Mike Cullity

'Extra Mile' cover story explores legendary SNHU hoop coach's journey

My profile of basketball coach Stan Spirou is the cover story of the Spring 2011 issue of The Extra Mile, the magazine of Southern New Hampshire University. Spirou's story is an inspiring tale - an immigrant who followed his parents to America from Greece in 1960, he discovered basketball on an inner-city playground, earned a scholarship to Keene State College and later, as a young coach, led his high-school alma mater to two state titles. Since becoming SNHU's coach in 1985, he has led the Division II school to 14 NCAA tournament appearances, four NCAA regional titles and two national final four berths. More importantly, however, he has invested himself in the off-court success of his players and has made a point to give back by offering annual summer basketball clinics in Greece and supporting local organizations such as Special Olympics New Hampshire and the Boys & Girls Club of Manchester. 

Sports notables highlight summer in NH

It's been a busy writing summer. Although New Hampshire isn't a major-league sports hotbed, my reporting for the New Hampshire Union Leader often brings me into contact with sports-world notables as well as athletes people will be reading about more in the future.

The Granite State's major-league claim to fame, of course, is NASCAR. The New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon hosts two NASCAR races annually and will add an IndyCar race to the schedule in 2011. During the Lenox Industrial Tools 301 in late June, I penned a profile of Bruton Smith, the CEO of Speedway Motorsports Inc. and owner of the Loudon track. An 83-year-old billionaire who still runs two public companies, Smith is a master promoter who started out hyping races on the dirt tracks of North Carolina. "I don't mean this as derogatory, but I always call him a used-car salesman," NASCAR legend Richard Petty, who has known Smith for five decades, told me. After chasing Smith for three days, I finally scored an interview with the racing kingpin just hours before my deadline.

In early July, I wrote a feature on Dan Mullen, the head football coach at Mississippi State University. From 1986-90, Mullen and I were friends and classmates at Trinity High School in Manchester, where we exchanged wisecracks in calculus class and suited up for the same varsity basketball squad. Over the last 15 years, the former Trinity quarterback - whom we nicknamed Dan "Sleight of Hand" Mullen for his deceptive fakes behind the line of scrimmage - has worked his way up the college coaching ranks. After Mullen helped lead the University of Florida to two national titles as offensive coordinator, Mississippi State named him top Bulldog in late 2008. On an off-season visit to Manchester with his family, Mullen filled me in on life as a head coach in the football-mad Southeastern Conference. "Sometimes I stand in the stadium and look up and say, 'Wow, this is pretty amazing,'" he told me.

A few weeks after my visit with Mullen, I sat down with Jennifer Song, and up-and-coming golfer on the Duramed Futures Tour. Song was in New Hampshire for The International at Concord, the tour's annual Granite State stop, and I wrote an  article on her in advance of the tournament. Last summer, Song became only the second woman to win the U.S. Women's Amateur and U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links titles in the same year. And in her professional debut on the Futures Tour in June, she fired a final-round 61 to win the tournament. She then donated a third of her $17,500 winner's check to local charities. Song didn't win in Concord, but she won her second Futures title two weeks ago in Richmond, Va., putting her in great position to earn her LPGA card for 2011. With her talent and uncommon generosity, I have a feeling Song has a bright future in professional golf.

Candid Gerring shares struggles

In this week's issue of Golf World, I catch up with former LPGA player Cathy Gerring, a three-time winner whose career was cut short after she was badly burned in a 1992 cooking-fuel mishap inside a tournament hospitality tent. During an hourlong interview, Gerring was very open about her struggles since the accident, which included becoming addicted to painkillers in 2000 as she attempted an LPGA comeback. Clean since going through rehab in 2005, Gerring now serves on the board of a halfway house for women in her native Fort Wayne, Ind., and offers support to others in recovery. "If I have a choice between playing golf and helping somebody turn their life around, it's a no-brainer for me," she says in the article. 

