Southern Bookman

it's a Truist story: I'm cheering for Braves against my boyhood team, the Astros

It's strange rooting against my childhood team, the Houston Astros.

Before the World Series, I thought I'd be conflicted. But I'm cheering for the Braves.

After two games in Houston, where I misspent a lot of my misspent youth and saw my first major league game, the World Series shifts to Atlanta on a chilly Friday night in autumn. Each team has won a game.

Atlanta's in the series for the first time since 1999, when the Braves were swept by the Yankees, despite fielding Hall of Famers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Chipper Jones and John Smoltz.

Led by Derek Jeter, Roger Clemens and Mariana Rivera, the Bronx Bombers were too much for Bobby Cox's team, then playing in Turner Field, converted from the 1996 Olympics stadium.

But Mark Bradley, Tim Tucker and Steve Hummer still write for the AJC. Walt Weiss remains with the Braves, this time as a coach rather than a player. And Brian Snitker, manager of the Braves' Myrtle Beach Pelicans in 1999, now pilots the big club.

The Braves have moved to fan-friendly Truist Park in Cobb County. With no mass transit other than Uber and Lyft, parking's a nightmare. but the Battery will be packed, even drawing fans unable to afford the thousands of dollars sought for tickets to get inside the ballpark. Presumably, Donald Trump will get in free. And they accuse the Dems of freeloading.

In 1999, the World Series drew up to 25 million viewers. The Braves and Astros' first game in Houston was watched by around 10 million, the second lowest ratings ever for a series opener, although an improvement over last year's pandemic-marred start between the Dodgers and Rays.

When I was growing up, Houston played in the National League. In my first major league game, seen with my father and grandfather, I watched the then Colt .45s play the St. Louis Cardinals of Bob Gibson and Stan Musial in steamy old Colt Stadium. The now abandoned Astrodome was rising just beyond the right field bleachers.

I still have a hard time seeing the Astros as an American League club, although they made the shift eight years ago and won the 2017 World Series as the American League champions. My thrill over their championship was crushed by the cheating scandal.

I loved the baseball movie "Bang the Drum Slowly," starring Robert de Niro as a mediocre catcher dying from cancer. But bang the trashcan slowly was a disgrace.

However, it's still wrenching for me to view Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa and Yuri Gurriel as villains, although Gurriel did break Charlie Morton's leg. And I always liked Dusty Baker.

Despite the aggravating delays, I'll be watching, although the game's an ordeal now. I love Tyler Matzek, A.J. Minter and Luke Jackson as much as the next fan, but the parade of relievers and Fox's long commercial breaks between innings stretch the games to over four hours. Major League Baseball recognizes that the torturous pace is killing the sport, but the games keep getting longer.

Another grumpy old fan's lament: Fox announcer Joe Buck openly soliciting gambling. Say it ain't so, Joe.

Hey, let's not party like it's 1999, let's beat the 'Stros and their fans' silly spacesuit getup. There's nothing like the World Series to excite a city. Even the Tomahawk Chop's been blessed by baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, who moved the all-star game from Atlanta to Denver.

I'll be cheering for Ian Anderson, my favorite Ian Anderson since Jethro Tull.

After midnight, I'll rub my weary eyes as Will Smith strikes out Alex Bregman, Yordan Alverez (if he finds a place to play) and Kyle Tucker. 

I might even wear pearls.

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Arnold Hano, chronicler of Willie Mays' catch

Arnold Hano wrote many books and articles in a long, distinguished career.

He's remembered for chronicling one moment on a sun-splashed September afternoon in upper Manhattan, close to where Hano spent his early childhood.

Sitting in the Polo Grounds' center field bleachers, Hano witnessed New York Giants outfielder Willie Mays' over-the-back catch of a smash by the Cleveland Indians' Vic Wertz in the eigth inning of the opening game of the 1954 World Series. Mays' catch, and subsequent spinning throw to the infield, is one of the most famous plays in baseball history.

Wertz's blast traveled 450 feet in the Polo Grounds' expansive center field. Mays turned and raced toward the ball, catching it over his back, then turned and hurled the ball to the infield.

The throw kept the Indians' Larry Doby from scoring from second base, preserving a 2-2 tie. The Giants went on to win the game 5-2 on Dusty Rhodes' 10th inning home run, and swept the series over the Indians, the overwhelming favorite after winning 111 games during the regular season.

