County Signs: Low-down, mind-messin’ SoCon blues

By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. The surreal moment of the week was finding myself a seat with a nice camera view and watching Wofford score nine runs immediately and 15 in the first three innings. Until the game started, I had high hopes for the Blue Hose. The Terriers won, 19-2, and …

Furmanology: Adjusting to the speed of light

By MONTE DUTTON PJay Smith (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. I never saw Stephen Croone play in person, but I was a big fan. While Croone was playing for the Paladins, I was, unbeknownst to me, winding down my NASCAR writing career. I had a false sense of security. Other than the occasional blog, I …

Furmanology: Accustomed to an absent mind

By MONTE DUTTON (Furman photo) Click here. On Saturday, I watched the closest finish in Kentucky Derby history. On Sunday, I watched the closest finish in NASCAR history. On TV, mind you. I’m not some globe-trotting bon vivant hiding behind a cloak of seeming poverty. I’m worse than a poor boy. I’m a poor old …

Blue Hose Blurbs: PC reaches top of Big South heap

By MONTE DUTTON (PC photo) Click here. Saturday’s victory over Charleston Southern put Presbyterian in a tie for first place in the Big South Conference baseball standings for at least a day. It’s not like the Blue Hose just began the season hot, though they did. When Sunday’s game at Charleston Southern ends, PC will …

Furmanology: But first, a bit of aged philosophy …

By MONTE DUTTON Evidence suggests the rain-shortened game was justified. (Furman photo) Click here. All is tangible, and all is not. Time, for instance. Precise. Measurable. Inviolable. Examined another way, it is not. For me, time crawls every morning, and then it gets faster and faster until late at night, when it runs out of …

Blue Hose Blurbs: Baseball is in the hunt

By MONTE DUTTON Joel Dragoo (Monte Dutton photo) Click here. I suppose folks must know, but it just hasn’t spread around their consciousness yet. They’re preoccupied. PC baseball is a game out of first place in the Big South Conference. Yeah. Did you hear me? What? Click here. PC. It’s a game out of first …

County Signs: Beat Catawba Ridge … check

By MONTE DUTTON (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. PROLOGUE Sometimes it rains. Sometimes it doesn’t. I like it better when Mother Nature makes up her mind. I’ve watched the weather. Laurens and Clinton have crucial high-school baseball games Friday night. The Raiders are (or by the time you read this, maybe were) undefeated in the …

County Signs: Red Devils stay alive

By MONTE DUTTON Camden Finley connects. (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. The latest of life’s ironies occurred to me Thursday morning as I augmented, updated, corrected and reposted Wednesday’s crop. NIL (name, image and likeness) provides college athletes monetary compensation, yet the world “nil” means nothing. Thus could the athlete at an unmonied institution say, …

County Signs: Raiders enjoy Coker cola in ninth

By MONTE DUTTON Coleman Coker drove in the winning run. (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. I was up until the wee hours, which are not that wee for me, failing to get Tuesday night’s results posted. Folks have more wi-fi than wife problems nowadays. Oh, wait. I don’t have a wife. It could be that …

County Signs: A mostly bleak night on the diamonds

By MONTE DUTTON Zane McLendon has that sinking feeling. (Monte Dutton photos) Click here. A Furman release revealed that the Paladins have signed two “rising juniors.” I thought, Thank God, they aren’t falling juniors. Yes, I know, “rising” refers to someone in the next class. It’s spring, and those two promising athletes are sophomores now, …