Remembering Mosi Tatupu

I was saddened to read this morning of the untimely passing of one of the New England Patriots' greatest unsung heroes, Mosi Tatupu.

Born in Samoa, Tatupu was drafted by the Pats in the eighth round of the 1978 NFL Draft out of the University of Southern California. In 13 seasons with New England, he made his mark as a special-teams stalwart and a bruising backup fullback, inspiring a group of loyal Foxboro followers who sat behind a "Mosi's Mooses" banner in the end zone.

Tatupu retired after a swan song with the Los Angeles Rams and went into coaching. He mentored his son, Lofa, at a Massachusetts high school; Lofa followed his dad's footsteps to the NFL and now plays linebacker for the Seattle Seahawks. Mosi later coached running backs at Curry College when former Pats teammate Steve Nelson was the head coach.

While Tatupu was an inspiring figure on the field, he made significant impact away from it. In a column by Albert R. Breer in today's Boston Globe, Nelson is quoted as saying: "I've gotten calls all day from parents talking about how much Mosi changed their kid's lives."

Growing up a Pats fan in the '80s, I fondly recall many a Sunday afternoon spent in front of the TV rooting for Tatupu. And though my memory of it is admittedly foggy, my brother Dan will never forget the time we met Mosi, who was making an appearance at a sporting-goods store in our hometown. Dan recalls Mosi chiding us good-naturedly for the San Francisco 49ers hats we were sporting, gifts from an aunt who had recently returned from the Bay Area.

For a few classic Mosi highlights, check out the video above. Here's to a good man gone too soon.

Saint win would lay ugly past to rest

I'm looking forward to watching this year's Super Bowl between the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints. I'm particularly intrigued by the match-up of this season's two premier NFL squads, given their experience with futility.

While the Colts had a winning tradition in Baltimore, capturing Super Bowl V and three NFL championships before the AFL-NFL merger, they reeled off nine consecutive losing seasons from 1978-1986. They suffered through an abysmal 2-14 campaign in 1981, posting bookend victories over the equally horrendous New England Patriots. In 1982, led by immortals Mike Pagel and Curtis Dickey, they finished 0-8-1 in a strike-shortened season. And in their first three seasons after owner Robert Irsay moved the team to Indy in the dead of night, the Colts went 12-36.

The Saints, meanwhile, didn't enjoy a winning season until the franchise's 21st year. The lowlight was 1980, when the squad finished 1-15 with Archie Manning, Peyton's dad, calling the signals. Things were so bad that year that Saints fans started wearing paper bags over their heads, launching an entertaining sporting custom.

Things are much different now, of course. The Colts won the 2007 Super Bowl and could very well have gone undefeated this season had they not rested their starters down the stretch. And the Saints looked dominant when I watched them dismantle my hometown Patriots at the Superdome in November.

If there's an underdog here, it would have to be the Saints. Their losing tradition dwarfs the Colts', and Hurricane Katrina knocked New Orleans for a loop in 2005. The Colts are a class organization, and Peyton Manning is a first-ballot Hall-of-Famer, but I'd like to see Drew Brees and the Saints win to boost civic pride and put to rest the ghosts of the franchise's ugly football past.

Bird-Magic book scores a three

For me, few Christmas gifts are more enjoyable than a good read. This year, my brother and sister-in-law gave me "When The Game Was Ours," the Larry Bird-Magic Johnson collaboration with former Boston Globe sports columnist Jackie MacMullan detailing an epic basketball rivalry turned friendship. 

Having grown up in the heyday of the storied Boston Celtics-Los Angeles Lakers rivalry of the 1980s, I enjoyed reliving the classic NBA battles of the era through the eyes of Bird and Johnson, their two main protagonists. But better yet, MacMullan recounts what happened behind the scenes to illustrate how the unique Bird-Magic relationship has evolved over the last three decades. 

Their story begins in April 1978, when the future Hall of Famers were frustrated second-string teammates on a college all-star squad competing in the World Invitational Tournament. Despite playing behind the stars of the NCAA champion Kentucky Wildcats, Bird and Johnson emerge with admiration for each other's games. But the voluble Johnson and withdrawn Bird did not strike up an instant rapport. 

