By todd traub
Leader sports editor
Leave it to the wacky Arkansas weather to make a liar out of the Harlem Globetrotters.
Maybe in this case we can just call it false advertising.
The legendary basketball team was forced to curtail its globetrotting ways, at least temporarily, when the Globetrotters’ bus was stuck at a rest stop during Wednesday’s heavy snows.
The barnstorming basketballers were due in Memphis on Wednesday night after playing in Little Rock’s Verizon Arena on Tuesday.
Team member and Arkansas native Flight Time Lang was wishing for just that — flight time — as he fretted about the snow that hit after the Globetrotters left their hotel around 7 a.m. on Wednesday.
“Man I haven’t seen snow like this in Arkansas since I was about 8 years old,” said Lang, whose hometown is Brinkley and who was hoping to perform for family and friends in Memphis later that night.
A fatal accident had closed the westbound lanes of Interstate 40 and traffic was being routed to Highway 70, but officials at the Memphis’ Fedex Forum were saying the Globetrotters would make it for their engagement.
All over the local area, sports were taking a weather-related hit.
Cabot basketball coach Jerry Bridges, still analyzing the Panthers’ Tuesday night loss at Little Rock Catholic, was already writing off Wednesday’s weather-related makeup game with Conway that was scheduled for Cabot.
“It ain’t happening guys,” Bridges said.
At the Arkansas Travelers’ Hot Stove function at Holy Souls reception hall in Little Rock on Tuesday, new manager Bill Mosiello nervously kept one eye on the weather reports.
He will manage 70 Travelers home games at Dickey-Stephens Park in North Little Rock and was in no rush to settle in just yet.
Moseillo, 46, wants to see as many of his sons’ basketball games as he can between now and the start of spring training later this month in Arizona, and he was hoping his 5 a.m. flight would get him out of Little Rock ahead of the storm and help him to avoid an extended stay in the Natural State.
Mosiello had been scheduled to visit, along with Los Angeles Angels outfielder Torii Hunter and Angels farm director Abe Flores, the previous week, but bad weather wiped out Hunter’s and Flores’ appearances altogether and forced the Travelers and Mosiello to reschedule.
We always have our fingers crossed for all travelers, not just the baseball kind and not just those in athletics in general.
So here’s hoping everyone found his destination and was safe and warm during the big whiteout.
But maybe we need something like this once in awhile, a little time to stop and catch a breath during the yearly march from game to game and sport to sport.
In the wake of the Super Bowl, with the big high school and college basketball tournaments still a few weeks away and only the regular-season slog going on right now, it’s nice to have a little down time, even if it is forced on us.
I think Mosiello was on to something.
So you know what I did?
I marched around in my snowy yard with my son. I made us a big, hot brunch. I cleaned house. I did a little busy work I’d been putting off.
I even wrote this, plus a couple other stories, for the paper. But then, sportswriters do most of their best work outside the office, anyway.
Or they should.
But real sports aren’t happening right now. At least not around here.
So let’s all hunker down and have a little hot chocolate and something good to eat. Let’s break out the books and the old movies and get caught up on a few indoor odd jobs.
Let’s reconnect with our friends and loved ones, even if we have to use Facebook to do it because we can’t travel.
Soon enough come the high school regionals and state tourneys, the report date for pitchers and catchers, the state finals and Sun Belt Conference Tournament in Hot Springs, the Big Dance and Opening Day.
I am looking forward to the excitement of all those things, but I can easily wait until the streets clear and this all blows over.
In fact, it’s the weather we have now that makes the anticipation all the better.
In the meantime, I’m thinking soup, or maybe chili.
