I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: sports

  • tennis anyone? you betcha

    tennis anyone? you betcha


    Fun tennis fact: The Championship at Wimbledon in 2023 for men’s singles was the first time in 25 years neither Roger Federer nor Rafa Nadal was included in the draw. Federer officially retired during the Laver Cup in September, 2022 at the age of forty-one; Nadal hasn’t played since January of 2023 but hopes to return to competition in 2024 for a farewell tour. He is thirty-seven years old with amazing resilience so fingers crossed he plays again. Regardless, as Wimbledon winds down this weekend I miss them both and resurrected this piece from July, 2018.

    For tennis fans, when July rolls around, the sounds of tennis balls flying off rackets held by seasoned warriors or hopeful newcomers, tennis balls traveling through the air at record speeds or strategic spins, landing on immaculately prepared grass courts with awkward bounces that require extraordinary hand-eye coordination to even be struck by another racket held by an adversary across a 3-ft net –  for that first fortnight in July and for those fans, the air is filled with the electric sights and sounds of Wimbledon, The Championships at the All England Club, the 3rd of 4 annual Major tennis tournaments but arguably the most revered for its traditions and longevity.

    The first week of the two-week tournament at Wimbledon for 2018 is a wrap, as we say in the entertainment industry. I have had my usual bleacher seats in front of a tv this week – the same seats I’ve had for the past 51 years since the color telecasts started. My television sets have changed through the years, but my love of the game has remained steadfast. And cheerio, the addition of the Tennis Channel with its 24-7 coverage of the sport year round has been an awesome addition for Pretty and me.

    Pretty once told me many years ago when we were in the middle of a dispute about how much time she devoted to playing tennis (which took her away from me) that “I had tennis before you. I’ll have tennis after you.” That put everything in perspective, let me tell you. As it turns out, she now has tennis with me in the bleacher seats but still longs to be able to return to the courts one day.

    Today is Sunday in the middle of The Championships at Wimbledon so the players who survived the first week are resting to prepare for Manic Monday tomorrow when both the women’s and men’s singles round of 16 will be played. The winners of these matches will move on to the quarterfinals, and two of them will win the finals at the end of this week.

    The women’s draw has been full of shocking upsets in week one with only one of the top seeds, Karolina Pliskova, remaining. And then, of course, all eyes including mine will be on Serena Williams who won the most important title of all last year when she and her husband served up their daughter Olympia who is the cutest baby ever. Serena has moved on to the second week, and I will be following her progress as I have followed her for the past 20 years. That’s right…t-w-e-n-t-y years. Serena at the age of 35 won her 23rd. major title which set the record for most women’s singles titles in the Open era when she won the Australian Open in 2017.

    As for the men in the second week, what can I say? Names that now define a Golden Age of tennis are chasing the Wimbledon title again. Roger Federer who at 37 apparently embodies the ageless body of Dorian Gray had he been a tennis player. The passionate Spaniard Rafael Nadal whose Vamos! inspires the enthusiasm of crowds like touchdowns in a Super Bowl. Winners of the past 6 tennis majors, Federer holds 8 Wimbledon singles titles and Nadal two. Novak Djokovic, another tennis titan,  is trying to reclaim his place among the greats but battling the most difficult opponent of all in recent years: himself. Two Americans, veteran big server John Isner, and unseeded unknown Mackenzie McDonald also will play on the big stage on Manic Monday.

    And so sports fans, as The Red Man used to call his friends in cyberspace, Pretty and I will be on pins and needles starting at 7 am tomorrow as we cheer for our favorites from the bleacher seats at Casita de Cardinal. Time and tennis march on.

    Stay tuned.

    VAMOS!

    (Nadal at the Olympics in 2016)

  • Outing at Soldier Field – Part 3 (from Not Quite the Same)

    Outing at Soldier Field – Part 3 (from Not Quite the Same)


    Soldier Field was like a religious experience for lifelong football fans. I grew up with Da Bears on television for the past fifty years. Teresa and I both knew most of the names on the murals that chronicled their fabled history. Red Grange. Papa Bear Halas. Dick Butkus. Walter Payton. William “Refrigerator” Perry. Jim McMahon. The wild and crazy players and coaches that were household names in our lives. It was like a trip to Mecca for a Muslim. It was holy ground for both of us.

