Pamela Hayden, who has voiced Milhouse Van Houten in the “Simpsons,” is retiring from the animated show after 35 years, Fox confirmed Wednesday.
“The time has come for me to hang up my microphone, but how do I say goodbye to The Simpsons? ……not easily,” Hayden, 70, said.
“It’s been an honor and a joy to have worked on such a funny, witty, and groundbreaking show, and to give voice to Milhouse (and Jimbo Jones, Rod Flanders, Janey, Malibu Stacy and many others).
“Here’s to everyone who made this terrific ride I’ve been on possible. Thanks for 35 years!! Be well and happy. My best to you all. P.S. I’ll always have a special place in my heart for that blue-haired 10-year-old boy with glasses.”
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Her final episode, titled “Treehouse of Horror Presents: Simpsons Wicked This Way Comes,” will air Sunday.
In addition to Milhouse, Hayden has voiced Jimbo Jones, Rod Flanders, Malibu Stacy, Lisa’s classmate Janey, among others.
Mark Heim is a reporter for The Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Mark_Heim. He can be heard on “The Opening Kickoff” on WNSP-FM 105.5 FM in Mobile or on the free Sound of Mobile App from 6 to 9 a.m. daily.
More longtime Birmingham radio personalities have left the air this fall as Summit Media replaces hosts with syndication.
On Oct. 29, Kim Moore, also known as The Night Bird, quit her decades-long, highly-rated night show on 98.7 Kiss FM. She worked at the station for more than 25 years.
Moore is one of multiple people who have left various stations so far this year. In June, Darryl Johnson of 98.7 Kiss FM and Young Dil of 95.7 Jamz were laid off. In October, Leo Taylor and Pisani Baldwin of 610 WAGG also were laid off. Baldwin made the announcement onFacebook.
“And just like that the station that has been a staple for our community is no longer as you’ve known it to be,” Baldwin said.
Summit Media owns radio stations around the country and is headquartered in Birmingham. Representatives currently working at Summit Media did not respond to repeated calls or emails from AL.com.
Kiss, JAMZ and WAGG are three urban stations that drove the highest radio ratings in Birmingham, according to Nielsen Ratings.
As of Nov. 20, the hosts have either been replaced by a syndicated personality that’s based in other markets or music has filled the time slot where they were previously on air.
Johnson, Dil, Taylor, Baldwin and Moore had all worked for the company since its inception in 2012. Prior to that, all of the stations were owned by Cox Media where the same talent previously worked.
The hosts took pride in playing music that appealed to local listeners. Now, they say, the stations don’t sound the same.
“They changed the format on 95.7 Jamz, it was as if they were being paid to play certain records, which is an indication of payola,” Taylor said.
Johnson, who was on air at Kiss since 1997, recently developed a health condition. AGoFund Me was created to pay for medical expenses.
Darryl Johnson inside Summit Media studios.Darryl Johnson
Sheila Smoot, previously the news director at Summit Media up until June 2024, will now air “The Sheila Smoot Show” weekly on WAGG and Tuscaloosa’s WTUG, according to a statement she provided to AL.com.
Smoot has had a long career in broadcasting. She said she believes the market is changing.
“Twenty years ago you didn’t have directors of social media. Or you didn’t have digital content creators. You didn’t have those jobs. So when you’re in media positions, you got to understand that’s how it will always be,” Smoot said.
Recent layoffs have caused people on social media to call for a boycott of the company.
Bruce Henderson Jr. commented under Baldwin’s post, “Praying for you all! Time to boycott! If we all stop listening, they will get the message!”
Under Rising’s post, Rose Walker commented, “I stand with you, no more will I listen to any of these stations!”
In 2023,Summit Media did not budget for the annual live radio broadcast of the “Rickey Smiley Morning Show” for the Magic City Classic. Smiley took it upon himself to host the show at Hoover’s Stardome Comedy Club.
With this new markdown, customers can get the HOKA Bondi B3LS for $123.99 instead of the usual price of $155. It is available in two colors: Oat Milk and Black/Alabaster.
HOKA All-Gender Bondi B3LS
The HOKA All-Gender Bondi B3LS is on sale for $123.99.
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Highlighted Product Feature: One standout feature of the HOKA Bondi B3LS is its plush cushioning. The ample EVA foam midsole provides exceptional comfort, making it particularly beneficial for long-distance runners or individuals who stand for extended periods. This cushioning absorbs shock effectively, reducing stress on joints and enhancing overall comfort.