Instead they became bitter rivals, first in the 1979 NCAA Championship final, in which Johnson's Michigan State Spartans defeated Bird's Indiana State Sycamores, and later in the NBA. Each watched enviously from a distance as the other won an NBA title (Johnson as a Lakers rookie in 1980, Bird with the Celtics in '81), and each followed the other's stats in the papers. Looking back, each acknowledges that the other was his prime motivator. 

Their rivalry reached a fever pitch in 1984 and '85, when the Celtics and Lakers faced off in consecutive NBA Finals. The Celtics prevailed in '84, with Bird garnering MVP honors, but the Lakers evened the score in '85. 

The moment at the heart of the book came three months after the Laker victory, when Johnson and Bird got together at Bird's Indiana home to shoot a TV commercial for Converse basketball sneakers. Ever the competitor, Bird had refused to participate unless Johnson came to him, and Magic, in true Showtime fashion, rolled into rural West Baden with his entourage in three limos. But when the two pow-wowed privately in Bird's basement, they discovered that they had a lot in common.

Although Johnson and Bird never faced each other in another NBA final, they remained fierce rivals while their mutual regard grew. After Johnson was diagnosed with the HIV virus in November 1991, he made sure his agent, Lon Rosen, informed Bird before the press conference in which Johnson announced his condition and retirement from basketball. Told by Rosen that Johnson would be in touch in a few days, Bird insisted on calling his rival right away. "My God," Bird said to his wife, Dinah, after the ever-upbeat Johnson consoled him over the phone. "Magic's gonna die."

MacMullan does a nice job recounting the hysteria, fueled by lack of information, that followed Johnson's HIV announcement. And she's equally adept in relating the tale of the 1992 U.S. Olympic "Dream Team," on which Bird and Johnson once again competed as teammates, bringing their story full circle.

One of the book's best passages recounts a pre-Olympic scrimmage in Monte Carlo in which an "East" team led by Bird and Michael Jordan comes back to beat a "West" squad anchored by Johnson, David Robinson and Charles Barkley. "It was the most fun I've ever had playing basketball," Jordan said tellingly.

As far as entertaining reading goes, "When The Game Was Ours" scores a three-pointer in my book.

 

"Invictus" falls short of expectations

My wife and I snuck out last night to see "Invictus," the new Clint Eastwood-directed film about Nelson Mandela, South African rugby and the healing power of sport. Since seeing the previews, I had been eagerly anticipating this movie, which stars Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar, captain of the South African Springboks rugby squad.

The film chronicles South African president Mandela's mission to spur the Springboks to victory in the 1995 Rugby World Cup as a way to help rebuild a nation fractured by decades of apartheid. Although the movie is entertaining, with Freeman and Damon turning in solid performances, I left the theatre mildly disappointed.

At the outset, Eastwood portrays the Springboks as a ragtag bunch of losers who stand little chance of contending for a world rugby title despite being revered by South Africa's white minority. Enter Mandela, the newly elected black president who served 27 years in the Robben Island prison under the apartheid regime. "Madiba," as his intimates call him, envisions a Springbok World Cup victory on South African soil uniting the country's races.

Mandela summons Pienaar to his office for a pep talk and instructs the mostly white team to conduct rugby clinics for black children in South Africa's forlorn townships. In the meantime, the Springboks mysteriously coalesce into winners and earn their way to the World Cup final against the fearsome All Blacks of New Zealand.

Before the big match, Mandela arrives at Springbok practice via chopper to wish the team luck and hands Pienaar a handwritten copy of "Invictus," the William Ernest Henley poem whose well-known last lines read: "I am the master of my fate/I am the captain of my soul." Mandela, the viewer has learned, looked to the poem for spiritual sustenance during his long incarceration. The Springboks also visit Robben Island before the final; inside Mandela's tiny cell, Eastwood portrays Pienaar recognizing the greater implications of the Springboks' on-field quest.

