There's a scene in "Great Balls of Fire," the Jerry Lee Lewis biopic, where Lewis had to open for Chuck Berry. Needless to say, Jerry Lee, as played by Dennis Quaid, was none too pleased.
So he took the stage and melted off the audience's face with his set. In the middle of the song "Great Balls of Fire," he douses the piano in alcohol, strikes a match, lights the piano ablaze and tickles the molten ivories before a raucous crowd.
At the song's end, Lewis walks off stage, stops, turns to Berry and says, "Follow that, killer."
Gotta be honest, right now I feel a little bit like Chuck Berry, staring at a smoldering piano.
In the Gazette-Mail's first year, we were able to do some pretty great things. It showed at the West Virginia Press Association awards, where the sports department left with an armload, including first place for best sports page and a three-man sweep of the best columnist category.
The leaders of the section in that year - editor Chuck McGill and assistant editor Derek Taylor - both have moved on to new challenges. McGill is now an assistant athletic director at Marshall University. Taylor is now a doctoral candidate at the University of Buffalo. And now I have taken the chair of the Gazette-Mail's sports editor.
Follow that, killer.
We'll do our level best.
And we'll do it with a staff that is a wonderful combination of experience and energy, one ready to take steps into journalism's future while never forgetting the tenets that are the bedrocks of the industry.
Let's start with our new assistant sports editor Nick Scala, who has nearly four decades' experience in the newspaper business and is the steadying force on our sports design desk. He teams with fellow page designer Jeff Rider to ensure an attractive print product is waiting at your doorstep each morning.
There's columnist Mitch Vingle, whose views you have come to know, love, agree with and, at times, disagree with. In just the last few weeks, he's dug into stories at West Virginia University, Marshall and the Mountain East Conference, taking readers behind the scenes in some areas and behind the struggles and triumphs of athletes all over the state.
Speaking of WVU and Marshall, the breadth and depth of coverage coming from Mike Casazza in Morgantown and Doug Smock in Huntington is tough to beat. They'll be with the Mountaineers and Thundering Herd every step of the way through the entire 2016-17 athletic calendar, both in print and in the blogosphere.
Then there's the prep sports tag team of Rick Ryan and Ryan Pritt, combing the Kanawha Valley and beyond to bring the latest news and most captivating stories about high school student-athletes. We'll chase breaking news all the way to the Northern Panhandle to ensure the Gazette-Mail readers will always be in the know.
And when you're out at a prep sporting event, there's a good chance you'll find web editor Tom Bragg, bombarding social media and making sure our Gazette-Mail Sports and Gazette-Mail Preps Facebook and Twitter accounts are humming.
Also, make sure to welcome our newest staff member, Michael Carvelli, in the coming weeks. He'll focus on our local college athletics, an important aspect of the Kanawha Valley sports landscape. And let's not forget the folks who help us on football Friday's and elsewhere to guarantee that we blanket the area for sports coverage.
This group takes great pride in the reputation it has built as the news source to count on for sports coverage across the Mountain State. And it will continue to operate with that pride and dedication to quality moving forward.
So, sure, Chuck Berry might have been standing before those red-hot 88 keys, tasked with following that explosive opener. But he still stepped onto that stage with guitar in hand and "Johnny B. Goode" on the set list.
Contact Derek Redd at 304-348-1712 or derek.redd@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @derekredd.