Other Features: Another unique aspect of the Bondi B3LS is its use of engineered mesh in the upper, which not only contributes to breathability but also allows for a comfortable, adaptive fit. This feature is particularly advantageous for individuals with varying foot shapes, ensuring that the shoe accommodates their needs without feeling restrictive.
Longtime Alabama basketball fan Karl Stingily had waited for this moment since his college days at UA in the late 1970s, when he and his buddies would leave their dorm rooms to be the first in line when the coliseum doors opened.
But Stingily’s personal road to the Final Four was anything but ordinary, and if not for the persistence of a patient wife, he might never have made it.
“I’ll take it a step further,” he says now. “My cardiologist here in Tuscaloosa very recently told me I was very fortunate to still be here.”
This is the story of that journey.
Karl Stingily, pictured here at the Final Four Fan Fest in Phoenix, fell in love with Alabama basketball as a college student at UA in the late 1970s and has followed the Tide all over the country ever since. (Photo courtesy of Karl Stingily; used with permission)
‘I always loved basketball’
Born in nearby Meridian, Miss., but raised in faraway Seattle, Stingily came to Tuscaloosa in the fall of 1977 to attend the University of Alabama, where he majored in accounting and fell in love with Bama basketball.
“I always loved basketball as much or more than football,” Stingily recalls. “So I was a huge fan of the program under Coach (C.M.) Newton and Coach (Wimp) Sanderson.”
As a student, he never missed a home game.
“Our deal was, we would eat dinner at Mary Burke (Hall) at 4:30, and we were in line to get into the arena at 5 when they opened the doors,” he recalls. “Back in the day, a portion of the student seats were behind the basket on the visitor side, so we would grab that first row.
“My responsibility was, I took an eye chart with me, and when there was a call I disagreed with, I’d lean over the rail and show the referee my eye chart. We had a really good time at the games.”
After he graduated from UA in 1980, Stingily followed the Tide from afar as a financial career with FedEx took him to work and live in Memphis, Hong Kong and Toronto.
Along the way, he suffered through his share of NCAA Tournament heartbreak.
He was in Houston in 1983 when an underdog Lamar University team boat-raced the Crimson Tide in the first round of the tournament, and he was in Louisville four years later, when Rick Pitino’s Providence Friars bounced one of the best Bama teams in school history in the Sweet 16.
Two years ago, he returned to Louisville and watched the San Diego State Aztecs send the top-seeded Tide packing in another Sweet 16 upset.
After Alabama beat Clemson to advance to the Final Four, Bama basketball fan Karl Stingily got a selfie with Tide center Nick Pringle, who had 16 points and 11 rebounds to help seal the win.(Photo courtesy of Karl Stingily; used with permission)
‘Maybe my happiest sports fan day ever’
After he retired last year, Stingily and his wife, Susie, moved from Colorado to Tuscaloosa, where his love affair with Alabama basketball began nearly 50 years before.
“One of the first things I did is go get on the list for season tickets,” he says. “It was very good timing.”
The fifth season under Nate Oats was a roller-coaster ride for Alabama fans, as the Tide entered the NCAA Tournament as a No. 4 seed following a blowout loss to Florida in the first round of the SEC Tournament in Nashville.
Expectations for a deep NCAA run were not high — except for the ever-optimistic Stingily.
“That was a pretty disappointing game against Florida, but that didn’t change my mind at all in terms of the possibilities of that team,” he says.
After the NCAA Tournament pairings were announced, Karl and Susie packed their bags for what they hoped – and expected – would be a three-week trip.
Their journey began in Spokane, where their seats were in the same section with the families of the Tide players.
Karl got to know Nels Nelson, the father of power forward and North Dakota State transfer Grant Nelson.
“After we win the second game in Spokane and are going to LA (for the Sweet 16), I go over there to either high-five him or fist-bump him, and he goes, ‘Hey, give me a hug,’” Stingily recalls. “So that tells you something about the kind of guy he is.”
Susie, meanwhile, bonded with senior point guard Mark Sears’ mom, Lameka Sears, whose animated ritual every time he son stepped to the free-throw line made her a tournament celebrity.