Predictably, the Springboks prevail, with their captain issuing the requisite "This is our destiny!" huddle speech. Although it's an inspiring true story based on John Carlin's 2008 book "Playing the Enemy," the film version does little to delve beneath the surface of the tale. I'd like to have seen more about the team's development from doormats to champions, and I had trouble suspending my disbelief that Mandela would be so consumed with rugby. And while Pienaar is a likable character, I wish Eastwood would have explored him more deeply. I'd also have appreciated a greater acknowledgement that, despite its power to inspire, sport itself cannot solve deep social divides.

Although it fell somewhat short of my expectations, "Invictus" is still worth seeing. Judging from its performance at the box office - it raked in $4.2 million nationwide last weekend, almost $6 million less than "The Blind Side," another inspirational sports drama - it may not be in theatres much longer, so if you prefer the big screen to home viewing I'd get out and see it soon.  

Prediction: Tiger's "break" won't be long

There's been a lot reported in recent days about how Tiger Woods'  "indefinite break" from professional golf will affect the business of the game. In this week's Sports Illustrated, Alan Shipnuck observes that Tiger's absence figures to depress PGA Tour TV ratings, which won't help the Tour attract sponsors in an already tenuous economic climate and will weaken its position in negotiating its next TV deal with the networks. Meanwhile yesterday's Boston Globe reported that Tiger's leave has left many golf-related businesses "worried about the future of a sport that has already been hurt by the recession."

I agree with the notion that a Tiger sabbatical, if extended, will exact a financial toll on the golf industry. But I also have a sneaking suspicion that golf's No. 1 player won't be gone long. In yesterday's Globe article, sports marketer Marc Ganis is quoted as saying, "Golf needs Tiger Woods more than Tiger Woods needs golf." While this may be true in a business sense, in an emotional sense Tiger may need golf now more than ever.

With speculation swirling that Tiger's wife, Elin Nordegren, will seek a divorce following revelations of her husband's rampant infidelity - ABCNews.com yesterday quoted a source close to Nordegren as saying the "divorce is 100 percent on" - Tiger's best escape from the personal turmoil that will no doubt accompany divorce proceedings will be between the ropes, the inevitable hecklers aside.

And let's face it - Tiger's now-revealed behavior behind closed doors tells us he's looking out for No. 1. His lifelong mission has been to eclipse Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 professional major titles. With 14 under his belt, he has to be licking his chops over this year's major lineup, which includes Augusta National (Masters), Pebble Beach (U.S. Open), and St. Andrews (British Open). He's won four times at Augusta, and he romped by 15 and eight shots, respectively, at Pebble Beach and St. Andrews in 2000.

The damage Tiger has caused at home is likely irreparable. Sitting on the sidelines won't change that. My prediction: After a few months away to tend to the personal and financial mess his actions have wrought, Tiger will re-emerge on the golf scene - possibly in March at Bay Hill, where he's the two-time defending champ and has won six times - in time to hone his game for the Masters. And instead of worry, the PGA Tour will likely have a TV ratings bonanza on its hands, especially if Tiger works his Augusta magic (see video).

"Game Six" is a winner

If you're a New Englander, the footage of Boston Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk's home run to win Game 6 of the 1975 World Series is as familiar as clam chowder.

Not so well known, perhaps, is how Red Sox pitcher Luis Tiant, the Game 6 starter, reacted after seeing Fisk's iconic 12th-inning blast on TV in the Sox clubhouse. Submerged in a whirlpool icing his arm and smoking a Cuban after seven innings of work that night, Tiant sprung from the tub and raced toward the dugout. Only after reaching it did he realize he was sporting nothing but a jockstrap.

Tiant's celebratory streak is among the rich details author Mark Frost recounts in his recently released book "Game Six." While diehard fans of the Red Sox and their '75 World Series opponents, the Cincinnati Reds, will take particular interest in the book, any fan of sports history will delight in Frost's exploration of this memorable contest, its protagonists and its aftermath.

