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Don’t tell me the celeb pickings are thin these days for the Mad Anthonys. I mean, that is a Manning out there, right?
He’s wearing white pants and a blue-white shirt and now, as the starter announces him on this humid morning, a smattering of applause rises from the smattering of spectators who’ve just watched Red Coat winner Amanda Blumenherst tee off. Peyton Manning! Here! In Fort—
Wait a minute. That’s not Peyton.
Peyton’s broad-shouldered and bulky, straight off the Big Lug rack.
This guy’s built more like a yard rake.
His first name, it turns out, is Major, not Peyton, and he’s 24 years old. A graduate of Augusta State University in Georgia, he’s a rookie on the Nationwide Tour, the PGA’s developmental circuit.
What’s interesting about him is he missed almost three months of 2008 because he got in a fight with a mechanical bull and lost.
It happened in August on Masters weekend last year, and it was all his buddies’ fault. They said, “Hey, get on the mechanical bull,” and he said, “Nah,” and then he said, “Well … OK.”
“It was one of those things,” Manning said Monday. “I’ve ridden the same mechanical bull probably 10 times while I was at Augusta State, and nothing’s ever happened. This time I got thrown off, and the landing area wasn’t inflated properly, and I landed on a support beam.
“Most pain I’ve ever been in.”
That’s because he landed on a disk, and even though it didn’t require surgery, he still requires a firm mattress and some electroshock treatment to feel right in the morning.
And, no, you wouldn’t know this little factoid about this Manning unless I told you, because Major Manning isn’t Peyton Manning.
And, no, you’d never know actor Danny Chambers is a former Double-A baseball player and child psychologist unless I told you, because Chambers’ screen portfolio, which goes back 30 years now, isn’t exactly DeNiro’s.
He has a handful of big-screen credits, done semi-regular turns on several Steven Bochco vehicles (“St. Elsewhere,” “Hill Street Blues,” “L.A. Law”) and had a regular gig on a couple of other shows. He’s That Guy: The guy whose face is familiar but whose name you can never quite place.
Know what else he is, though?
He’s someone who’s been coming to this event for 15 years, largely because the Mad Anthonys’ target charity – children – hits close to home. More than 30 years ago, Chambers was on his way to drama school in L.A. when he began working with kids. That led to graduate school, and that led to his own private residential treatment program for emotionally disturbed kids, which he ran for the next 5 1/2 years.
“Then one day the curse of my soul, acting, bit me again, and it was time to go to L.A.,” Chambers says.
And to come to Fort Wayne, because, one, Chambers loves his golf, and, two, the event hews resolutely to its purpose these days.
It’s why it’s purposely called the Mad Anthonys Charity Classic for Children now. It’s why it’s no longer about high-profile celebs and huge crowds and autograph hounds, but about Mannings with their own stories and raising money for kids that used to go to lure headliners.
“There are other great charities out there, but most events I go to are children’s charities,” Chambers says in the morning quiet of what is now a quieter but more relevant event. “Children’s charities have a particular resonance for me. If I’m gonna spend my time away from what I do, I want to spend it to help raise money for children’s charities.”
Top that line, DeNiro.
