We had offices, a conference room, a reception area and, for the purpose of this story, a break room.

The break room had coffee and one of those honor-system snack boxes filled with the same candy, chips and other assorted necessities you’d normally find in a vending machine.

The snack box usually didn’t get much attention, but that changed during an annual company-wide meeting.

Staff from the El Paso Diablos and Sioux City Explorers came to Boise to join those of us with the Boise Hawks, Idaho Sneakers of World TeamTennis (still two words, just smashed together) and Idaho Steelheads.

Throughout the meetings, I kept seeing Sioux City director of baseball operations and on-field manager Ed Nottle eating snacks.

I didn’t think anything about it until the proprietor of the snack box stormed into our accountant’s office the following week, shaking a stack of tiny scraps of paper.

“What am I supposed to do with these?” he asked angrily.

Every piece of paper had IOU written on it, and every one was signed in cursive, “Ed Nottle.”

After calming him down, our accountant counted the IOUs and wrote the owner a check for the total. If I’m not mistaken, the accountant then deducted Ed’s snack tab from his next paycheck.

The owner was also asked to remove his snack box because we were all confident there would be a repeat performance the following year.

Sometimes even a journalism major gets it wrong.

Earlier this year, I wrote 23 stories and posted them as Substack Notes. Unfortunately, Notes don’t generate email notifications, so many of you probably never saw them.

Welcome to #FlashbackFriday, where I’ll dust one off from the archives and share it with the readers who missed it.

When I see or hear a number, my mind almost always jumps to a uniform number.

So when I was handed #29 at Whataburger, I didn’t think about burgers or table tents.

I thought of Pete Incaviglia.

Pete was voted the College Baseball Player of the Century, and I was lucky enough to work with him for one unforgettable, NCAA record-smashing season.

Apparently, not everyone associates fast-food numbers with college baseball legends. Go figure.

READ about it here:

https://jackcarnefix.substack.com/p/only-pete-incaviglia-could-accomplish

I had arrived in Iowa after spending the last six years as the director of operations for Oklahoma State baseball. In the spring of 1994 I made the choice to leave OSU and accepted the position with the Explorers, who would be playing their second season in the independent Northern League.

The single biggest difference between college and professional baseball was the bats with colleges using aluminum bats because of cost and pro teams using wood bats. I had never worked in professional baseball, but had heard plenty of stories about it from former Cowboys who returned to Stillwater to train and continue their education during the offseason. I learned from these players that it was standard operating procedure in the minor leagues to issue each position player two bats. If one of the bats was broken, the player would exchange it for a new bat.

During one of our conversations about equipment the general manager shared with me how in their first season the team had run out of bats and had to order more. I asked how that happened and he told me that each of the players had been given a half dozen bats at the beginning of the season. I shook my head and explained that the players had probably gifted bats to siblings, former teammates and others. I proposed what I had heard about two bats and requiring a broken one for a new one, which we decided was the most fiscally responsible plan moving forward.

There was some resistance, including questions about whether players could still give broken bats to fans, particularly kids. I said that they were welcome to request a broken bat to share as a token of appreciation, but that they weren’t being given six bats at a time again.

On the first day of training camp during equipment checkout, as we handed each player two bats and explained the broken for new exchange program, one said, “Last year we were each given a half a dozen bats.” I replied that this year it was two bats. He smiled and said, “Oh, so you know. Well, it was good while it lasted.”

I am proud to report that in 1994 the Sioux City Explorers had enough bats to make it through the season.

Sometimes even a journalism major gets it wrong.

Earlier this year, I wrote 23 stories and posted them as Substack Notes. Unfortunately, Notes don’t generate email notifications, so many of you probably never saw them.

Welcome to #FlashbackFriday, where I’ll dust one off from the archives and share it with the readers who missed it.

A Facebook post about the long-gone Seattle Pilots sent me straight back to Sick’s Stadium, where six-year-old me once watched my Oakland A’s take on Seattle.

I’m pretty sure the A’s won. Mostly because that makes me happier, and also because the Pilots, well they didn’t exactly strike fear into opposing lineups. Seattle finished last in the American League West at 64-98. Oakland went 88-74 and beat the Pilots 13 times in 18 tries. And then, the Pilots were gone, moving to Milwaukee to become the Brewers after just one lonely season.

