COLUMN: While sports reporting is hectic, the small moments keep me sane

Everyone says it’s the little things that count.

Sometimes I don’t agree. As plenty of my co-workers, family and friends will likely tell you, it can sometimes be difficult for me to take stock of small blessings in the face of something big stressing me out.

Check the pages of today’s paper and you’ll see one of the things that has loomed large in my life, both as an editor and in general, recently: our 32-page, brand-spanking-new football preview tab.

Jason Vorhees, I profusely thank you for taking all those gorgeous practice photos, not to mention working on that cover shot of Macon’s top-tier running backs. Caleb Slinkard, bless you for laying the darn thing out and helping me through it in so many ways.

It was worth it.

Not only does the thing look fantastic, it’s the real deal — 16 teams represented, including Macon private schools, public schools and local colleges along with a killer lead story. It’s something Bibb County hasn’t seen in a while.

It wasn’t easy. It took a lot of work from us along with some great stringers to pull the thing together, and Caleb had to jump through an entirely separate set of hoops to get it printed (again, I can’t thank Caleb enough for handling that end). 

I’m so grateful and beyond stoked, though, that Bibb County has what is perhaps its first fully-fledged football preview section in a decade. The football teams around here will get some love they haven’t seen in a long time, the love they deserve.

The fervent pace of putting together such a project, though, made me think a lot harder about slowing down. 

Being a sports editor has its busy moments, but taking the time to bask a little longer than normal in certain vignettes has often saved me from tearing my hair out. Most of these quick reprieves involve my car, for whatever reason, but they all have to do with my love of sports at their core.

Here’s a glimpse into some of the times when I’ve slowed down lately, and (hopefully) an
explanation of why they matter.

Night lights and fantasy football in Roberta

Last week, when I wasn’t running around like a headless chicken while attempting to wrangle football coaches, players and the like, I was watching softball.

It seems to me that the masses tend to forget about fast-pitch softball, sadly. That’s largely because it begins at virtually the same time as football, of course, that all-consuming deity of the fall season that draws fans to the stadium like moths to a flame.

Sports editors are afforded no such luxury — if you read my newsletter last week, you know what my mission here is: give Bibb County the sports coverage it deserves. That means all the sports, or at least as many as we can manage. Not just football.

So, with that in mind, I went to my first softball game of the year last Monday, Aug. 5. To cover Bibb County, of course, one must often leave the confines of it. In this case, that meant driving through Lizella and over to Roberta to watch the ACE Gryphons face the Crawford County Eagles.

A modest trek, sure, but one I’ll readily admit that I don’t make often. The drive was scenic, in that rural Georgia way — I enjoyed glancing at houses as they rolled by, both the absurdly new ones with nice trucks in concrete driveways and the run-down, family heirloom homes with dirt roads out front.

The game itself wasn’t bad, either. The softball field at the Eagles’ place narrowly dodged the storms coming through that night, so with a rainbow sprouting out from the canopy behind the right field fence, a pretty good crowd gathered to watch the teams go at it.

Though it ended with ACE winning 17-5, there were fun moments — a steal of home by the Gryphons, a sparkling snag of a foul pop-up by the Crawford County catcher. 

I most enjoyed, however, chatting about the merits of drafting Falcons running back Bijan Robinson in fantasy football with one player’s dad. Something about talking to someone about something so trivial yet so entertaining for me, and with a stranger, no less, was endearing.

With my ACE interview wrapped up after a surprisingly pleasant evening, I made my way home. On my way out of town I made a wrong turn, and so looped around a small road in an effort to get back to the highway that would eventually turn back into Eisenhower Parkway.

The detour took me past a small, grassy cemetery — I’d almost call it a quaint cemetery, if resting places can assume such traits. As the sun vanished behind nearby trees, glowing LED lights, presumably placed by loved ones, flickered next to several graves.

I wouldn’t call it morbidly beautiful, because it wasn’t morbid. It was just pleasant in a simple, albeit strange, sort of way. I slowed down a bit in my old 4Runner and appreciated the lights, and the love people had shown by laying them there.

I know I’m corny, but stay with me. I saw this strangely comforting sight because of sports, in some roundabout way. And as I slowly turned through the several roundabouts between Roberta and my Macon home that night, I was thankful.

Three dingers to dead center and a radio
antenna

I had a much shorter commute the next day when I motored over to Peake Road to cover one of the first all-local softball games of the season, Howard visiting FPD. 

This game, though less picturesque, was still exciting. I got to sweat through my shirt, but I also watched Vikings center fielder Jessica Jones clobber three home runs, each to nearly the same portion of dead center field. Her head coach, in his first season, grinned while he talked about it after the game.

Though worlds different in atmosphere and tone from the neon-hued headstones in Roberta, these three home runs had a similar effect on me. Watching the softballs sail out of the yard made me smile and appreciate being able to watch sports, and write about them.

A volleyball game between Mount de Sales and Mercer just a minute or two away from our Mercer Village office provided more sports moments to distract from stress. After a netball, chants of “Fishy fishy fishy, net net net!” amused me to a childlike degree.

Maybe the most serene instance of sports-induced splendor in recent weeks of chaos, though, came after that volleyball game, again in my old 4Runner. As I drove home one night with the Atlanta Braves’ late game on my radio, Chris Sale was pitching a gem — but my signal suddenly went fuzzy.

I pulled over in a random parking lot and hopped out to adjust my goofy-looking, bent radio antenna — voila. The sweet sounds of baseball returned, loud and clear.

It’s things like that radio moment, or those three long bombs, or those unexpected night lights in Roberta after a softball game that make me love smaller, less fawned-over sports just as much as the bigger games.