By Gregory Crawford, Founder of Craw's Corner

CLIMATE CHANGE: I personally am in no way the Denier of climate change. However after living in the Portland, Oregon area for 8 decades, I can verify and sustain the fact, out summers might be a little warmer, but our winters at least in the past 50 years, along with fall and spring have pretty much remained the same.

While each season might be a little different over time, the consistency remains the same. Does this tell us anything scientifically, I will let others tell us and weigh in.

OVERTIME---Speaking of overtime, I do like the idea that the icon Jon Spoelstra talks about when it comes to basketball overtimes. If not the first overtime, the second if needed for sure, (first team to 5 points wins.) Benefits of this change, much more exciting, defense really comes into play and if you really study overtimes, they are poorly played and at times very poorly officiated. Shorten them and you have a better product.

TURN SIGNALS---I would like two introduce you all to  a new concept in driving cars, Turn Signals. If you turn right, push upward, if you turn left push downward. I know this is new to most of you, but like everything else, go out in the driveway and practice. 

INVENTIONS----- What is the greatest invention in the last 200 years? Love to hear your answers and thank you for reading,

So Long Dr. Smooth

 

By Harry Cummins

     After 15 seasons and 1,445 games, sweet swinging Michael Brantley has decided to call it quits this week.

     Playing for Cleveland and Houston, Brantley was a 5 time All Star and a Silver Slugger Award winner in 2014.  With 1,656 hits he ended his career with a .298 batting average. Rare air.

     Brantley probably will never make it to Cooperstown, but his picture book swing will endure in the minds of his many fans.  His quiet manner stamped him as one of baseball's most respected players. 

    His coveted power-speed combo likely anchored many a fantasy baseball teams lineup as well. 

    Including mine. 

The Defense Rests!!

 

By Harry Cummins

As evidence, here are just a few NBA winning team point totals from the last 3 days:

Pacers   142

Cavs      140

Hawks   141

Pacers    150

Mavs      139

Jazz        154 OT

A Hall of Fame Half Inning

 

For one day in 1961..the greatest outfield baseball has ever seen!

By Harry Cummins

     Among the substantial number of baseball memories I have stashed away over a lifetime, seen either from wooden grandstands or perched in a press box, a brief 4-batter half inning played 63 years ago still lingers at the top of the list.

     It was the summer of '61 and baseball fans had not yet realized that Babe Ruth's season homerun record would fall later that season and Billy Crystal would one day make a movie about it.  The American League, with Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris in the lineup, met the National League in the 1961 All-Star Game at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.

     In the top of the 10th, the American League took a 4-3 lead and sent famed knuckleball artist Hoyt Wilhelm to the mound to face a gauntlet of the game's greatest hitters.  Hank Aaron led off the inning with a single, went to second on a passed ball and rode home on a Willie Mays' double to tie the game. Wilhelm then plunked Frank Robinson, putting runners on first and second.  Roberto Clemente then won the game for the National League with a line drive opposite field hit.

     As with most All-Star Games, this one wasn't about the score. There they were. Four immortal names who found themselves hitting in a brief but glorious Murderers' row.  Incredibly, Mantle, Mays and Clemente found themselves positioned in the same outfield during one point on this magical afternoon.

     A Midsummer dreamscape for youthful eyes... still undimmed.

     

      

     

Big News for Craw's Corner This Week

 By Gregory Crawford, Founder of Craw's Corner

After a long absence, way too long, Craw's Corner will be back this week, with lots of new

things included and plenty of good reading. You will enjoy. So get ready.

Transformed Lions Seek Route To Redemption - 2023-24 Season Preview

New Look Lions Coming Into Focus

 

By Harry Cummins

     The basketball floodwaters of change at Multnomah University in Portland, Oregon have sufficiently receded this Fall, revealing a decidedly altered landscape.

      An off-season metamorphosis now casts an illuminated shadow on all those invested at this small Bible-based NAIA school with an arabesque past.  Such a sweeping sea change, whether for good or ill, likely will depend on your point of view and an incognito season yet to reveal itself.

     The Multnomah Lions first influenced the geographical imprint of small college basketball several years ago when a whirlwind descended on this campus of 300 plus students in the form of a diminutive 5'8 guard named Justin Martin. He would go on to capture back-to-back NAIA national scoring titles while posting record-setting 71 and 74 point scoring games in successive seasons.  It was a rousing, if not winning, brand of basketball to behold.

     Martin is gone now. So too is 2,000+ point career scorer and all-time 3-point leader Zach Richardson, along with 20 year head coach Curt Bickley who has retired after decades spent strapped for conveyable resources. Their combined legacy was cemented in one particular 2018 game that saw Multnomah sink a still-standing NAIA record 38 3's in a single contest that also saw Martin and Richardson score an incomprehensible 49 points each. 

