What happened to the Foreign Floridian?

As someone who spent his entire life living within smelling distance of the beach, I did not know what to expect upon moving to South Texas.

After dropping off my girlfriend at the airport in Houston my phone died on the drive back to Victoria. For nearly 90 miles it was just me and the music to pass the time driving through cities that seemed to get smaller the further south I drove.

There were no palm trees, or reminders to visit a beach to keep my attention. It was just the countryside. Clearly, this was going to be different. Outside of spending one summer on internship in Shreveport, La, I had never spent more than three weeks away from Florida.

Initially, when I told people I was from Florida it was as though I named some exotic and foreign place. (Candidly, that is what I thought about Victoria when I first moved here, which was why I titled my blog at the Advocate the Foreign Floridian.)

When the quizzical looks subsided what I found were friendly people who preferred good news above all else. Negativity was frowned upon, but tolerated if disseminated without spite or a sense of an agenda.

As I pack up and return to Florida this weekend there were far more positives than I ever imagined when I drove along that seemingly desolate highway 21 months ago.

Any conversation with Gary Moses; challenging a pair of gentlemen to a tennis match; covering a canoe race; the story of how my cell phone became waterlogged covering said canoe race; the passion of the football fans in Port Lavaca; the excellence of the 2011 Refugio football team; the time I wrote a story about a boy who loved football and his mother left three dozen cookies on my desk as a thank you; the Twitter banter with students and athletes at Victoria West high school—special shout out to my hype men Qualian Bryant and Jonathan Vahalik, who retweeted many of my comments – and the conversations in the press box at Victoria East football games are just some of those positives.

Two years ago I had no clue what Shiner Bock was, or where it was brewed. I still haven’t tried it, but I can say that people in Shiner, Texas follow the golden rule, which is to say that they treat everyone well.

Of course there were people and things that irritated me. As time goes on those things will be forgotten, the memories that remain will only elicit smiles.

Esther Perez became a dear friend. Through the Advocate I met Camille Doty, who is not only a friend, but the person responsible for introducing me to my church home while in South Texas. And a special thank you to my college classmate Gheni Platenburg. Without her encouragement, I never would have accepted an offer from the Advocate.

 Advocate business reporter Allison Miles may be the kindest person I have ever met in my life. Miguel Torres’ daughter attended the smallest high school in Victoria, but he was such a fan of every child in the community it was impressive. Even people my editor told me were “surly” and “difficult”, like former Victoria East soccer coach Tim Eaton, wound up being energetic and engaging.

If there was one thing I learned about life in Texas it was to give people a chance. Frequently, when I went on assignment I didn’t know anyone. But people were always willing to open up and share with me.

On my first week, I underestimated the distance between Victoria and Yoakum… while my gas light was on. Were it not for Yoakum resident Paul Ebner, the Sports Information Director at the University of Houston-Victoria, telling me there was a gas station right around the corner, unbeknownst to me, I likely would have been stuck walking in the wilderness on a sweltering summer day.

No matter where I was, I always found a gas station and a Whataburger. Those two things were just as important to my random journeys as a notebook and digital recorder.

As I write this I am sipping on a root beer from another late night run to Whataburger. There are a few 

Whataburger locations in Florida, but it’s not the same. Whether I was in Refugio, Portland, Goliad, Port Lavaca, Cuero, Corpus Christi, Schulenburg, San Antonio or Kingsville I always knew where to find a Whataburger because on Friday nights the restaurants became a mobile office.

Fittingly, the last story I submitted to the Victoria Advocate was filed from a Whataburger.

As much as I enjoyed covering other sports, and sporting events, my passion was catching soccer games. Whether it was UHV, or one of the area varsity teams, I found any and every excuse to write about the sport.

This March one soccer player told me “I didn’t know you played soccer.” Her coach looked at her, looked and me and said “He’s plays every weekend. Hey, Will, why aren’t you leading this goalie drill? Aren’t you a goalie?”

Indeed I am. Within a month of arriving in Victoria, I found a soccer team to play with. It didn’t matter that my Spanish was limited. It was a chance to play and release some energy. When word leaked out that I played on weekends my attempts at being a “portero” was a way to connect with local soccer teams.

The Victoria Advocate published for more than 160 years before I arrived. The newspaper will continue to publish long after I return to Florida. But, I will always cherish the connections I made and the friends I found in the time I was here.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

p.s. Anyone who enjoyed my writing, or my work, should thank Advocate photographers, page designers, copy editors, like Esther, as well as my former colleagues Mike Forman, Clay Whittington and Albert Alvarado on the Sports desk.

How does one find a team to call their own?

