Tommy Tomlinson

The Dean Smith story

At this point I’ll never catch up with all the people who have said nice things in one place or another about my Dean Smith story. It’s a great problem

100 words on… that Red Sox game

The iconic image of that fantastic game in Boston last night will be the cop’s arms and Torii Hunter’s legs in perfect symmetry after David Ortiz’s game-tying grand slam: (photo

Nicknames from selected Charlotte Observer obituaries, May 2014

Pudgy Trip Kitty Smurfette MeeMaw Sho Big Dave Boompa The Deal-Making Man Nanny Grump Pod Punch Bip Peewee Herby 69 Bitty Shonna Pooh

Snow day

We woke up this morning to about 6 inches of snow on the ground and more coming down. This was on top of all the unmelted snow that hardened into

Apologies

To the five or six people in the world who have this blog on an RSS feed: You probably saw a couple of weird posts today. There was a multimedia

A Prince story

I went looking for the ticket stub today but couldn’t find it. I’ve kept the stubs from almost every concert and ballgame I’ve ever been to, but somehow this one

Guest post

My brilliant sportswriter friend Joe Posnanski (author of the best blog in the history of the Internet) asked me to write something for his other blog, on the future of

Heaven Is a Playlist, Track 1: Little Richard, “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got But It’s Got Me”

Hey, everybody: Today begins what I intend to be a long-running series on the songs I think about the most. They’re not necessarily my FAVORITE songs — that’s a different

Bill Murray, Baseball, Fireworks, Life

If you enjoy any of the things in the headline, you should watch this — Bill Murray’s speech on being inducted into the South Atlantic League (known down South as

Mama

We buried my mom late in the afternoon, next to where we put my dad 28 years ago. It was warm enough that the gnats were out in south Georgia.

A little makeover

I’ve never been quite satisfied with how this blog looks, so I’m playing with the design again — this WordPress theme is called Newsworthy. If you’ve seen another theme you

What made “Serial” work

ALERT WARNING ALERT: Spoilers from the last episode of “Serial” below. STOP NOW if you don’t want to know how it ends. Here’s my Journalism 101 question about

Short Stories

Short Stories

The Dean Smith story

100 words on… that Red Sox game

Nicknames from selected Charlotte Observer obituaries, May 2014

Snow day

Apologies

A Prince story

Guest post

Heaven Is a Playlist, Track 1: Little Richard, “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got But It’s Got Me”

Bill Murray, Baseball, Fireworks, Life

Mama

A little makeover

What made “Serial” work