At the time, I had no idea that a Pilots pitcher, Jim Bouton, was secretly keeping a diary that would become one of my all-time favorite books: Ball Four: My Life and Hard Times Throwing the Knuckleball in the Big Leagues.

By today’s standards, Ball Four is quite tame. But in 1970 it was nuclear.

Bouton wrote about the locker rooms, motel rooms, the drinking, the griping and more. Basically, all the things baseball had politely pretended didn’t exist. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn called the book “detrimental to baseball” and even tried to get Bouton to say it was all fiction. Sportswriters were furious, too. After all, their livelihoods depended on players still talking to them.

But the damage, in the best possible way for us readers, was done.

Ball Four became a landmark. It was the only sports book on the New York Public Library’s 1996 list of Books of the Century, and Time later named it one of the 100 greatest nonfiction books since the magazine was founded in 1923.

It came out in 1970, but I didn’t discover it until years later, probably because it wasn’t exactly “age appropriate.”

Also, because I was too short to reach the higher shelf, I am positive it was kept on at the library.

If you haven’t read Ball Four, pick up a copy.

You’ll be entertained.

And you’re welcome.

You Know Jack! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

It was my third National Wrestling Hall of Fame induction ceremony, and the ice sculptures had become the bane of my existence. They looked good sitting in the buffet line, gave the whole evening a fancy schmancy feel, and were otherwise an annual headache from start to finish. The sculptor didn’t help. Getting him to retrieve his “custom” tray after the event required a small communications campaign, every single year.

Year one went fine. Because it was the 40th anniversary we had two sculptures, which were properly disposed of in the kitchen after the event. Nobody thought much about it.

Year two is where things got interesting. We left the sculpture sitting out on the “custom” tray, which was roughly four inches deep and therefore capable of holding only so much water as the sculpture slowly did what ice does. Our event was Saturday evening. By Monday morning, when the Student Union staff arrived to clean the ballroom, they found a large puddle in the middle of a wooden floor. We got lucky. No damage.

In the third year, I began reminding staff about proper disposal on Monday. I reminded them Wednesday. By Saturday, they were tired of hearing about the ice sculpture.

They had received the message loud and clear. I was speaking with some guests when I heard the thud. A few chunks apparently reached the feet of bystanders. There was a collective gasp from the staff, then the giggles started, the kind people try to suppress when they’re sitting in church. As they gathered up the pieces and carried them outside, tossing them over a ledge onto the grass below, the giggles became laughter.

Not long after, while I was recounting all of this to someone, they offered a suggestion: “You could get a faux ice sculpture.”

It had not occurred to me that faux ice sculptures existed.

The Hall of Fame now owns several. They’re acrylic. They sit on a lighted base. They don’t melt, they don’t need a custom tray, and I don’t have to deal with their creator every year.

Sometimes even a journalism major gets it wrong.

Earlier this year, I wrote 23 stories and posted them as Substack Notes. Unfortunately, Notes don’t generate email notifications, so many of you probably never saw them.

Welcome to #FlashbackFriday, where I’ll dust one off from the archives and share it with the readers who missed it.

One season, the Boise Hawks held a minor league hat giveaway night in partnership with New Era, the official hat provider of both Major League and Minor League Baseball.

This was not your standard “here’s our team hat” giveaway. This was random. As fans entered the stadium, they were handed a hat from some minor league team somewhere in America.

And almost every fan reacted the exact same way. They’d look at the hat, turn it sideways, study the logo, and then ask, to no one in particular, “Does anyone know what team this is?”

As I exited the back door of the front office on my way to the press box, I heard one of those cries for help. I glanced at the hat and said, “That’s the Carolina Mudcats.” The fan immediately went from confused to thrilled.

Another asked, and I told them they had a Cedar Rapids Kernels hat. And just like that, word started to spread. Apparently, “that guy” could identify your hat.

Now, there’s a reason for this. Baseball America published a book that listed every minor league team with staff directories, affiliations, and most importantly, logos. As someone trying to break into professional baseball, and knowing front office careers often take the same winding path as players, I spent a lot of time flipping through that book looking for opportunities.

And, as it turns out… I remembered more logos than I realized. Soon, I was surrounded. Hats were coming at me from every direction.

I’d identify one and the owner would walk away smiling, proudly announcing to their friends that they were now the owner of a Hickory Crawdads hat. I even spotted a couple of Sioux City Explorers hats, a team owned by the same group as the Hawks, and where I had worked my first year in professional baseball.

