DOBservations

You have to love how passionate people are in Quincy. I’m sure sure people in other towns are passionate about where they live, but I’ve lived in other places and I haven’t seem the same kind of passion about their town as I have here.

The latest example of that came Tuesday night when a basically standing-room only crowd filled the clubhouse at Westview Golf Course to hear about the Quincy Park District’s proposed changes to the last nine holes of the 27-hole course. Nearly 20 people addressed the board. All of them made good points. None of them waved their fingers or ran down anybody. They just wanted to make sure that the board knew how passionate they were about Westview and that they wanted to make sure the course remained to be what it is — one of the best public courses around.

Park District staff believe that making some adjustments to the back nine will help make the course a more viable business. I’ve golfed out there plenty. I have to say there were times when I wished there was a driving range to hit balls. Then again, if I was really serious about my game all I have to do is go a mile up the road to the Knights of Columbus driving range and I could do the same thing.

Several people suggested Westview and the Knights of Columbus working together. There’s nothing to say that Westview couldn’t work out some kind of deal with Knights of Columbus so golfers who want to warm up couldn’t do it. The groups could think up some sort of incentive program that could benefit both entities.

At a time when people are watching every dime they spend, I’ll be surprised if the Park Board signs off on spending the more than $400,000 the project is expected to cost. A final decision about what — if anything — will be done won’t happen for months down the road.

Word is starting to trickle out of Macomb that Western Illinois University has let Athletic Director Tim Van Alstine go. Although the university hasn’t made it official yet (as of 1:45 anyway), I have talked with people inside the department who have confirmed that Van Alstine is finished.

I don’t know what caused the dismissal, but Van Alstine gave the Leathernecks 12 really good years. The school enjoyed a lot of success with him in charge. According to his bio, WIU teams won 28 league titles during his tenure. WIU coaches won 28 Coach of the Year honors and 19 teams reached postseason play in either the NCAA Tournament or another post-conference tournament event.

He made two great hires for the school’s basketball programs in men’s coach Jim Molinari and women’s skipper JD Gravina. Facilities have undergone great changes. Hanson Field, home of the WIU football team, has a nice turf look now. The baseball stadium has been renovated and has to be one of the nicest fields among mid-major schools. Former Quincy Gems skipper Ryan Brownlee now heads up the WIU baseball program and should have the Leathernecks on the rise.

Van Alstine made a lot of people upset when he fired former football coach Don Patterson after a few down seasons. The team didn’t find the same sustained success under Mark Hendrickson that it had under Patterson, but Van Alstine made a hire that many liked when he lured Bob Nielson away from a national championship-winning program at the NCAA Division II level last December.

When I was a sports guy, I always found Van Alstine to be fair. He never told you what he was going to pay the coaches he hired, but a simple Freedom of Information Act request always took care of that.

It will be interesting to see where WIU goes from here. My inside sources tell me that it will be someone new who will take over the department. Thanks to Van Alstine, that person should walk into a pretty good situation.

UPDATE: Around 2:45, the school issued a press release saying that Van Alstine had resigned. No reason was given for his resignation.

I try not to be “that guy.”

We all know “that guy.”

“That guy” is the one who screams at his kids, the coach or the referee at his kids’ youth sporting events. I have to admit to being “that guy” a few times when I was younger. Now that I have a second child going through the youth sports circuit, I’m a little wiser. Every game isn’t the end of the world. Your kid is going to strike out, miss shots, flub a tackle and let someone else score a goal on them. It’s not going to cost them a college scholarship or a shot at the pros either. It’s part of the learning experience.

I think I have a different perspective now than I did when my oldest son played sports. What happens, happens. Sure, I want my son and his team to do well. If they don’t, it’s not the end of the world. If they don’t want to lose again, they’ll work harder. If my boy wants to succeed as an individual inside his team sport, he’ll work harder.

The volunteer coach is doing all he can to provide a good experience for the kids. The umpire or ref getting maybe $10 or $20 bucks to be out there is doing the best that he or she can. No need to berate them for being human and getting one wrong.

Many of you will be out in force this weekend during the Gus Macker 3-on-3 tournament. You surely hope that Junior and his crew wind up champions on Sunday. There’s nothing wrong with being a cheerleader from the stands, but make a pact with yourself to be positive toward your child and the officials. I can guarantee that there will be no college or pro scouts in attendance.

Just let the kids have some fun. Don’t be “that guy.”

My son, Reid, turned the corner Thursday night as we walked outside the Quincy Family YMCA and his eyes got wide.

“Dad, can I go run the bases?” he asked.

He had just played two games earlier in the evening at Geisler Field. We had wandered over to Tappe Field, the bigger of the two fields behind the Y, to watch a neighborhood kid play. But our car was parked near the other field. That gave him an extra chance to play.

When he asked me if he could go run, Reid reminded me of an 8-year-old DOB. I would have done the same thing. For a kid, there is nothing better than to run the bases. You don’t have a care in the world. All you’re worried about is trying to see how fast you can get from one base to the next and figuring out how dirty you can get your uniform with that slide into home plate.

“Of course you can,” I told him.

And off he went. He acted like he had just laced one into a gap and was off on a dead sprint. He zipped his way around the bases and did a belly flop into home, stirring up enough dust to cover himself in dirt. He popped up and dusted himself off with a wide smile on his face.

“Dad, let’s race,” he said to me.

Of course, I took him up on it. He’s much more athletic than I ever was — he can thank his mother’s gene pool for that — and easily beat me around the bases. Being 8 and athletic trumps being 42 and out of shape every day of the week.

I’ve never been one to subscribe to the whole “having kids helps keep you young” thing. But the older I get, the more I think that those people might be right. I think I feed off my kids’ energy.