I have no shame. For years, my football fanaticism was open and available to any team with stylish play. A team I loathed in the past could just as easily recapture a different place in my heart.

In middle school I had a crush on a girl named Maggie. She was Polish and the biggest Real Madrid fan one will meet on this side of the Atlantic. She liked European soccer, which meant I liked European soccer.

Eventually, I became a Borussia Dortmund fan because they played exciting soccer and had these garishly bright jerseys. This devotion lasted long enough to con my mother to spend more than $100 on a jersey for my 14^th birthday. (To this day, the jersey hangs in my closet next to apparel from future sporting crushes.)

Once Dortmund stopped making routine trips to the latter stages of the Champions League my ability to follow them waned. The German club found financial troubles, then nearly folded, before morphing into every football hipster’s favorite club the last two years.

While Dortmund was in the wilderness, so was my soccer support. Major League Soccer was in its infancy. Though the Tampa Bay Mutiny played right up the road, I only went to one game. Apparently a Who’s Who of American soccer was not enough to encourage me to care.

High school came and went. There were things to occupy my time other than the nearby professional soccer club and what was going on in Europe.

The obsession was rekindled in 2002 when I heard Maggie’s Real Madrid conquered Europe for the third time in five years courtesy of one of the best goals of all time. (I was so oblivious I didn’t know Dortmund won the German championship that year until a Wikipedia search more than a decade after the fact.)

Two weeks later another World Cup kicked off, and I picked up where I once left off. Of course, had I been a true fan I would not have worked bagging groceries the day Brazil won the tournament.

Growing up, I didn’t know too much about the technical side of the game, or tactics. Looking back at my attempt to play varsity soccer I ran around like a capon with his head cut off.

It was around that time, that I realized it was easier for me to stop goals from being scored rather than create them. Though I dabbled at goalkeeper for years, I didn’t really give up playing in the outfield until college, when it was apparent my touch was far behind the others on our club team. In goal I was able to read the game, diagnose what teams were going to do and occasionally stop them from scoring. I hated playing from the back for two reasons: I was always taught to launch the ball to safety and I rarely had faith in the touch of my defenders.

In the college years I lost touch with Maggie, but found my touch on the pitch. Things I was unable to do in high school I could do when playing with my friends. Eventually, I become good enough to play in goal because I wanted to, not because there was nowhere else on the field. During that evolution, I became attracted to teams that added substance with their score lines.

First it was the Galactico Era at Real Madrid, then the thrill of Liverpool’s refusal to quit in cup competitions. There was a brief love affair with Arsenal, but that one-sided relationship was washed away in disappointment when they lost the 2006 Champions League Final.

Though I thought Juliano Belletti’s goal to vanquish Arsenal in ’06 was lucky, I became a reluctant Barcelona fan. Barcelona had so many great players, who moved the ball in a way I couldn’t even imagine. It was a relationship that lost its luster after the constant diving and theatrics in 2010 when teams had the gall to dispossess, let alone, defeat them.

This was the time I realized I was a soccer vagabond, doomed to wonder from team to team in the hope some player, or some team would encourage me to reconsider.

It was only confirmed when I saw Cristiano Ronaldo, who Maggie later told me is her favorite active player, inexplicably escape three Ivorians in the 2010 World Cup and unleash a 35-yard shot. The goalkeeper was beat. The goalpost was another story. It was such an incredible moment of skill — from a player I thought was a closeted thespian — it still plays in my mind like a personal Youtube clip.

Ronaldo’s near miss only reaffirmed my preference to commit to football causes, not football clubs. By then it had been nearly a decade since the two MLS franchises in Florida folded. Geographically, my choices were either D.C. United or the Houston Dynamo. But, I hated Marco Etcheverry when I was younger—maybe, it was the mullet—so the Dynamo became the team I would support with lukewarm enthusiasm.

An eventual move to Texas, just two hours away from the Dynamo’s sparking new stadium, deepened my roots. Covering, then attending, a game in that cauldron of orange opened up the possibility that my odyssey was nearing an end.

Maybe it was a sign of maturity, as all boys eventually discover. Maybe it was the enthusiasm for the franchise that a friend and former colleague imbibed into me. Maybe it was an appreciation for the gritty, scrappy and winning formula this club has cultivated. Whatever it was, I realized Texas may not be home, but I am Forever Orange.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb

Do you know the penalty for not voting?

By Will Brown

When I was an undergraduate an uncouth woman was recognized as Miss FAMU. We shared a last name and that was about it for commonalities. Yet for some reason classmates and others thought I was related to this Montgomery mistress.

