Looks Like Cornhole Has A New Beatwriter

My life-long dream of being a fringe sports reporter came true this weekend.

I've long wished to write fringe sports stories, and I've even chalked up a few peculiar bylines with stories on dirt track racing (where I got hit in the face with a dirt clod), cage fighting (where I was horrified when my boy got knocked unconscious) and bull riding (where I interviewed professional rider Jody Newberry, who was absolutely hilarious).

But I finally got a byline in the sports section on Sunday, which now makes me honest. (I bought three papers for my dad, who will be so proud.)

It was pretty sweet. I covered the first ever national cornhole championship, and while you might think these guys are just tossing feed bags into a hole (because they are, in fact, just tossing feed bags into a hole), it was pretty serious for them. (Several of them make some nice change traveling to tournaments and beating people.)

I thought it would be a festive tournament, with lots of beer drinking and rowdiness. Instead, it was very quiet and serious, with several players storming away from the cornhole court, swearing and pissed. One of them even kicked the cornhole board - twice - and flipped it over he was so mad he finished fourth.

I reported the tournament as though it was an actual sporting event - like a baseball or basketball game - complete with post-game quotes, comentary and play-by-plays. I'm pretty proud of it, really. It's my first excursion into that kind of writing, and since it was on deadline, I had only 20 minutes to finish it, so that made it even more exciting and sports-like.

I also got some feedback on the story, which is rare. Some guy emailed me with a question for the winner: "Is the crown going to be big enough for his head?" Ouch. He also pointed out that his friend, Dewi, who won the doubles competition, would have beaten the winner had he entered the singles competition. Cornhole smack-talk is vicious.

The Tall Drink of Water, while reading the story on Sunday, laughed out loud thinking that the winner's quote, which compared himself to Randy Johnson pitching 9-innings, was a joke. It wasn't. He was very serious. But not in an over-inflated sense of self way, though it seems that way. It was just his way of pointing out he was tired from throwing bags for two days.

The preview video was an underground success, too, though not because of anything I did.

If you wait for it - or skip ahead - you'll see an old guy walking out of the frame wearing only his underwear. He was a regular at the bar where I reported the preview for the tournament who kept threatening to streak. Finally, he came prancing out in just his skivvies. The whole clip is hilarious, but I didn't include it in its entirety for fear the Enquirer would make me redo it if there was too much old guy in his underwear.

Pretty fun stuff.

Actually, I just realized this is only partially true. In fact, my first official sports byline was Saturday with a trampoline preview story for the same sports festival that the cornhole tournament was in. But I still feel like it was Sunday's piece that made me legit, I think because it was the first sporting event I actually covered, not just previewed.