“I was a previous ICU nurse, and she’s a nurse, so we actually talked about how we bring our faith into nursing,” Susie says. “The conversation wasn’t around basketball at all, but we really bonded over that.”
After the Tide beat first College of Charleston and then Grand Canyon University to advance to the Sweet 16, Karl went to Seattle for a couple of days before continuing to Los Angeles. Susie, meanwhile, flew to the Denver area to be with her father, who was having surgery.
“I put that up against any national championship football game I attended,” he says.
For the Clemson game in the Elite Eight, he sprang for primo seats about five rows behind the Alabama bench.
After Alabama’s tense, 89-82 win, he got selfies with Alabama players Nick Pringle and Aaron Estrada, who came into the stands to exchange hugs and high-fives with fans and family.
“Maybe my happiest sports fan day ever was watching Alabama win the game and seeing the happiness of the players as they achieved their dream — but also mine as an Alabama basketball fan,” he says.
Karl Stingily dreamed of going to the Final Four since he became an Alabama basketball fan nearly 50 years ago. (Photo by Susie Stingily; used with permission)
‘I may miss the Final Four’
From Los Angeles, Karl went to Las Vegas, where Susie rejoined him, to spend a few – presumably relaxing — days before the Final Four in Phoenix.
“I had worked in Las Vegas for Caesar’s Entertainment as chief audit executive before retiring last year, so it was a logical place to hang out for a few days before traveling to Phoenix,” he says.
That Tuesday – four days before Alabama’s Final Four showdown with the UConn Huskies – Karl noticed something wasn’t right during a business lunch with a recruiter.
“While I was sitting at the table, I started feeling chest pressure,” he recalls. “And I started sweating like a pig all of a sudden. And I was very light-headed. I mean, this was not normal.”
Karl soldiered through his lunch, rationalizing that he had overexerted himself in his haste to make the meeting.
“I had really been rushing just to get there,” he says. “I’d been out running, and I ran hard. So part of me thought, I’m just reacting to the running because it was a fairly warm day in Las Vegas.”
Afterward, he went back to his brother Mike’s house, where he and Susie were staying, to take an afternoon nap.
When Susie – who had worked as an ICU nurse for 12 years – got there and heard what happened, her instincts told her that her husband had suffered a heart attack.
And she tried to convince him that, even though he said he felt better, he needed to go to the emergency room.
“What people don’t understand is the heart attack that kills you is often not the first heart attack that you actually had,” she says. “Had he gone out for one more jog or gone to the Final Four, it would have taken very little — you know, screaming, getting angry — to precipitate the finality of that heart attack.”
Karl, though, continued to brush it off.
“I didn’t tell her everything,” he admits. “It was already on my mind: Wait, I may miss the Final Four.”
Over his wife’s objections, he even went to a business dinner that night.
Karl Stingily celebrates with a Wendy’s Frosty after having a stent inserted in his right coronary artery the day before Alabama’s Final Four showdown with Uconn. (Photo by Susie Stingily; used with permission)
‘You’re not going anywhere’
The next morning – three days before the game in Phoenix – Susie again pleaded with her husband.
You need to go to the hospital to get this checked out.
“I literally could not get him to go in,” she remembers. “I’m like, ‘Look at me. This is my area of expertise, and you’re not even listening.’”
Karl couldn’t be persuaded.
If I go to the hospital and they keep me, then I’m going to miss the Final Four.
Exasperated, Susie crawled back into bed that morning and pulled the covers over her head.
“What’s wrong?” Karl asked her.
“I’m done,” she told him.
“And it wasn’t until that moment – until I quit, until I literally said, ‘I’m done’ – that he agreed to go into the hospital,” she recalls.
Even then, she needed to negotiate with him to get him to agree to an electrocardiogram to check his heartbeat and a troponin test to diagnose whether he suffered a heart attack.
Let’s just go and get these two boxes checked, and then you can go to the Final Four and not worry about it.
“I had to sell it to him to get him to go,” she remembers. “But, in fact, I knew all of his symptoms meant he had had a heart attack.”
They got to the emergency room at Centennial Hills Hospital about 9:30 that morning, and the tests confirmed what Susie had known all along.
“His troponin came back off the charts,” Susie says. “He had had a really good heart attack, not just a mild one.”
The emergency room doctor delivered Karl the bad news.
You’re not going anywhere.
