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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2008 > June > 09 > Entry
BLOG: “The guy’s got a bandanna against me”
He was a well-known Dayton athlete who was shot by some guy one night on the West Side. He survived and soon after I went to talk to him and asked why he thought he got shot.
“The guy’s got a bandanna against me,” he said.
He meant vendetta, but I liked it a lot better the way he put it. Because of that verbal blunder, I’ve never forgotten it. In fact, it’s one of my favorite sports quotes of all time.
Over the years, I’ve interviewed thousands and thousands of athletes and every once in awhile I hear a spoken faux pas that just sticks with me.
I don’t know if it’s because of the naivete with which they’re delivered, or it’s the sheer absurdity of it or maybe it’s just those weird visuals you’re left with.
I talked to a pitcher in the Cincinnati Reds organization this year and he was telling me how he was discovered on the playground by the high school baseball coach:
“He gave me a little tryout. He had me throw the ball and he put the radiator gun on me. I was hitting 85, 86 mph back then.”
At a recent Super Bowl, a big lineman told me beforehand how he hoped his team would win because as soon as the game ended, he wanted to run out on the field and let all that “glittery graffiti” come falling down on him. He said he wanted it to fall into his hair and stick on his uniform and arms and face.
I liked that visual. Instead of confetti, I envisioned gang slogans and spray-painted hearts and Cupid arrows hanging from his ears and his cheeks and those massive shoulders.
And finally, back to that guy who got shot in the middle of the night.
Although sprawled on a Dayton sidewalk for a long time and bleeding heavily, he finally managed to crawl to a nearby house, get up on the porch and feebly bang on the door for help.
I asked him about his will to survive and what drove him to pull himself up off that sidewalk.
“I just didn’t want people finding me dead and seeing magnets all over my body,” he said.
All I could imagine was the magnets stuck to the front of a refrigerator door, only this time the notes people would stick under them would say stuff like “Hey, you look dead.”
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Comments
By Mike Tyson
June 23, 2008 8:10 PM | Link to this
I think I’m going to fade into BolivianBy Mike Tyson
June 23, 2008 8:09 PM | Link to this
I think I’m going to fade into BolivianBy Todd
June 10, 2008 10:19 PM | Link to this
As I was reading the blog, I heard former Cubs great Billy Williams on the TV broadcast talking about the “crooks and nannies” of Wrigley Field.By Ken
June 10, 2008 6:52 AM | Link to this
Is it any wonder people with foreign sounding names are getting so many of our jobs requiring a technical education? Some cultures actually value an education instead of watching or getting on YouTube.By TP
June 10, 2008 12:25 AM | Link to this
These anecdotes would be funny if they weren’t so sad. These are the role models of so many of our youth. It sends the message that idiots prosper. And the REALLY REALLY sad thing is that they actually DO. My seven cents.By LA
June 9, 2008 11:36 PM | Link to this
Oops,I meant Pickens, not PerkinsBy LA
June 9, 2008 11:14 PM | Link to this
Not a sports figure but Sam Goldwyn had the same idea as Perkins when he lamented the passage of time by remarking, “We,ve all passed a lot of water since then.”By Brian
June 9, 2008 3:48 PM | Link to this
In the immortal words of former-Bengal Carl Pickens, “It’s all bridge under the water.”