maly, too: O'Grady Resurfaces

Monday, December 9, 2013

O'Grady Resurfaces

It was good to see Denny O'Grady back in the paper again. His writing showed up in the e-mails and letters section on page 2 of the

Sunday sports section. O'Grady's thoughts were posted under a headline that said Class 4-A finalists were good sports. O'Grady's first couple of paragraphs read, "What a class act with six minutes left in the Class 4-A championship football game at the UNI-Dome. Dowling head coach Tom Wilson inserted the second-team defense into the game with the Maroons up 44-10. Xavier head coach Duane Schulte called a timeout and inserted his second-team offense." With all of the firings and layoffs at the paper in recent years, I'm not sure who edits the stuff that appears on page 2 of the sports section, so I'm uncertain as to whether he or she knows that O'Grady is a longtime Dowling fan/cheerleader who is the public address announcer at the Maroons' games. It was no wonder he was giddy about Dowling's easy victory over Xavier in the 4-A high school championship game. Dowling's 44-13 victory in the title game verified what a lot of people figured would happen--that the winner of the Valley-Dowling game in the semifinal round would win the championship. Dowling won that game, 17-3. Actually, [again, perhaps because of the heavy turnover in sports department people, including editors and columnists, in recent years] maybe some people at the paper don't recall that O'Grady was a parttime sportswriter at the Register in his younger years. He later was the sports editor at the Carroll, Ia., newspaper. The guy obviously knows his way around Maroon athletics, and sports in general in the state of Iowa. Indeed, O'Grady is such a stout Dowling fan that he almost was ejected from a Dowling-Valley baseball game a few years ago at Valley. He was sitting in the grandstand, second-guessing the umpires' balls-and-strikes calls. Suddenly, the home plate umpire wheeled around and shouted, "O'Grady, one more word out of you and you're gone!" I'm pretty sure O'Grady kept his opinions to himself the rest of the game. The last time I saw O'Grady was when I was having a sweatshirt made at the Van Ginkel sporting goods company on Ingersoll in Des Moines a few years ago. O'Grady was working at the store, and may still be employed there. I had a nice talk with him then, and I hope I see him again Friday night when Dowling visits the Bill Coldiron Fieldhouse in West Des Moines for Dowling's boys' and girls' basketball games against Valley. Speaking of high school basketball, I see the paper is back to keeping the stories about metro games down to one paragraph again. The high school teams seemed to be making some progress in the paper's coverage during the football season. At least the results of most of the games were in the paper, and occasionally the game stories were of more than one or two paragraphs. But the basketball teams continue to get short-changed. Too often, someone has the box score of the game on his or her computer in the newsroom, writes one paragraph about the leading scorer and rebounder, and that's the extent of the coverage. Shameful.

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Photo of a football and basketball courtesy of Google

JOLTIN' JOE GOT IT STARTED

When Ron Maly was a kid in Cedar Rapids, he wanted to enter an essay contest, and he did. He wrote about Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees being his favorite baseball player. For finishing second in the contest, Ron won a Louisville Slugger baseball bat autographed by DiMaggio. Ron later wanted to be the first person in his family to attend college, and he was. He earned a degree in political science from the University of Iowa, and did what all political science majors do. He became a sportswriter. He had, after all, covered high school football, basketball and baseball games for the Cedar Rapids Gazette while he worked parttime during his university days. Ron wanted to sit in the press box and write about an Iowa-Minnesota football game, and he did. It happened while he was the sports editor at the Albert Lea [Minn.] Tribune, and the game was at Memorial Stadium in Minneapolis. Ron wanted to cover a World Series, and he did. Also when he was working for the Albert Lea newspaper. Ron wanted to cover Rose Bowls, Sugar Bowls, Orange Bowls, Cotton Bowls, Holiday Bowls, a Freedom Bowl, a Sun Bowl, a Super Bowl and NCAA basketball tournaments, and he did those things after he moved to Des Moines. Ron was a four-time sportswriter of the Year in the state of Iowa [the years were 1977, 1978, 1994 and 1996]. In 2006, he was named a charter member of the University of Iowa's media Wall of Fame in the Kinnick Stadium press box. A photo of the plaque that's displayed in the press box is displayed above this story. Following Ron's retirement from the newspaper business, a publisher asked him if he wanted to write a book about the rich football tradition at the University of Iowa, and he did. The hardback version of "Tales from the Iowa Sidelines" was a best-seller, and so was the revised, softback version. Now he's been asked by his publisher to update the book for a second time. He's in the process of doing that at the present time. Ron considers being asked to update a best-selling book for the second time to be the supreme compliment, considering the Hawkeyes won just four games in the 2012 season. When Ron isn't working on books, he's busy traveling and spending time with his family. Indeed, he attends the athletic, theatrical and musical [both vocal and instrumental] events in which his six grandchildren participate. He also writes about anything that interests him for his many websites. Every chance he gets, Ron proudly wears his America Needs Farmers T-shirt.

