Courage and Redemption

Room 103
– A Title IX Drama –

Room 103 is a stage play set on a contemporary college campus. Warning, what follows involves sexual violence, courage, entitlement, narcissism, and the troubling level of privilege we afford student athletes.

Title IX, signed into law over fifty years ago, is well-known for requiring gender equity in college sports. It goes way beyond that, prohibiting discrimination and harassment on the basis of sex among all students in schools that receive federal funds. Sexual assault is a violent form of discrimination and harassment, and is investigated by the school’s Title IX enforcement office separately from any criminal charges that may be filed.

Many thanks to the survivors of sexual violence whose courage is the inspiration for this work.

Continue reading “Courage and Redemption”

Abusers, enablers, and glory

He’s a predator, no doubt.

He stalks a victim, grooms a victim, lures a victim. He’s a master of charm, deception, distraction.

Hey, look over here. A championship. A scholarship. Golly, would ya look at that. It’s a seat on the national team. A shot at Olympic glory.

Nothing else to see here. Just a string of winners.

Bring those kids, parents. Give ‘em to me. I’ve got what it takes to get ‘em to the top.

Pay no attention to the sick son of a bitch behind the curtain.

A guy you’ve never heard of made headlines last month:

https://www.seattletimes.com/sports/a-coach-accused-again-and-again/ 

Not patriotic: USRowing has some work to do.

Continue reading “Abusers, enablers, and glory”

Room 103 Act I

Room 103
– A Title IX Drama –

Room 103 is a stage play set on a contemporary college campus. Warning, what follows involves sexual violence, courage, entitlement, narcissism, and the troubling level of privilege we afford student athletes.

For a cast list, scene summaries, and basic stage instructions, please click here.
All material copyright (c) 2023 by William Walker. Contact at rubycreekboathouse@gmail.com

 

Act I

Scene 1

Room 101 – Barbara Woods’ office, untidy, stacks of papers, cheap furniture: desk, conference table, 8 chairs.

Barbara Woods, preparing for an interview, sits at her desk urgently reviewing papers. If stage allows, could show Nancy Doe waiting next door in Room 103, in shadows.

PAULINA NETTLES (knocks, enters, seems harried):            What are you doing, Barbara? Aren’t you coming?

BARBARA WOODS (baffled):            Coming where?

PN:                  Barbara… softball stadium. There’s a-

BW:                 Oh yeah. Can’t. I’m booked. Got an interview waiting in 103. With another in 105 right after.

PN:                  President Clemons just called. He expects us all there. He’s not gonna be happy.

Continue reading “Room 103 Act I”

Room 103 Act II

Room 103 
– A Title IX Drama –

Room 103 is a stage play set on a contemporary college campus. Warning, what follows involves sexual violence, courage, entitlement, narcissism, and the troubling level of privilege we afford student athletes.

This is Act II. To start at the beginning, please go to Act I here.
For a cast list, scene summaries, and basic stage instructions, please click here.
All material copyright (c) 2023 by William Walker. Contact at rubycreekboathouse@gmail.com

 

ACT II

Scene 1

A week later – August 3
Leaving Room 101

Pop Hughes and Welly Harris, outside Barbara Woods’ office

POP HUGHES (pacing):    Suspended? It’s the first week of August! Three months delay, for this! You’re suspended?

Continue reading “Room 103 Act II”

Something about Mary…

“I charge for that, y’know.”

Maybe Mary was joking, or maybe she just didn’t want her picture taken. Or maybe she was serious. Either way, Mary said it would cost us. As well it should. Mary’s a big deal around here.

So we never took her picture.

She plopped down next to us, 2 rows behind the Mariner dugout, in Peoria’s 80-degree heat. Dave and I had beers and brats in hand. I was snapping pics and texting my family when she came down the steps to her seat.

I focused on the brat. That was before we met Mary.

“I’m Bill, this is Dave.” 

She reached to shake hands. “My name’s Mary. I’m 90 years old, and I’ve had season tickets to Spring Training since they opened this park 30 years ago.”

Mary had our attention.

Continue reading “Something about Mary…”

2020 Ex-Mariner of the Year… late but worth it

Sorry, teacher, we’re a year late.

The 2020 Ex-Mariner of the Year announcement was all set for February 2021. It was a campaign marked by the deepest dive we’ve ever taken here at Playin’ in the Dirt. We searched MLB postseason rosters… added a Ross Eversoles bracket for guys still gripped by the game somewhere you’ve never heard of… an offshore bonus bracket for ex-M’s in foreign lands… we even put in a special folksong bracket for Ex-Mariners named Abraham, Martín, and Juan. And Robi.

So there we were, a year ago, ready to unleash the big announcement. Seriously. It was ready to go. No, teacher, the dog didn’t eat our homework. It was something way worse.

