A KillerFrog Is Feeling a Bit Thankful This Holiday Season

Writing for fun, learning about sports, and challenging himself along the way.

KillerFrogs

It is Christmas Day, 2021, as I write this, and I am writhing in pain. Okay. Perhaps not writhing so much as squirming, but it makes a great line. You see, I had a bad fall at work while trying to help change a keg. Fortunately, the concrete floor broke the fall. Unfortunately, in breaking the fall, it also broke my arm, my right, chipping my ulna, which the nurses say is important and as my ulna periodically reminds me with rhythmic muscle spasms that feel like a claw clenching my forearm. That this happened two days before my birthday only serves to strengthen the wisdom of the adage “Pride cometh . . .” How does 37 feel, you may ask? A hell of a lot worse than 36, and, hopefully, a hell of a lot worse than 38.

But I am not disheartened. It has been a self-imposed rule of mine to treat the holiday season as a reminder of what demands my gratitude, and being a writer, after all, I could not ask for a greater birthday present, dear Reader and Frog fan, than to address you from a professional point of view. Because writing for KillerFrogs has undoubtedly proved a blessing. Beyond a faithful audience, and great colleagues to correspond with and write alongside, it has given me what is most important for a writer: a challenge. It is fundamentally my job to persuade you, dear Reader, that I know of what I scribe, at times, while at others entertaining the notion I haven’t a clue. Needless to say, for a person whose passion is making stuff up and, in the process, conjuring for a reader a world of their own, writing about sports—on the one hand, so concrete, on the other anything but—is a godsend.

How did this godsend come to be? A fortunate reference put me in contact with Ryann Zeller, the lovely lady at the helm of this enterprise. It was her absolute optimism that persuaded me I could be of use. For her, I couldn’t be more grateful. She, in turn, put me in contact with the other writers who have devoted hundreds of hours of their time to help facilitate this site whereby fans of TCU athletics and TCU, in general, can receive first-rate news and commentary on all things related to the Frogs wherever and whenever they play. These fellow authors have been patient with my admitted ignorance. For Brett Gibbons, David Tucker, Nicholas Howard, and Adam Shirley, I am deeply appreciative. But I must extend a special thanks to Barry Lewis, who, despite running a marketing firm, has found time to write, personally, over one hundred articles, edit hundreds more, and read every article I have authored to ensure that my research is sound and that what I assume to be fact is not in truth a concrete fancy awaiting my slip up.

Through this last month, I have learned more than all my prior years combined about the varieties of sport and their labyrinthine laws, rules, regulations, and customs. I admit much is still baffling. I hope, if nothing else, to entertain.

John Banville, one of the great stylists of our time, said great writing can appear anywhere there are words and readers. The people I have worked with this last month daily prove the truth of his observation, and it is a privilege to write with them, for you, dear Reader and fellow Frog. 

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