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Joey Martin is the Sports Editor for the Concordia Sentinel located in Vidalia, LA and he covers most all the sports in and around Concordia Parish, if you see him, please tell him how much you enjoy reading his articles on MissLouSports.Com  

A 1-0 record with a save and an 0.90 earned run average.
Not bad for a Minor League rookie who wasn’t drafted.
Vidalia’s Barry Bowden of the Class A Burlington Royals posted his
first win and save as a professional over the past two weeks, earning a
win on July 3 against the Danville Braves before getting the save
Saturday.
“I knew I could do it,” Bowden said from North Carolina Tuesday. “I
think I’ve proven something to the team and to myself.”
Bowden is the Royals’ closer after a season as Southern Mississippi’s
No. 1 pitcher during the spring.
“That has been an adjustment, but I’ve gotten used to it and kind of
like it,” he said. “I’m not going directly into the game and I can get
a feel of things before going in.”
  Bowden has pitched 10 innings, allowed five hits, striking out 14 and
walking two batters.
“That’s been tough, after pitching seven innings a week at Southern
Miss,” he said.  “It’s a bit frustrating, but I like coming in as a
closer in tight situations.” In the win over Danville on July 3, Bowden
entered the game in the bottom of the eighth and Danville’s first
batter reached on an error. Bowden would get the next two hitters out
and then intentionally walk Matt Kennelly to put runners at second and
first with two away. Joel Campusano would come up and hit a ground ball
up the middle that was gloved by Yeldrys Molina on a diving stop.
Rodriguez would turn the corner at third and start to head home on the
play. Molina came up firing and threw a strike to Moctezuma to retire
Rodriguez and the Braves in the eighth.
In the top of the ninth, Molina after making the diving stab hit a
triple to left field. After Hilton Richardson grounded out for the
first out of the inning, Franco would hit a chopper over the head of
Braves’ shortstop Shayne Moody into left field to tie the game. Bowden
would pitch a one-two-three ninth to finish off the Braves. An RBI
single in the ninth by Angel Franco put the Royals ahead in the ninth
to come away with the 7-6 victory at Dan Daniel Memorial Park.
The Royals had a no-hitter going into the eighth inning as Burlington
broke their six game losing streak on Saturday night. Burlington got
three runs early and won 3-2.
Bowden got his first save of the season as he pitched 1.2 innings to
close out the Danville Braves.
“I’m definitely pitching with a lot more confidence,” Bowden said.
“I’ve gotten some valuable experience and hopefully I can go out there
and continue doing what I’m doing. The coaches are satisfied with how I
am pitching and shake my hand and tell me I’m doing an outstanding job
after games. I’ve got a lot more confidence now.”
Bowden said he enjoys living in North Carolina at the moment.
“Although it’s kind of tough right now because I don’t have a car,” he
said. “But that’s part of it. At least the humidity is not as bad.”
Bowden said he’s going out each game focused on giving his best
performance.
“I just want to continue pitching well and some day move up to the next
level,” he said.


  A year after going without a program because of lack of interest,
Huntington School is fielding a fast-pitch softball team for the
upcoming year.
“They asked me during track if I would coach a team and I told them if
they could get enough, I would do it, but we had to have enough,” said
Lady Hound softball coach Marion Newman. “The last time I tried this we
had 11 kids and that was tough stuff to deal with. But right now I have
a list of 20 kids signing up and I am tickled to death.”
The list includes six seniors.
“These girls have played before and Julie Moak is a senior who has
pitched before,” Newman said. “There are some outstanding athletes at
this school and usually good athletes can play softball. We’ll find out
a lot about ourselves this week.”
Huntington opens its season on Aug. 5 at home against Wilkinson County
Christian Academy.  The Lady Hounds will compete in the Amite School
Center Tournament on Aug. 9.
“We were having some trouble scheduling some games, but we have about
15 now and that could be more down the road,” Newman said.
Newman said he will concentrate on finding pitchers and catchers early
before filling in other spots.
“I’m just glad to have something for these girls to do,” he said.
