A Stodghill Says So blog:
You never can be sure about the breaks in life and sometimes you have to wait for your big chance and then grab it. I was reminded of that yesterday while trying to find the news on TV and instead saw half a minute of Notre Dame football. Things were not going well for the Irish and that fired a memory of a time 32 years ago when it was the same way. I was covering a game at Ross-Ade Stadium in West Lafayette, Indiana and the way Purdue was manhandling the visitors it seemed like they should have stayed home in South Bend. Notre Dame was sluggish so the starting quarterback was replaced by the second-stringer, a young man named Gary Forystek. The Irish showed a bit more life, but not much. Then some law of physics must have entered the picture when Forystek was hit and brought down. You could hear the cracking of bones all the way up in the enclosed press box. Half an hour went by while the doctors of both schools worked on the unconscious Forystek. They finally got him onto a backboard, an ambulance drove onto the field and he was taken away, his career ended and almost his life.
No one would be singing The Victory March that day. What though the odds be great or small - well they don't get much greater than ten points behind, a lifeless offense, just over ten minutes left on the clock and then a third-string quarterback trotting onto the field. A couple of wags in the press box cracked wise about his unusual name and how far the Irish search for help had gone.
Then a funny thing happened. That third-stringer began firing laser-like passes. His presence seemed to have lit a fire under the entire team. He passed for a touchdown, an inspired defense stopped Purdue in its tracks, Notre Dame had the ball again and marched down the field for another TD. The Victory March was heard after all.
With that former third-stringer leading the way the Irish won the rest of their games and then trounced top-rated Texas in a bowl game. A couple of years later he was in the NFL and kept right on winning. He led his team to four Super Bowl championships and today his bust is in the pro football Hall of Fame in Canton.
Oh yes, the name they were laughing about in the press box that day in 1977 was Joe Montana.
So it was a bad break - a broken back among those broken bones - for Gary Forystek but a good one for Notre Dame and that third-stringer who stood on the sidelines waiting for his chance. When it came he was ready.

"Oh yes, the name they were laughing about in the press box that day in 1977 was Joe Montana.
So it was a bad break - a broken back among those broken bones - for Gary Forystek but a good one for Notre Dame and that third-stringer who stood on the sidelines waiting for his chance. When it came he was ready."

Thanks, Dick, for inspiration. Today, I'm thrilled to see Ghost Orchid in ebook knowing the print version is just around the corner too. It represents an author "on the sidelines waiting for 'her' chance."

I looked up the definition of "author" at Wikipedia. That was an exercise in futility. Give it a look. It takes a lawyer to find the definition; I don't think it's there!!!

Best I can tell, if our signature is on it, we're the author. If we wrote it, we are the writer also.

9/20/2009

DK...

I have the e book rights to two of my books,
how do I go about creating an e book ? And what company
do you put it on ? Thanks..

Cheers..Joe

Good story Dick. One never knows when the breaks will come, however one must be prepared to step in, just as Joe did.

DK,
I think there were posts by some folk that didn't want to recognize anyone as an author unless they were published by a mainline publisher. The simple answer is that whenever you write anything, you are the author.

Dick ,

Great story and perspective.

Very good story, but I can't help feeling for that Forystek guy.

1977? Is Joe Montana that old???

Ann

My publisher put my Ghost Orchid in Mobipocket and Kindle, and will likely put it in Fictionwise also. It will also be in print. Some ebook places (Fictionwise) require the publisher to set the ebook.

If your book is listed at Amazon, you can put it in Kindle ebooks with little effort. As far as the others, there are sites (Ghostwriterreviews.com was one) that will do it for you and list the ebook at their sites. That's my only knowledge; others may have more extensive suggestions.

Yes, Ann, Montana is that old so think what that makes me.
That day everyone felt sorry for Forystek. Never has a stadium containing 70,000 or so fans been that quiet for so long a time. It really seemed he might be dead.

Very funny.

The author I met at my husband's reunion was going to be published by my favored publisher, (one who wrote a fantastic rejection letter after the book made it all the way to the marketing department.) They never published this man's book due to some internal discourse. Just another example of a bad break being a good one.

Methuselah? Shelagh I don't think Dick is that old.

Carol

I have something of a love/hate relationship with football, the details of which belong somewhere else, but one of my outstanding memories of the game occurred on November 26, 1999.

Just over a week before the traditional game between Texas University and Texas A&M, while students at A&M were constructing thier annual bonfire to be burned the night before the game, the structure collapsed, killing 12 students and injuring another 27. Now please understand, I am a longstanding fan of the University of Texas. I was preparing to transfer there when I met my future husband, who was a proud alum. I did date a few "Aggies" during my young single days, and know and have experienced all the fanfare and hoop-la of being an Aggie date at one of their games. Maybe that is part of what happened that afternoon.

I was at home, alone, and my thumb just "happened" to hit the button on my TV remote. I was, of course, aware of what had happened with the bonfire, so I decided to watch, just for a bit.

But when Dan Campbell caught that winning pass and carried it into the end zone, setting up an unbelievable upset over the high-ranking University of Texas, I found myself on my feet, singing "Hullaballo, Caneck, Canneck" at the top of my lungs, euphorically "sawing (UT) varsity's horns off" until I was too hoarse to sing anymore.

I don't know what it is about that game, a violent game, and one that in this instance had led to violent deaths among innocent fans, but sometimes, it just gets you in your guts, and you don't really understand why.

Ann

It's that way up here, Ann, only with Ohio State and Michigan. A popular song is "We don't give a damn for the whole state of Michigan, we're from O-HI-O."