At that point, it felt less like a giveaway and more like a pop-up identification service. Drawing on my experience moving athletes through crowds toward press conferences, I kept inching forward until I finally reached the stairs.

I apologized to my new group of “customers” and told them I really needed to get to the press box to do what I was actually hired and paid to do.

I don’t think I could identify nearly as many minor league hats today.

But on that night in Boise, I was in midseason form.

He didn’t make it very far before the low gravelly voice of Ed Nottle said calmly, “Can, everyone dresses the same for practice. Go back in and put on a pair of baseball pants.”

“But, Skip, it’s really hot,” pleaded Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd, who was a new member of the Xs in 1994.

Can and Ed had known each other since 1985 when both were part of the Boston Red Sox organization. Can joined the Red Sox in 1980 and was a member until 1989, pitching eight seasons in the big leagues with Boston before concluding his major league career with Montreal and Texas. By the time he showed up in Sioux City, he’d earned the kind of standing that lets a man get away with a scheme like this.

Rules were rules, so Can turned around and went back into the locker room and returned wearing grey baseball pants.

Ed might have thought that was the end of the training camp dress code discussion. But it was not and after practice Can requested that we provide him with the short size for every player and coach. After showering and getting dressed, Can left the locker room with his list of shorts needed in hand.

When the team returned for its second workout of the day, Can walked through the locker room passing out a pair of black shorts to every player. His last stop was the manager’s office where he tossed a pair to Ed and said, “Now everyone can still dress the same, but we won’t be as hot.”

Ed laughed, pulled on the new shorts, and walked out to join the rest of the Explorers in their new practice look.

We didn’t realize it that day, but there were going to be many more stories involving Can.

Sometimes even a journalism major gets it wrong. Earlier this year, I wrote 23 stories and posted them as Substack Notes. Unfortunately, Notes don’t generate email notifications, so many of you probably never saw them.

Welcome to #FlashbackFriday, where I’ll dust one off from the archives and share it with the readers who missed it.

I was sitting at a restaurant, waiting on my food, when I noticed a drink station in the corner. This particular machine dispensed flavored moonshine cocktails.

That’s when I saw them.

Bees landing on the machine and sampling like they had just completed a moonshine factory tour.

This made me wonder, “Can bees get drunk?”

As we all do, I asked the internet, which confirmed that yes, pollinators can absolutely get intoxicated. In nature it happens from consuming fermented nectar or overripe fruit.

And just like humans, a buzzed bee (yes, intentional) loses all sense of navigation. They fly crooked, crash into things, and sometimes can’t even make it back to the hive. Basically, the bee version of “I’m fine, I don’t need a ride … wait, where’s my house?”

Even worse, when they do make it home, the guard bees can smell the alcohol. Think of them as tiny spouses waiting up at the door, asking the usual questions like “Where have you been?” and “Do you know what time it is?”

But here’s where our pollinator friends go full nature documentary.

Sometimes the colony rejects the drunk bees. Sometimes they even get … well … disappeared. (Which is honestly a little extreme. But I get it. Because we’ve all managed an intoxicated friend acting like an unsupervised toddler in a Costco.)

I always thought humans were the only species making questionable choices around alcoholic beverages.

Turns out bees are right there with us. Impulsive and willing to embarrass themselves for a tasty fruity beverage.

So, the next time you see a bee hovering over your adult drink, please be considerate.

Let the little guy have a droplet before you shoo him away.

He might just be trying to take the edge off after a long day.

Once it arrived, the goose began its modeling career. Festively outfitted for every holiday and season.

She even went to Hobby Lobby looking for a replacement hat because, “Honey, the one it came with not only didn’t fit, but it was also ugly.”

Phone calls often included a complete report on the goose’s latest wardrobe change. Entertainment reporters covering the Oscars weren’t nearly as thorough.

I have included the photographs from my mother’s goose’s fashion shoot. These weren’t snapped with a phone. These required an actual camera, a roll of film, a trip to have it developed, and then waiting to discover whether my mother’s finger was in the shot or if the goose had blinked.

Mom freely admitted she wasn’t exactly a dedicated photographer. She once had a roll of film developed that contained photographs from my birthday parties spanning two years. People always assumed she was kidding. She wasn’t.

Rose Marie may not have diligently documented every moment, but she filled every moment with something worth remembering.