     Multnomah's fitting  '3 Point U epithet has now been reconstituted by new head coach Tayo Gem in character with the rallying cry currently fashioned on the wall of the Lions locker room, Sustained Intensity.  Gem, it seems, along with his assistant coaches Quinn Curry and Xavier Dupree  are at work on a larger canvas, a roll call showcasing an ideally balanced ensemble of players with an increased focus on the defensive side of the ball.

     Gem is not bereft of current offensive weapons however. Seniors Tyrese Taylor and Neyland Block return to form a dynamic presence. Taylor, a 6'8 forward with bull-like strength, averaged a double-double last season, while the 6'5 Block, gifted at creating for others, finished 5th in the nation in assists.  Assistant coach Curry unequivocally calls Block "the most underrated player in the country."  Both are All-Conference candidates in the rugged Cascade Collegiate Conference that produced last season's national champion in College of Idaho... as well as yet another in a succession of second division finishes for these Lions.

     Lifting the burden from Taylor up front is 7'0 Senior F/C and Nebraska native Javier Turner, who can run the floor, block shots, and was his conference defensive player of the year last season for Point U.  Joining Turner at the forward spot is Miles Macadory, a converted 300 pound offensive tackle in football who has transformed his body into a sleeek 6'6, 210 pound shot maker, replete with a 5th year senior's court savvy.

     Chad Napoleon, a 6'6 Jr. forward, brings an infectious energy to the Lion's fortified front court. From Del Ray Beach, Florida, Napoleon played the last 2 seasons at Blue Mountain C.C. where he became the only 1,000 point career scorer in the school's history. Versatile and experienced, he once played summer ball in Spain on an international high school travel team.

     Multnomah's back court is loaded, allowing Coach Gem to deploy his guards like breaking waves.  Kadeem Nelson is a 6'5 Junior who took his City College of San Francisco team to the State championship game last year. Long and athletic, he is blessed with great speed and change of direction in blowing by opponents. 

     The best contender to propagate the link to the litany of former 3-point snipers at Multnomah is 6'3 Senior guard Taylor Pomeroy.  Also a local high school star from Portland, Pomeroy transfers from Bellevue University in Nebraska where he shot a sizzling 44.9% from long distance and led the team in free-throw shooting as well. His companion skill at getting to the basket stamp him a defensive nightmare to defend.  Josiah Sewell is a 6'1 Junior guard from Colorado Springs and Portland Community College who will allow Coach Gem to use his versatility and deft shooting touch to impact games.

     Two of the top defenders in Multnomah's 'sustained intensity' model are 6'3 Senior James Sanders and Senior 6'3 returner Amande Uchime. Along with Taylor and Block, Uchime is one of 3 senior holdovers from the wholesale remake of last season's roster. Already one of the top defensive players in the CCC, Uchime is looking to create more disruption this year among Lions opponents.  Sanders, meanwhile, is a seasoned D-1 transfer from Denver University with 2-way skills. 

In this forest of tall trees it may be easy to miss Multnomah's newest 5'9 wonderkind, Freshman Marje Windfield, who hardened his game on the rough and tumble courts of the Chicago Public League, once dropping 37 points in a key league match-up. His amazing quickness has dominated Fall workouts.

     The lure of the bright lights at the national tournament in Kansas City each Spring remains the Holy-Grail toward which every NAIA team points. Lions coach Tayo Gem and his staff should be well-served in that pursuit by coalescing this current cluster of talent, motivational psychology, and the growing pains of the past in synthesis with this lock-step poeticism from William Blake:

"I give you the end of a golden string....wind it into a ball.   

 It will let you in at Heavens Gate."

The grasp for golden threads begins Nov 4

hcummins@aol.com

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

Pieces Of Her Heart

 

By Harry Cummins

     Until the day in 1984 when she just collapsed on the kitchen floor and died, I believe my mother had always thought of her life as being hard.

     She was married most of the time, to my father for a short while until his drinking drove her away, then to another man for nearly 30 years. It was sometime early into those 30 years that I grew into the understanding that my mother had given up on her own happiness.

     When I was in the sixth grade, my mother sent me away to live with a Norwegian family near San Francisco. Even then I never doubted her love. Often she would come to visit, putting her powerful arms around me and squeezing so hard I could barely breathe

 "Your happiness means everything to me," she would say.

     As my own life moved ahead, I could feel my uneasiness that hers was not.  Love held us close, but we seldom spoke to one another about what really mattered. In the end we got a little better at it.

     I know this now:  There is nothing so remarkable as the gifts we freely extend to others in the face of our own unhappiness.  It is not just ideal families or undamaged dreams that begat hope and affection. It is the powerful mystery of human love extended one to another.

     The mosaic beauty of broken pieces.