Bulls City Bound

My day job, which is just as likely to be a night job, has kept me hopping these past couple of weeks, what with trips to such far-flung (and disparate) destinations as West Point, NY, and Clemson, S.C. So it's about dern time I got back on here to tell everybody how much I appreciated seeing them last week at our signing at Quail Ridge Books and Music in Raleigh.

Also I'd like to mention that I'll back up in the Triangle this week for Thursday's (Oct. 3) signing at the Barnes and Noble in New Hope Commons in Durham. We'll start the night off with a rousing rendition of Sail With the Pilot at 7 sharp, so you know you don't want to be late.

The signing at Quail Ridge was by far my best ever. Not only is it one fabulous store, but a standing-room only crowd showed up for the occasion. Or at least it was standing room once my F&Fs (Friends and Family) drank that last round of beer in the T.K. Tripps across the parking lot and made it on over.

Saw some old friends and met some new ones and, as promised, we all had us a time.

Meanwhile some old buddies in the business are coming through, as I knew they would. Just a couple of days after Luke DeCock wrote that bang-up column about ACC Basketball Book of Fame for the News and Observer, the one and only Al Featherston chimed in with this review for that excellent website devoted to Blue Devil athletics, the Duke Basketball Report.

It's been interesting to see how much focus there has been on the formula I devised to select which players should be enshrined in my Hall of Fame, but I suspected that would be the case. What I really liked about Feather's piece is that he recognized that the real heart, the real essence, of the book is found in the stories about the various players I came up with. Many are them are stories I first heard from Feather and other sportswriting buddies as we sat around hospitality suites drinking free adult beverages and winding down from making (hopefully) another deadline at the ACC Tournament.

So of all the people I'd want to like and appreciate the book, it would be the guys who have been in the trenches with me covering ACC Basketball over the years.