So, without further ado, I proudly present Rose Marie’s dress-up goose fashion show.

In February of 1994, I began working for Diamond Sports in Sioux City, Iowa with the Explorers. After the season I was relocated to Boise, Idaho. I continued to handle media and public relations for the Explorers, in what we all know now as working remotely, while adding the Boise Hawks, a minor league baseball team, and the Idaho Sneakers, a World TeamTennis franchise (still two words smooshed into one).

In Boise I met World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame founder Myron Finkbeiner, and attended the annual induction ceremonies, as did Roderick.

Finkbeiner commissioned Michael Destin, a renowned wildlife artist from Eagle, Idaho, to produce portraits for each Humanitarian Hall of Fame inductee.

Impressed with the portraits, Roderick commissioned Destin to create portraits for the National Wrestling Hall of Fame of every American wrestler who had captured Olympic gold. Destin originally created 33 portraits and has since completed 17 more, bringing the total to 50.

When I joined the Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2015 I became part of the portrait process. It begins with coordinating with gold medalists on choosing the photograph that Destin, who works in what he calls his Wrestling Hall of Fame style, will use.

Two guys named Myron. Each the founder of a sports hall of fame. Both based in different cities, connected by a wildlife artist and a series of ceremonies in Boise.

The odds on that have to be pretty high.

But the odds that each of them could ask the other, “Do you know Jack?” and they would both say yes?

Those have to be astronomical.

I wasn’t 15 and heading out on tour with a rock band like William Miller, but I was the new stats guy walking into one of the most dominant programs in college baseball.

And I won’t lie. I was nervous.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I had just stepped into one of the most impactful stretches of my professional life.

Being around those teams, those players, those coaches, those expectations, and that standard raised the bar for everyone in the building, including the stats guy.

And I already had a pretty good work ethic thanks to Jack, Sr., and Rose Marie.

The numbers tell part of the story.

Ten trips to the College World Series from 1981 to 1996. An NCAA-record seven consecutive appearances from 1981 to 1987. Three runner-up finishes in Omaha. Multiple top-three national finishes. And 17 Big Eight titles from 1978 to 1996, including 16 in a row.

That wasn’t just success. That was rarified air.

And all these years later, what still gets me isn’t just how good those teams were. It’s how their pursuit of excellence made the stats guy want to be better too.

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Beyond the seats down the leftfield line was a giant grass hill that was packed with kids during every game. They ran up it, rolled down it and transformed into Olympic sprinters anytime a foul ball landed nearby.

There also seemed to be an unwritten rule that a foul ball was not officially yours until you escaped and reached the top of the hill without getting tackled by another kid. Once they made it to the top clutching the ball, they would raise their arms in triumph like a champion, often drawing cheers from the crowd that had stopped watching the game to watch them instead.

Further down the line kids gathered near the bullpen where college pitchers, who were often unsupervised and bored, entertained themselves.

Each game pitchers carried extra baseballs to the bullpen to warm up. Sometimes a pitcher would hold up a baseball, get the kids attention and then toss it onto the hill just to watch the chaos unfold.

Following one game a pitcher proudly told me he had traded a baseball to a kid for a hot dog.

I laughed as I explained that a baseball cost about $5 while the hot dog cost $2, meaning the pitcher had just been outsmarted by a child.

Do not prank them.

What we failed to do was give the bat boys and bat girls the same speech.

Which eventually led to one of the greatest power moves I ever witnessed.

One of the bat boys asked a pitcher if he was throwing that day.

The pitcher replied that he wasn’t pitching until tomorrow.

Without hesitation, the bat boy reached into his pocket, pulled out some cash and asked, “Can you go to the concession stand and get me a hot dog?”

The pitcher did not appreciate being asked.

Later he complained to me about the incident.

It took every ounce of professionalism I had not to burst out laughing as I assured him that we would address the matter immediately and instruct the bat boys and bat girls not to ask players to go to the concession stand.

After sharing my first Substack posts on Facebook on July 6, 2025, 51 of you signed up and another 56 joined in the next six days. You Know Jack! continues to grow and now has 225 subscribers. It is still exciting every time that I am notified of a new addition. Thank you to those who are paid subscribers and I hope that others will be joining your ranks.