    Our seats were in an end zone and very good. Hundreds of Bears fans around us with a few scattered Panther blues in the midst. It was a very different culture from our games at home. One of our first impressions was the maleness of the game. There were very few women in the entire stadium. Testosterone was the hormone of the hour, and it raged with a vengeance. The row of men behind us defined Da Bears as I always thought of them. Big blue-collar guys in their mid-thirties who loved their beer and their Bears.

    I learned some things I didn’t know, though. These men loved to sing. There was a fight song created in 1941, and the entire stadium was singing it on cue sixty-five years later. “Bear Down, Chicago Bears,” they sang lustily whenever the Bears made a good play or when the defense was asked to step up to stop us. That was a tall order this day. On the second play from scrimmage our quarterback, Jake Delhomme, hit our pro bowl receiver, Steve Smith, for a long touchdown pass to our end zone, and the tone was set. Teresa and I hugged each other, laughed, and were so excited. We couldn’t believe it, and neither could Da Bears. The rest of the game was close and could have gone either way, but we were never behind from that play in the first minute of the game. Unbelievable. Our relatively young professional football franchise held its own amid the echoes of the legends as the wind swirled around us.

    I begged Teresa for the blanket I hadn’t wanted to bring as soon as we sat down. And, although she tried to get me to wait until I was cold beyond belief, she did relent and put it around us. She also brought out all the scarves and wrapped them around our heads so that we looked like blue blobs sitting on black coats. We spent much of the game jumping up and cheering but then quickly trying to bundle back up when our blanket slid off. We froze.

    The men sitting next to us in our end zone said this was much too warm for football. They had wished for snow and sleet for the game so that our players wouldn’t be able to maneuver as well. The skies remained clear and sunny. The beer flowed freely, and the lines to the men’s restroom grew longer. The language grew saltier.

    Sometime in the third quarter one of Da Bears sitting behind us discovered an older fan seated several rows down from us. The man had a rainbow colored scarf and Da Bear said, “Hey, there’s a f—ing fag down there. Look at that rainbow scarf. Yeah, he’s queer and he’s proud, too.” All his buddies began discussing the fag in the scarf and then progressed to speculation about the number of fags on the Panthers team. Steve Smith was the most likely, they decided. I found it interesting the suspected football fag would likely be the Most Valuable Player for our win. Teresa and I looked at the man in the scarf and whispered he was most assuredly not gay; he had simply made an unfortunate coincidental choice in color for his scarf at the game. We should know.

    Da Bears behind us got drunker and rowdier and much louder as we entered the fourth quarter. At one point when they were out at the concession stands we talked about how offensive their language would be in other settings, but somehow we  rolled along and didn’t get angry. Maybe we were overwhelmed by the panoramic spectacle of Soldier Field. Maybe we forgave them because we were gracious winners. Maybe we were too cold to care.

    Toward the end of the fourth quarter the most vocal and possibly most inebriated Bear leaned down between me and Teresa and said to me, “You’re hot…I’d like to meet you in a hotel after the game for some fun. How about that?” I said thanks, but that wouldn’t be likely to happen.  He took it very well. Then, a few minutes later he leaned down between us again and said to Teresa, “You’re hot, too. How about a little kiss?” Teresa said ok and pointed to her cheek, but he was distracted by another guy and she was spared his affection.

    A little while later he leaned over again and said, “Hey, are you girls sisters?” Undoubtedly, there was a family resemblance due to the blue blobs on the black coats. “No, not sisters,” Teresa said. Silence as his inebriated thought process absorbed this. “Are you good friends?” He continued to try to figure out an increasingly puzzling situation. “Yes,” Teresa replied. “We are very good friends.”

