Father's Day

"My dad taught me everything I know.  Unfortunately he didn't teach me everything he knows."  ~ Al Unser.

“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”  ~ Unknown but often attributed to Mark Twain

He pulled on the oars on a chilly (well, frigid) early morning and the little rowboat, not so much glided as  moved in fits and starts to a little spot tucked into some reeds at the lake’s edge.  I would stare sleepily, trancelike at the water that swirled around the paddles.  Once at our spot he would tie the boat off on a half-submerged tree and then he’d make sure I’d baited my hood correctly and then would guide me through the cast.  The reel zinged and then the little split shot plopped into the water and then we waited.  That was Lake Merced, in the southwest corner of San Francisco.  The lake is just inland from the ocean and is often blanketed by fog that’s pushed in by a chill ocean breeze.  In the middle of that lake on a little rowboat it seemed like you were in the coldest damn place on Earth. 

Classic Dad; book, pipe, easy chair and a little Cognac

Dinner at Mom's: 2nd Course - Fried Meat, Mushrooms, Politics and a Side Order of Fear

Don't you understand, what I'm trying to say?

Can't you see the fear that I'm feeling today?

If the button is pushed, there's no running away,

There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave,

take a look around you, boy, it's bound to scare you, boy,

but you tell me over and over and over again my friend,

ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction. 

~ Eve of Destruction written by P. F. Sloan, recorded by Barry McGuire.

October 1964; probably 3 or 4 times in a month mom put fried pork chops on the menu.  Chops carried more fat back then and so it followed that they carried a hell of a lot more flavor.  Mom would put the pan drippings to good use and make a batch of cream gravy.  Nothing quite like pork chops and mashed potatoes in a bath of cream gravy.  It was the meat and potatoes diet that was starting to undergo scrutiny.  The medicos waved a bony finger at America and warned that fatty red meat, cream, butter and all that frying was going to clog the arteries and bring about a national cardiac crisis.  We were faced with the fear that our diet was killing us.

As so as we cemented our arteries, we watched the dour TV newsmen report on the upcoming presidential election. The GOP had nominated the conservative Barry Goldwater to unseat Lyndon B. Johnson who took office after JFK was assassinated.  It was the dual of initials; LBJ versus AuH2O (the chemical symbols for Gold and Water).  Johnson teetered on the Vietnamese fence by positioning himself as a pillar of war restraint who could still be tough on Communism. It might have been a hard sell against anyone but Goldwater.  The Arizona Senator's tough posture on the Commies translated to acute "hoof in mouth" disease with some propositions that scared the shit out of the electorate. His notion on dealing with Chinese supply lines in Vietnam was to clear them out with "low yield nuclear weapons."  I still recall the GOP campaign slogan touting Goldwater's conservatism, "In your heart you know he's right," being turned by the Democrats to, "In your heart you know he might" (launch a nuke) and "In your guts you know he's nuts." And so as we sat at the dinner table that forkful of dessert hung suspended as we watched with unease and then gasped at Johnson’s campaign ad; a little girl, a daisy and a nuclear mushroom cloud.

Oh yeah, we knew all about mushroom clouds.  Hiroshima and Nagasaki were within my parents’ recent memories and as a kid I remember news footage of those boiling explosions. My grade school friends and I may have been too young to be concerned but we knew all about mega tonnage and we were in awe along with the rest of the world of the Soviet's gargantuan tests. I was 10 years old when Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro had their atomic pissing contest. It was the Eve of Destruction that Barry McGuire would sing about two years later.