The Hawkeyes' Rich Football Tradition, Revisited

I mentioned a while back that I was in the process of updating my Tales from the Iowa Sidelines book. Updating it for the second time. The original hardback edition of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines [pictured at the right] was published in 2003, during the 10-3 season, when coach Kirk Ferentz and his Iowa football team had a 10-3 record that included a 37-17 victory over 15th-ranked Florida in the Outback Bowl and after the Hawkeyes went 11-2 in 2002. That book was a best-seller, so the publishers came to me again in 2005, a season that finished with a breathtaking 30-25 victory over No. 11 Louisiana State in the Capital One Bowl on New Year's Day, 2005. Because buyers had cleaned out the the shelves in the bookstores, the publishers wanted to know if I'd do an updated version of the book. I agreed, The revised, soft-cover edition [pictured at the left] was published in 2005. Warren Holloway, who teamed with quarterback Drew Tate on a miraculous 56-yard touchdown pass to win the Capital One Bowl, was featured on the cover. That book, too, turned into a best-seller, So I had reason to feel very good about my years as a published author. It's not every day that a the original version is a best-seller, and so is the updated version. Then, imagine my surprise when I received an e-mail from a senior editor at the publishing company last fall, wanting wanted to know if I was interested in doing a second updated version of the book. It came at a time when things weren't going well for the Hawkeyes in the 2012 season. They lost their last six games and finished with a 4-8 record. Frankly, the thought of doing a revised edition of the book during a 4-8 season seemed to be a stretch. "Maybe producing a revised edition in a year or two would be a better idea," I told the publishers. "We'd like to do it now," I was told. "Let me think about it," I said. After a few days of thought, I accepted the idea. I talked myself into the idea that this was the supreme compliment--being asked to do a second book update during a 4-8 season showed strong confidence by the publishers in me and in the Hawkeyes' football program. So I got back into the business of interviewing players and coaches again, going to postgame press conferences, weekly press conferences and a scrimmage in West Des Moines. After a press conference in Iowa City, I did a one-on-one interview with coach Kirk Ferentz, and mentioned to him that I was in the process of doing a revised edition of my two best-selling books. I congratulated him on the excellent things he had done for Iowa's football program--all of which contributed to the success of my books. "I think Coach Fry had more to do with it," he told me, bringing up the name of Hayden Fry, his one-time boss at Iowa and a man who brought Iowa's football program back from the dead in the 20th century. That's modest Kirk Ferentz for you. Even though the 2012 season wasn't something Hawkeye coaches, players and fans will recall with any special feeling, Ferentz has a 14-year record of 100-74 at Iowa that includes two 11-victory seasons [2002 smd 2009], two 10-victory seasons [2003 and 2004], plus he's been the Big Ten coach of year in 2002, 2004 and 2009, and national coach of the year in 2002. Indeed, Ferentz has done some wonderful things at Iowa City, and I fully expect his success to continue. I've concluded my writing for the second update of Tales from the Iowa Sidelines, and the senior editor has furnished me with an early look at the book. Not only are the Kirk Ferentz years included in the updated version, but so is the stuff I previously wrote about Howard Jones, Dr. Eddie Anderson, Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick and the 1939 Hawkeye Ironmen, Ronald Reagan, Ozzie Simmons, Ossie Solem, Randy Duncan, Alex Karras and lots of other legends from Iowa's rich football history. I expect the book to be in stores soon. I hope you like it.