Bob Padecky

2 weeks ago | pressdemocrat.com | Bob Padecky

It’s been 56 years since I went to college there and yet here I am wearing my Florida cap, my Florida shirt and a window sticker with an alligator wearing a Florida letterman’s sweater. I try to keep my collegiate heritage on the down-low, as Gainesville truly is light years from Northern California and it’s hard to explain why I didn’t mind living with swamps, sweat and skeeters.

2 weeks ago | pressdemocrat.com | Bob Padecky

The Tush Push is a popular country line dance that, as far as I can tell, does not involve an actual pushing on the tush. Age, height, weight and grunting seem to bear no influence, as having the desire to crush someone’s skull. Physical contact is nonexistent, except for the occasional flinging of brow sweat. It’s a beautiful thing, two 20-step movements, in choreographed unison with fellow hoofers who seem to be, dare I say, smiling. Tension?

1 month ago | pressdemocrat.com | Bob Padecky

Last Wednesday, the needle inched a bit further to where one day, a boy, age 10 — who can dribble a basketball like a magician — will look to his father and ask, “ Hey dad, what it was like being a kid?”Last Wednesday, Mater Dei High School in Southern California announced it had signed a multimedia rights deal with a sports marketing company. It would be for 10 years at $1 million a year.

1 month ago | pressdemocrat.com | Bob Padecky

Baseball’s spring training, if you believe the poets, represents life anew, flowers blooming, people emerging from igloos and Mother Earth having cleansed the landscape from another harsh winter. A young man’s fancy returns to. . . “Major League Baseball doesn’t have the courage or the decency (to reinstate Pete Rose),” wrote our President on Truth Social. With characteristic tact and sensitivity, he added,“ Baseball is dying all over the place. (MLB) should get off its fat, lazy ass.

1 month ago | pressdemocrat.com | Bob Padecky

Once upon a time, a professional athlete in this country didn’t have to worry about his house being burglarized, never called the U.S. administration a“ Nazi movement,” never was shot walking down the street, never said a woman s place was in the home making babies and never heard America’s best friend, Canada, boo the playing of our National Anthem. Kinda makes you wish for the good ol’ days when all hell broke loose because the 49ers’ Colin Kaepernick quietly took a knee in racial protest.