Hano gave a memorable account of Mays' feat in his 1955 book "A Day in the Bleachers," now seen as a pioneering work of "New Journalism." While he want on to a prolific career as a magazine writer and popular novelist, Hano gained fame for his description of that play, giving a picture as clear and vivid as black-and-white film clips available on YouTube.

A native of New York City, Hano died Sunday at age 99 at his home in Laguna Beach, Calif., according to a New York Times obituary. Along with novels, Hano wrote several biographies of sports heroes, including Mays. He was a veteran of World War II, and won the 1964 Sidney Hillman Foundation Award for his article "The Burned Out Americans," uncovering abuses of migrant workers in California's Central Valley.

Along with brilliantly depicting Mays' catch, "A Day in the Bleachers" records Hano's reactions to working-class fans, the smell of hot dogs, and each team's players. His novelistic first-person voice anticipates later works by Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson and Norman Mailer.

He came to the game planning to write an article about the experience of attending the opening game of a World Series. He completed an impressionistic piece, rejected by the New Yorker, and went on to finish the book. "A Day in the Bleachers" set a standard for later sports classics by Roger Kahn, Dick Schapp, Roy Blount Jr., Roger Angell and others.

In his long, productive life, Hano also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica and fought to protect Laguna Beach's shoreline from developers' schemes.

The films on YouTube show Willie Mays going back, his number 24 turned toward the infield, and somehow capturing the ball in flight. In Hano's words, the moment lives forever.

 

 

 

 

Jonathan Bate examines literary connection of John Keats, F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald just before his death made a recording in Hollywood of John Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," which he knew by heart.

Fitzgerald venerated Keats, sharing his romantic sensibility. Both writers saw beauty as truth, as Keats said in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn."

Arizona State and former Oxford professor Jonathan Bate's "Bright Star, Green Light, The Beautiful Works and Damned Lives of John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald" examines how Keats influenced Fitzgerald's work. 

Following the model of Plutarch's "The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans Compared," Bate offers dual biographies of the two writers, separated by 100 years, the same amount of time that Keats was removed from his literary hero, Shakespeare.

Bate at times appears more engaged with Fitzgerald's life than Keats'. He castigates both men for their objectification of women. Analyzing in depth Fitzgerald's novels, especially "The Great Gatsby," Bate takes a cursory look at Keats' great odes and other poems.

Alleviating that lack, Bate gives a complete synopsis of the composition and meaning of "To Autumn," Keats' most accomplished poem. Keats wrote the poem while on a sojourn in the ancient Roman cathedral town of Winchester. Bate gives a novelistic portrait of Keats' walks through the city, and the town's agricultural setting that inspired the poem.

While Keats undoubtedly was a major influence on Fitzgerald's work, Bates too often overreaches in contriving connections between the poet's life and scenes in "The Great Gatsby" and "Tender Is the Night."

Bates revisits familiar details of Keats' life, from his apprenticeship as a apothecary to his struggling apprenticeship as a poet, before his astounding breakthrough in the spring of 1819.  While he treats Fitzgerald's relationship with Zelda Fitzgerald more completely than Keats' with Fanny Brawne, he gives a more detailed picture of Keats' fragile financial situation than other biographies.

Keats' aesthetic concepts, generally tossed off in passing in his letters to his brother George, who immigrated to America, are inadequately explored.

Most glaringly, Bate gives short shrift to Keats' most famous idea, "negative capability." While Keats saw Shakespeare as possessing the magical ability in abundance, he cited Coleridge as lacking  it. Bate disappointingly doesn't examine the reason for Keats' criticism of Coleridge, who displayed Shakespearean creativity in his poems.

While Keats' artistic ideas inspired Fitzgerald, especially in "The Great Gatsby" and "Tender Is the Night,"  a title taken from a passage in "Ode to a Nightingale,"  the writers' had far different careers.

Fitzgerald enjoyed instant fame with the publication of "The Other Side of Paradise." The then-young author was acclaimed as the voice of his generation and the sage of the Jazz Age. In contrast, Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome at age 25 without achieving the fame he desperately wanted.

In the tradition of a long succession of Keats biographies, Bate shows the poet as an exemplary, tragic figure, beloved by his circle of friends. While Bate neglects Fanny Brawne's side of the relationship, he quotes extensively from Keats' yearning love letters to her.