Karl Stingily finally listened when his wife Susie, a former ICU nurse, insisted that he get tested to see if he had suffered a heart attack.(Photo courtesy of Susie Stingily; used with permission)
‘Everybody was holding their breath’
Right away, a nurse put Karl on a heparin drip to clear some of the blockage in his right coronary artery, and he was admitted to the hospital, where he waited for an arteriogram.
As Wednesday became Thursday and Thursday turned into Friday, his hopes of realizing his lifelong dream decreased with each passing hour.
“I was told (the arteriogram) would be sometime on Friday,” he recalls. “And then Friday is starting to slip away, and I’m kind of doing the math in my head.”
By then, Karl and Susie had already missed the Friday flight they had booked from Las Vegas to Phoenix, meaning that if he got out of the hospital in time, they would have to drive.
Finally, around 3 o’clock that afternoon, the cardiac surgeon arrived to perform the arteriogram. He presented Karl with best- and worst-case scenarios.
The best result would be that Karl just needed a stent — a tiny tube that holds the artery open so the blood flows better – and might be able to check out sooner rather than later.
The worst outcome would be that he required open-heart surgery, which would mean a longer hospital stay and that he would most assuredly miss the Final Four.
His hopes buoyed, Karl decided to roll the dice and ask his doctor a favor.
I’ll do whatever you recommend, obviously, but my greatest hope is that I’ll still be able to go to the Final Four on Saturday.
The cardiac surgeon, an Indiana University graduate and a big college basketball fan himself, assured Karl that he would do everything possible to make that happen.
About a dozen members of the hospital staff watched the procedure, Susie recalls.
“Everybody was kind of holding their breath,” she says. “You could see the vessel on the screen, and when that vessel started filling with blood fully, the whole room clapped.”
They wheeled Karl back to his room for his post-op recovery, and Susie later treated him to a celebratory Frosty from Wendy’s.
Then, about 10 o’clock that night – less than 20 hours before tipoff – Karl’s cardiac surgeon dropped by to check on his patient.
“And Karl, of course, is still wondering about the Final Four,” Susie says. “I don’t think he realizes that he just had a major procedure done.”
The cardiac surgeon took his cell phone out of his lab coat and called the doctor who would be on call the next morning.
I want you to come see Mr. Stingily first thing in the morning because he needs to get to the Final Four.
Although Alabama lost to UConn in the semifinals, Karl Stingily, after all he had been through the previous four days, was just thrilled to make it to the Final Four. (Photo by Susie Stingily; used with permission)
‘My goal was to get there’
That next morning, while Karl was waiting to be discharged, Susie went to the airport to swap rental cars and to Walgreens to get his prescriptions filled.
In his room, Karl changed into a pair of blue trousers and a crimson golf shirt with an Alabama script “A.”
At 11 o’clock – less than seven hours before tipoff – Susie pulled up outside the hospital to pick Karl up for their five-and-a-half-hour drive to Phoenix. Karl sat in the passenger seat while she drove.
By the time they got to Phoenix, the closest parking they could find was about 15 minutes away from State Farm Stadium, so they parked the car and got an Uber.
Their Uber driver took them to a designated ADA pick-up spot outside the State Farm Stadium, where a golf cart picked them up and dropped them off at the handicap entrance.
“Karl still had his hospital band on, so I was able to show them he just got discharged from the hospital,” Susie says. “So they let us in the handicap door.”
Once inside, Karl took off like a kid at an amusement park.
They arrived during halftime of the preceding Purdue-North Carolina State game.
Karl had seats near his old college buddy Ken Edwards and Alabama superfan Dick Coffee III, who also had been at UA at the same time as Karl and Ken.
“They knew how important it was to make that Final Four appearance,” Karl says. “I don’t think they would have missed it, either.”
Coffee had sat with Karl in Spokane and again in Los Angeles but wasn’t aware of what had happened to him in Las Vegas. Nor did Karl talk too much about it.
Coffee did, however, suspect something was up when he reached out to Karl earlier and Karl told him he would be “a game-time decision” for the Final Four.
“I talked to him in between (games), and he said he was a game-time decision, but he didn’t really elaborate,” Coffee recalls. “I didn’t know it was a heart attack until later.”
With Susie by his side to make sure he didn’t get too excited, Karl remained calm throughout the game.
It didn’t even matter that much to him when UConn, on its methodical march to back-to-back national championships, ended Alabama’s unexpected tournament run that night in the desert.