As kids we carried A-bombs in the backs of our minds.  We wondered if the destructive force of a nuke dropped on downtown San Francisco would carry as far south as San Mateo.  My friends and I would ride our bikes around the nearby College of San Mateo, often passing by the stairs that led down to the fallout shelter.  I seem to recall some sense of relief that we had a shelter so close, although in retrospect had the bomb been dropped when class was in session the shelter would have filled up with college students leaving the rest of us to go through the radioactive baking cycle. We knew all about the Strategic Air Command B-52s that hovered round the clock on the outskirts of Soviet air space to deliver retaliation in the event of of a Soviet launch.  We knew that fighter pilots on alert slept in the cockpits of their jets on the tarmacs.  When the sixties began we went through the bomb drills not really knowing what we were doing as we got into a tuck position under our desks.  We giggled and made faces at each other.  By the mid-sixties we probably started to question what the hell good a student desk would do in the midst of a nuclear attack.  Finally, by the end of the sixties as we entered high school we darkly joked that the tuck position was invented to be able to conveniently and easily "kiss your ass goodbye."  And yet there was this perverse fascination, an attraction to the images of nuclear blasts.  The vivid colors and the seeming grace in which the big cloud formed carried a strange and awful beauty. And then of course there was the awesome, hard to imagine power. We were transfixed, but really, who would admit to it?

Practicing to kiss your ass goodbye?

When I look back on the cold war I pause for a moment at 9/11; I recall the general fear that gripped our nation in the hours, days and weeks that followed. It makes me wonder how much fear our parents felt when they knew that destruction and death from above were just a few minutes away.  A nuclear storm could strike Oklahoma City with more destruction than a tornado and about as little warning; or a bomb could topple San Francisco as suddenly as a 7.0 earthquake.  If we kids could sense the danger of nuclear holocaust how much fear dogged our parents?  In some cases it was enough for them to build bomb shelters under the house and then be prepared to lock out the desperate folks who used to be friends and neighbors before the sky started to fall.

The images that left us in awe

In October 1963, just weeks before the election, my parents brought me with them to Washington Square in San Francisco to listen to Johnson preach peace in a stump speech.  LBJ concluded his speech by saying, “For 11 months I have tried to help us have peace in the world, and if I can have your help, if I can have your hand, if I can have your heart, if I can have your prayers, if the good Lord is willing, I will continue to try to lead this Nation and this world to peace." Johnson won the election handily but in the end it didn't work out so well; for LBJ or for America - at least not on the foreign policy front.

America sat at the dinner table that election year and was fed a diet of fear. By Goldwater, the fear of the Red Menace; by Johnson the fear of Goldwater. Not much has really changed has it? Candidates still serve up the fear diet; just in a different flavor.  Soft on Communism has become naive about terrorism. I feel fortunate that as a boy I had a connection to a different time, as my dad would relate to me the calm that FDR tried to deliver to an anxious nation; "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Fear is now a permanent ingredient in the campaign recipe. We'll never go back will we? Sad.  

Stump speeches.  I look back at LBJ in Washington Square as irretrievable nostalgia.  Presidential candidates don’t make stump speeches anymore.  They rarely come to California anymore but when they do it's with a purpose irrelevant to the election itself; Republicans know they can’t win here and Democrats know it’s in the bag.  So why would you come to the most populous state in the Union? To meet the people you hope to lead?  To deliver to the electorate your vision of hope for the nation?  Hell no. It’s to appear at a gazillion dollar a plate fundraising dinner.  They go out of their way to appear in front of friendly crowds because protest signs make bad photo ops and heckling a poor sound bite.  Politicians have lied through their teeth for ages.  In the old days you got to see them do it in person - for free, in a big city park.  Now you have to whip out the AMEX, or mortgage the homestead so you can listen to a fellow mortgage his morals at a private dinner in a rich guy's mansion.

And ironically, some fifty years after we were being told that our diet was about as healthy as a glass of hemlock, the stigma has been removed from red meat, starches and heavy cream.  Meat and potatoes have been repackaged as the healthy, salutary paleo-diet.  I suppose that if the diet experts ever tire of analyzing what we eat they can turn to politics.  They seem to be pretty good at flip-flopping and scaring the shit out of the public.
"Wife, we need to get off those damned grains and legumes.  They're killing us.  Whip me up a chicken fried steak with a an order of cream gravy and do it on the double quick"

Trick or Treat; And Make It a Double

I've been a bad blogger.  I don’t mean in the sense that this blog as a whole is trash; although that in itself might be a problem.  I've been lax and lazy.  When I published my last post the Halloween candy hadn't yet hit the store shelves.  Now the big wide seasonal aisle in the local super is well stocked with bags of mini candy bars and little boxes of candies.  I've noticed over the years that the bags of candy keep getting smaller and smaller as do the bars inside the bags.  It used to be that two or three bags of Snickers might handle the Halloween crowd.  Now you need at least six or seven.  Well you actually need less than that to feed the little monsters but that wouldn't allow for the proper snacking between the time you buy the candy and Halloween night. 