In contrast to Keats, Fitzgerald is portrayed as reprehensible, especially when drunk. Fitzgerald's chronic alcoholism led to shameful behavior; Gerald Murphy, the model for Dick Diver in "Tender Is the Night," banished Fitzgerald from his parties on the Riviera. While drunk, Fitzgerald was also physically abusive to women, including Zelda and Sheilah Graham, his lover during his final years in Hollywood.

Bate also finds that Fitzgerald held virulent racist views similar to those expressed by his boorish villain Tom Buchanan in "The Great Gatsby."

The book ends with a flourish. Bate achieves Keats' and Fitzgerald's standards of beauty in his heart-searing narratives of each writer's final days.

Before his death of a heart attack, while at Sheilah Graham's West Hollywood apartment, Fitzgerald's career had come to resemble that of Keats. His novels out of print, Fitzberald was a forgotten writer, although still writing for Esquire magazine. Despite his failure as a screenwriter, Fitzgerald was engaged in writing "The Last Tycoon," which he left unfinished.

Fitzgerald was prematurely aged from alcoholism, tuberulosis and heart disease. Increasingly happy in his relationship to Graham, while remaining connected to Zelda, committed to a mental institution in Asheville, N.C., he had begun a new optimistic chapter. His old Jazz Age friend Dorothy Parker was one of the few visitors to the funeral home after his death.

Both men died believing themselves failures. After his death, Keats received recognition as one of the greatest English poets. In a similar way, Fitzgerald gained posthumous critical acclaim as a major American writer.

Bate in the end shows them as mystically connected in their fragile lives, their sensitivity to beauty, and their desperate love of language.

 

Residential plan for Peachtree Center tower another boost for downtown Atlanta

The owners of Peachtree Center in downtown Atlanta reportedly plan to convert the complex's south tower to residential units.

Office space at the 27-story building would be converted to 340 condos and apartments by 2023, although Peachtree Center owner Banyan Street Capital has not yet confirmed the plan.

As Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy noted this week, the plan would boost downtown Atlanta's progress as a full-time residential area.

Despite the lack of services such as grocery stores, downtown has been slowly increasing its population in recent years, generating hopes that downtown can one day turn into a "24-7" center of urban excitement.

John Portman's complex opened in 1970 generated controversy from the beginning. Proponents claimed it stopped downtown's decline, while critics called it a forbidding fortress closed off from Peachtree Street.

In my years working at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's old building on Marietta Street, I thought Peachtree Center, along with the neighboring 191 Peachtree Tower, was one of the few places in downtown Atlanta that possessed a big-city urban pulse.

The Peachtree Center plan adds to other recent good news for downtown.

Plans to build a residential building near Peachtree Center are under way, according to Torpy. The Central Library nearby recently reopened after a $50 million renovation, adding welcome windows and light to Marcel Breuer's forbidding concrete pillbox.

More plans are in the works for Underground Atlanta, and the Centennial Yards Project will transform the dreary railroad gulch a few blocks south.

Downtown Atlanta in the next decade could at last reach the critical mass of residents for the urban lifestyle already thriving in other cities.

 

 

New York Times Book Review marks 125th year

The New York Times Book Review on Sunday marked 125 years of publication with a special issue of reviews and author interviews from the past.

No reviews of current books appeared, or the weekly best-seller lists. The entire publication was devoted to the book review's proud history, now in decline.

The New York Times began publishing the stand-alone book review in October 1896, surprisingly predating the Times Literary Supplement by six years. Publisher Adolph Ochs began the book review, another of his ideas that changed American journalism.

Sunday's anthology shows that the Book Review in its history has shown an awareness and understanding of Southern literature, echoing Ochs' origins as the publisher of the Chattanooga Times.

I was intrigued by the inclusion of a lengthy interview with Gore Vidal, who always claimed the Times had a vendetta against him and his books. Novelist Diane Johnson interviewed Vidal, who made his characteristic acerbic comments about the low standards of American literary criticism. He refrained from his usual barbs against the Times.

The reprinted reviews, most of them cut from their original length, covered a range of books, from James Joyce's "Ulysses" and Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence," to Dale Carnegie's "The Power of Positive Thinking,"  Toni Morrison's "Song of Solomon" and Elizabeth Gilbert's "Eat, Pray Love."