    He let this sink in, stood up, and said in a thundering loud voice, “Very good friends…hey, you’re not lesbians, are you?” Teresa looked at me. Our eyes met, and we smiled at each other.“Yes,” Teresa said in the middle of Da Bears end zone in Soldier Field. “We are lesbians.” Da Bear announced this to all his friends and everyone else within earshot of his voice. “They’re lesbians – we’ve got lesbians sitting in front of us!” The shock was too much for him. It measured somewhere between disbelief and horror. He sank slowly into his seat. What happened next was astonishing. As his buddies began to get into the spirit of the “outing” and started to make loud derogatory comments, Da Bear would have none of it.

    “Hey, shut up,” he said to his friends. “That is not cool.” And with that, we never heard anything else from any of Da Bears for the rest of the game. Final score: Carolina 29 – Chicago 21. The underdogs won. Teresa told me later had she known we could quiet the end zone by telling them we were lesbians, she would have done it in the first quarter. I love that girl. She has set me free.

    To be sure, I have had many “outings” in my sixty years as a lesbian, but none more memorable or more public than the one in that end zone at Soldier Field.  An old Texas dyke with her South Carolina girlfriend on an unforgettable adventure surrounded by football history. It doesn’t get any better than this. It was bright and sunny the next day as our airplane left the runway in Chicago; Teresa and I both knew the Panthers hadn’t been the only winners that weekend.

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

    Thanks for making the trip to Soldier Field with us in January, 2006 – looking at Chicago in the winter makes me feel a little bit cooler in the heat of the summer in South Carolina. The “Outing” was a memory maker. Stay cool, stay safe and please stay tuned.

  • Outing at Soldier Field – Part 2 (from Not Quite the Same)

    Outing at Soldier Field – Part 2 (from Not Quite the Same)


    On Sunday, Game Day, we were caught up in our shared football passion. What  would we wear to sit in the cold at Soldier Field?  Most of our fan apparel was for warm southern weather so we had to wear layers of our blue and black Panther colors that we brought. Scarves and gloves and stocking caps, too.

    what we would have worn in South Carolina

    “Let’s don’t bother with the blanket,” I said. “It’s too much trouble to carry it through the Art Institute.” Did I mention we were taking a detour to spend a couple of hours at the Art Institute on our way to the football game at Soldier Field? “I think we might need the blanket,” Teresa said. “You know I’ll be glad to carry it.” I reluctantly added it to our bag of extra scarves, head gear and binoculars.  And off we went. The day was breathtakingly beautiful with bright sunlight, but the wind whipped its way into our bodies as it blew across Lake Michigan and onto the streets of Chicago as we walked.

    The Art Institute was crowded with the people who were not on their way to the Bears game. We covered as much as we could and were thrilled with the works of some of the same European artists we loved in Florence, Italy, last year. The mixture of artists and mediums was a visual assault. The personal discovery of a painting by Antonio Mancini called “Lady Resting”captured our attention. It was the only one by him, and we couldn’t believe how much this eighteenth century woman looked like Teresa with her dark skin and even darker eyes and hair. I remembered when my Uncle Ray met her the first time he visited in our home from Texas and asked if she were Eye-talian. How little we know of ourselves in this life. Maybe she was?

    We left art behind and joined the processional of Bears fans walking to the playoff game. Da Bears were out in full force – we were quite conspicuous in our Panther blues. We walked and walked and walked some more through Millenium Plaza and Park down to the Field Museum across from the new Soldier Field. I had to stop for a breather to sit for a few minutes before the final push to the game. And Da Bears just kept coming.

    We made our way to the entrance where we handed our tickets to the gatekeepers. Teresa went through just fine. “Your bar code’s invalid,” the ticket guy said to me when he scanned my ticket. My heart stopped. I couldn’t speak. I had ordered the tickets from an online ticket vendor called TicketDaddy, and I was nervous about their appearance when I got them in the FedEx package before we left. The man kept trying to scan my ticket without success and finally called his supervisor to take a look. He must have sensed that the senior citizen with the ticket was about to go into cardiac arrest if she didn’t get past him. The supervisor tapped my code into a hand-held computer that accepted it and told me to go in. I could breathe again.