It’s certainly fun to watch them enjoy life. Something we should all be reminded of.

During my sports writing days, I had the opportunity to go into many interesting environments to work on stories. I’ve been in big-league and NFL locker rooms, and more college and high school locker rooms than I care to remember. But on Wednesday, I went to jail.

I wasn’t booked or anything. I know better than that. I had an opportunity to go behind bars at the Adams County Jail for a series of stories that I’ve been working on. It’s not a pretty place, certainly not any place that I would ever want to spend a considerable amount of time. I asked the inmate that I am doing a story about what they did all day in there, he said they didn’t do much of anything.

“All I have to look forward to is my next meal,” he said.

Not exactly a glamorous life.

At least the Chicago Bulls will always have Game 1 in Miami. The NBA playoffs were fun while they lasted for this Bulls fan. Getting to the second round with a rag-tag collection of players is quite an accomplishment.

The Bulls’ playoff run will end Wednesday night when the Miami Heat eliminate them in the fifth game of the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. The Heat will go on to win their second straight NBA title. It’s a foregone conclusion. It won’t be a breeze for LeBron and Co., but they will stand above all others when the season is finished next month.

When the Bulls return in October, they’ll have Derrick Rose back. Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich should also be healthy. I would like to see the team get some help off the bench. This year’s bench crew didn’t impress me. Nate Robinson had his moments, but is rather maddening to watch play.

I love watching Tiger Woods win. The only thing better to me than watching Tiger Woods win is watching Sergio Garcia implode while watching Tiger Woods win.

I will forever remember the 2013 Players Championship. Sergio, who I hate more than any professional athlete ever, and Tiger were deadlocked going into the 17th hole, which is home of TPC Sawgrass’ famous island green. Tiger had no problem with the tee shot and made off with a par. Playing in the group behind Woods, Sergio dunked his ball twice. That was part of a quadruple bogey-double bogey finish for the Spaniard. Woods, meanwhile, stayed out of the water and finished par-par to win the title.

I was so inspired by Sergio’s gaffe that I made a Vine about it. Check it out.

God bless, Charles Ramsey. He’s the guy who helped rescue the three kidnapped women in Cleveland. His brutal honesty in what happened during the rescue and his role in it was refreshing to see. I loved how Ramsey, who works as a dishwasher, deflected any talk that he should be rewarded for what he did. He told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that any reward money should go to the victims. I’m not so sure that I would do the same thing.

Ramsey has become an internet sensation, but he has also been goofed on with people turning his TV interviews into Autotune songs. Let’s celebrate Ramsey for doing the right thing and not clown on him because some of the things he said in his interviews play into certain racial stereotypes.

DOBservations update

Those of you who check in here daily saw yesterday’s post on Pittsfield native Brad Fox, an aspiring professional wrestler. He is part of the TNA GutCheck Challenge, which unknowns like Fox, try to make it into TNA, the No. 2 pro wrestling promotion in the U.S. behind the WWE. Fox, known in wrestling circles as Jake “Dirdey” Dirden, was the No. 1 vote-getter in his opening round of competition. He’ll be in the next round of voting, which starts on June 8. We’ll keep you up-to-date here on Fox’s progress.

Want to help a local guy make it to the big time? Then shoot on over to the TNA Gut Check Challenge and vote for Pittsfield native Brad Fox, aka Jake Dirden. It looks like you can only vote once.

Fox is trying to make it into the big-time ranks of professional wrestling. I wrote a column earlier this year about how he is trying to make like Glen Jacobs, the Frankfort, Mo., native who is known as Kane and is one of the WWE’s top stars.

Fox is honing his skills over in Japan right now and appears to be holding his own. Fox is doing a great job of updating his fans through his Twitter and Facebook sites.

Go vote today.

The last time I texted with Chip Gerdes, he wanted to know how the protest for Quincy’s Dancing Man was going at Quincy Mall. I was at a youth basketball tournament that day and told Chip I didn’t know what was going on.

“I should have run his protest,” Chip texted. “I would have had kids dressed as black panthers. Fist in the air Olympic style.”

And had Chip been in charge of that protest, he probably would have had kids dressed as Black Panthers, mimicking the famous black power pose struck by Tommy Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Olympics.

Whatever Chip put his mind to, he did.

I first met him about seven years ago. Not long after that, Chip was ticketed by the Quincy Police Department for playing his radio too loud at the corner of 18th and Broadway. The song he was playing was Public Enemy’s “Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos.” Instead of simply paying the fine, which probably would have been $50 or $75, Chip fought the ticket and had a jury hear his case. He was found not guilty.

On Monday, I found out that Chip died. He was only 42, the same age as I am. I feel for his wife and daughter and friends and family who knew him a lot better than I did. Hansen-Spear Funeral Home is handling the arrangements.

I’ll remember Chip for his love of all things Quincy and being a big sports fan. I’ll forever be thankful for him giving my oldest son and I his Rams tickets so that my son could see his first NFL game.

He was a funny guy, who loved Alabama football. When my beloved Notre Dame Irish went up against the Crimson Tide in the national title game earlier this year, Chip let me know who was going to win. And he was right. Under his alias, Tookie, Chip wrote the Quincy City Desk blog, which touched on topics of local interest and had more than enough Alabama football chatter. The blog may have been NC-17 at times, but it was often funny.

Chip was a big behind-the-scenes player in political circles. He’s been remembered fondly by those folks with fitting tributes. Read more here and here.

How important was Chip on the political scene? I doubt that many of us will be remembered on the floor of the U.S. House after we pass away. On Monday, Congresswoman Ann Wagner read a tribute about Chip on the House floor.

I’m sure Chip has probably talked a little football with Bear Bryant by now.

Roll Tide.