Well-known authors wrote many of the reviews, such as James Baldwin praising Arthur Hailey's "Roots" and Nora Ephron chortling about Rex Reed's "Do You Sleep in the Nude?," a collection of Reed's candid interviews with celebrities that appeared in the Sunday New York Times.

Another highlight is Alfred Kazin's review of Flannery O'Connor's "Collected Stories," in which he mentions visiting O'Connor and her "famous peacocks" at her home in Milledgeville, Ga.

In his discerning appraisal of the collection, published in 1971, seven years after O'Connor's death, Kazin finds that O'Connor displays her genius in her intense concentration on her memorable characters

The famed literary critic's Jewish immigrant experience in New York City gives him special insight into O'Connor's understanding of the South.

"O’Connor, as I must call her, was in story after story all there, occupying the mind and the whole life of a character who was as solidly on the page as if impaled on it," Kazin wrote.

"Her people were wholly what they were, which wasn’t much in “humane” terms. But they were all intact of themselves, in their stupidity, their meanness, their puzzlement, their Southern “ruralness.” The South was her great metaphor, not for place but for the Fall of Man. Life for O’Connor was made up of absolutes; people were absolute, sharp, knives without handles."

The anthology, which generally avoids William Faulkner, also offers a wonderful interview with another esteemed Southern writer, Eudora Welty, who actually was a staff writer for the Sunday Book Review for several years during World War II before returning to her Mississippi home.

Walter Clemons' 1970 interview with Welty, geared to the publication of "Losing Battles," her last novel, gives striking details of his visit to Welty's home in Jackson, Miss.

Clemons and Welty discuss her 1963 short story "Where Is the Voice Coming From," based on the murder of Medgar Evers at his home in Jackson. Welty says that after the story's publication in the New Yorker, a Northern reporter called to ask if anyone had burned a cross on her lawn. She expresses her incredulity at the question. "The people who burn crosses on lawns don't read me in the New Yorker. Really, don't people know the first thing about the South?"

That reminded me of Faulkner's character Quentin Compson telling his Harvard roommate Shreve McCannon at the end of "Absalom, Absalom" that he didn't hate the South. Welty didn't hate it either, as Clemons' interview makes clear. She loved it, with all its faults.

Southern literature, and Faulkner, is viewed from a black perspective in Harvey Breit's revealing 1952 interview with Ralph Ellison, conducted before Ellison gained fame after the publication of "Invisible Man."

“It is felt that there is something in the Negro experience that makes it not quite right for the novel," Ellison says. "That’s not true. It becomes important to the novelist because it is in this problem, as Faulkner makes us aware, that the American human conflict is at its most intense and dramatic."

Such insights are rare in today's Book Review. The reviews and interviews from the past struck me as more substantial, well-written and entertaining than what appears in today's Book Review.

Compared with the Wall Street Journal's Saturday Review section, the TLS , the London Review of Books and the New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review has sunk to self-indulgent writing, pandering to popular tastes and gimmicky features.

The publication that once set the standard for American literary criticism has lost its way.

 

 

Braves-Dodgers series returns to home of the tomahawk chop

Braves fans fear another Atlanta team collapse following the Dodgers' 11-2 victory  in Los Angeles Thursday to avoid defeat in the National League Championship Series.

With the Braves holding a 3-2 lead in the series, the teams return to Atlanta's Truist Park for Saturday's sixth game and a possible seventh game Sunday. The winner will advance to the World Series against either the Astros or Red Sox.

The return to Atlanta will focus renewed attention on the tomahawk chop and chant, frequently condemned in the national media as disparaging to Native Americans. Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke in writing about the series has several times called the chant racist.

Plaschke also drew Atlantans' ire by ridiculing Truist Park and the adjacent Battery, saying they were like suburban malls lacking soul. The Battery has more excitement than Dodgers Stadium, a 1960s relics perched on a hill in a sea of parking lots.

But although Plaschke ignores that Dodgers Stadium was built on a site expropriated from a Mexican-American community, he's right that the chop should be retired.

Braves management two years ago announced they would consider ending the chop after St. Louis Cardinals reliever Ryan Hensley, a native Cherokee, said he was offended by the fan ritual.