“We’ll also have cross country starting up soon so they will be busy
for a while.”


Johnny Futch of Monroe and Fred Maxwell of Delhi return to Panola Woods
Country Club this weekend in hopes of winning their second straight
Budweiser 4-Ball Tournament and their fourth overall.
“We’re looking at another full field,” said Panola Woods Golf Pro Fuzzy
DeLaune. “This is our biggest tournament and hopefully it will be
another good one.
The tournament consists of a scramble on Friday with the 4-ball
tournament being held Saturday and Sunday.
The 4-ball tournament will consist of 72 teams.
“We’ve got a good many local people playing,” DeLaune said.
The Panola golf pro said he would love to have some rain.
“The farmers need it and this golf course needs it,” he said.
Futch and Maxwell shot a 133 last year to win the title.
Glen Roscoe and Dale Cagnolatti hold the record with five tournament
titles.
Kevin Bacle and Wes Tarver finished second last year at 134, while the
teams of Lannie Emfinger and Dan Farrow, Pat Hinson and Clif McGlothin
and David Sinclair and Adam Hand tied for third at 136.
Bacle and Tarver won their first 4-Ball Tournament two years ago.
Taking top honors in last year’s scramble was the team of Dan Farrow,
Lee Rife, Ronnie Lewis and Ray Simpson, shooting 15-under par.
Three teams tied for second place in the scramble.
Closest to the hole and longest drive awards will be presented after
the tournament.

Ferriday’s Dixie Debs (16-18) captured the district tournament with a
5-0 win over West Carroll Friday.
Melissa McFarland allowed one hit for the win.
McFarland, who played at Franklin County, signed a softball scholarship
with Copiah-Lincoln.
Monea Cameron, who signed with Copiah-Lincoln Community College,
provided the offense with a grand slam home run, double and single.
Cameron played high school ball at Franklin County.
Casey Smith and Taylor Stewart both had two hits.
Alyx Atkinson, who pitched at Trinity Episcopal, signed a scholarship
with Hinds Community College.
The Dixie Debs begin play in the state tournament Friday in West Monroe.
The Ferriday Dixie Belles defeated Winnsboro 2-1 Friday to win the
13-15-year-old district tournament.
Ellen Bairnsfather was the winning pitcher in relief of Heidi Thornton.
“Ellen has a great rise ball,” Horne said of the Monterey High softball
player.
Kierra Collins and Thornton had two hits each for Ferriday, while Ginny
Daggett tripled.
The Ferriday Dixie Belles defeated West Carroll, 2-1 on July 9.
Mary Sanders was the winning pitcher.
Bailey New led Ferriday with two hits.
Ferriday begin state tournament play Saturday in Pineville.
"We had a lot of tough games," said Ferriday coach Rut Horne. "We
played three one-run games and they were all pretty much decided in the
last inning. We had good pitching and defense."
Horne said he has 12 players has good speed.
"We have seven left-handed batters and bunted 10 times against
Winnsboro and got nine hits out of it," Horne said.
The Ferriday Ponytails fell to West Carroll 14-3 Friday to finish third
in their tournament.
Maggie Ray had two hits, while Taylor Perkins had a base hit.



The Anthony “Booger” McFarland I Can Wait Football Camp will be held
Saturday at Franklin Parish High School.
The camp is free for ages 7-18. Registration is 8 a.m. and the camp
will run until 2 p.m.
McFarland, who played in the Super Bowl with the champion Indianapolis
Colts two years ago, was injured last year and is currently seeking an
NFL team.
“Booger has had a lot going on this summer,” said Franklin Parish coach
Barry Sebren. “He got married, he’s still recovering from the injury
and he’s looking for an NFL team. But he wants to have this camp. It
means a lot to him and to Franklin Parish. Last year it was a big
success. We want to keep it in Winnsboro.”
McFarland was originally drafted by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 15th
overall in the 1999 NFL Draft. He played college football at LSU
McFarland has also played for the Indianapolis Colts. He has won two
Super Bowl rings in his career - one with the Buccaneers in Super Bowl
XXXVII and another with the Colts in Super Bowl XLI.
