Columns

By: John Curtis White The MLB season is over halfway through and playoffs are in two months. The trade deadline is in only 14 days. However, I believe that the playoffs should be talked about more than they are right now. Here are my 1st round playoff predictions. First, I would like to name all the teams in the National League  (NL) who will get byes. The Dodgers will be the one seed and move on to the NLDS. The Dodgers have been the best team in baseball. Led by a combined 3.51 ERA and a .229 batting average, the Dodgers are the best team in baseball. The 2nd team who...

The recent British Open certainly had an exciting finish. American Cameron Young, who birdied four out of his first five holes in the final round, got into the clubhouse early posting a score of 9-under-par for the tournament. Then he waited and waited for more than two hours to see whether anyone caught him. They did. New Zealander Ryan Fox kept plugging along birdieing Hole No. 13 and Hole No. 14. He bogeyed hole No. 15 followed by a birdie at Hole No. 16. After parring Hole No. 17, Fox went into the final 72nd hole of the tournament in a tie for the lead. By this time, Young was back on...

The Whitley County Fair and the recent deaths of two local residents will be three of the topics for this week’s column. Williamsburg Dry Cleaners owner Pat Michael Marple died on July 15 at the age of 79. Most people in Williamsburg knew Pat from his time owning and operating Williamsburg Dry Cleaners for over have a century. Pat’s father, Pat Marple Sr. founded Williamsburg Dry Cleaners in the late 1930s. I did a story about the younger Pat and Williamsburg Dry Cleaners in 2001. The business never charged to clean an American Flag or a Christian Flag. It was a practice’s Pat Marple Sr. started and one his son continued. One interesting thing...

After a year with the News Journal, it’s time for me to say goodbye and return to the classroom. This news may come as a surprise to some of you, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. As I sit here writing this, I can’t help but think about the people who will be reading it. One of my favorite parts of this job was getting to know the people behind the stories. I’ve always said Corbin feels like home to me, even if technically it isn’t. I was born and raised in London, but after interning with the News Journal in 2023 and completing both of my student...

By John Curtis White As of right now, the All-Star Game has just concluded and the AL ended up winning 4-0 with Cody Bellinger winning MVP. There are also a lot of things left to happen in the season, one of which is the trade deadline, which is only 15 days away. Most players who are going to get traded either cost too much and their team has to make budget cuts or just want to get out of wherever they are. Here are 3 key players who I believe will get traded.    First, I think Louis Arraez will get traded. This season Arraez has been one of the best...

On my first day at the News Journal, my Nana, for reasons I truly cannot imagine, thought I worked at Waffle House. She told a few of our relatives as much, which prompted my brother to send a me a confused text. When I got back to the house that evening, she opened the door smiling and asked if I was making people breakfast. I do not remember exactly what she said when I told her, “No, Nana, I’m working at the newspaper,” but knowing her, she probably laughed at herself and said something like, “Oh, flitter.” I am glad she could still laugh in moments like that. She was...

To this day, I can still remember the words of my friend, Rev. Keith Decker, when I was in the ring taking pictures of the mule pull at the Whitley County Fair several years ago. “I want you to know I was praying for you real hard,” Keith told me after I had gotten out the way more than once that morning from a team of mules, which had tried to break loose. If you were going to have somebody praying for your safety, Keith, who founded Cedaridge Ministries, was a good one to have in your corner. For those unfamiliar with mule pulls, these events involve teams of mules working to...

A few weeks back, I went to take pictures at a WWE NXT event at The Corbin Arena. I have not watched wrestling in a few years, and I had never heard of any of the wrestlers, but I still had a good time. I grew up watching wrestling. While my mom’s mother despised it, my dad’s mother was the exact opposite. She loved wrestling. You did NOT try to tell her it wasn’t real. (She was one of THOSE wrestling fans…LOL.) Back then wrestling tried to maintain what has affectionately been dubbed “kayfabe.” In other words, wrestling did its best to maintain the illusion its story line was real. Every Saturday afternoon, Grannie would...

As anyone, who has played much golf in their life can attest to, golf is a sport, which can help you forget about your real-world problems for a while. This may come in the form of having a really great day where you are hitting nearly every fairway and green in regulation and you have your putter going. For most of us hackers though, it is usually because trying to hit the dang little white ball is so frustrating sometimes, you just forget about everything else. Either way, you are usually not thinking about the mortgage, your high cholesterol or the stress of your job for a while when you are...

By: John Curtis White We are now officially over halfway through the 2026 MLB season. Some players are having breakout years, and I believe that if the awards were right now they would win an award. These are the early MLB awards in my opinion for the 2026 MLB season. First, the MVP and Silver Slugger race. The MVP and Silver Slugger race right now is not very contested in both the National League (NL) and the American League (AL). Here are my winners for the award. In the NL, I believe that Shohei Ohtani will win the award. First, Ohtani has been dominant both on the mound and at the plate....