    Teresa had been waiting for me while this minor melodrama had taken place but hadn’t heard what was going on. She said it was better she hadn’t. We were handed souvenir Bears rally towels as we went in. I almost didn’t take one. Then the fellow passing them out said, “Hey, it’s the Playoffs. You’ll need yours for crying when you lose anyway.” I took one.

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

    Congratulations – you’ve made it through to the second round of the story! One more to go…please stay tuned.

  • Outing at Soldier Field – Part 1 (from Not Quite the Same)


    I realized at a very early age growing up in the piney woods in rural east Texas I was somehow different from my family and friends there. I didn’t understand the difference completely as a child.  And to tell the truth I spent a lifetime evolving from that early recognition to the social justice activist I became in my middle age years in South Carolina. “Coming Out” happened over and over again in many settings in my more than sixty years as a lesbian. At some point in your life, though, you begin to feel there will be no more surprises or discoveries. As they say in football, that’s why they play the game

         “Look out the window. It’s pouring snow,” I said as our plane touched down on the Chicago runway. Why do I say those things to a person who minutes earlier  clutched my arm and said with hushed hysteria, “We’re going down! We’re going down!”? And that was when the landing gear made the noise it always does in preparation for landing.

    “It doesn’t pour snow,” Teresa said. That’s my girl. Even the peril of impending death won’t interrupt her brain’s ability to spot an obvious grammatical gaffe. I love that mind of hers, but next trip it will definitely be sedated before takeoff.

    We were on one of those remarkable unexpected escapades that had never been a part of my life before Teresa. She is the definitive impromptu whirlwind that spices up my studious planning Taurus nature.  Life is an adventure, and I found it is not necessarily wasted on the young. This was going to be a big weekend for us.

    The Carolina Panthers, our pro football team in Charlotte, North Carolina, were in the 2005 NFC playoffs against the Chicago Bears. Teresa and I were both huge football fans and made the two hour drive from our house in Columbia, South Carolina, to see every home game during the five years we had been together. We watched some dismal losing seasons, but this year was a banner year. The win against the New York Giants last Sunday made this happen. So the following Friday we were on a plane from the warm and sunny state of South Carolina to the frigid windy city for the big game on Sunday afternoon at Soldier Field. Unthinkable in my prior life.

    The weekend was as remarkable as she is.  From the moment we got to our hotel in the city’s theater district downtown, we didn’t stop. In the midst of the wintry mix that night we walked to see two movies that weren’t playing in our town. Not one, two. Capote and Brokeback Mountain. Two movies with gay themes that would take several decades to be shown at home.  We saw them at a marvelous old theater called The Esquire that reminded me nostalgically of the downtown theaters of my childhood visiting Houston in the 1950s. Of course, the interior of the Esquire was broken up into the little theaters they all have today, but I could still recall the magnificent old Texas theater lobby in my mind. The smell of the buttery popcorn was the same.

    In between the movies, we had a wonderful Chicago pizza in a warm noisy restaurant near the theater. The people were friendly and in a jubilant mood. Tables and booths were packed. Standing room only. It suited our festive mood. By the time we finished the second movie and walked back to our hotel, we were exhausted.

    On Saturday morning we took a train out to the suburb of Oak Park, walked the streets of Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright. Teresa is a lover of books and authors, so this was sensory overload for her. We had a guided tour of the Hemingway family home for just the two of us. It was a slow Saturday for literary greats. We were the only visitors in the Hemingway Museum during the hour we were there.

    Next was the bitterly cold walking tour of the neighborhood where Frank Lloyd Wright began his career designing homes for his friends. My legs ached, and I could see my breath in the icy air. But Teresa’s face was alive with enthusiasm at the wonder of all we were seeing. Her intensity was invigorating, and so we moved on. She can never know enough. We never have enough time to see all she wants to see. There aren’t sufficient books in the souvenir shops for her to buy to read later to see what she missed while she was here. Never enough time to read them when she buys them. Her passion for knowing and seeing and doing is boundless; her energy is contagious.