McFarland attended Winnsboro High School (Winnsboro, Louisiana) and was
a letterman in football. In football, he was a two-time All-District
selection and, as a senior, he also was a first team Class 3A All-State
selection.
McFarland was drafted in the first-round (15th overall) by the Tampa
Bay Buccaneers in the 1999 NFL Draft.
Colts acquired McFarland in a trade with the Buccaneers.
He was traded for a second round draft pick in the 2007 draft.
On August 3, 2007, McFarland suffered a severe knee injury, believed to
be a torn patellar tendon. He was placed on the Injured Reserve list on
August 10, ending his season.

I began reading The Missing Ring a couple of weeks ago, the story of
Alabama’s football team being denied a third straight national
championship despite going unbeaten.
The very well written book by Keith Dunnavant talks about Alabama
finishing behind Notre Dame and Michigan State despite the Irish and
Spartans playing to a 6-6 tie during the 1966 season while Alabama went
unbeaten and untied, dominating Nebraska 34-7 in the 1967 Sugar Bowl.
When I got to page 12, I came across a familiar name - well, somewhat.
The sentence at the top of the page read, “It had been little more than
a year since the same magazine accused Bryant of promoting ‘brutal
football’ after an unfortunate incident involving Georgia Tech player
Chick Granning.”
I’m sure that’s not the first time Chick Graning has had his name
misspelled.
It’s also not the first time Graning has read about the incident which
earned a lot of headlines back in 1961.
“It’s funny how many people heard the story and how few ask my
version,” Graning said this week. “Particularly since I was there.”
Graning recently had an unsuccessful run for mayor of Natchez, his
first time ever throwing his hat into the political ring.
“My first and last,” Graning said. “I learned a lot about politics,
enough to know I want nothing more to do with it. I didn’t run as a
politician, I ran as me.”
Getting back to The Missing Ring, it does not really get into the story
of what happened in 1961. I have heard the story before - never from
Chick himself before talking with him this week. I did find an
interesting article by Harry Dery who wrote about Bear’s early, middle
and final years.
Dery described the play this way:
On November 18, 1961, Bear Bryant led his team against then
Southeastern Conference rival Georgia Tech at Legion Field in
Birmingham.
The single incident that became a national symbol for the type of dirty
football allegedly encouraged by Bryant occurred in the fourth quarter
on a routine punt return on which Alabama’s return man called for a
fair catch. The score was 10-0 and Alabama was determined to pound the
last hopes for victory from the Tech squad.
Georgia Tech’s Chick Graning was running down field on punt coverage
when he saw the fair catch signal. Thinking the play was over, he
pulled up, temporarily dropping his guard. That was all Alabama’s
Darwin Holt, a Texas native and a senior who’d followed Bryant from
A&M, needed to see. He sprung at Graning, throwing a forearm into the
unsuspecting young man’s face and shattering his jaw.
Graning fell to the ground unconscious as Holt ran to the sidelines
where he was embraced by a gleeful Alabama sideline that included
legendary Alabama linebacker LeRoy Jordan as well as the young and
impressionable Mickey Andrews— now a coach at Florida State University.
Dery went on to say that the SEC officials did not even flag the play
and accounts of the game by Alabama’s media did not even mention it.
Everywhere else in America, and especially in Georgia Tech’s hometown
of Atlanta, it was the story of the week.
Graning’s jaw and cheekbone were shattered, he’d lost five teeth,
suffered a concussion and, since his nasal bone had also been
destroyed, his sinuses had flooded with blood.
The Atlanta Constitution ran photos of the brutalized young Graning
lying in his hospital bed with his face smothered in bandages.
Dery said papers called for Holt to be suspended for what was, to them,
an obviously late and dirty hit. Alabama declined, offering an apology
instead.
The SEC Commissioner, a man by the name of Bernie Moore, said that the
SEC could and would do nothing about the incident.
Moore was LSU head football coach from 1935-47.