In "Game Six," Frost applies to baseball the formula that earned him success with previous books on golf, most notably "The Greatest Game Ever Played" and "The Match," in which he breathes life into historical events. While recounting every pitch of Game 6, Frost intersperses the stories of the game's main characters, such as Fisk, Tiant and the stars of Cincinnati's Big Red Machine. He also explores the tales of those who played bit parts in the drama, from obscure Sox reliever Roger Moret to broadcaster Dick Stockton.

Although virtually every reader who picks up this book knows what happened, Frost does a nice job recounting the details that set the stage for Fisk's climactic swat and, ultimately, Cincinnati's come-from-behind victory in Game 7. I particularly enjoyed the book's portrayal of Reds manager Sparky Anderson's mental gymnastics in the eighth inning, when the Red Sox sent lefty Bernie Carbo to pinch hit with two men on base. Although Anderson's gut was telling him to yank his pitcher, righthanded fireballer Rawly Eastwick, and insert southpaw Will McEnaney, Anderson stuck with Eastwick, who served up Carbo's three-run homer to tie the game.

Although the play-by-play provides logical structure, the human tales carry this narrative. Perhaps most compelling is the story of Tiant, the Cuban hurler who rose to stardom after the Red Sox rescued him from baseball's scrap heap. While claiming victories on the field, Tiant experiences personal triumph in the summer of '75 when, before a media throng at Boston's Logan Airport, he reunites with his parents, Luis Sr. and Isabel, who had been trapped in their native land by Fidel Castro's regime. Further from the spotlight, Frost recounts the kinship between Anderson and Carbo, a talented but troubled former Reds outfielder who grew up with an alcoholic father and battled substance abuse himself.

After describing the timely Cincinnati hits - and questionable moves by Red Sox manager Darrell Johnson - that produced the Reds' 4-3 victory in Game 7, Frost explores subsequent events, in particular the demise of baseball's reserve clause and the dawn of free agency, that eventually toppled the Reds and Red Sox from the elite perch they occupied in October 1975. The book also tracks the divergent paths of the Game 6 protagonists into the present day.

As with "The Greatest Game Ever Played" and "The Match," two books I thoroughly enjoyed, my quibbles with "Game Six" are minor. Frost reveals he's not a New Englander when he refers to Boston's North End, the city's well-known Italian quarter, as the "North Side" and places Pawtucket, home of the Red Sox' longtime minor-league affiliate, in Massachusetts rather than Rhode Island. Similarly, he calls the Reds' former playing field "Riverfront Park" instead of Riverfront Stadium. But these foul balls do little to subtract from an enjoyable read.

Dock Ellis' fantastic trip

I overhead someone talking last week about this animated short, which illustrates one of sport's most mind-boggling accomplishments: Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis throwing a no-hitter while on LSD in 1970.

As a fan of 1970s baseball, I had to check it out. Ellis, then 25, no-hit the San Diego Padres at San Diego's Jack Murphy Stadium on June 12. It was hardly a masterpiece, as Ellis walked eight batters, hit one with a pitch and loaded the bases twice. Years later, he claimed to have twirled the no-no while tripping. Before his death from liver disease last December at 63, Ellis recounted the details in an interview, which serves as the soundtrack to animator James Blagden's video.

Ellis was certainly one of baseball's more colorful characters. He sported a flashy wardrobe and wore hair curlers on the field. Once, he pledged he would drill every batter in the Cincinnati Reds' lineup with a pitch and nearly succeeded (he plunked Pete Rose, Joe Morgan and Dan Driessen, walked Tony Perez and buzzed two pitches past Johnny Bench's head before being lifted).

Despite his talent - Ellis went 19-9 for Pittsburgh's world champion 1971 squad and compiled a career record of 138-119 - Ellis was dogged by a fear of failure that led him to drugs. To his credit, he cleaned up after retiring in 1979 and eventually became a drug counselor.