The team stopped playing the chant on the public address system, but the chop lives on spontaneously, encouraged by the scoreboard image of two giant tomahawks pulsing with a lurid glow. Truist Field's outfield restaurant is called the Chop House, and tomahawk images remain on the team's uniforms. 

TBS has received criticism for focusing on Braves fans engaged in the chop during its broadcasts of the first two games of the series, dramatically won by the Braves. But it would be difficult for the network to avoid showing the excited fans.

Former Braves outfielder and National Football League great Deion Sanders reportedly brought the chop to Atlanta in the early 1990s from his alma mater Florida State, where the chant is a fixture of Seminoles football games.

The spectacle of fans performing the chop in unison became a defining part of the team's image. Generations of Atlanta fans have joined in the ritual, as much a part of going to games as beer, hot dogs and singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the seventh inning stretch.

But it's time for the chop to stop.

 

 

 

 

 

Voters unexcited about tight Atlanta mayor's race beween Kasim Reid, Felicia Moore

The tight Atlanta mayor's race hasn't excited voters so far.

Former Mayor Kasim Reed and City Council President Felicia Moore are tied, according to polls. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has extensively covered the election, including front-page profiles of each candidate. A small but steady flow of TV ads has appeared, mainly heavy-handed attacks on Moore by Reid's campaign.

But voters don't appear enthusiastic about the nonpartisan election. Perhaps Buckhead residents involved in the outlandish campaign to form a new city have decided not to participate in local democracy. After the exhausting 2020 presidential election and the endless subsequent turmoil, voters are sick of campaigns.

That seems the case in the volatile Virginia governor's race, where Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe's flagging campaign against Republican Glenn Youngkin has panicked the Biden administration and national Democrats.

Reid and Moore are waging a heated battle, with Reid displaying supercilious hostility toward Moore in TV debates. City Councilman Andrew Dickens has run a strong campaign, without seriously challenging Reid or Moore. Attorney Sharon Gay, the leading white candidate, has not capitalized upon the Buckhead dissatisfaction with the city despite strong fund-raising.

Proving again the value of a strong local newspaper columnist, the AJC's Bill Torpy Thursday examined why former Mayor Shirley Franklin vehemently opposes Reid, her former campaign manager.

Franklin called Reid a dictatorial bully, comparing him to former Haitian ruler "Papa Doc" Duvalier. She also said that Reid is falsely taken credit for a city reserve fund surplus that she created.

Franklin is supporting Dickens instead of Moore, who seems to be drawing support from middle-class white voters who still care about the city's future. Dickens is an appealing candidate who doesn't have the citywide recognition enjoyed by Reid and Moore.

Torpy also asked former Mayor Andrew Young why he's supporting Reid. Young seems to endorse Reid's imperious image, decried by Franklin. Young sounded like a grumpy old man who who believes that Reid has a special hold on the office.

The Franklin-Reid dispute points to a split in the black political machine that has ruled Atlanta City Hall for years, beginning with Maynard Jackson. Moore, a veteran member of the Atlanta city council, made her reputation as an outsider independent of the mayor's office.

She's been the target of negative ads from Reid, who holds a sizable campaign funding lead. Reid has attempted to paint Moore as soft on crime, although she like him calls for the hiring of more police officers. Reid has sounded like a GOP candidate in his relentless anti-crime stance.

So far, the mayor's race has received little or no national attention. Neither The New York Times nor Wall Street Journal had so far looked at the race. Outgoing incumbent Keisha Lance Bottoms for a while was a favorite guest on MSNBC, but the network has ignored Moore and other candidates.

Torpy and AJC political columnist Patricia Murphy have kept their attention on the election. But Atlanta voters, like those in Virginia, remain apathetic.

 

Catching up with Martin Scorsese's "The Irishman"

On a beautiful autumn Sunday afternoon, I decided at last to watch "The Irishman," Martin Scorsese's take on Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance and other famous mob murders.

The film featured a murderers' row of famed mob-noir actors: Robert De Niro, Harvey Keitel, Joe Pesci, Bobby Cannavale, Al Pacino, Jesse Plemons, even Steven Van Zandt in a cameo role. And Ray Romano shows up as a mob lawyer. Michael Imperioli and Ray Liotta must have been busy.

While Pesci was mesmerizing as the crime boss Russell Bufalino, DeNiro as the hit man Frank Sheeran and Pacino as Hoffa burn up the screen in their dual appearances. The two acting legends keep pushing each other to more flamboyant mugging and vocal histrionics.

