Derek Jeter, Three Thousand Hits and a Christian

     Yesterday Derek Jeter got his 3000^th hit which just happened to be a home run.  He was only the second player to achieve that mark with a dinger, the other being Wade Boggs.  When a ballplayer’s milestone hit just happens to be a long tater it creates something of a logistical problem; a problem that leads to anything from an informal negotiation to a court battle.

     There was a time when a fan would settle for a short meet and greet with the player and an autograph or two in exchange for a home run ball.  That sort of behavior is now frowned upon.  Nowadays it’s expected that the fan will enter into hard negotiations with the player, the team or both.  Shockingly (he said with tongue firmly in cheek) a cottage industry has developed around home run balls.  Called ball hawking it is capitalism on steroids, pun intended.  In simple terms the ball hawk snags the ball and then tries to take the player to the cleaners (Yes I know what you’re going to say and I’ll take that up later).

     A few cases in point here.  In 2008, A’s rookie Carlos Gonzalez hit his first major league homer.  A ball hawk named Tom Snyder caught the ball and asked for a jersey and two signed bats.  The A’s rejected the offer saying that uniforms take too long to replace.  So in what I would consider a bizarre bit of negotiating, Snyder asked for $10,000 which the A’s also rejected.  Snyder left with the ball and Gonzalez probably figured his souvenir 1^st home run ball was gone.  Not so, as Snyder traded the ball a week later for a signed photo with Gonzalez (a fair deal he should have taken in the first place).  The “gentleman” who caught Ken Griffey’s 600^th home run ball asked for, as Griffey put it, “a few things that were out of hand.”  The imagination sort of reels over what “out of hand” means.  Griffey never got that ball which eventually sold for $42,000 at an auction. The stories about the McGwire and Bonds “record breaking” home run balls are now legend.  McGwire’s 70^th in the ’98 season sold for $3 million and the Bonds 73^rd single season ball went to court over who actually caught the ball.

     Returning to Jeter’s 3000^th; it was caught by a fellow named Christian Lopez.  According to the folks who are supposed to be experts in the matter, the ball would be worth about $250,000.  As the ball sailed over the fence the Yankee brass were probably opening the safe and pulling out the checkbook.  Lopez was located and asked his price.  Nothing; Lopez wanted nothing.  Well the Yankees weren’t going to accept an outrageous offer like that so they gave Lopez four front-row Legends seats for the remainder of the season, including the playoffs and a gaggle of signed Jeter memorabilia.  In addition he had his photo taken with Jeter and met with Reggie Jackson and other Yankee stars (and I would imagine, got their autographs as well).

     Now, back to that “cleaners” thing.  Yeah, yeah I know, Jeter’s salary will average $16 million dollars over this season and the next two, and the Yankees are one of the richest franchises in sports, so between the two a couple hundred thousand is nothing.

      A quick review of the comments section of any article on Lopez/Jeter says that in the eyes of many of his fellow Americans, Lopez is a bloody fool.  A few choice samples from Yahoo Sports for your reading pleasure:

                “What a fool!!!!! He looks like he eats a lot. Will regret that he didn’t take the money.”

                “Christian did a STUPID thing, nothing admirable about it. His girlfriend should dump him.”

                “The right thing was to get paid so your family will be set....just sayin”

     And here’s one of my favorites, “All you people who talk about morality, integrity, the right thing to do, etc. when it comes to this make me sick. Since when does anybody who catches a ball have a moral obligation to return it?”

     A couple of thoughts.  To be fair, a number of commenters commended Lopez for what he did, citing integrity, moral obligation and honesty.  None of those really apply here.  The ball was not stolen property.  According to Major League Baseball rules, the ball belonged to Lopez free and clear so there was no compelling reason, legal or moral to give the ball to Jeter.   So why did he do it? I would like to think it’s because he’s a good guy.  I also would like to think that I would do pretty much the same thing.  I’ve often posed that same question to myself and my answer has always been that I would probably ask for an autographed ball and an autographed picture of me with the player.  And I think that’s a fair deal.  As a baseball fan those would be some nice mementoes for the mantle.  I seriously could not see myself asking for a horse choking bankroll.  It isn’t in my makeup and apparently it isn’t in Lopez either and if that makes us chumps then fine, we’re chumps. 