Karl Stingily – after all these years – had lived to see the Tide make it to the promised land of college basketball.
“My goal was to get there, to see Alabama in the Final Four,” he says. “I was just ecstatic to be there. Everything we talked about over the past decades, and to finally be at the Final Four, in a way, that was enough.”
He knows, though, he wouldn’t have made it without Susie.
“She stuck with me because, believe me, I knew she was not in favor of us traveling to Phoenix,” he says. “She really watched over me.”
A popular Birmingham night spot is moving further downtown in January.
Carrigan’s Public House, also known as Carrigan’s Philanthropub, will be taking a place in The William, located at 1911 3rd Avenue N. Carrigan’s has been a staple of downtown life since 2013 and is currently on Morris Avenue.
Owner David Carrigan said the move will take place sometime after New Year’s.
“The space will be a little more intimate, but with a lot of the same design character,” he said. “As far as menu, we’ll have the same full cocktail program. The bar side will be familiar. The food we will upgrade a little, and put a few more sharable items, a little elevated, a little nicer.”
Staple foods such as the burger, corndog and house cut fries will remain.
The restaurant will be open all six days, with lunch offered. The move allows a certain downsizing, but with more of a focus on quality, he said.
“We were one of the first full-on restaurant bars, and we’ve kind of watched things change downtown,” Carrigan said. “We’re adjusted to what we’ve seen that’s changed in the market. Some of that’s post-COVID, some of that’s saturation with other options.”
One entrance will be through a back alley as well, which Carrigan’s hopes to light and reactivate.
“It’s something new and exciting that has been successful in other cities,” he said. “We have the buildings and infrastructure to do it.”
The William will feature 27 apartments, retail space, and a private rooftop cocktail bar.The William
The William is a redeveloped building originally constructed in 1905 as a furniture store which has been converted into a mixed-use development. It takes its name from a department store that was once located there, as well serving as an homage to Carrigan’s father of the same name.
The building includes 27 residential apartments styled as boutique-living. Residents will get personalized concierge services, such as cleaning and laundry services.
After redevelopment, the William has a 65-foot interior atrium across all five floors, with nine apartment units to each floor. Two apartments each face the street and the alley, while the other five get exterior lighting from the atrium.
“That allows natural daylight on every floor,” he said.
There will also be space for retail shopping and a private rooftop cocktail bar run by Carrigan’s, which will serve as an event space similar to one at the present Morris Avenue location.
“We want to have some private cocktail evenings, reservation only, and mixers for the tenants,” he said.
Carrigan said the move goes hand-in-hand with his hopes for downtown walkability.
“We’re really excited about being in the city center,” he said. “Maybe that’s not a primary motivation, but it’s an indirect motivation. My passion is for downtown adaptive reuse projects.”
The apartments are preleasing and slated to open Jan. 1. For more information, visit the website.
This is a true story from my childhood, growing up on a farm in the hills and hollers of Kentucky. I love pigs.
Where I come from, the cool November air makes a hog antsy. They quit eating. They stalk the pen like a prisoner, pacing, snorting, searching for a sniff of freedom. A hog can sense what’s coming. It took several Novembers for me to figure out what a doomed hog knows by nature. I was 9. My sister was 6.
“We have a problem,“ I said. “Men are coming to kill our hogs.”
“Let’s tell Daddy,” Donna said.
“That’s the problem,” I said. “He’s in on it.”
Like he’d done every year as far back as I can remember, Dad bought a couple of shoats in the spring.
Pigs (photos.com)photos.com
Maybe he called them meat hogs from the start, or maybe he didn’t. It doesn’t matter. We were in the pen playing with those little pigs from the get-go. They were our pets, just like the dogs.
When they got too big to trust — hogs will eat a young ‘un, we were told — we would stand outside the pen and scratch their backs with a garden hoe. Later in the year, usually around Thanksgiving, those big hogs would up and disappear. Poof! Next spring, we would have two new pigs to play with. We named them, slopped them and used them as props for made-up adventures. We had gotten pretty attached to Smoky and Snout.
The Plan
“Dad might kill a meat hog, but he wouldn’t kill a mama,” I said. “We have to make him think they have babies.”
