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bragging about the “Hall of Fame.” It was just a phone wire that ran across the street next to the field with maybe forty pairs of old cleats hanging on it.
    â€œAfter we stomp some black ass, we’ll vote our best player to hang his shoes up there,” one of them cackled.
    The game was nasty, with lots of kicks and punches from both squads at the bottom of every pileup. Then, with the score tied in the fourth quarter, the rain started coming down in buckets and wouldn’t stop. You could hardly see in front of your face, and after five minutes that field was nothing but a muddy pit.
    On the next-to-last play of the game, their quarterback threw a pass that got tipped in the air. By dumb luck it came down right into my hands. I started running for the end zone as fast as I could, with half their dudes hot on my tail. I sank deeper into the mud with every step, and it was like running in quicksand. My thighs and lungs were burning. I didn’t even have on football cleats. I was wearing Jordans. But I made it past what was left of that white-chalk goal line before one of them shoved me face-first into the mud.
    My teammates were jumping on top of me, celebrating, even the white ones. And after we won, Armstrong’s players used the rain as an excuse not to shake our hands.
    We changed our clothes back on the bus, and our guys were calling it “Noah’s Ark.”
    Then Asa, Bonds, and me went back outside on the low. The street was empty with all that rain pounding down, and I tossed those muddy sneakers over the phone wire on my first try.
    NEW ATTACK OPENS OLD WOUNDS
From The Morning Star Herald
    On a stifling summer afternoon, Columbus Park offers barely an inch of shade. its 14-foot-high chain-link fence encloses a handball wall, swings, monkey bars, sprinklers, and benches spread out over half a city block of asphalt. For almost two decades, this ordinary-looking playground in the nearly all-white section of Hillsboro has been called a den of hatred and intolerance by surrounding black communities. On the street it is known as Spaghetti Park, due to the large number of italian American teens who hang out there. The park was the igniting point of the 1990 killing of African American Michael Sheffield, who was struck down by a car as he fled from an angry mob of white teenagers.
    â€œit’s safe here. Everybody knows everybody else,” said Diana DeBlassi, a 16-year-old sophomore at nearby Armstrong High School. “My parents let me stay here with my friends at night because they know i’ll be all right.”
    On August 9, just six blocks from Columbus Park, three African American teens from East Franklin were chased, and 17-year-old Noah Jackson was beaten in the head with an aluminum baseball bat. And once again, Hillsboro is in the headlines as the site of an alleged hate crime.
    â€œit wasn’t anything racial,” said a distraught Delores Scaturro, the mother of bat-wielding suspect, Charles Scaturro, 18. “They’re trying to make my son pay for what happened here twenty years ago. The mayor and DA are playing politics with his life to score points with the blacks in the next election.”
    Charles Scaturro, who is being held without bail, is currently on probation for firing a paint gun at a Pakistani couple on the streets of Hillsboro. A high-school dropout who has a $40,000 land Rover registered in his name, Scaturro is unemployed.
    Also charged in the hate-crime assault on Jackson is Joseph Spenelli, 18, who allegedly beat and robbed the teen of his sneakers and diamond-stud earring. Spenelli is also being held without bail. As of yet, no charges have been filed against a third suspected attacker, Thomas Rao, 17, whose father, Anthony Rao, is a city detective. Thomas Rao is cooperating with authorities.
    â€œThat’s what the (expletive) police do in this neighborhood now. They set traps for young people. Then they try to turn them against each