You can also help me by encouraging others to sign up for You Know Jack! Please don’t limit your encouragement to just family and friends. Feel free to invite enemies, people you meet waiting in line and others. “Liking” and “Sharing” are really just digital versions of pyramid schemes whereby the reach grows as the word is passed along. Speaking of X, you used to ReTweet, so now do you ReX?

I recognize the names on the majority of the email addresses and it makes me happy that I know so many of my readers. It also tells me that many of you have been able to smile and nod while reading a story because you were there and often a part of it. If you haven’t had that experience don’t despair, or, maybe ‘don’t relax?’ because I’m sure you’ll have a chance to remember in a future post.

One of the biggest things that You Know Jack! has done for me is make me realize that Clarence from “It’s A Wonderful Life” really knew what he was talking about when he said, “Remember no man is a failure who has friends.”

I’m ready for Year Two. I hope that all of you are too.

Flashlights were coming at us from all sides inside Gallagher Hall (now Gallagher-Iba Arena). The student assistant from sports information and I froze. My good friend John didn’t even realize the police had arrived until he crawled out from under the bleachers, retrieving one of the basketballs that had gone astray. Which, now that I think about it, probably didn’t help our case.

So how exactly did we end up shooting, and eventually dunking, mini basketballs in the middle of the night inside Gallagher?

It started innocently enough. One of the perks of being the sports editor for the OSU student newspaper, The Daily O’Collegian, was the opportunity to file a weekly feature story for the Tulsa Tribune. (At the time, the weekly $25 payday felt like I was one step away from early retirement.) I was waiting my turn to transmit my story to the Tribune and John was waiting with me and the student assistant was also waiting his turn.

“What were you waiting for?” you may be asking. The sports information computer.

This wasn’t a “personal computer,” because those didn’t show up in the office until I got a full-time gig in 1984.

This unit transmitted directly to the Associated Press, United Press International, and every major paper in the state. Unfortunately, the Tribune’s system was down.

So we waited. And waited. And, as often happens when you give a group of college kids too much time and not enough supervision, someone found a bag of leftover miniature basketballs, giveaways from the previous hoops season.

We started tossing them around in the office, which somehow led to the logical next step to go shoot in the arena.

It was dark, but from the light through the windows waaay up there in the nosebleed section, we could see the baskets well enough. That’s all we needed. A few shots turned into more shots, and then someone said what was clearly the least responsible sentence of the night, “You know what would make this better? Dunking.”

Now, none of us could dunk. Not even close. So naturally, we did what any group of future professionals would do. We built a staircase out of stackable chairs.

We stacked them up, one on top of the other, creating what I’m sure would not have passed even the most basic safety inspection. Then we took turns running up the chairs, launching ourselves toward the rim, and dunking miniature basketballs like we were in the Final Four. At no point did anyone say, “This might be a bad idea.” Which, in retrospect, feels like a missed opportunity.

Thoroughly enjoying ourselves, we failed to notice the Oklahoma State police entering the building.

They asked each of us what we were doing there so late. The student assistant and I explained we were waiting on the Tribune computer. Then they looked at John. He paused for a moment and said, “I guess I’m just playing basketball.”

Which, technically, was true, and might have been okay, except for the fact that it was 1:30 in the morning in the dark, after rearranging the furniture so to speak. They wrote down our names, watched as we dismantled what I will generously call our “dunking assistance apparatus,” and told us to go back to the office. We did. The Tribune computer finally came back up, and the student assistant and I were able to complete our tasks.

The next day, I was back at Gallagher, heading down the hallway to see my mom, who was the ticket manager, when I heard a voice say, “Jack Carnefix, get in here.” Being summoned from a voice in an office is never a good thing, particularly when the voice belongs to assistant athletic director Sam Aubrey.

I walked into his office, and he reached into his desk drawer and pulled out a piece of paper. “Do you know what this is?” he asked. I told him I did not. “It’s a police report,” he said. “Do you want to explain to me why you were running around playing basketball in Gallagher at 1:30 in the morning?”

And as so often happened, and continues to happen, I said something that probably should have stayed in my head. “Dr. Boger had the court until 1 a.m.” (Dr. Boger was at that time the president of OSU.)

There was a pause. A brief smile that quickly faded. And then he informed me that my late-night playing days had come to an end, put the report back in his desk, and sent me on my way.

I’m sure I wasn’t the first, and I’m confident that I wasn’t the last, to play late-night basketball in what is now Gallagher-Iba Arena. But I might be one of the few who can say it’s part of an official police record.