Real baby pigs would be hard to come by, but we had plenty of stray dogs and dropped-off puppies in our rural neck of the woods. On average, we kept and fed about half a dozen dogs. At one point we had 12 grown dogs, a fact I boasted about the way a Texas rancher brags about his cattle. We may have been dirt poor at times, but we were always dirty dog rich.
Looking back, I don’t see how we kept so many bellies full. There were seven people in our five-room house, a bunch of dogs and at least two hogs, all fed from the same table. After we ate firsts and seconds, Mom made extra gravy and splattered it on the sidewalk by the backdoor step for the dogs, and they licked it up with leftover biscuits, potatoes and bones. In those days, dogs didn’t choke on chicken bones, and they didn’t die from chocolate. Dogs didn’t start suffering from these things until the communists tricked liberals into buying dogs at the mall — in the mid 80’s, I think.
The hogs got everything else, mixed up in delicious sour milk slop. I loved listening to them eat. Hogs have their own music, you know. With their bodies thumping at the trough and their teeth grinding up corncobs, apple cores and melon rinds, their grunting lays down a steady, funky bass line that builds to a crescendo of squealing solos that could have inspired Jimi Hendrix, B.B.King and Stevie Ray Vaughan to shred and wail. Hogs know the blues.
If we didn’t act soon, these hogs may have played their last concert. The plan was to go on a neighborhood small dog and puppy sweeping spree. We would disguise the dogs as pigs and plant ‘em in the pen with the hogs. The plan would work, I assured Donna. My loyal little sister nodded, reluctantly, but reckoned it would. It had to. It was a brilliant plan!
It didn’t matter that both hogs were male. It didn’t matter that, even with construction paper pig ears, puppies still look like puppies. We were too desperate for details. If nothing else, when our dad sees the effort we put into saving these hogs, that would be enough for him to stop this madness.
We marched across the pasture on a mission.
Hog killers
“David! Donna! You kids get in the house!” Mom was calling. It was too late. A beat-up red pickup truck pulled into our driveway. Two burly, beastly figures climbed out. The hog killers were here.
From this point on, memory has turned these events into a surreal slow-motion film, in shades of black, white and red.
If you’ve never seen hog killers, you’ll know exactly what they are when you do. They’re fearsome men, caked in mud and blood from their beards to their boots. They wear overalls soaked with the stains of their business. One man carries a big rifle, the other a large knife. From the looks of things, these two had already met several deadlines by the time they got to our place.
Mom was at the stove, old country ham sizzling in the skillet. Donna and I looked out a kitchen window. We watched the killers disappear through the trees that shielded our view of the shed where our hogs awaited their fate. I don’t remember breathing. But Donna and I were praying awfully hard for a miracle – a stay of execution – for our hogs.
It was deathly quiet for the longest time.
And then a commotion.
One hog emerged from the trees — then two. Smoky and Snout were loose and running for their lives! I wish they had headed for the woods. Instead, the hogs ran around and around the house, the killers chugging along behind in their mud-bloody boots, waving their weapons. There was a lot of hollering and squealing.
Donna and I raced from window to window cheering our heroes on at the top of our lungs. I don’t know how long the chase lasted. Two minutes. Maybe twenty. It seemed like a long time. But it wasn’t long enough.
The cheering stopped with a gun blast. Then two. At our back door. From the kitchen sink window, Donna and I were perched for a great view of the horror. On the sidewalk between the doorstep and the old water pump — right where we fed the dogs — our hogs were shot dead, their throats slit to bleed out. There was enough blood to drown all the dogs we’ve ever owned.
The crimson stain on that sidewalk never washed away. To this day, you can still see flecks of it in what’s left of that old sidewalk. When the wind’s right, you can still hear the squeal of two hogs and two kids who cheered them on to the finish line.
If hog killers ever show up at your house, God help you. I hope you have hogs.
JD Crowe is the cartoonist for Alabama Media Group and AL.com. He won the RFK Human Rights Award for Editorial Cartoons in 2020. In 2018, he was awarded the Rex Babin Memorial Award for local and state cartoons by the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. Follow JD on Facebook, Twitter @Crowejam and Instagram @JDCrowepix. Give him a holler @[email protected].
Whether the Birmingham Race Course began as a heavy favorite or a long shot, it faded down the stretch of a track that proved daunting against longer odds than anticipated.
Owned by the Poarch Band of Creek Indians, Atmore-based Wind Creek has purchased the track and its holdings from its longtime owners, the McGregor family.
