Chris Singleton’s year of strength and sorrow after the Charleston shooting

I’ve got nothing. Just a beautiful but heartbreaking piece.

Chris thanked everyone who had reached out to him, expressed his grief for the other families and fielded 15 questions. “I didn’t think about it at all,” he’ll say later. “I just spoke from the heart.” Someone asked if he had a message to pass on to a world horrified that a young man could walk into a church and fire 77 bullets at a group of people as they studied Scripture, ending nine lives, stealing sisters and brothers, parents, grandsons and grandparents, all in hopes of starting a race war.

A young man who didn’t understand the verses in Mark 4 that the group was dissecting as he sat there that evening, getting ready to reach into his backpack and pull out the Glock. The verses telling how some seeds fall in rocky ground and never germinate while others fall in good soil and multiply a hundredfold.

A young man who couldn’t imagine the seeds of strength and resiliency that those nine people had planted in their loved ones, that Sharonda had sewed and nurtured for 18 years in Chris.

“I just say, love is always stronger than hate,” Chris told the crowd. “If we just love the way my mom would, then the hate won’t be nearly as strong as the love is.”

There it was, his mission for the rest of his life—to show how small hate is, held against love. It was out of his mouth before he’d had a chance to grasp what that would take. He took off the microphone, went to his car, closed the door and broke into sobs. Now he had to go home and live that message.

Vanderbilt’s Everett Dies In Drowning

Vanderbilt freshman righthander Donny Everett has died, drowning in a lake in Coffee County, Tenn., The Tennessean reported.

Everett, who ranked No. 21 on the BA500 a year ago but was drafted in the 29th round by the Brewers due in part to his Vanderbilt commitment, was 19.

Sad news from Tennessee. Everett was really good - here’s his 2015 MLB draft video.

‘Trails end, baby, they all end’: Texas removes Augie Garrido after 20 seasons

For someone who has played and coached baseball for the better part of 70 years, Augie Garrido surprisingly says he doesn’t love the sport. After particularly excruciating losses, Garrido has been known to dip into his bank of one-liners and damn the game “a cruel mistress.”

On Monday, he learned just how cruel it can be. At a morning meeting with athletic director Mike Perrin, Texas ended months of speculation and dismissed Garrido, college baseball’s winningest coach, for not winning enough. He’s out after 20 seasons and eight appearances in the College World Series, two of which ended with national titles for the Longhorns in 2002 and 2005.

‘Trails end, baby, they all end’: Texas removes Augie Garrido after 20 seasons

For someone who has played and coached baseball for the better part of 70 years, Augie Garrido surprisingly says he doesn’t love the sport. After particularly excruciating losses, Garrido has been known to dip into his bank of one-liners and damn the game “a cruel mistress.”

On Monday, he learned just how cruel it can be. At a morning meeting with athletic director Mike Perrin, Texas ended months of speculation and dismissed Garrido, college baseball’s winningest coach, for not winning enough. He’s out after 20 seasons and eight appearances in the College World Series, two of which ended with national titles for the Longhorns in 2002 and 2005.

OTP 2016 May 16: College baseball takes hit from Mississippi politics

The state flag is already keeping Mississippi from hosting predetermined NCAA preseason and postseason tournaments, which is why the state didn’t put in a bid to host the SEC baseball tournament, which could have been held at Trustmark Park, in Pearl.

An anti-flag group held a rally last month at the SEC headquarters in Birmingham to ask the league to ban Mississippi from postseason play altogether. Postseason baseball tournaments are currently determined by how well a team performs during the regular season, but the group is calling for the SEC to stop Mississippi schools from hosting, regardless of the team records.

“To me, that’s penalizing student athletes—some of them are from this state and some of them are not from Mississippi—and you are penalizing universities that don’t dictate the flag either, and so that would be a shame,” Ole Miss baseball coach Mike Bianco said.

OTP 2016 May 9: There’s no politics in baseball

Only one problem. The national tournament May 28 through June 4 is being held for the eighth-straight year in North Carolina. And Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton last month prohibited state employees and state agencies from traveling to North Carolina in protest of that state’s new law prohibiting transgender people from using bathrooms designated for the gender with which they identify.

The governor’s ban didn’t apply to MnSCU (Minnesota State Colleges and Universities) campuses like Mankato, but MnSCU presidents followed the governor’s lead by implementing their own travel ban for their own employees, including baseball coaches and others connected to the teams.

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Vulture: Everybody Wants Some!! Is Effortless Fun.

The time is late August, 1980, when an agreeable 18-year-old named Jake (Blake Jenner) arrives at Texas Southern University, where he’ll be pitching on the baseball team. His “dorm” is a ramshackle house for fellow baseball players, and the atmosphere in those few days before classes and games begin is loose. The looseness is deceptive, though, because even as these athletes devote most of their waking hours to chasing women (with one practice session), they’re taking one another’s measure: preening, boasting, faking (but not really) aggression. Then there’s another, quieter source of tension. Each sequence begins with a time stamp denoting the number of days, hours, and minutes until classes begin, which adds a note of unease — an extension of the feeling of the last days of high school in Dazed and Confused. Now the men will truly be separated from the boys.

I saw the film on Friday, and was frankly surprised by just how much baseball there was in it—and how well Linklater nails the dynamics of a competitive, amateur ball team. A feature: there is no big game, no pressure pitch, no dramatic home run. Not his best movie by any stretch (and more aggressively male than Dazed & Confused), but it was worth my twelve bucks.