What's Happened Here?

When did it all change?  Why did it all change?  How did it all change so much?  I grew up in the suburbs of San Mateo.  It was a middle class neighborhood in the hills above the town, on the San Francisco Bay Peninsula, about 30 minutes south of San Francisco itself.  It was the fifties and sixties; a time when we boomers lived the American Dream defined by well-manicured lawns, ranch style homes and the notion that we, the children, would live in a better America. 

The Oak Desk

I recently made the decision that it’s past time to get rid of the roll top desk that sits under the window in our bedroom.  A roll top was something I’d always wanted.  I suppose I pictured myself sitting at that desk like some latter day Mark Twain; sipping expensive bourbon from a heavy crystal rocks glass, dipping pen in inkwell and writing the next great American novel.

HSB: Warren Hellman's Musical Gift

The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival

It is now less than 2 months from the start of HSB and I'm already getting into weekend bliss mode. That's what Warren Hellman's annual gift to the Bay Area has been for me.  No matter how shitty life has been in a particular year, for 3 days everything is beautiful. Thank you Warren and I'll be there in October. ~  My dear friend Scott.

For years Scott has suggested that I attend Hardly Strictly Bluegrass and for years I've always had something else going on..until this year.  Even though we went this year we missed hooking up with Scott who every year attends all three days. When he learned that I was writing a post on the event he offered some fodder for the post - an offer which I eagerly accepted. So this post is a shared work. 

It was day two of a weekend (Counting Friday) that the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce couldn’t have conjured in their wildest fantasies.  A convergence of events promising to bring an estimated million visitors and their money, money, money into the city.  That’s what it’s all about, right – money? The Giants are in the playoffs at AT&T Park, an America’s Cup Yacht race on the bay, a Blue Angels air show over the bay, a couple of street fairs, a parade, a 49er home game and in Golden Gate Park, the three day Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival (lovingly known as HSB).  Cora and I opted for HSB on Saturday, with plans to evacuate the house early and beat the hordes across the bridge into The City (“C’mon Cora, aren’t you ready yet? Hurry up!”).

Many Thanks Steve

65 toss power trap; 65 toss power trap.  That might pop right open.” ~ Hank Stram

The Autumn wind is a pirate
Blustering in from sea
With a rollicking song he sweeps along
Swaggering boisterously.
His face is weatherbeaten
He wears a hooded sash
With a silver hat about his head
And a bristling black mustache
He growls as he storms the country
A villain big and bold
And the trees all shake and quiver and quake
As he robs them of their gold.
The Autumn wind is a Raider
Pillaging just for fun
He'll knock you 'round and upside down
And laugh when he's conquered and won ~ Steve Sabol

Jumping Over the Candlestick

I indulged in a nooner yesterday.  Not that kind of a nooner; cleanse that dirty little mind.  A nooner is a weekday baseball game.  Years ago it was called a businessman’s special.  Take off from work at noon, maybe take a client, catch the game and back to work for a couple of hours.  Men went to the game in business suits; there was no such thing as business casual.  When I was working at a retail hardware store my co-worker Joe would often say, "I'm going to the businessman's special today.  Joe wasn't a businessman, he was the delivery driver.  His "suit" was jeans and a Giant's t-shirt.  The midweek day game is great fun, and usually an opportunity to get a good seat at a good price but unfortunately is becoming a dinosaur.  The reason; grousing about post-game traffic mingling with rush hour traffic.  Let's just take all the fun out of life. There was no work for me this day and in lieu of a client I opted to go with my wife; a definite upgrade.

