Played #golf this afternoon. My drives were too straight, the cart girls were too sexy, I only two-putted three times, and the course was too nicely manicured. When will it end
@hummergolfcart A six pack and a lawn chair 10 feet from this rig while you wait for the owner to come down and fire it up with the echo of the parking garage. Great Saturday night
Best I can tell, with Alabama losing 14-2 to Texas in the 9th inning, this will be the largest negative run differential (-21) for a CWS team that was swept since Colorado State College (now Northern Colorado) was outscored by 25 runs in the 1957 College World Series.
USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.
Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.
I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."
"They just come with the table, man."
They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.
This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.
I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.
"Did we…?"
"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."
Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.
My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."
Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.
I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.
Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.
I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.
Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.
This is the most “The European mind can’t comprehend this” moment of my life. One of my friends said, “Punch me five times tomorrow and I’ll still think this isn’t real.”
NC State HC Elliot Avent on the Auburn Regional:
"I've been to a lot of regionals. Auburn, Alabama, is a special place to me. It's one of the class places in all of college sports. The people. They're great fans and great sports fans. It's different than most places you go."