Wind Creek said in a release Monday that it will transform the track “into a premier entertainment destination in the Southeast and will continue to offer parimutuel and historical horse racing games currently in operation.”
It’s unclear what that means. Kip Keefer, chairman of the Birmingham Racing Commission, said it has not yet received any paperwork related to the sale. which is expected to be finalized early in 2025.
Attempts to contact Wind Creek for comment were not immediately successful.
Birmingham City Councilman Hunter Williams, chair of the council’s Economic Development & Tourism Committee, said the “ink is not even dry” on the deal, but he’s excited.
“That site has been there for several decades and at its time, it was a premier spot. Time had its toll on it, and it became less and less a premier spot,” Williams said. “When you have a group like the Poarch (Band of) Creek Indians, who have funding and knowledge of running an entertainment site like that, it has a definite upside. They’ve been able to execute on some top-notch facilities that bring jobs and second line jobs for groups that service them, as well as a lot of revenue. I think there’s a lot of upside.”
History of the Birmingham Race Course
Whatever the plans may be, they will have to go a long way to top the ambition with which the venue opened back on March 4, 1987.
The Birmingham Turf Club, as it was then known, welcomed more than 13,000 visitors on opening day, according to reporting at the time. Traffic backed up for miles along John Rogers Drive, named for the legislator who pushed for the track. Crowds swarmed as the gates opened.
The Turf Club was an $85 million showplace, with a seven-story grandstand seating 5,200. There were several restaurants, lounges and private meeting areas.
The Birmingham Symphony Orchestra provided entertainment as high-dollar guests sipped champagne on opening night. Mayor Richard Arrington and several dignitaries were paraded around the track.
Queen Alexandra was the first horse to win a pari-mutuel thoroughbred race in Alabama history. The track tallied a betting handle of more than $720,000.
But still, there were ominous signs. A fireworks display sparked a blaze on the turf course. Betting lines backed up, as new clerks met new betters, with a little something lost in translation on both sides of the counter. A computer glitch meant that some people buying tickets found someone else sitting in their seats. And while the opening night total was high, it was south of the $1 million anticipated.
The Turf Club had been expected to bring $250 million to the Birmingham metro area, and herald the coming of restaurants, entertainment venues and other businesses.
But by the next night, March 5, when a mere 4,500 people showed up, it was obvious many expectations for the Turf Club were going to need rethinking. Owners retreated from the champagne and glitz of opening day, slashing prices and attempting to rebrand the track towards a blue-collar clientele. But on its one-year anniversary, the club was closed, with no working capital to operate. Its operators lost more than $50 million during a 175-day season.
Racing returned in 1989 with a new name – the Birmingham Race Course – but talk was already starting of greyhound racing being more sustainable.
That came in 1992, when a referendum allowed dogs at the track. New owner Milton McGregor began a $7 million conversion, putting the dog track inside the thoroughbred course. On Oct. 29 of that year, more than 12,000 people came for the first day, with bets on the inaugural race totaling more than $112,000. The dog gamble seemed to have paid off.
But again, the opening day crowds did not herald better things ahead. Within a few months, McGregor’s other venue, VictoryLand, was outearning the Race Course.
The only two operational dog tracks remaining in the United States are both located in West Virginia. Commercial greyhound racing is illegal in 43 states, and Alabama is one of only six states where it remains legal, but racing does not take place.
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This is an opinion column.
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Alabama doesn’t play Auburn in basketball until mid-February, but the comparisons will begin now.
Give the first round of fisticuffs to Nate Oats, the masterful coach of the Crimson Tide.
Alabama lit Birmingham’s Legacy Arena ablaze on Wednesday night, and then afterwards Oats scorched Pearl with a burn that will sting throughout the cold winter.
Displaying the type of depth that can deliver a league title and earn a No.1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, Alabama defeated a good Illinois team 100-87. Notable was the fact that Alabama’s veteran guard, Mark Sears, didn’t score a single point, and apparently even benched himself, and yet Illinois trailed by double digits for most of the game.
Sears didn’t speak with reporters during post-game, but, according to Oats, Alabama’s starting point guard held himself out of the second half because he could see that his backcourt mates had things under control. Starting two-guard Latrell Wrightsell, Jr., had an efficient 16 points, but the headlines will go to Labaron Philon and Aden Holloway.