In the Summer Of:

My seventh year:  I lived in the suburbs of San Mateo.  It was a white, middle class neighborhood.  There were literally no Asian, African-American or Hispanic families in or near our neighborhood.

My fifty seventh year:  My family lives in the suburban town of Hercules.  Our neighbors on each side are African-American.  The neighbors across the street are Filipino and Chinese.  A Hispanic family lives just down the street. 

 My seventh year:  The top three television shows were Wagon Train, Bonanza and Gunsmoke; all westerns.  One reality show, of sorts, was in the top ten; Candid Camera.  There were three major networks; ABC, NBC and CBS.  Although cable was making inroads, most homes still relied on rabbit ears and rooftop antennas for reception.

America's Favorite 1961

My fifty seventh year:  There are four major networks; ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox.  There are multitudes of cable channels.  Many homes have their own satellite dishes.  It’s hard to fathom the most popular TV shows since there are so many different categories but from what I could gather, the 3 most popular shows this past week were, America’s Got Talent, Big Brother and The Bachelorette.  Keep your Bachelorette and her Big Brother and just give me Bonanza, Wagon Train and Gunsmoke please.

 My seventh year:  The president was a former Junior Senator from Massachusetts.  His campaign relied heavily on the relatively new medium, television, helping him win the election.  He was the first Catholic President.  His Vice-President was a Senior United States Senator from Texas.

My fifty seventh year:  The president is a former Junior Senator from Illinois.  His campaign relied heavily on internet technology, helping him win the election.  He is the first African-American President.  His Vice-President was a Senior United States Senator from Delaware. 

 My seventh year:   I was on break between second and third grades.  My days were mostly taken up with play.  My friends and I played army pretending to fight against Japanese and Germans.  We were the sons and daughters of men and women who went to war against Germany and Japan and the memories and stories of that war were still fresh. 

My fifty seventh year:  The games we played in my seventh year are not at all politically correct today.

My seventh year:  There were a total of 18 teams between the National and American Leagues and no divisional play.  Two All Star Games were played that year.  An upper deck seat at Yankee Stadium cost $3.25.

My fifty seventh year:  There are 30 major league teams between two leagues and six divisions.  There are two layers of divisional play before the World Series and there is one All-Star Game played.  An upper deck seat at Yankee Stadium costs 30 dollars.  And let’s not even talk about the cost of a dog and a beer.

My seventh year:  The world record in the mile was held by Australian Herb Elliot, at 3:54.5 and was set in 1958.  The world record in the marathon was held by Ethiopian Abebe Bikila, at 2:15:16.2 in the 1960 Rome Olympics.

My fifty seventh year:  The current world record in the mile is held by Hicham El Guerrouj of Morocco at 3:43.13 and was set in July 1999.   The current world record in the marathon is held by Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie at 2:04:26 and was set in 2007.

My seventh year:  Our nation was dipping its national toe into the swamp of a Southeast Asian country that hardly anybody had ever heard of.  The war had something of an initial public backing but after a few years the nation grew weary and the conflict would become a national controversy.

My fifty seventh year:  Our nation is trying to emerge from a conflict in Afghanistan that had initial public backing.  Ten years later the nation has grown weary and the war is becoming a national controversy.

My seventh year:  A fully loaded Corvette Convertible retailed for about 7000 dollars.  A gallon of gas cost 27 cents.

Would you spend $7000 for this?

My fifty seventh year:  A 1961 Corvette Convertible featured on the internet is being offered for 77,500 dollars.  As I look out the window of Starbucks at the local station I see premium gas at 3.95 a gallon.

Maynard G. Krebbs Beatnik

My seventh year:  A coffee house was considered a meeting place for Beatniks reciting politically charged or off color poetry.  They weren’t considered a fit family environment.  You drank coffee or espresso.  A cup of coffee cost about 10 cents.

My fifty seventh year:  A coffee house is a place where people of all stripes congregate to discuss all kinds of topics.  Families are welcome.  The smallest cup of coffee at the Starbucks I’m sitting at now is 1.50.  You can get coffee, espresso and a whole variety of other nonsense on the menu board.  I’ll have a cup of mud please, black.

