National Free-For-All Championship

Memories of the Free-For-All

January 17, 2025 | National Free-For-All Championship, Remembrances | Comments

It was my privilege to report the National Free-For-All Championship at Sedgefields, Safford, Alabama a few years just before its discontinuance as a three-hour stake. It was unique, and its loss was a blow to the sport. First run in 1916 by the National Field Trial Club, it was first won by John Proctor (HOF 1954), which had won the National Championship the week before after a two-hour second series. Read more

The Saddest Tale

August 9, 2022 | National Free-For-All Championship, Poetry | Comments

You can talk about your endurance tests And yes, Ames is one with its three hours in West Tennessee And the Livingston Place for its hour fifty in briars and Florida heat (But you must not call it Dixie Plantation for both them words ain’t woke) And four hours down at Paducah in three days is a worthy test I guess But the toughest of all Was at Sedgefields West ( Mr. Jimmy’s Sedgefields ) In the National Free-For-All Read more

A Rivalry

February 16, 2018 | National Championship, National Free-For-All Championship, Short Stories | Comments

It’s the 1930s, times are desperate, the Great Depression has the world in its grip, yet for a few at the top nothing has changed. So it is for Harley Keen and Richard Bain, owners of businesses whose products are still in demand at prices producing a profit. Keen’s is tobacco, Bain’s is whiskey, legal again with Prohibition’s repeal. They are sports, and their shared passion is bird dog field Read more