I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: sports

  • if cats have nine lives, how many lives do dogs have?


    we tried to warn you, Charly said

    Charly’s loud barks startled Pretty and me late Friday night when she jumped to her feet from her bed next to me in the den, staring toward the darkness of our backyard. Spike joined in with her from his sofa in the living room.

    What’s up with the dogs? I asked Pretty who shook her head as she scrolled Twitter from her chair for any tidbits about the first round of the Final Four women’s basketball games we watched that night. I glanced behind me from my comfortable recliner in the direction of Charly’s gaze but didn’t see any lights from our backyard motion detection devices, sighed, gave Charly a withering look for disturbing my focus on the second half of the UConn/Iowa game, raised the volume on the TV until Charly and Spike eventually stopped barking.

    Some time later I noticed our elderly 100% deaf dog Carl wasn’t in his usual spot on the rug in front of the fireplace screen. Do you know where Carl is, I asked Pretty who looked up from her phone in the direction of the kitchen. Probably in the kitchen, she said. I got up and checked his alternate sleeping spot in the kitchen, but he wasn’t there. That’s odd, I thought.

    He must be outside, but I’ll take a look, I said to Pretty who nodded. Charly seemed eager to go out with me.

    As we walked around the swimming pool in the chilly air, the motion detection lights clicked on to reveal what looked like the shape of a very large rat swimming barely below the surface of the water at the deep end of the pool opposite where Charly and I were standing. She ran around to that side of the pool as I followed her.

    The moving object came into focus when I approached, and my blurry eyes finally recognized Carl’s little terrier head barely above the surface of the water but still moving with his short arthritic legs keeping him afloat.

    I can’t swim so I started yelling for Pretty who couldn’t hear me over the TV in the den. I walked as fast as I could to the back door yelling Carl’s in the pool, Carl’s in the pool!!

    Pretty jumped up, ran past me to the swimming pool where Charly was still standing guard over Carl, and the next thing I saw while I tried to reach them was Pretty diving into the pool to lift Carl out of the freezing water, swimming him to the nearest ladder.

    Minutes later we had wrapped the shivering Carl in towels and blankets in front of gas logs blazing in the den. I held him while an equally shivering Pretty changed out of her wet clothes. We had no idea how long he had been in the pool, how much water he swallowed, whether he would survive the whole ordeal.

    You’re my hero, I said to Pretty when she walked into the den in dry clothes. She shook her head, but I repeated No, you are really my hero. Carl would be gone without your brave rescue. Let’s hope he pulls through tonight, Pretty replied.

    ********************

    Carl two days later – with a look that might say you should have listened to Charly and Spike Friday night. First, you take me on a car trip across the country to a basketball tournament in Albany, New York and when I make it home from that adventure this week, you nearly let me drown in the swimming pool. Talk about March Madness, and thank God for Pretty and April, if you don’t mind me saying.

    You know what, Carl? I don’t mind your saying, and I couldn’t agree more.

  • March Madness on the Road with Pretty and Carl from South Carolina to New York!


    Our family road trips following the Texas years have been far and few between as my cousin Martin used to say, but March Madness brings the passions that are often an impetus for wild yearnings to be a part of something bigger than our living rooms. Before you could say Go Gamecocks, Carl and I were passengers in our Grannymobile being driven by Pretty to watch our Gamecock women’s basketball team play in the Sweet Sixteen in Albany, New York, a mere 853 miles from our home in West Columbia, South Carolina.

    We were welcomed by North Carolina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York on our trip – but Virginia’s Blue Star Memorial Highway pet rest area was Carl’s personal favorite. Pretty and I oohed and aahed over the beautiful Shenandoah Valley in Virginia between the Blue Ridge mountains to the east and the Alleghenies to the west while Carl slept in the back seat. He missed breathtaking vistas during that 140-mile portion of the trip but didn’t seem bothered when he woke up in West Virginia.

    Gamecock mascot Cocky cheers with fans at team send-off in their Albany hotel on Game Day, Baby!

    Associate Head Coach Lisa Boyer and me in hotel lobby

    (hm. I possibly had cocktail before this picture was taken)

    Head Coach Dawn Staley leads team through hotel lobby to bus

    basketball buddy Brian, me and Pretty in MVP Arena on Game Day

    basketball buddy Robert with new Gamecock friends we met at game

    Brian, Robert, me and Pretty thrilled as Gamecock women wins in Albany send them to 2024 Final Four!

    Consider the 2023-24 South Carolina Gamecocks women’s basketball team which at the end of the regular season + the SEC tournament + the first two games of the 2024 NCAA women’s basketball tournament + the Sweet Sixteen + the Elite Eight = the only undefeated team on the road to Cleveland, Ohio, for the Final Four. Go Gamecocks!

    ****************

    We’ll be watching March Madness this weekend at home from our living room – still trying to catch our breaths from road trip – catching up with laundry, too.

    (Thanks to Robert, Brian, and Pretty for photos used today.)

  • March Gladness


    wishing our friends in cyberspace March Gladness!

    particularly nine-day-old Penelope a/k/a Penny

    Penny is the newest addition to our good friend Susan’s farm in Elgin – Susan loves her Gamecock women’s basketball team almost as much as she loves Penny.

    Here’s to new life in the spring, renewed hope in a future that includes another national title for Coach Staley and her Gamecock women in the NCAA tournament starting today in Columbia!