That year the winner repulsed me to the point that I picked up one of her campaign signs after the election and kept it at my college apartment as a constant reminder that those who represent us are not always the brightest cookies in the jar.

On top of the campaign poster, which was hung on the wall in my apartment, was a quote from Plato: “one of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.”

The quote was recycled Wednesday afternoon when the U.S. Senate failed to pass legislation that would “ensure that all individuals who should be prohibited from buying a firearm are listed in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and provide a responsible and consistent background check process.”

The bill needed 60 votes. It received 54.

When news of that vote reached Barack Hussein Obama II the American president was incensed. The second amendment specifically states “a well regarded Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Now, I’m not a constitutional scholar, but I seriously doubt any militia would accept someone with a criminal history, or someone who may be suffering from mental illness.

For the sake of this discussion, forget the second amendment. The 17th amendment is far more important.
In January a Pew study found a majority of Americans favored gun control similar to the bill introduced by West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey that did not receive enough votes to move forward.

If a majority favored regulation 90 days ago, and those We the People sent to Washington to represent us chose to vote otherwise maybe it’s time to rethink who We the People send to Washington. This is why the 17th amendment, which was ratified 100 years ago this month, is important. It gives We the People an opportunity to elect our Senators. Previously, delegates from the states selected and sent Senators to Washington every six years.

There will be 31 Senate seats up for grabs next November. Of those 31 races there will be 25 incumbents — Massachusetts will have an election in June to replace the seat vacated by John Kerry.

Susan Collins (R-Maine) was the only elephant who was bold enough to put her trunk up and vote for this legislation. The 10 other Republicans whose seats will be up for election next fall voted against the bill.

Republicans were not alone in forgetting humans are not invertebrates. Five Democrats also did not support this legislation for a sundry of reasons. Maybe it’s a coincidence that three of those five donkeys are up for reelection next year. Maybe, it’s not. The six Senators, four Democrats and two Republicans, who will not seek re-election voted along party lines. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey), Carl Levin (D-Michigan) and John Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) all supported the bill. Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia) and Mike Johanns (R-Nebraska) did not.

The president advocated remembering today’s vote 19 months from now. Our liberal president has proposed a lot of things, but asking the people he serves to recall how their Senator voted on one piece of legislation 19 days from now might be more difficult than passing universal health care.

In the interim we can only hope to be led by people, on both sides, who prefer our politicians display common sense, not cowardice. Otherwise we will continue to be governed by our inferiors.

Laughs and liveliness, -Wb

Does the “hero” always have to be the main attraction?

A lot of fanfare and media attention has been devoted to the recent release of a sixth production about Jackie Robinson.

This one is arguably has more financial support than the other productions and was released to the broadest audience. Some have praised the movie, others have panned it. My suggestion would be to see the movie and make up your own conclusion.

My knowledge about Jackie Robinson and baseball history led me leaving the theater wanting more. As happy as I should have been that another movie was made about Robinson, I wondered why elements of Robinson’s past were not mentioned and why the picture only focused on a narrow segment of his life.

What was surprisingly refreshing was the prominent role the movie showcased to one of my trailblazers.

Before seeing the movie with my wife and a friend of ours someone told me there was a character in the movie that reminded them of me. The first time I saw Andre Holland in the film, I knew exactly what that person meant.

Wendell Smith was the first African-American accepted into the Baseball Writers Association of America in 1948. In my career, I have made fun of press boxes that have mice in them. Smith, meanwhile, was not even allowed to sit in the press box during parts of his career.

As the movie wore on I was more enamored with Smith and the bigoted baseball players as opposed to the centerpiece of the biopic. Maybe that was the journalist in me, the journalist who admittedly would not have lasted too long had my role with Smith been reversed.

Wendell Smith came to mind hours later when I remembered a sobering story I was told last summer as I sat in a room filled with sports journalists at the National Association of Black Journalists annual conference. Rob Parker, yes, this Rob Parker, noted how important it was for more blacks to cover baseball because there were only 10 African-Americans in the Baseball Writers Association of America at the time.

I’m not sure how many people are members of the association. But there were nearly 570 ballots sent out to writers for the 2013 Baseball Hall of Fame vote. I’m also not sure whether Parker’s number was spot on. But the murmur of surprise that wafted through a room with more than 75 sports journalists led me to believe there was some validity to that fact.

There are all sorts of studies and information that chronicle and specify the lack of minorities in journalism, specifically sports journalism. Were it not for ESPN those figures would be worse for not only minorities, but women as well.

So forgive me if I pay more attention to the bespectacled man relegated to the stands in 42, not the gentleman whose immeasurable impact has been discussed and dissected for more than 50 years.

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb