I'll Call It Like I See It (with humorous tendencies)

by sheila morris

For any who want more, complete list of all posts by month since 2011

  • The Dreams Came True!


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    Cinderella Coastal Carolina Celebrates...

    The “sugar” game in the College World Series that was scheduled for the night of June 29th. had to be re-scheduled for the following day due to inclement weather, and the crowd that was able to stay for the game the next day at noon was much smaller than the ones on hand for the two previous night games.  But what a treat for baseball fans whether in the TD Ameritrade Park or watching from their living rooms via the magic of ESPN!

    Coastal relied on three pitchers throughout the nine innings to throw strikes that left the Arizona Wildcats stranded on bases  when the chips were down. An unexpected bonus was a  young man named G.K. Young, a local boy from the little town of Conway down the road from the Coastal campus, who hit a two-run homer that made the final score 4 – 3. The game was a barn-burner, as my daddy would have called it.

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    G. K. Young a Hero

    During a post-game interview with the slugger, G. K. Young said he had dreamed of one day hitting a game-winning home run but that hitting one in the College World Series was more than a dream come true.

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    As for Coach Gilmore, his tears of joy spoke for him. Twenty-one years of keeping on keeping on and believing in himself and his program, his coaches and his players…big dreams of one day taking a team to Omaha and playing in the World Series had already been fulfilled. But to actually win…unbelievable…a miracle. His only regret was that his father wasn’t there to share the moment with him. His father had died two years earlier, and the coach pointed skyward as he said he knew his father was watching.

    When the team returned home the next day, more than 8,000 people greeted them as the conquering heroes, and Coach Gilmore again was near tears. “I came here twenty-one years ago and spent the first six months in a trailer with no indoor plumbing”, he said. “And these guys behind me have made my dreams come true.” They also helped him be recognized as the national coach of the year.

    And so we say good-bye to the Coastal Carolina Chanticleers and to college baseball one more time. Theirs was a Cinderella story with a Hollywood ending. Thank goodness Wimbledon dreams are still alive for another week of drama and underdogs like Sam Querry who defeated Novak Djokovic, the #1 player in the world, move on to the next round. Casa de Canterbury will be tuned in.

    As the Fourth of July approaches, I am reminded of another group of unlikely young men who became heroes as they fought and won our independence to establish a great nation that continues to grant me life, liberty and my personal pursuit of happiness two hundred and forty years later.  I am indebted to those early freedom fighters – flawed as we all are – who never lost faith in their dreams.

  • The Smiles Have It!


    From the Williams Sisters to the Italian Sisters, the US Open tennis tournament for 2015 was an unforgettable one. The tales of not one, but two, underdogs rising to the top of their game in a twenty-four hour period inspired prime time tennis-crazed New York City on one side of the Pond and the entire country of Italy on the other.  Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, the youngest Italian PM ever, and his entourage, made a whirl-wind trip  to Flushing Meadows and the Billie Jean King Tennis Center on Saturday to watch the Women’s Championship match which was the first all-Italian Grand Slam final in the Open Era.  Awesome.

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    Prime Minister Renzi is lower front…

    and couldn’t be happier

    Roberta Vinci and Flavia Pennetta were long shots to win the Grand Slam title, and why wouldn’t they be? Vinci had lost in the first round of 23 of the 44 matches she’d played in the US Open before the 2015 tournament, and Pennetta had lost 48 times playing singles in the tournament prior to this year’s Open. They had been beaten a combined total of 92 times in their previous attempts, and neither had high hopes for stronger finishes this year.

    Yet, they showed up. They brought their finesse games to the hard courts that in recent years have belonged to the big power hitters who dominated the US Open as well as the other Grand Slams in Melbourne, Paris and London. They showed up.

    They came, they played, they conquered; and then they smiled with real joy in their moment of triumph.

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    Roberta Vinci (l) and Flavia Pennetta at the trophy presentation ceremony

    The two thirty-three-year-old women who played against each other in this final have known each other since they were nine years old. They started playing tennis together as children and later shared a home for four years when they began playing on the professional tour. They successfully played doubles together and with other partners for more than fifteen years, but neither was a singles star…until the 2015 US Open when Vinci defeated the number one American singles player Serena Williams and Pennetta dismissed the number two seed Simona Halep.

    Miraculously, they stood together with their trophies at the awards presentation ceremony following the championship match.

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    The ecstasy of victory

    In her trophy acceptance speech, Flavia Pennetta stunned the tennis world by announcing her retirement at the end of this year. She said she made the decision a month before the US Open and that she never dreamed she would win the tournament but was thrilled to be able to leave the professional arena with a Grand Slam title. A Cinderella ending to years of hard work and determination.

    When someone from the press asked her afterwards about why she was leaving, she replied, “The moon is going up and down, no?” It is, indeed, and Flavia will now have a view of it from somewhere other than a tennis court. We wish her well.

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     In the past fifteen years, many of the tennis champions have won more than one major title – Serena has twenty-one, Roger Federer has seventeen, for example – and while their happiness is apparent in every victory, there is something magical about a ceremony with a first-time champion who has loved the sport and persevered in following her dream all over the world from Italy to New York City and will go home carrying a Grand Slam trophy.

    Wrap this one up for the history books. It’s a memory-maker. Do you remember when…at the 2015 US Open…those Italians…

    The End.

  • Turn Out the Lights…


    …the party’s over.

    Serena Williams’s search for the ultimate prize of the Calendar Grand Slam in 2015 ended Friday afternoon with high drama in the third set of her US Open semi-final match against Roberta Vinci on the courts of Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing Meadows, New York. Roberta Who??

    Exactly. Roberta Vinci, an unseeded player from Italy, was a very long shot to win. The odds makers had her at 200:1 or thereabouts – depending on your bookie. Now that’s an underdog.Think David and Goliath, the first recorded upset in a match that was crucial to a lot of folks in days of yore. In the biblical account David the little shepherd boy goes up against the great Philistine warrior giant Goliath and manages to take him down with a single  stone from a  slingshot. Score David 1, Goliath 0.

    In her press conference following the loss, Serena looked like a giant who had been slain by a barrage of unbelievable shots from an opponent comparable in rank to the little shepherd boy. Surely Goliath must have had a similar shocked expression on his face as he tried to figure out what hit him before he fell to the ground.

    The tennis world reeled from the results of both semi-finals in which the top two players lost, and the widely anticipated match-up between Serena and Simona in the final was not to be. The media scrambled to find a new story line, and the ticket-holders for the final were disappointed in the lost opportunity to watch an American sports icon make history in her country’s most prestigious tournament.

    The Serena Saga came to an unceremonious end with much doom and gloom in the atmosphere at the Arthur Ashe arena, but as the poet Kahlil Gibran wrote: The moving finger writes, and having writ, moves on.

    Tom Rinaldi’s interview with Roberta Vinci after her match with Serena introduced an Italian tennis player with a great smile and sense of humor to go along with her slingshot.  She was the beginning of a new story that captivated tennis fans and gave the world an unprecedented opportunity to witness a magical moment in sports in an American tennis final that belonged to Italy.

    It’s why they play the game.

    To be continued.

  • Both Have Prevailed


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    Venus Williams and her little sister Serena

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    For the past seventeen years the Williams sisters have carried the heavy burden of American tennis on their shoulders, and the load has never been an easy one. Their two-person dynasty has been controversial, but their attitudes about the sport they represent have matured as their games have become more powerful. Their popularity increased as they became more comfortable with their celebrity and confident in their games. They grew up in front of a nation and, eventually, the world.

    Never in their 27 professional matches have the theater and drama been more exciting than last night in the quarterfinals of the US Open under the lights in New York City.  Approximately 23,000 fans came to the Billie Jean King Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows to watch a match that was more than a game, and the Williams sisters delivered another thrilling exhibition of tennis at the highest level. As the ESPN commentators noted before the match, this was a big-time American sporting event with all the bells and whistles we love in our fascination with sports.

    Tom Rinaldi who has replaced Dick Enberg as the TV tennis philosopher who adds the stories to evoke our emotional attachment to an event, made these remarks prior to the match: “In an individual sport, their stories will always be linked…in our view of the Williams sisters, we see champions sharing a court, a desire to win, and a name. True, one will win –  but both have prevailed.”

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    Serena Williams is now two matches shy of her goals of a Calendar Grand Slam in 2015 and a total of 22 Slam titles to tie Steffi Graf’s record in the Open Era. Two matches…and counting.

    To be continued.

  • Sister Act (2015)


    Lord help the mister who comes between  me and my sister,

    And Lord help the sister who comes between me and my  (slam).

    Actually, Irving Berlin’s lyrics in the 1954 romantic musical White Christmas ended that second line with “man” because Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen played sisters in love with the same man, Bing Crosby. In my 2015 version the two sisters are in love with the same dream: winning major tennis tournaments like the US Open in New York City this week so I took poetic license and inserted “slam.” My apologies to you, Mr. Berlin.

    For Serena Williams the stakes couldn’t be higher since she is now three matches away from a Calendar Grand Slam, something which hasn’t been done since 1988.  She’s also chasing Steffi Graf’s record of winning 22 majors in the Open Era. She’s at 21 and counting, which already secures her place in tennis history but 22 would place her in the conversation of being the best ever.

    The tennis gods have aligned the Open draws with their usual good sense of humor and placed a familiar obstacle in Serena’s quarterfinal match. She will face her older sister Venus for the 27th. time in their professional careers. Serena has won 15 of those matches and Venus has won 11. Venus has won seven Major titles herself and at the ripe old age of 35 appears to be playing up to her personal best tennis again in 2015.

    Both sisters have said the one thing they know for sure is that a Williams will be playing in the US Open semi-finals but neither claims to know for sure which sister it will be.

    How many times have these women taken to the practice courts in their lifetimes? How many tennis balls have they hit together as a team and separately as the solo act on those courts…they have won 13 Grand Slam titles in their doubles career together, too. Extra kudos to them for these wins.

    I have mixed emotions about this quarterfinal match. I wonder about the tension at the Williams family dinner table when everyone tries not to talk about their match or whether they kid each other about who has the better chance of winning. As an only child, I have no point of reference in winning or losing to a sister; but my sense is that Venus and Serena both want to win very badly whenever they step onto the court and this ultimately trumps any potential guilt one might have for standing in the way of the other.

    Lord help the sister who comes between me and my Slam.

    To be continued.