    Go Gamecocks!

  • Ella’s first soccer match

    Ella’s first soccer match


    four-year-old Ella with her coach (Daddy Drew)

    two-year-old sister Molly on the move behind them

    kids that play together…don’t hate each other when they’re four

    some confusion about where to kick ball

    on final play Ella went down the field and scored

    (luckily for her team!)

    ********************

    Special thanks to another grandmother Lolly for these great photos which captured the joy and innocence of young children. Ella’s Nana and Naynay were far too entertained by the team’s goalie who stood behind the goal to avoid balls being kicked toward him. Focus on the game, grands.

    Unfortunately, Coach Drew will not be available for the next few weeks. He’s having a medical procedure related to an injury he suffered playing league basketball several weeks ago. No genetic testing necessary for Ella’s competitive spirit, and fingers crossed for Daddy Drew.

    By the way, the Republican Primary in South Carolina coincided with Ella’s first soccer match. The results after the polls closed later that evening heavily favored an ex-president who was on the ballot again – thank goodness for the soccer match in the morning which gave me hope for a future generation that focused on the things where, as Maya Angelou said, human beings are more alike than unalike.

  • say it ain’t so, Rafa

    say it ain’t so, Rafa


    Rafael Nadal announced yesterday he will become the tennis ambassador to Saudi Arabia in an effort to promote the visibility of tennis in the kingdom which will open a Rafa Nadal Academy there for the purpose of developing young talent in the country.

    “Everywhere you look in Saudi Arabia, you can see growth and progress and I’m excited to be part of that,” Nadal wrote in a statement. “I continue to play tennis as I love the game. But beyond playing I want to help the sport grow far and wide across the world and in Saudi there is real potential.” (Josh Fiallo, The Daily Beast, January 16, 2024)

    Okay, cyberspace friends. Hopefully your jaw found a soft landing on that news. My jaw felt like the ground hit by the ball dropped in Times Square in New York City at midnight on New Year’s Eve. I felt gobsmacked, somehow personally betrayed by a close friend. Obviously Rafa and I aren’t close personally, but I have loved him throughout his career since he began playing professional tennis in 2001 as a sleeveless young fourteen year old boy with more guts than glory back then. It was the same year Pretty and I got together, and we will have our twenty-third anniversary next month.

    My feelings for Rafa were that he was not only one of the greatest tennis players of all time but also a humble, good guy who had respect for the game of tennis and everyone who played it. Say it ain’t so, Rafa. Where in the world did you look in Saudi Arabia to see “growth and progress everywhere?” Did you look at their treatment of homosexuals, for example?

    The Wahabbi interpretation of Sharia law in Saudi Arabia maintains that acts of homosexuality should be disciplined in the same way as adultery – with death by stoning. Homosexuality or nonconformant gender expression can also be punished by corporal punishment, flogging, imprisonment or forced ‘conversion’ therapy. In 2019, the Saudi Arabian government orchestrated a mass-execution of 37 men who were accused of espionage or terrorism, five of whom were also convicted of same-sex intercourse after one was tortured into confessing. (Fair Planet May 27, 2023)

    Rafa, the following tidbit from the Human Dignity Trust hits closer to home for me – did you see it?

    In April (2020) a Yemeni blogger living in Saudi Arabia was arrested for advocating for equality for LGBT people. In July he was sentenced to ten months’ imprisonment and a fine, followed by deportation, under ‘public indecency’ laws. While in detention he was subjected to solitary confinement, beatings, and torture.

    While the Saudi Tourism Authority has apparently updated its website according to CNN Travel in May, 2023 to say gay travelers are welcome in the kingdom in an effort to attract more overall revenue from international tourists, no governmental assurances have been made to make LGBTQ+ individuals feel safe.

    And Rafa, did you read this post on the status of women in Saudi Arabia by Tracey Shelton in January, 2023 on abc.net.au?

    Rei na Wehbi, MENA regional campaigner for Amnesty International, said while Saudi Arabia is “rebranding its image” as a progressive state, the underlying reality is very different. “‘Positive’ changes have mostly been social reforms and are very far from genuine human rights reforms in Saudi Arabia,” she said.

    “They are meant to deflect attention from the continued brutal crackdown on activists and human rights defenders and other flagrant human rights violations.”

    She said most human rights defenders, independent journalists, writers and activists have been arbitrarily detained. In 2019, just as the kingdom announced that women could drive, the women who had campaigned tirelessly and publicly for precisely this right were arrested and locked away. More recently, Salma al-Shehab, a PhD student and activist who posted support for women’s rights activists on Twitter, was re-sentenced to 27 years in prison in January, 2023.

    Money talks, right, Rafa? But will you sell your soul for twenty pieces of silver…or twenty gazillion? Will you sacrifice your personal integrity for an alliance with a country recognized around the globe as a repeated offender of human rights – not to mention terrorist organizations connected to the events of 9-11 in New York City? I cringe at the thought.

    I am a seventy-seven year old woman who has loved you like a family member for more than two decades, but you have broken my heart over your alliance with a country that in my opinion is aligned with evil.

    Say it ain’t so, Rafa.

    ****************

    And don’t even get me started on the Women’s Tennis Association going to Saudi Arabia for its season-ending finale this year. OMG. What are they thinking?