My seventh year:  My mother used to admonish me that one day I would have kids of my own that I would worry about and fret over.
My fifty seventh year:  I watch my son and daughter and their spouses worry about and fret over their children.  And I still worry and fret over that whole crew now and then.

My seventh year:  My mom was a working mom and my grandmother from Italy was helping to raise me.  I had an aunt in Italy named Luciana.

My fifty seventh year:  I have three grandchildren, one is half Filipino.  One of my granddaughters is named Luciana. 

My seventh year:  The price of a 30 foot by 15 foot in ground pool was 2695 dollars.

My fifty seventh year:  In Chicago the minimum base price of an in ground pool is 20,000 dollars.

Yuri's 108 min. flight shocked the world

My seventh year:  Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space shocking the US and prompting one congressman to suggest that the country be put on a war footing.  It could be said that Gagarin's flight kick started America's lunar program (actually the flight was not in summer it was in April).

My fifty seventh year: The Space Shuttle took its last flight and now we will be hitching rides with the folks who first launched Yuri.

My seventh year:  A first class postage stamp cost .04.

My fifty seventh year:  What in the hell do you need a stamp for?

My Old Baseball Friend

     Welcome back baseball.  Welcome back to the friend I knew and loved.  For a while there you were going through a rough patch. You fell in with a bad crowd, started messing with substance abuse and got addicted to some really bad stuff. Your personality changed, you lost your charm and became a big, brutish lout. You lost the respect that you had for your rich and storied ancestry, forsook your forefathers and got infatuated with a fake, fleeting here and now. When you lost your self-respect you got pretty sleazy and slept around with a bunch of self-absorbed phonies. You stopped being the baseball that I knew, that we all knew, a subtle, strategic game with all those nuances like double switches, the hit and run and the suicide squeeze. You started resembling a “D” level, beer league softball game.  And what about your caretakers, those guys who were supposed to look out for you? They just became a bunch of greedy enablers turning a blind eye, letting your addiction run rampant while they raked in their ill-gotten gains.

     The home nine is in first place and playing some exciting ball. No bombastic displays of tape measure home runs with footballesque final scores. The Giants are winning low scoring, one run affairs. They're doing it with pitching; a solid rotation and a stalwart bullpen. The offense is pure punch and judy, with an occasional long ball and some sort of smoke and mirrors magic woven by manager Bruce Bochy.  Last year we christened the season "torture" and the one run, walk off torment is back for a delicious second course. 

     In recent years I sat out that bastardization of baseball called “the steroid era.” I walked out on the freakish thing it had become, figuring I wouldn't return.  Sometime during the 2009 season my interest started piquing again.  Barry Bonds, the man who had so arrogantly soiled one of sport’s most hallowed records was not invited back for 2008 and when I was satisfied that his stink had left the yard I was ready to come back. While a recession driven belt tightening kept me away from the stadium last year, I watched on TV with renewed joy the game being played as it should.  And listening to the radio broadcast while working in the yard or tending the barbecue has brought back baseball memories of my childhood.

     Yes, I love baseball and I’m not ashamed to say that I love it in a naïve way; in the tradition rich, storybook, peanuts and Cracker Jack, smell of the green, green grass, baseball cards, hotdogs and beer, all-American way.  I love it because unlike professional basketball and football, baseball unabashedly honors its past. It’s a game that’s spanned decades has gone through little change to the game itself yet continues to captivate its fans.

      Professional basketball has gone from a patient team game to an up and down the court race punctuated by in your face slam dunks tossed down by petulant, chest thumping, preening players who’ve physically outgrown their field of play.  For the most part I find NBA players to be dislikable. There is no reverence for the past in the NBA. Today’s players wouldn’t know Jerry West or Oscar Robertson if they smacked into them at the foul line and most fans probably don’t know of an NBA past that goes beyond MJ.