Over the past 40+ years working in sports, I’ve often been one of the last, and sometimes the last, person to leave a venue.

There’s a rule of thumb. Enter and exit through the same door. That way you know where you are, and more importantly, where your car is.

After an event at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, they were cleaning or doing maintenance in the area we had entered.

So naturally, we were directed to an alternate exit. On the opposite side of the arena.

We walked out into the night, and the door closed behind us. Locked.

It was dark. Not “I should have brought a flashlight” dark. More like “we may not make it out of here” dark.

And then we realized something else. Construction zone. Which, in the dark, is less of a zone and more of a suggestion.

KRC looked around and said, “Well, this isn’t good. We could fall into an open hole because we can’t see anything.”

Fair point. I calmly reached into my briefcase, pulled out a flashlight, turned it on, and pointed it ahead of us.

“C’mon,” I said. “I’ll keep an eye out for holes, so we don’t fall into one.”

We started walking.

A few steps later, he muttered, “I didn’t know I was working with MacGyver.”

Racing M&Ms down the concrete below the aluminum bleachers of Lewis Field was how I kept myself entertained on Sunday mornings while cleaning Oklahoma State’s football stadium. You find ways to cope.

Cleaning the football stadium, you ask? Yes. One of the ways the Oklahoma State baseball team funded its annual spring trip was by cleaning up after Cowboy football. Every fall. Every home game. The next morning, we were back in there with trash bags and blowers, harvesting whatever 50,000 fans had left behind.

And fans leave behind a lot. Empty cups. Not-so-empty cups (think smokeless tobacco). Popcorn boxes. Candy wrappers. Beer cans. Liquor bottles. Lots of popcorn and peanut shells. And used diapers. I mention those separately because they deserve their own sentence.

Now consider who was doing this work alongside me. During this stretch the Cowboys were one of the most dominant programs in college baseball, winning 16 straight Big Eight Conference titles and making 10 trips to the College World Series, including an NCAA record seven consecutive from 1981 to 1987. Future first-round draft picks. Future big leaguers. All-Americans. All of them, trash bag in hand, working their way through section after section of bleachers and seats. The veterans showed the newcomers the ropes. The ropes being: here is a bag, here is a cup someone didn’t quite finish, good luck.

My first three years I worked with the baseball program in the sports information office, which meant Sunday mornings in the fall I was at a desk. In 1988 I joined the baseball staff directly, which meant Sunday mornings I was not at a desk.

As a staff member I got assigned to the blower crew, working alongside assistant coaches, graduate assistants, and veteran players. The pickup crew went through first. We came after, walking in a staggered line, blowing the leftover popcorn and peanut shells down to the row below, then shifting and coming back the other direction. Row by row, section by section, until everything piled at the bottom where the pickup crew was waiting with brooms and pieces of cardboard they were using as dustpans.

It was a system. It was not a glamorous system.

Whenever a cleanup fell on the day clocks rolled back from Daylight Saving Time, we’d arrive to find several players already there, sleeping on the concrete. They’d shown up at what they thought was 7 a.m. It had become 6.

I worked 34 of these cleanups between 1988 and 1993, which I am reasonably confident puts me in the top three all-time. I celebrated my birthday doing this exactly once.

We were usually finished by noon. Depending on where we were in the football season, you were either cold, frozen, or hot. You were always, without exception, filthy.

It wasn’t without its perks. We began each cleanup with donuts, milk and orange juice. Okay, not the best of perks, but perks, nonetheless.

Following every recent OSU baseball game at O’Brate Stadium, former equipment manager Trent Marr will take the lead to pick up all of the trash in the outfield seats located directly below “Alumni Allie” where he graciously provides beverage, food and hospitality for baseball alumni every game. Old habits die hard.

Nobody liked stadium cleanup. But nobody complained about it either, because everyone understood why we were doing it. And now, decades later, whenever former players from that era get together, someone will bring it up. They always do. People will shake their heads about how much they hated it, then somebody will say, but I get it now more than I did then.

Randy and Johnelle Little, who owned PFI, promoted the event year-round, which made my job a lot easier. By the time we arrived, the town already knew we were coming. The week included all the usual stops with radio interviews, TV appearances, and a hospital visit. And, because it was Springfield, a concert in the PFI parking lot with a live band, food, and drinks.