Labaron, the freshman from Mobile, had a LeBron-esque 16 points, nine assists and seven rebounds. Holloway, the transfer from Auburn, had 18 points on 7 of 10 shooting and 3 of 4 from distance.
Based on his defense, Labaron is starting to look like a future first-round pick. His energy is infectious. I asked Labaron about his hot start to the season. He said he’s not trying to be a hero on the court. Put it on a poster. I’m already in love with his game.
Incendiary Oats was then asked about Holloway’s role on the team and Alabama’s coach didn’t shy away from the question.
Certainly Holloway had good games at Auburn, Oats said, before adding that, “We thought he could be more like he was out of high school, and that’s what he was tonight.”
Intentional or not, it came off as a direct shot at Pearl’s ability to develop guards. For the record, both Pearl and Oats have a pretty good history of putting players in the NBA.
Have I mentioned yet how fun this basketball season is going to be?
Oats, fresh off of his first trip to a Final Four, is feeling himself these days. He has one of the best teams in the country, and he’s already using his once-Auburn guard to go after Alabama’s in-state rival. If Holloway develops into a consistent player, then it could be used as a major chess piece for Oats on the recruiting trail.
The next opportunity to compare Alabama and Auburn isn’t far off. Alabama travels to Las Vegas on Tuesday for a Thanksgiving-week showcase against Houston. Auburn went to Houston and manhandled the Cougars 74-69 back at the beginning of November. It remains one of the best wins of the non-conference schedule in the country.
Alabama’s victory against Illinois isn’t far off, though, and especially considering Sears wasn’t at his best.
“He’s under a lot of pressure,” Oats said after the game.
Oats has a habit of saying pretty much everything he’s thinking, but that observation of his star player felt loaded down with layered intent. Oats is known as a stats guy, but he’s also an excellent motivator. Sears has played in a Final Four, so the bright lights of Legacy Arena shouldn’t have been a problem. If Sears is feeling any pressure at all, then it’s coming from Alabama’s own depth at the guard position.
Philon, the freshman who prepped at Baker High School in Mobile, looks like one of the best young guards in the country. He was originally committed to Kansas last summer, but he ended up choosing Alabama in the end. It looks like he made the right decision.
I asked Oats if he was surprised by Philon’s immediate impact. It’s not just his offense. Philon is already Alabama’s second-best backcourt defender behind Wrightsell. Oats said he would have been surprised by Philon last summer, but that when he showed up on campus he quickly became one of Alabama’s best guards.
Oats said the key to Philon’s early ascension is open competition on the practice court. No one is guaranteed minutes. No one is promised anything. It’s Saban-type stuff. Survival of the fittest. That’s a tricky proposition in the NIL era, but Oats is managing it well. It’s why NBA executives are paying attention to Alabama’s fiery coach.
Oats might very well be a coach in the NBA one day, but I don’t think he’s leaving Alabama for another college-level gig at this point. He has everything he wants at Alabama, and that includes a better version of Auburn’s former guard.
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Dear Eric: I’m gay and a dad. Recently, my 16-year-old’s phone was connected to the car display, and I noticed from a notification that he had changed his phone contact for me from Dad to my real name and changed my husband’s name to Dad. My feelings are hurt. Am I overreacting or should I have a discussion with my son about it? I can’t stop thinking about what could’ve happened to cause this change.
– Used to be Dad
Dear Dad: I understand why this hits a sensitive spot for you. Your relationship with your kid probably continues to change and develop as he moves toward adulthood. And I imagine there have been people at various points in your life who have questioned the legitimacy of your family structure. But you know the truth: you are your kid’s dad, and you always will be.
So, what’s going on with him? Probably nothing. Maybe it’s funny to him that when his father calls, his full government name pops up on the screen. Maybe he’s experimenting with being more mature and testing out new nomenclature. Our phones are places where we deposit the weird insides of our brains, and it doesn’t always make sense to the outside eye.
I’m curious what he calls you when speaking to you. Are you still “Dad?” Or has that changed, too? That’s a better measure, I think.
But the best measure of the strength of your relationship is your actual relationship. Try to put aside the hurt; chalk it up to teen capriciousness. Mention it to him casually if you’re nervous that it means something bigger. “I see you changed my name on your phone. Any story there?” If he gives that textbook teen response “Nothing” (or its cousin: a shrug), let it be just that.
Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at [email protected] or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.