Dery said Holt, whose late hit had perpetrated the incident, explained
that he’d meant to smash his forearm into Graning’s chest, but that his
arm had “slipped” up into Graning’s jaw and “accidentally” shattered
his face.
Bryant said he was sorry. No one believed him.
Highly-respected Atlanta Journal Constitution sports editor Furman
Bisher wrote a lengthy article for The Saturday Evening Post entitled
“College Football is going berserk” in which he claimed that Bryant
coached his team to deliberately try and knock opposing players
senseless using dirty and illegal tactics. Bisher had attended several
Alabama practices and noted what he felt was an attempt to teach
improper technique including the throwing of forearms which had
resulted in Graning’s injury.
“Furman Bisher was my champion and he has been my friend ever since,”
Graning said this week. “He was well-respected and he went after Bryant
and Holt tooth and toenail. He really lit the fire.”
Unfortunately for Graning, he was one of the few to see that side of it.
“I’ve had more than a dozen guys call me and say they want to write a
fair story about the incident,” Graning said. “But it ends up being,
‘Let’s praise Bryant and the poor victim Darwin Holt whom the press
jumped on unmercifully.’ For years I tried to be Mr. Nice Guy about it
and finally got sick and tired of everybody calling me wanting a fair
version and then turning things around and covering it up. I finally
told the last guy who was asking me about this incident, “Have you seen
the film? Then don’t call me until you see it and answer your own
questions”
Graning actually hasn’t seen a film of the play. He said Alabama has
the film but doesn’t want it out. Graning does have a sequential series
of pictures of the play.
Graning said it was almost two years before he could actually remember
most of what happened that night at Legion Field.
“For a long time I didn’t remember anything,” he said. “It wasn’t until
the following Thursday, which was Thanksgiving, that I was able to
remember the game.”
But Graning certainly remembers now.
“We had seen this guy Holt throw elbows when we were watching the
Richmond game,” Graning said. “I saw him take a kid’s helmet off with
an elbow. Those were cheap shots, not missed blocking attempts. It was
trying to hurt somebody.”
Graning, who played running back at Georgia Tech, said he was covering
the punt on the left side as the outside man near Alabama’s bench.
“It was a short punt and their guy signaled for a fair catch,” Graning
said. “I had overrun it and their linebackers had criss-crossed. The
official was blowing the play dead and Holt was going to the bench
because he did not play offense. Back then guys played both ways.
“As he came across behind the official he came all the way off his feet
and threw an elbow at my face,” Graning said. “I only had one face bar
and it had been adjusted upward because my nose had been broken so many
times. His elbow went under my facemask and the impact turned him all
the way around in the air. He trotted off toward the bench pointing at
his elbow toward his teammates.”
Graning said Holt visited Georgia Tech in April of 1962  to “apologize”.
“He flew into Atlanta and I showed him around the campus,” Graning
said. “He met a lot of people and seemed a little nervous because a lot
of people weren’t crazy about him.”
As for the apology.
“He said, ‘If I meant to hurt you, I would have killed you.’” Graning
said. “That was his so-called apology. I just let it ride. I certainly
did not accept it.”
Graning said he received more than 2,000 letter from all over the world
following the incident.
“One letter was from the president of a fraternity at Alabama that said
he regretted the incident,” Graning said. “The other was from Pat
Trammell. I was red-shirted and when I was a freshman Pat was a
prospect I showed around campus. He ended up playing quarterback at
Alabama. He was a fine man and we always chatted during our games. We
got along great. He sent a letter saying he and his family apologized
for the incident. He was one of the finest men I wanted to know who
ended up becoming a doctor and later died from cancer.”
Derry’s article also talks about another story asserting that Bryant
had been getting scouting reports from former Georgia coach Wally
Butts. Butts was an infamous alcoholic and womanizer who’d been forced
from his job as head coach at Georgia due to both his off the field
antics and his inability to win games. Butts was known to spend
weekends in Atlanta getting drunk and hopping from one unseemly night
club to another with young women half his age.
Believe it or not, that was not acceptable back then.
