Gilmer's Gospel

     As my final week at the Herald-Journal looms ahead, I’ve decided to take the time and write about some of my favorites over the past nine years.
     Today is a list of my favorite stories that I got to do that little to do with high school athletics.
     Most of my time was spent covering high school sports. Every once in a while I would venture out of that realm to do something different.
     I've written video game reviews, music reviews, stories for other sections and for Spartanburg Magazine during my time here.
     Here are my five favorites.

    
     1. Talking umpiring with Fieldin Culbreth: I did a series last summer about four Spartanburg residents making their living in professional baseball without being players.
     Culbreth, a Chapman graduate, is a Major League umpire. I went to his house to talk with him for the story and got to see his collection of memorabilia and see photos of him in action.
     He was honest and professional and gave me a great interview.
     After doing a story, you never know how the subject will respond. Culbreth sent me a nice note thanking me.
     You also never know if you’re get to interview a subject again. A few months after our initial meeting, I was back at Culbreth’s house – he was calling the World Series.
     For the first story, he told me it was his dream to work the Series, then he got to do it.
     It was nice to take that story full circle.
     It was nicer for Culbreth to talk with me about it.



     2. Professional wrestling series: For two summers, I spent a lot of time researching local angles on professional wrestling. I met great people doing these stories, some who are former wrestlers and some who had retired.
     I got to speak with NWA legends Harley Race and Ivan Koloff. I traveled with local brother Kirby and T.J. Mack to an event in Columbia to watch them wrestle. I spoke with Dustin Rhodes and Rakishi on that trip.
     Those stories took me away from high school sports and during the summer it was a welcomed, relaxing venture.
     The trip with the Macks was my favorite part.              
     Photographer Tom Priddy and I hopped in the van with those guys, rode down to Columbia while talking about their lives in professional wrestling and then we watched them perform.
     We came back late that night and had a new understanding of how wrestlers earned their living trying to make the big show.
     And Tom slept on the way home.



     3. Seeing Kevin Pucetas pitch in the all-star game: Another long trip for Tom and I, but another well worth it.
Pucetas, a former Broome pitcher, was in the Double-A all-star game in Myrtle Beach.
     Since he was pitching for the San Jose (Calif.) Giants on the West Coast, this was our only chance to see him play last summer.
     Tom and I headed down to the beach, almost ran out of gas, never saw the ocean and ended up eating dinner at 1:30 a.m. Worth it, though.
     Pucetas is one of those players who’s great to work with, easy to contact and going to be in the Majors. I did get him yelled at by his manager though.
     I stood in the dugout during the all-star game and grabbed a quick interview after Pucetas threw his inning.      The game was still going on. I was trying to beat a deadline. Pucetas was just helping me out by standing off to the side answering my questions. His manager gave him a hard time. Hopefully, he didn’t have to run extra sprints for it.

     4. College football with Bobby Bentley: When the former Byrnes coach took over at Presbyterian College, I asked if I could join him for his first day of practice. And not just for practice.
     But for the ride to Clinton, meetings with players and assistant coaches, lunch and everything else that went along with his day. Having worked with Bentley for so long, he gave me unlimited access on that first day.
     I wandered in and out of meetings, watched film and talked to everyone. I showed up at Bentley’s house before the sun rose and watched him have breakfast with his kids, then hopped in the first seat as he dropped them off at school.
     It was a long, grinding day and I understand why college coaches (and Bentley, in particular) can get burned out.

     5. Goalball: A couple of years ago, the Sports staff here at the H-J was introduced to a sport for the blind called “goalball.”
     We knew nothing about it early on, when the Goalball National Games came to town.
     We quickly learned. We played it and got pounded by the high school team from SCSDB. Just imagine how bad we would have gotten beaten by the national teams.
     The sport is played in a gym, with long nets and three players trying to stop a jingling ball while being essentially blindfolded.
     When the World Goalball Games came back a few years later, we knew enough to give (what we thought to be) great coverage of the sport. We became small-level experts on the sport and knew the top players by name and what their strengths were.
     I don’t think we could field a team that would win a goalball match, but we’d at least know the rules.
     And I think we let the community know that even though they were blind athletes, they were still high-caliber athletes.