     As it worked out, in my opinion anyway, Lopez got a pretty nice little package.  Had he gone into a hardball negotiation session, I doubt that he would have been offered that deal and may have ended up settling for less.  He could also have opted to auction the ball.  As to the comment that Lopez’s girlfriend should dump him, it’s quite likely that the quality that made him give the ball to Jeter is just what she is looking for in a mate.  Maybe she just isn’t in to opportunists.

     This story might also say something about Derek Jeter.  With the possible exception of some Red Sox and Mets fans Jeter is seen as one of the classiest guys in sports.  A milestone hit by A-Rod, or the aforementioned Bonds might not invite the kindness shown by Lopez.

     And so this leads me to a final comment on the whole affair.  In a short time Derek Jeter will retire and when he does it will leave one less in a meager pool of classy athletes who would invite the kind of goodwill shown by Christian Lopez.

    

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.

It Wasn't Their Money

     There was no Fourth of July parade in Hercules this year.  The annual Hercules fireworks display was dark.  A month ago the annual Hercules Multicultural Fair was canceled for the first time in what; twenty years?  The swim center has cut back on hours of operation.  I’m wondering if there will be annual haunted house and Christmas Tree lighting.  These are just the cuts to fun and games.

     There have been some much more serious cuts in our little community.  The number of police officers has been cut from 30 to 26.  The Chief of Police, Fred Deltorchio, a quality fellow who has done a marvelous job and who I’ve chatted with on bike rides and at the local gym has moved up his retirement date.  He’s fed up. Said Deltorchio about the current state of affairs, "I put together a really good team. They are a great group of professionals... who are in it to serve the city.  It's hard for me to go back and undo it."  In April, the city pink slipped 25 employees in what was described as the first round of layoffs that could involve as much as 40 percent of the city’s workforce.

     How did we get here? Sounds just like the typical symptoms of our recent/current global economic meltdown.  But it isn’t quite that way at all. No, this was the handy work of folks who were either knaves or bunglers or bungling knaves.  It’s the story of folks who milked the city coffers dry through a combination of bad planning, their own greed and the greed of others and a total disregard of their fiduciary responsibilities.

     Hercules started out as a company town for an explosives company and by the 1970s had evolved into a bedroom community.  When my family moved to Hercules in 1990 it was still that; a bedroom community with no real downtown, serviced by a couple of malls. The town has grown since we moved in, adding businesses, restaurants and a number of housing developments, some fairly tony. 

     But there had always been bigger plans; maybe plans that were bigger than we needed. The city council spent money wooing Wal-Mart and then when public opposition to the predatory giant was successful it spent more money making it go away.  There were plans for a transit center with a rail station, a ferry terminal and a transit village.  Construction began on a project called Sycamore North, a downtown that would house restaurants and retail.  At this writing, the project consists of unfinished buildings cloaked only in their bare wooden shells, a main street that goes through the project is closed, with traffic detouring through a residential area and the well that waters the whole thing has all but run dry.  It is possible that for the foreseeable future we will have a skeletal downtown.  Another project, a complex of six sports fields went too far beyond the mere contemplation phase.  For two years beginning in 2008 the city shelled out 30,000 dollars a month to a company called Big League Dreams for what was described as“project evaluation” and “conceptualization,” which sounds like a flowery way to say, consulting fees.  In 2010, the city scrapped the whole project. Big League Dreams has refused to refund a 450,000 dollar licensing fee and the city has sunk 2 million dollars into what turned out to be a big league hallucination.  And then there is Market Hall. Market Hall was built on the site of an abandoned Park and Ride on one of the area’s main streets.  It was conceived of as a temporary retail site before yet another project called New Town Center was to be built there; a "placeholder" as the developer called it.  From the start an amateur like me looked at it and said, “Huh?”  Market Hall housed a handful of uninspiring retail shops each about the size of my living room that included a plant store, a clothing outlet and a toy store which sold toys for plenty more than you would pay at the local Target.  There was a stage where local entertainers put on shows before audiences of phantoms, and a bocce ball court.  A bocce ball court?  That’s right, bocce. They might just as well have put in a polo field. Food was provided by food trucks most of which bailed out after a couple of months of desultory trade.  One truck which served Mexican food stuck it out to the bitter end albeit with a spotty schedule.  The only business that gutted out a regular schedule was the coffee house which served excellent coffee, superior to the swill dispensed by the nearby Starbucks and with much better, friendlier service.  From the start, Market Hall looked like a junky little trading post with no hall and very little market.  Now after being open for 11 months it is a closed and deserted, junky little trading post and all that’s missing are the tumbling tumbleweeds, the creaking signs and the jingling of a bridle swinging in the wind that characterize your typical ghost town.  The developer, Red Barn, billed the city for everything from property management at 30,000 dollars per month to trips to Vegas for corporate executives.  The Planning Commission consistently sounded alarms against less than promising projects like these but the klaxons went unheeded.  If projects were food the council's eyes were bigger than their stomachs and much, much bigger than the city's wallet. 

