Some tidbits on James Aldridge

Our story that ran in Thursday's paper had intended to be a feature on James Aldridge. But then he didn't play save for one down and one fumble, the running game continued its dominance of moving backwards (well, sort of, zero is better than minus-8) and Notre Dame continued to lose, so we kind of featured it but addressed more the situation of the running backs who aren't running.
So here are some things that didn't make the story -- but might have if we had written a straight feature:

• Aldridge feels like he's more the runner he was in high school than the one hampered by injury last year. Considering he was a high school All-American, that's probably a good thing.
• He likes to fish. And bowl.
• As far as the bowling goes, he last bowled over the summer and it was one of his best games, a 269.
• Back in the day, he and his friends used to try and sneak bowling balls out of the lanes. No harm there. We tried to do the same with bowling shoes (hey, wearing bowling shoes was sort of in in New York at the time). ... He did say he started bowling because it kept him and his friends off the streets in St. Louis.
• The best game he's ever thrown -- a 273.
• He had a celebrity encounter his sophomore year at the lanes with rap star Nelly. "We said 'What's up.' He bowls a lot. He was pretty decent from what I've seen."
• Junior Jabbie went bowling with him, too. "He's pretty good," Jabbie said. "The first time he went he was talking like he was real good and I wasn't expecting him to be as good as he was. He shocked me as good as he was. He's pretty good at that."
• As for football, Aldridge talked a little about that, too. His strength: "A combination to break one or run somebody over. That's always good."

-By Michael Rothstein of The Journal Gazette

Comments

[Bobby]

Michael,
First, this a great article on Aldridge. I hope ND gets him on the field a little more often.

Second, you wrote "the running game continued its dominance of moving backwards (well, sort of, zero is better than minus-8)". Well, since 0 is better than -8, the sentence should have been "the running game continued its dominance of moving forward". Since 0 is better than -8.

But anyway, great article. Hopefully next week you will have the ammo to produce an article on Aldridge's great game.

Bobby