    I was thrilled when we finally came to rest late that afternoon in a fabulous Mexican restaurant with plenty of heat besides the warmth of the picante salsa. I could feel my tired old bones begin to thaw. Teresa glowed as she related her favorite sights of the day. We took the train from Oak Park to downtown Chicago and made our way to our hotel. The plays in the theater district looked inviting, but we were afraid we’d pass out sitting in the dark for that long. Our hotel bed welcomed us with open arms.

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

    When the heat index is over 100 degrees in South Carolina this week, I thought I needed a breath of cold air…brrrr….stay cool and please stay tuned.

  • A Cappella (from Deep in the Heart)

    A Cappella (from Deep in the Heart)


    Daddy, please tell Mama I can’t possibly try out for the high school choir this year, I pleaded. I’ve got to spend extra time in the gym so Coach Knipling can scout me for the varsity basketball team next year when I’m a sophmore. The three of us sat at the kitchen table in our rental house in Brazoria, Texas (pop. 1,291) in the fall of 1960 – I was fourteen years old, the only child of schoolteacher parents, and the discussion had turned into a rare argument.

    Well, Selma, Sheila’s got a point, Daddy said. She’s not as tall as the other girls so the coach needs to see her shoot. Her set shot is as good as anybody’s, and she drives the paint well, too. I think she can make the varsity team next year if she puts in extra gym time.

    Set shot, hook shot, free shot, dribble, dribble, dribble, Mama said with exasperation. All I ever hear in this house is some kind of ball talk. Softball, basketball, volleyball – and now you’re taking her to play golf with you after school. What’s so great about balls? Round balls to put in hoops, over nets, in holes or in leather gloves. They’re games, for heaven’s sake! I’m talking about culture, music, things that will last her a lifetime. Does anyone sitting at this table seriously believe that a five foot, two inches tall fourteen year old teenage girl will ever have a chance to play sports designed for giants when she gets out of high school?

    She paused to look at Daddy and me. Daddy picked up the newspaper on the table and looked away. I stood up from the table and stared back defiantly at her.

    Mama, you don’t understand. There are no freshmen in the West Columbia high school choir. It’s just for upperclassmen. Besides, there are only a couple of kids from Brazoria that have ever made the a cappella choir. They say we can’t read music right. I’ll be the only one from here, and I’m not going.

    I looked at Daddy for help, but he was not getting into an argument with my mother when she got on a wild hair. Well, she said. I don’t know who they are who know so much about choral music, but I do know you won’t be the only one from Brazoria to try out tomorrow. I called Joyce Burke last night and she said Karen will go with you. You’ll have a nice friend from the church to audition with you. Plus, the high school has a new choir director this year who just graduated from Hardin Simmons University in Abilene. They have an excellent music program there. You girls can sing, and she won’t care if you’re from Brazoria, Texas or Kalamazoo, Michigan because you’re both altos. There’s always a shortage of altos.

    Tryouts for the choir were held in the high school auditorium. Karen and I waited with the older students who seemed to know each other because they were talking, laughing, not as stressed as we were while we stood together in the lobby waiting for our names to be called. I felt sick, out of place, afraid of the humiliation I was about to endure to appease my mother. Finally, my name was called, and I opened the door to enter the large room filled with rows of empty chairs. A woman sat at the piano onstage and seemed to be absent-mindedly striking the keys before she looked up and called my name.

    Sheila? she asked. Come up here with me and let’s listen to you sing.

    Why me Lord, I thought as I walked down the center aisle to the steps leading up to the stage. What have I ever done to deserve this?

    As I walked up the steps I took a good look at the woman who sat on the piano bench. Oh, my gosh, I thought. It’s Jackie Kennedy. Of course it wasn’t really Jackie Kennedy, but she looked just like her. Her hair was the same color – not as long though. Her face was shaped the same, and she wore a dress that looked like something Mrs. Kennedy could wear, but not as stylish. Other than that, they were twins. Unbelievable. The woman was drop dead gorgeous and so young, too. She smiled as she motioned me to stand next to the piano.