Missouri native Luke Snyder was always part of the PR rotation, and this particular year, we also had Cord McCoy, who had gained notoriety from his appearance on The Amazing Race.

One of our stops was a local morning TV show, which was fairly standard in every town. For their live shots, they had requested a bull, also a pretty normal request. Now, typically, if you’re going to involve a live bull, you do it at the arena, where there are actual pens and actual fences that are set up to contain bulls.

This was not that. This was a parking lot. Soon enough, a truck pulled in, towing a trailer with a bull inside and a couple of fence panels. Which, apparently, was the entire plan.

Cord, Luke, and I stood there and watched as a makeshift “corral” was constructed by attaching one end of the panels to the back of the pickup and the other to the trailer. That was it. That was the system.

The idea was simple: build the corral, open the trailer, let the bull step out, and let him enjoy his moment on live television. What could possibly go wrong?

The trailer opened. The bull stepped out and immediately his hooves slipped on the parking lot.

Which told you two things. He didn’t like the surface, and this might not go according to plan.

But the first live shot went off without incident, which, in hindsight, may have given everyone a false sense of confidence.

As we waited for the next segment, the bull started to get a little restless. Then a little more restless. Then he started to bounce. The “bouncing” was not a long-term strategy. It was a prelude. Sure enough, the next move was a full commitment.

The front half of the bull came up and over the top of the fence. Luke and I immediately jumped back. Cord took off. (Some might describe it as taking a couple of large steps. Others might call it running away. I’ll let you decide.)

Fortunately for all of us, the bull couldn’t get any traction on the pavement, slipped backward off the fence, and landed back inside the world’s least secure corral. Crisis averted. For the moment.

Luke and I turned to see Cord walking, very calmly, back toward us, as if he had just stepped away to check on something.

Luke looked at him and asked, “Where were you going?” Cord didn’t hesitate.

“I saw you two weren’t doing anything,” he said, “so I was going to get a horse and a rope to catch the bull.”

When you think about it, that would have been a good plan to have in place before the bull is already halfway over the fence.

The flagship station for OSU since its sign-on in 1947, KSPI doesn’t have hold music, it has its broadcast. Board operators at the station knew the drill and became friends with the families, even becoming concerned if someone didn’t call in.

It still makes me smile as I remember parents, grandparents and others listening to Bill Platt and Rex Holt from Allie P. Reynolds Stadium in Stillwater and stadiums around the Big Eight Conference and beyond.

Some families who lived in close proximity, meaning the same state, went in on a speakerphone together and gathered at each other’s homes for the games.

OSU was one of the most dominant offensive teams in the country in the 1980s and 1990s, and games were not short. I can’t imagine what families were paying in long-distance charges, but it definitely gave a new meaning to “friends and family” rates. Fortunately, the majority of games were on nights and weekends when rates were lower.

Even families in Oklahoma had to work for it, sharing stories of which hilltop they drove to in order to catch the broadcast.

I was fortunate to join Bill Platt on air many times. The first time is a story unto itself.

https://jackcarnefix.substack.com/p/vin-scullys-job-was-safe

The elevator doors opened and I was greeted with two grown men (who could be somebody’s grandpas) wrestling on the carpet.

Was I surprised?

No.

Why wasn’t I surprised?

Because I was in Cleveland for the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championships.

Legendary wrestler Dan Gable once said, “Once you wrestle, everything else in life is easy.”

That quote is on a wall at the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in Stillwater, Oklahoma, where I work, and at the National Wrestling Hall of Fame Dan Gable Museum in Waterloo, Iowa.

What I’ve learned during my 10+ years with the Hall of Fame is that once you’re a wrestler, you’re always a wrestler. And that means that, at any given moment during a museum visit, at a Hall of Fame Honors Weekend event, or in or near an elevator in a hotel, you are one casual conversation away from a match breaking out. Sometimes these can be rematches. Old scores need to be settled.

I’ve included a picture from the 2016 NCAA tournament at Madison Square Garden. That’s Dave Martin, who won an NCAA title for Iowa State at 158 pounds in 1970, going in on a single leg of former United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who wrestled at Princeton. It should be noted that this was more of a photo op.

I’ve seen it happen between visitors at the Hall of Fame. I’ve seen it happen during Honors Weekend, which is happening this week. And now, I’ve seen it happen between floors.

So, when you attend a wrestling event, just know this: if there are two people talking, it is a real possibility that one of them could shoot a single leg.