I’ve been trying not to write much about boxing lately because people keep telling me it’s a dying sport and not nearly as much fun as watching guys kick and choke each other.
Indeed, it was great sport when mixed martial arts made its first prime time national television appearance last week with a spectacle complete with one grotesque cauliflower ear, a bunch of scantily clad women and a main event that looked suspiciously like it had been plotted by the network folks who also bring you CSI.

PULASKI
Jimmy Eavers’ tears were telling of what the Waynesboro baseball squad was. Some would call them a “team.” They called themselves a “family.”
So when Eavers, a freshman call-up from JV that spent most of his time in the dugout cheering on the guys that accepted him into the purple and gold familia, couldn’t keep from crying as the Little Giants readied to walk out of Calfee Park in Pulaski, it was clear who he was crying for.

The sun set in left field at Baltimore Park in Powhatan one-year ago today while Waynesboro celebrated in the dugout.
“How many miracles do you want?” Waynesboro coach Jim Critzer asked.
The Little Giants had just knocked off the Indians in a 2-1 thriller that walked a thin line of infringing on the copyright of a Disney movie.

What were you planning on thinking? Something along the lines of David Blaine, done proving to the world how big of a tool he is by taking six hours to lick himself out of a block of frozen salsa, decided to come to the River City, wave his hands and make Josh Craig’s bat go “poof” and disappear into thin air?
What? Did you imagine some mad-as-all-get-up Southern Valley coach, still holding a grudge over the senior’s timely hitting during the regular season and district tournament, overnighted his Little Giants’ first baseman voodoo doll to Region III?

The debate on the safety of aluminum bats always simmers just under the surface, then bubbles to the top every few years.
This year, the catalyst for the debate not just bubbling to the top but spewing over the sides is the lawsuit filed by the family of Steve Domalweski.
Domalweski was a 12-year-old pitcher in Wayne, N.J., when, in June 2006, a ball struck by an aluminum bat hit him in the chest. His heart stopped, his brain was deprived of oxygen for between 15 and 20 minutes, despite the quick administration of CPR, and Domalweski now is severely disabled.

The BALCO scandal has finally come down to just Barry Bonds, and for that most will be grateful.
Not necessarily because they want to see Bonds behind bars, though undoubtedly there are a lot of people who do. That probably includes some in San Francisco, who no longer feel compelled to offer up excuses for Bonds now that he is out of baseball and no longer useful to their team.

SOMEWHERE IN NELSON COUNTY
The conversation on the vomit-inducing bus ride spans the globe.
They talk about Little League games, Josh Craig played on the Reds, Jeremy Hahn shows off his Mariners’ love. They talk about winning an AAU championship game by forfeit, after being down 8-0 and how the opposing team’s coach, after hearing he would have to give up his victory, chucked the second-place trophy down the third-base line.

AMHERST
No goading. No Barbara Walters hand-on-the-knee question asking.
Heck, all you had to do was come out and ask Waynesboro freshman pitcher Drew DeMoss if he was nervous when skipper Jim Critzer, after watching senior starter Jeremy Hahn get into a sixth-inning funk, motioned toward the pen to bring the 15-year-old in.

She opened her red fold-up chair, placed her white tote down and got comfortable.
She waited until the game started to take out her case and put the glasses on.
And she cheered. When Ken Cox called your name over the slapped-together PA system at the Riverheads pitch, she clapped with you. She mouthed Kristen Moody’s name. She rubbed her daughter Elizabeth’s leg when Cox’s voice echoed, “And number 4.”

INDIANAPOLIS
Getting all the best drivers in open-wheel racing on the same track turned out to be a lot easier than keeping them there.
The story of this year’s Indianapolis 500 was supposed to be a feel-good tale about the end of a decade-long civil war that split the sport into rival leagues and so damaged both that they wound up sucking on the fumes of NASCAR as it zoomed past in popularity and prize money. Instead, the 92nd running of what was once called “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” turned out to be one of the sloppiest.

Bill Parcells just doesn’t get it.
He’s mad at Jason Taylor, so mad that it’s likely the best player on the woeful Miami Dolphins won’t be a Dolphin much longer. So mad that he watched game film instead of watching Taylor in the finals of “Dancing With the Stars.”

Forget Turner Ashby and those other baseball teams up north that decided to jump ship, form their own district and give it a cool name.
Forget those days, they’re gone. Close your eyes tight and wish with all your might. They ain’t ever coming back. There’s a new heated rivalry in town that doesn’t involve Knights, male turkeys or those who blaze new trails into the Shenandoah Valley.
Good bye streaks of blue.

When reporters surrounded Ken Tilley during halftime of the Hidden Valley-Greensville County Group AA girls basketball semifinal in March, the VHSL’s executive director knew what was coming.

It didn’t hit Joseph Lucas until the Little Giants shook hands with the Knights after Monday’s game. That’s when it slapped him in the face like a hot shot back to the mound. That’s when he let out a sigh and realized what he and the Little Giants had done.
“We were walking down to have our [post game] meeting and it hit me,” the 16-year-old said Tuesday before practice. “We just beat Turner Ashby.”

How would you end your star-crossed senior season? Would you be able to suffer through too many matches saddled to the bench, nursing a broken ankle, taking on a new and unfamiliar role of being another coach from the sidelines, all the while knowing that, man, this is it? Is this how it’s going to end?
Would you, after your return, suffer through a shoulder injury during your third match back? Then go out and play back-to-back games two days later?

The biggest save on an ultra-rare girls, boys Friday night soccer doubleheader at Waynesboro came before the center judge even blew his whistle. And, no surprise, here, it came from a Garber.
John Garber, that is.

All this slack-jawed sports columnist wanted to do was point out that, yeah, soccer is big and the local high schools that haven’t seen those dividends paid just yet soon will.
The youth of Wilson Memorial captured my eye and I decided to head out there and chat it up with coach Scott Crist and a few of the young girls on a freshman- and sophomore-laden team. Sorry, but it’s a fact that the Hornets have raised eyebrows in the Shenandoah District thanks to keeping pace with the always tough Holmes Tehrani-led Gladiators in a 2-2 tie. Holding their own against a just-as-good Buffalo Gap squad and losing 1-0 only added to the excitement in Fishersville.

Memo to the Washington Redskins regarding a trade for Chad Johnson: Don’t do it.
Johnson is an extremely talented wide receiver. He’s also trouble. He signed a contract extension worth $35.6 million in 2006, and he’s already unhappy with the deal.
Even if the Redskins acquire him and give him all the money he wants, he will be unhappy again as soon as another wide receiver signs a better deal.
And somebody always signs a better deal.

BLACKSBURG
Back in the day (about 47,316 cups of coffee and one nicotine addiction ago and before scholarship limits crunched the numbers), Billy Hite christened the running backs he coaches at Virginia Tech “the Stallions.” This implies, as you might suspect, plural. A herd.

The “Journey of Harmony” for the Olympic torch proceeded yesterday through India, where it only took 15,000 police, soldiers and commandos in New Delhi to protect the flame from being hijacked or drenched like the Wicked Witch

Waynesboro has a freshman that can pitch and R.E. Lee’s Rajah Jenkins is going to be special at VMI next fall. Yep, don’t look for any news on the NBA Developmental League here, because this is Augusta County’s only all-local, daily sports blog.

RICHMOND Million.  Dollar.  Smile.  There she was at mid court - the little freshman that is - with her hands in the air, fists clenched and soaking in the applause from adoring fans dressed in purple and gold with beads slung around their necks.