     And what can you say about the NFL? It’s the consummate sport become business. And while it keeps some tenuous ties to its past it has become something unrecognizable from what it was a mere 10 years ago. Never satisfied to be what it is, the NFL seems to be in an insatiable quest to get bigger, brasher and glitzier. There is no charm to its championship game. The Super Bowl is an event which every year has to outdo its predecessor.  It’s an uncharismatic happening of a game that falls victim every year to its own hype; a hype which it inevitably fails to live up to. With its ostentatious overpriced arenas and personal seat licenses it has become a Romanesque orgy for gamblers, rich guys and corporations that’s thrown the common fan to the curb. Unlike professional basketball and football, baseball has maintained some affordability.

How many of these did I lose?

     Baseball has always had an intimate connection with the fans.  The Brooklyn Dodgers not only played in that borough but lived there and mingled with their neighbors and fans, shopping in the local stores, going to the local barbershop, and playing with local kids.  In his book Bums, Peter Golenbock writes about the memory of a Brooklyn fan who said of Duke Snyder, “We would be playing stick ball and he would come home….and the kids knew who he was. ‘Hey Duke, want to take a few cuts?  It was like he was one of the boys. He’d take a few cuts."  When I was a kid, after games we would go to the player’s entrance and wait for our heroes to emerge, offering a glove, ball, baseball cards, or scraps of paper for them to autograph.  Most would graciously sign, while admonishing the kids to be patient and polite.  I recall Sandy Koufax taking my ball as he stepped onto the team bus.  I thought for a moment that he had stolen my baseball until he dropped it out a window to me with his autograph and those of some of his teammates.  I lost that ball.  In fact I must have got the great left hander’s autograph a half dozen times, losing all but the one I still treasure.  While the player’s entrance is now off limits, a ball player will still stop and sign some autographs before and during BP (batting practice).  I recall Dave Stewart kindly signing autographs for my son and his friend before a playoff game against Toronto.

     I can’t remember the first game that I went to. I know it was at windy, frigid, Candlestick Park in San Francisco. Probably in 1961 or 1962 (I would have been 8 or 9 years old), the details escape me , might have been against the Cards, but I clearly remember walking out of the concourse and into the seating area to stare in awe at that field; so vast and so green.  It seemed bigger than anything I’d ever seen.

Maury Wills steals third

      A rabid Giants booster, my mom was the head fan of the family.  I was, and for the life of me I don’t know why, a Los Angeles Dodgers fan.   I think that maybe I was just attracted to that Dodger blue color.   Now you have to understand that a Giants fan and a Dodgers fan under the same roof do not make for a peaceful household between the months of April and October.  There was plenty of yelling and screaming during the many great games that we watched and listened to while “hating” each other and each other’s teams.  Those Giants-Dodgers games of the sixties defined the game that I grew up with and love to this day.  The Dodgers were a punchless team with plenty of speed.  Maury Wills would bunt himself to first and then the drama began.  No secret he would steal.  In the first act of the drama he would take his lead, the pitcher would throw to first and Willie McCovey would smack a leaden glove onto the diving Wills.  Time and again this scene repeated itself with Wills extending that lead by mere inches each time.   Wills wore out the pitcher and McCovey’s heavy paw wore out Wills.  The first act would usually end with the Dodger shortstop dusting himself off, standing on a freshly robbed second base.  Act two had Wills, dancing off second, racking the pitcher’s nerves until he pilfered third.  Act three ended with Wills either crossing the plate or being stranded at third.  Mom hated Wills, I hated Willie Mac but we both reveled in the rivalry.

Russ Hodges, Lon Simmons, Bill Thompson

     The sounds of spring, summer and fall were the voices of Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons calling the games while my mom worked in the garden or did her housework.   It seemed that everywhere you went there was a radio tuned to KSFO; “And there’s the pitch. Mays swings. And you can tell it BYE, BYE, BABY!”   Radio was king and baseball was the game of great voices; Hodges, Simmons, Vin Scully, Mel Allen, Jack Buck, Ernie Harwell and Harry Caray.   For a kid a transistor radio was an indispensible piece of equipment.   It was the only way you could you catch the last few innings of a night game, under the covers with the radio just loud enough to hear the game and just low enough that mom and dad wouldn’t hear.  How else could you catch bits of a weekday World Series game, trying to tune out the teacher yet keep an eye and half an ear on her so as not to get caught.   And every now and then there was that rare, cool teacher who would let us watch some of the game on TV.

