The Writing on the Wall

As the mural of my high school's great athletic moments was unveiled to the public in the fall of 2012, I divulged a few behind-the-scenes stories about its creation in our alumni magazine. Here was the product.

Eat as much protein as you like, Tom Higley ’86, but you’ll never grow as tall as you stand in our new Mulvena-Mazik Fitness Center.

There he is, a seven-foot, younger version of himself adorning the fitness center wall, perpetually breaking the tape at the 1985 county meet. He’d just erased a Dickinson runner’s lead in the final 30 meters. “Something inside me told me to go for it,” he said back then. “And I did.”

The mural that Higley graces is Salesianum’s own Ashburn Alley, walk of fame, and Division I stadium lobby rolled into one. Its pictures and narratives fill five walls. The long timeline relives our moments of athletic triumph—and those heartbreaks glorious because of the monumental efforts they elicited.

A School's History in Pictures and Stories

One of my best memories from working at my old high school, Salesianum in Wilmington, Delaware, was being asked to research and write a mural for the athletic center renovation. We finished in late 2012 and dedicated the new center shortly afterward.

Following a summer of writing and research, eighty-eight moments emerged: The school's greatest athletic achievements and most dramatic contests since its founding in 1903. Then a team of architects and designers laid out the artwork covering two stories of wall space using the photographs we lifted from archives, newspapers, and yearbooks.

Click to view the full PDF version of the modern era mural (2000-present).

Calm Yourself

What’s it like inside a timeout—and inside the most important timeout of the season—with new Salesianum basketball head coach Brendan Haley ’82? Not as action-­‐packed as you might think.

Printed in Distinguished Gentleman, 2013

You are 17 again and sweaty, wearing longer shorts than you ever have in your life, treading on an acrylic blue chicken on your way to talk with your math teacher. He hates numbers. High school is one hell of a place.

You are losing. He has thirty seconds. He looks to the assistants around him, then turns to you. Fifteen seconds.

“Be more physical,” he says. His eyes are fixed. His arms are steady. “More physical.”

Ten seconds.

Back to the Semi-Pros

Of course Ben Davis drove a nicer car than you, he just didn't act like it

March 23, 2009

Ben Davis went to my father’s high school. A reception room precedes the office of the dean of admissions, whose omnipotence carries to the ends of the world such that he decides who gets to pay $22,000 in a given year for the privilege of attending the Augustinians’ campus. When the sun is right—early on the East Coast—Malvern Prep’s acres almost bear outlines of the Villanova cathedral tower’s long shade.

Davis stood in the dean’s office, leaning against the wall, those protracted shadows shrinking. An ornamental side table lay underneath his feet.

We first met seven years ago in that office, when I was an eighth-grader looking to go to Malvern Prep for high school, but the conversation moved like traffic out of a concert venue. One-way. Frozen in time, Davis continually stared at a scorching home run he had just hit, his piped Malvern uniform still piping from the force.

Above the photograph of him, the title USA TODAY NATIONAL PLAYER OF THE YEAR hovered like a mistake curveball. Not many wide-eyed prospective students missed the framed poster on the dean’s wall. “Wow,” I said. That was our conversation. Then, he was Malvern’s finest athletic product, a Seattle Mariners catcher. Seven years later he would be my teammate.

Aloha to the Streak

Notre Dame's football team ends a long bowl-game drought

First published in The Dome, April 2009

They say it takes one day for every hour of time-zone difference to recover from a long plane trip.

Yet according to the game clock, the Irish needed just twelve minutes to adjust their internal clocks five time zones away from South Bend against a jetlag-less team eating home cooking.

At Christmas Eve’s Hawaii Bowl, the Warriors obviously forgot to mention the old wisdom to Robert Hughes, the sophomore tailback who punched in the opening touchdown. Ditto to Jimmy Clausen, whose West Coast roots perhaps eased his adjustment to HDT—Hawaii Destruction Time. The Californian’s 22-for-26 day included a 69-yard bomb to Golden Tate to the house in the second quarter.

Also forgotten was the NCAA-record bowl losing streak of nine games after Notre Dame put up 28 points—all Clausen passes, three of which went to Tate—in a span of 14:27 to all but seal the deal by the middle of the third. Both Tate’s 177 receiving yards on six catches and Clausen’s 406 passing yards and five TDs (both school records) earned the players co-MVP honors for their Hawaiian vacations.

Vive le Ref

Refereeing as a tryout for benevolent dictator

September 2014

Suppose you were born into enough luck in the Middle Ages or Ancient Rome. What kind of emperor would you have been?

Ah, now wait a second. You’d like to think you’d have been an enlightened ruler. Free the slaves, frown on war. From our modern perspective, it’s tempting to say you’d have risen above the moral limits of your day. But when human slavery drives your economy, your allies behead their wives because it’s faster than getting an annulment, and your security detail isn’t quite as tight as the Secret Service, tyranny looks a lot more appetizing.

I love to ask myself this question. It’s an exhaustive test of our moral aptitude. It evaluates not only how we wield authority but also, crucially, how well we recognize the evils that today are customs. What will cause posterity to read about us and cry, “Barbarians!” just as we do with human sacrifice and slavery?

I ask: How virtuous am I, really? How much is merely a product of my environment? As a dictator, would I have been compassionate, or merciless, or merely lazy? Free the slaves—more likely I’d have driven my slaves to the bone, with the enthusiastic support of all my contemporaries.

Since we cannot travel back in time, the only way to know the answer is to find some small post vested with absolute authority. This is why I referee soccer matches.

Summer Ping

Aluminum Bats: The story of their surge into amateur ranks, their production, and their tragic power

First published May 6, 2009.

Brandon Patch was dealing on that Montana summer night. The 18-year-old Miles City Mavericks pitcher had held Helena, two-time state champions, to just one earned run through four innings. The score was tied at three.

Under those late July lights, the season was drawing to a close. Brandon, a tall, husky southpaw, was making his final start for his American Legion baseball team. The black and red numeral—11—swayed against his grey road jersey as his hands remained still until they separated.

Then his left leg finished bent high above a stiff right leg, as he’d done since he was a kid. “Ping!” the bat sounded another grounder or lazy fly, and another Helena Senator was put out. One down, bottom of the fifth.

Quinn LeSage dropped his warm-up bats in the on-deck circle and walked to the plate. The 6’5” first baseman was garnering looks from Division I colleges. He dug in, and Brandon fired a ball and a strike in succession.