Taken from Sheeran's memoir, "I Hear You Paint Houses," the exhausting three and half-hour film written by Steve Zaillian and directed by Scorsese for Netflix hinted at Mafia involvement in the John F. Kennedy assassination, as well as Hoffa's death. Like a homicidal Forrest Gump, DeNiro's every-man hitman Sheeran keeps showing up, even killing "Crazy Joey" Gallo at a restaurant in Manhattan.

Scorsese and Zaillain give tantalizing tidbits of mob culture: "I Hear You Paint Houses" is code for "I hear you kill people." There's a long mystifying dialogue about a fish left in the back of a car, connected to Hoffa’s killing. Right: "He sleeps with the fishes."

Conspiracy buffs will levitate at references to old Joe Kennedy's mob ties, JFK's disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion, and other hints of mob anger at what they saw as the Kennedys' betrayals. The CIA is not mentioned. There is a muffled mention of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby.

The epic makes references to other mob films, directed by Scorsese and others. The depiction of Gallo's murder echoes the famous scene in Francis Ford Coppolla's "Godfather" in which Pacino's Michael Corleone kills the mob boss and crooked cop at an Italian restaurant. This time, the killer doesn't go to the bathroom to find the murder weapon.

A huge banquet honoring Sheeran, where Van Zandt appears as singer Jerry Vale, recalls the wedding scene in Coppolla's movie. Bits from "The Sopranos," "Goodfellas,"  "Casino," "Scarface" and "Mean Streets" fly by.

Pacino and De Niro appeared in "Godfather Part II," but in separate tracks. "The Irishman" was the first film in which they faced off against each other.

I was gratified that the movie made a passing reference to Ed Grady Partin, the Baton Rouge Teamster boss whose testimony sent union president Hoffa to prison. In my youth, Partin's strikes often shut down Louisiana's capital city for months. Partin met his downfall trying to organize workers at publisher and TV station owner Douglas Manship's Morning Advocate.

"The Irishman" is like a greatest hits album featuring stars of yesteryear. The movie is a feast for history, conspiracy, Mafia and film buffs. The soundtrack of old '50s and '60s songs, compiled by the Band's Robbie Robertson - also touch the nostalgia synapses.

God, the film is long. Scorsese might have cut closing scenes of De Niro in his nursing home, reminiscing about the old days of carrying out mob hits and confessing his sins to a young priest.

But, hey, it was De Niro, filling the screen.

 

 

 

 

 

LSU soap opera continues as Ed Orgeron moves on

LSU athletics director Scott Woodward in a hastily arranged news conference Sunday with ousted football coach Ed Orgeron said he hopes in the future to "hang out on the bayou" with his fellow Louisiana native.

Those good times eating crawfish jambalaya likely won't happen. Following news that the embattled Orgeron will step down after this season, reports of volatile animosity between him and the LSU administration kept coming, like tremors from an earthquake.

Woodward and Orgeron's awkward display of friendship didn't lessen the painful reality that Orgeron is leaving his dream job just 21 months after leading the Tigers to the 2019 national championship. As in previous seasons, turmoil had quickly swamped LSU's national success.

On the day after the Orgeron led his decimated LSU team to a 49-42 upset over Florida, LSU announced it had reached an agreement for the LaRose, La., native to leave after this season, taking a $17 million buyout.

Negotiations for Orgeron's ouster followed LSU's embarrassing blowout loss to Kentucky the week before the surprise victory over Florida. Earlier, LSU lost to UCLA and Auburn, crashing hopes that the Tigers would regain national prominence after a dismal 5-5 record in 2020.

Indefatigable Sports Illustrated reporter Ross Dellinger, who broke the news Sunday about Orgeron's deal with LSU, documented a series of angry outbursts by Orgeron, including a chair-throwing incident over a "hype video." Orgeron's bewildered players, and Woodward, reportedly witnessed Orgeron screaming in frustration in the locker room following the UCLA loss.

The Athletic's Brody Miller, also outshining the New Orleans-Baton Rouge Picayune-Advocate in reporting on the breakup deal, disclosed that Orgeron attempted to pick up a woman he encountered at a service station who turned out to be the pregnant wife of an LSU official. Orgeron's wolfish advances reached the administration.