     Baseball was the game that we could always play even if we didn’t have a team.  Any kid with a tennis ball and the side of house could play a ball game all by himself.   I was that kid and many were the afternoons when I would throw a tennis ball at the house and as shortstop field the grounders coming off the wall, throw it back against the wall and as first baseman field the rebound always just nipping the phantom runner.  On warm evenings dads in the neighborhood would go out with us kids to a local field and hit us some flies.  Even into my twenties and thirties I would go out to a local ball field with my friend Scott and we would take turns hitting and shagging grounders.  Now nearing 60, I do miss hearing that crack, ranging over and snagging a backhander right in the sweet spot.  I even miss that sting of the ball when it smacks into the palm.

     Baseball is a game for the senses. It’s the green of the field, the blue of the sky, chatter of the players, crack of the bat, ball skittering on grass and the pop of the glove.  It’s the smell of a dog and a beer, oil on a leather glove and a sweaty old cap.

     Baseball is nicknames on the back of a card (does anybody really collect football and basketball cards?).  It’s The Mick, Jocko, The Say Hey Kid, The  Baby Bull, Big D, Slick, Biscuit Pants, Willie Mac, Rube, Smokey, The Splendid Splinter, Buck, The Kid, Killer and Stan the Man.  Baseball is kids tearing open the wrapper on a pack of cards, shoving a stick of stale bubble gum in the mouth, thumbing through the cards and negotiating multiple “humpties” for a star.  

     Baseball is a colorful language of its own.  Its a can o’ corn, hard cheese, gopher ball, around the horn, chin music, tools of ignorance, bases juiced, fungo, heater, hot corner, on deck, on the screws, seeing eye single, skip, southpaw, small ball, scroogie, slider, slurve and of course, the Mendoza line.  C'mon, who needs the Romance Languages when you have baseball lingo.

      So welcome back baseball.  You’ve gone through some changes over the years and I haven’t been a fan of many of them.  I like interleague play about as much as I like eating liver.  And do you really need another level of playoffs, as if a 162 game season can’t decide the best teams?  I can’t say that I like the uniform changes.  How come you got rid of the stirrups and long socks and started sporting those pajama bottoms?  You know, I didn’t like the DH when you first introduced him to me and I don’t like him now.  If he’s fat, slow, out of shape and not able to play in the field anymore maybe he should just retire to the coach’s box or the broadcast booth.   And did you really have to silence the chin music? I miss those days when some of the game’s toughest hitters would come nervously to the plate to face an angry Bob Gibson.  Some Drysdale heat to the ribs kept that batter out of the pitcher's office.  And where did the jawboning between managers and umpires go?  It was always great fun to see two paunchy guys go nose to nose and belly to belly screaming whatever it was they were screaming with the crowd in full boo, ending with the umpire heaving his fist in the air and the manager out of the game.   

     But, you do have a problem.  How are you going to deal with the guys who cheated you; who cheated us and who stole from the greats of the past?  Those guys who arrogantly thought they were bigger than the game.  They screwed up all of your record books and they did it with no regard to the forefathers they disrespected.   Barry Bonds says that when it comes to the record books and the hall of fame there are no asterisks.   Well that’s fine with me; just keep him and his injected ass-terisk out of both the books and the hall.  And while you’re at it keep the sniveler McGwire and the arrogant Clemens out too.

     There are some fans who aren’t thrilled that you’ve gone back to your old self. They liked the barrage of long range shells, travelling implausible distances, launched by chiseled fakes.  They’re bored by the bunt, the butcher boy, a drawn in outfield and the sac. fly.  My feeling is you should tell those fans that if they’re looking for an exhibition generated by muscle bound fakery there is a “sport” just for them. It’s called the WWE.  

Baseball is a game of memories. I hope those who read this will share some of their memories, either as players or as fans.