Kevin Mather, former Mariner CEO, goes off the rails
Absolutely, totally, unequivocally not the Ex-Mariner of the Year. (Bellevue Breakfast Rotary)

It was #thatman. Kevin Mather. Voldemort. He Who Shouldn’t Even Have Been Named Again here on these pages.

Continue reading “2020 Ex-Mariner of the Year… late but worth it”

Why do we have to learn sad things?

It was just another tweet from a tweeter on the twitter, a quick stop on a casual scroll down the screen. Then I hit the brakes. 
 
“Today when I taught my 8th graders about the Indian Removal Act,” the tweeter tweeted, “one asked why they have to learn sad things, and I would love to hear your gentlest, sincerest responses to the 13-year-old behind that question.”
 
As my brain scratched around for suitable 280-character wisdom, I read through the replies. And they were gold. 
 
You can find that tweet, with all the beauty and power in those replies, right there on the twitter:
 

 

And a tiny sampling of those replies… Continue reading “Why do we have to learn sad things?”

Pasteurized American slices

It’s cheesy, really. A whole book of cheese. We love cheese. With baseball in particular, our weepy overwrought technicolor memories of perfection are just… well yeah. Cheese.

It’s Mudville Diaries, A Book of Baseball Memories, Collected by Mike Schacht. 

But I gave him the book anyway. And now I’ve had it longer than he did. It was Father’s Day 1996 when he got it from me. With love. Says so right there in my red scribble on the title page. 

Tonight’s serving with cheddar please.


It was the June after I took him hobbling up the Kingdome steps to the last MLB game he’d ever see in person, the ALCS opener against Cleveland, when Bobby Wolcott, in the only postseason action of his short career, walked the bases full with nobody out in the first inning. Right about then Dad might have said “well shit, let’s go home” before Bobby found himself and worked the next seven frames for the W. 

And it was still a few years from those same Indians sending us a special gift in the form of Jose Mesa, whose two seasons in Seattle were defined by an ERA over 5.00 and by my father’s habit of screaming at the TV that goddammit if they were going to pay any random SOB three million plus to just serve that shit up, why the hell didn’t they let him, Kirby Walker, do it for half that much at 82 years old? 

Those are just the kind of cheesy stories that fill the pages of Mudville Diaries. Minus my dad’s endearing profanity of course. People’s best and worst memories of baseball. Verbal imagery. Classmates, teachers, teammates, opponents, brothers, sisters, moms, ballparks, balls, gloves, heroes and goats. But the recurring theme, bang, there it is again, is Dad. And again. And again.

And my dad left the bookmark right at the page where I put it, all those years ago. “Dad, read this” it still says, in that same red scribble. It’s the page that stood out from the cheese. The page that held, for me as I read it in that bookstore, what’s real about men and kids and a game that, like Santa Claus, stays magical for only those lucky few who hold on and believe it to be so. My dad was one of those guys.

Still there after 26 years.


And under that bookmark, still there where I left it on Father’s Day 1996, with love, are these words from Gene Carney:

He was bigger and stronger then
And you knew he could knock you over
If he really wanted to cut loose
He lobbed at first
And as he threw harder
You knew he was testing you
Seeing what you were made of today
Noticing how you handled the stings 
Watching how you backpedaled 
When he tossed infield flies
He made you run
Firing one wild high or
Bouncing it past your dive
Maybe so he could rest up some
Maybe so you could rest up some
So the game could go on
Till dinner time or till dark
Or till one of you
Grew up

Did we really have that game of catch every day? A couple times a week? Once every season? Once, ever? Did we really, ever?  …does it matter?

He was 90 when we lost him. It still hurts after fourteen years, a fresh, jagged blade in the ribs whenever I have big news to tell him, advice I need from him, a ballgame I’d like to share with him.

Or when I just need a game of catch. Cheese and all.

Do better, Joe. Way better.

Seemed innocent enough, right? 

It was just Joe Buck and John Smoltz covering the World Series, talking about the amazing Braves and all the adversity they faced on their way to glory. As it happened I was on my way out of the room on an urgent matter when Buck said what he said, so it didn’t quite register as anything more than normal between-pitches blather.

Matter of fact it was this blather right here: season of hardship for the Braves, blah blah here they are poised to win the World Series, blah blah lost this guy to injury, blah blah then Marcel Ozuna suspended for domestic violence, but the hits just kept on coming…

What’s that you said, Joe? (FOX Sports)

Continue reading “Do better, Joe. Way better.”

We got a front runner!

Yes, we got us a front runner.  …but he stands on the brink as we write this.

It’s a week into the postseason, but it only took us a day to wonder just what the hell is going on. The box score of the Yankees-Red Sox wild card game contained exactly zero ex-Mariners on either squad. For a couple of teams that regularly feature former M’s like Varitek while we slobber over bums like Slocumb… wait, we digress.

The next night, the Dodgers-Cards matchup, was a different story, wasn’t it? Continue reading “We got a front runner!”