Dery continued, saying allegedly bitter over his treatment, Butts was
accused of giving inside information to Bryant that helped Alabama
destroy his former team. The primary source of this accusation was an
Atlanta businessman named George Burnett who claimed to have overheard
a conversation wherein Butts spoke to Bear Bryant at length giving him
very specific details about what Georgia would do and how he would best
be able to counter their movements.
Bryant and Butts denied the charges, suing The Saturday Evening Post
for libel. Butts won his case. Bryant settled out of court. The Post
tried to appeal Butts’ victory but the appeal was denied and The Post
ultimately printed a half-hearted retraction.
Dery states there is ample evidence to suggest that Burnett’s story was
true. Butts phone records for the day Burnett claimed to have overheard
the two coaches talking included two long distance calls that
corresponded to the exact time Burnett claims Butts was in his office
speaking with Bryant.
The first was to Frank Scoby, a well-known Chicago gambler who admitted
to betting on college football games and described himself as a
“compulsive gambler.” Immediately after speaking with Scoby, Butts
called Bear Bryant and spoke with him for over an hour.
In The Missing Rings, Dunnavant says the Post “bungled the fix story to
the point of absurdity,” adding that Bryant was no saint for his
drinking and skirt chasing but lived by a certain code of right and
wrong, especially in the context of the game.
Graning has a hard time believing there was a conspiracy.
“I wanted to believe every word of that, but I can’t really see those
two men involved in some type of collusion,” Graning said. “Wally Butts
was too old school just like Bryant. He did whatever it took to win.
They wanted to beat each other too badly through the years, I just
can’t see that happening. It would have to be proven to me.”
Graning was drafted in the ninth round of the NFL Draft by the St.
Louis Cardinals and in the 18th round by the AFL Denver Broncos.
He played one year with the Cardinals before playing the next year with
the Boston Patriots.
Graning spent the next two years in the Army before ending his playing
career wtih the British Columbia Lions in the Canadian Football League
in the late 1960s.
“I played with and against many people who played on that Alabama team,
such as Richard Willamson an Bill Rice and a bunch of those guys in the
service and with Boston who I liked and respected and got along great
with. The only two people I ever had anything against were Bear Bryant
and Darwin Holt.”
Needless to say, Graning had very mixed emotions when his nephew, Ward
Graning, who played football at Natchez Cathedral, walked on at Alabama
to play football and eventually earned a scholarship.
“I had hard feelings for a while about that,” Graning said. “And then I
finally realized this boy is not only my nephew, but one of my favorite
people. He wasn’t even around when that happened. Do I wish he would
have kept the Graning name off that campus? I still do. But that was
his choice, not mine. It was something he wanted to do for his reasons.
Ward and I get along great, and the fact he went there sort of excused
a lot of things for me.”
Of course, nothing will excuse what happened on November 18, 1961. No
matter what kind of spin some folks try to put on it.


The Miss-Lou Mudbugs begin play today in the championship bracket of
the USSSA World Series in Branson, Mo.
The Mudbugs were one of 16 11-year-old teams out of 30 to advance out
of pool play.
The Mudbugs defeated the Kosciusko Crush, the top-seeded team out of
Mississippi, and Buster 400 out of Arkansas, falling to the Oklahoma
Rockies.
Miss-Lou faces the Twin City Outlaws out of Texarkana, Texas today.
The tournament began Monday and ends Sunday.
Members of the Mudbugs are Hunter Randall, Trey Book, Ty Brown, Trey
Fleming, Quinn Logan, Dylan Jones, William Handjis, Hayden Nunnery,
Peyton Jones and Thomas Garrity.
Coaches are George Book, Garland Randall, Jon Nunnery and Travis Brown.

The Co-Lin fast pitch softball camp will be held at the ACCS softball
field July 21st and 22nd. Registration forms may be obtained by logging
onto the C0-LIN website click on womens sports go to softball and you
will see a prompt that is labeled natchez camp application from there
you can get an application. you may mail your completed form to CO-LIN
, turn it in at ACCS or drop it by FOSTER E-Z Pay Auto on Hwy 61 South.