    She studied me carefully. So, have you been singing a long time? she asked as she gazed intently at me.

    I felt like she was looking straight through me. Yes, ma’am, I replied. I’ve been singing solos in the Baptist Church since I was five.

    Good. Can you sing Amazing Grace for me? I’ll play the piano for you.

    Yes, ma’am. How many verses?

    The first and last will do fine, she said and began to play, but something was wrong. I couldn’t find my singing voice.

    Ma’am, can you play the song in a lower key? I can’t sing that high. Mama plays the piano for me and sometimes has to transpose the keys lower for me when I can’t sing like they’re written.

    The teacher smiled, nodded, and began to play in a key I could manage. I sang the two verses.

    Very good, she said when I finished. Tell me do you know how to read music? Can you sight read the parts as you sing?

    I know what the notes are because I’ve been playing the piano since I was five, too but I’ve never tried to sing anything without knowing the tune.

    How good are you at math? she asked. The question surprised me.

    Ok, I guess. What does that have to do with singing?

    Music is mathematical. It’s all about notes and numbers and the relationships between them. I have a feeling you can learn, she said, and flashed a smile that lit up the stage.

    She picked up a pen. What grade are you in? she asked as she wrote.

    Ninth, ma’am.

    Would you like to sing in the a cappella choir this year? I need tenors, and I don’t have many boys trying out. I think you could learn to sing tenor just fine.

    I’d love to sing tenor for you, I answered while I thought yes, yes, yes I desperately want to sing in the a cappella choir or any other musical group you plan to direct if you will look my way and smile while we practice.

    Karen Burke and I were the only female tenors in the high school a cappella choir that year. Singing in the tenor section wasn’t exactly what Mama had in mind for me, but she was pleased when I told her the news. Maybe next year she’ll move you over to the altos with the rest of the girls, she told me.

    The director’s name was Gloria Pittman, and she must have been in her early twenties since we were her first teaching position out of college. I loved her almost as much as I loved Coach Knipling but for different reasons. (Coach Knipling rarely smiled at me – much harder when you had a whistle in your mouth most of the time.) Miss Pittman had legs that went on forever – I dubbed her Piano Legs Pittman – and she taught us much more about music than how to blend our voices in choral sounds. She brought her own record player and records from her apartment to introduce us to the classics. She turned the volume up so we could hear her favorites like Mendelssohn, Schubert, Bach, Beethoven – we had to be able to distinguish Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony from his 5th, and much more. I began to close my eyes like she did when she heard the classics, tears streaming down her face from joy or sorrow…I never knew why except that she was intense, passionate about the music. She was a pioneer for our class in our “cultural development”and made an indelible impression on my young mind.

    Unfortunately, that year was her first and last as our music teacher. She had a special group of eight singers from the choir that performed as a select ensemble. They met on weekends and after school in the afternoons – sometimes they practiced in Miss Pittman’s apartment, and rumors were they smoked more than the cigarettes she was seen smoking with the drama teacher, Mrs. Juanita Roberts, in the teachers’ lounge at school. Everyone knew Mrs. Roberts was a radical liberal.

    Mama wasn’t sorry to see her go and was much happier when the band director, Raymond Bethke, also directed the choir. He moved me and Karen Burke to the alto section. He was a good band director. Enough said.

    My mother was also right about me and athletics: there was no demand for short basketball or volleyball players when I graduated from high school – even softball players needed to be bigger, faster. Choruses, choirs and chorales, on the other hand, stood the test of time for me. Both a cappella and those with orchestras, symphonies, pianos, organs as accompaniment. I auditioned many times during my lifetime, and what I learned from Miss Pittman opened doors for me with opportunities I might have missed like singing in the Southwestern Singers, the touring choir at the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas ten years later.

    There was always a shortage of altos.