedia states that the poem is a criticism of the harsh conditions in English and Welsh workhouses under the 1834 Poor Law. As a popular and sentimental melodrama, the work has been parodied many times.
I am not up on my history of the 1834 Poor Law but I bet they made it against the law to be poor and any one who dared to be poor was thrown into jail or a workhouse until such time as that person would no longer be poor.
Kinda like a law against someone being homeless but not providing a home for such a person I guess.
And the version that Ed Asner recites is one of those parody versions.
There were also enough links that it seems the parody versions were quite popular in those Brit Boarding schools and lots of people posted fond memories of learning and reciting.
So here is your toast, as recited by Mr. Asner.
Feel free to adapt and use as you can this holiday season.
‘Twas Christmas in the work ‘ouse, The best day of the year, And the paupers all was ‘appy, For their guts was full of beer.
Now the master of the work ’ouse, Strode them dismal ‘alls, And wished the men ‘Merry Christmas,’ And the workers hollered, “—–.”
Now the master he grew angry, And swore by all the gods, “They’ll ‘ave no Christmas pudding, The lousy lunk of sods.”
When up stood a war scarred veteran, Who’d stormed the Khyber Pass, And said, “You can take your Christmas pudding And stuff it up your a….!”