After divorcing his wife of 23 years immediately after the championship, Orgeron brought girlfriends to the athletic department offices and allowed their children to participate in practices, WBRZ-TV  reported. (My late father was the station's general manager for years).

Orgeron was also named in a Title IX lawsuit over rape cases involving former LSU running back Darius Guice. He also angered black players for expressing support for Donald Trump and not displaying empathy following the George Floyd slaying. The coach reportedly was unaware of a campus march by black and white team members in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Woodward stated at the news conference that LSU decided to change so soon after the national championship because of the Tigers' disappointing on-field performance.

After losing key coaches and players from the championship team including 2019 Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow, the Tigers struggled to a 5-5 record in the pandemic-shadowed 2020 season and opened this year with the loss to mediocre UCLA. After Hurricane Ida, the Tigers had to leave Baton Rouge to practice in Houston before traveling to Pasadena, Calif. for the game against the Bruins.

But Orgeron's vaunted team was also listless in wins over McNeese Sate and Central Michigan, and blew a fourth quarter lead to lose to Auburn at home for the first time in 20 years.

The devastating 42-21 loss at Kentucky pushed Woodward over the edge. While negotiations for Orgeron's leaving were in progress last week, Orgeron was somehow focused enough to engineer the win over Florida, although LSU had lost most of its 5-star recruits to injury or academic ineligibility.

For LSU fans, the bizarre end to the Orgeron era replayed the melodramatic finales of Nick Saban and Les Miles.

A couple of years after winning the national title, Saban abruptly left to coach the Miami Dolphins, quickly spurning the NFL team to find unprecedented success at Alabama, LSU's bitter rival. Pressure to compete with the Tide has dominated LSU football during the Miles and Orgeron eras.

Miles also won a national championship before alienating Tigers fans with his stone-age offense, nutty behavior and increasingly frequent losses. Former AD Joe Aleva unceremoniously fired Miles only four games into the 2016 season, replacing him with Orgeron, who quickly revitalized the team with a few speed bumps such as a loss to Troy and conflict with former offensive coordinator Matt Canada, now with the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Like Miles before him, Orgeron will leave a wounded program, no matter how well the Tigers fare for the rest of his lame-duck season.

At the press conference, Baton Rouge native Woodward made no mention of Orgeron's off-field controversies that have blazed across LSU fans' message boards and social media platforms.

A photo surfaced last season of Orgeron in bed with a woman. But, as late Gov. Edwin noted when he said he would only lose a Louisiana election if found with a dead girl or live boy, Orgeron's womanizing wouldn't have led to his ouster if he had kept winning.

That's all that matters, Woodward made clear. After reaching a lucrative deal with gambling promoter Caesars Entertainment, Louisiana's flagship research institution will have ample money to buy out Orgeron, as well as pay millions to some big-time coach.

The "student athletes" Woodward mentioned in passing will have to make do with "NIL" agreements, or seek to transfer to schools elsewhere. Orgeron assured fans that he will still be recruiting players during his long farewell.

Prospective LSU coaches have been put on notice: winning will be judged above all else.

 

Civic leader launches Baltimore Banner to restore local news in H.L. Mencken's town

Hotel magnate Stewart W. Bainum Jr. wanted to save the legendary Baltimore Sun.

But his efforts to purchase the newspaper from the rapacious Alden Global Capital fell through.

Undaunted, Bainum is following through on his commitment to local journalism in the hometown of H.L. Mencken by launching the Baltimore Banner, a nonprofit digital operation that will have a $15 million annual budget and 50 journalists, according to reports in the Atlantic and New York Times.

While Bainum's venture is laudable, the Banner will start with a small fraction of the resources that the Baltimore Sun commanded at the height of its power. The Sun in its heyday had hundreds of reporters and editors, fielding a network of foreign correspondents as well as giving in-depth coverage of local, national and Washington news.

If Bainum's subscription model proves successful, other local online news sites likely will follow across the country.

That offers some hope for community news as local newspapers struggle to survive.

Alden Global Capital's purchase of Tribune Publishing, which Bainum sought to counter, has led to severe cuts at the Sun, Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News and other once vital newspapers.

Many American cities no longer have newspapers to report on local government, schools, arts, business, crime, weddings, deaths, courts and human interest stories.

The Baltimore Banner gives promise of a new era for local news.