     Amidst all of the big plans for the future everything else seemed to be an unfinished symphony. We have poop bag dispensers along the recreation path that are now nothing more than modern art as the city has ceased to refill them.  A pleasant path through one of the new developments is bereft of poop bag dispensers.  But that doesn’t matter because there are no trash cans to throw the non-existent poop bags into.  The city put up it’s one and only dog park, an attractive yard that I took my dog to once and vowed never to go back to.  Why? Because it has no turf.  In the summer your dog comes home dusty and ready for a bath and after a winter rain the place is a muddy quagmire.  Locals go to the parks in neighboring Pinole.

     Who would do this?  There were the greedy and dishonest.  One of the chief gang members, a city manager named Nelson Oliva was the owner of a company doing a healthy business with the city. To avoid any apparent conflict of interest he “suspended” his activities with his company, NEO and put his then just out of her teens daughter in charge.  Her work experience prior to being a CEO was waiting tables at a local pub (talk about your skyrocketing career path).  This arrangement apparently made it alright for NEO to continue doing business with the city, even benefiting from no bid contracts.  In the meantime, Oliva, while still under contract with Hercules and in apparent violation of that contract, traveled to Lompoc to market a 350,000 dollar deal between NEO and that city.  This is just a taste of Oliva’s slippery dealings.  There was former mayor Ed Balico who’s own company profited from housing developments that the mayor pushed for and voted in favor of.

     There were the gullible like the city council members who approved no bid contracts and expensive projects with little or no discussion or public input. There were the enablers such as the city attorney who turned a blind eye to the entire nefarious goings on.  There were the ass coverers in the city council that gave a new city manager his walking papers ostensibly for insubordination but more likely because he had uncovered and was ready to make public the shady shenanigans of the past. There were those who fed themselves from the public trough like the property manager who allegedly helped himself to 73,000 dollars from a city trust fund but was circumspect enough not to drain it completely dry.  He did after all leave 39 cents.

     Where are the knaves and fools today?  Two council members were recalled in last June’s election.  Balico, with an impending recall petition dangling over his head resigned for “family reasons”.  Oliva no longer works for the city but collected a generous severance package.  The city attorney resigned as well and those remaining council members who never saw a project or met a consultant they didn’t like, failed in their reelection bids.  While there are rumblings of criminal and civil proceeding against these folks they will probably just live with their shame.  They probably shop in neighboring communities these days and no longer frequent the local watering holes.  Instead of a legacy of community service they are loathed by the citizens of that community.  I suppose the various consultants, attorneys, managers and other suits spent their recent Fourth of July weekend sipping umbrella drinks on a cruise ship or gambling in Vegas; all paid for by the generous citizens of Hercules.

     What does all of this have to do with anyone who doesn’t live in Hercules?  Nothing more than the story of Bell, California which was bilked on what can only be described as an artistic level by its “caretakers.”  These are object lessons to everyone whether they live in Bonanza Town, Colorado, population 14, or New York City.  There are people who go into politics for all of the right reasons, do their level best and even make mistakes but in the final analysis take their responsibilities seriously and care about the citizens that elected them.  And then there are those who go into public office with every intention of lining their own pockets or are completely clueless, with no idea of, or concern for, their fiduciary responsibilities.

     I know many people, too many, who characterize themselves as politically inactive; actually taking pride in their apathy.  They look down their noses at politics for its dirtiness and corruption, feeling that they are above it all, not deigning to soil themselves.  I know others who take part only to the point of going to the polls with as much knowledge of the candidates and issues as they have of, oh, astrophysics. In a free country that’s all fine and dandy but it does rather run counter to that whole silly notion of an enlightened electorate. 

     There are those who say, “Oh my vote doesn’t really count.”  To that argument I need only point to the failed reelection bids of incompetent Hercules council members and the subsequent recall of two other scoundrels.  In these elections the votes counted loudly and without those vociferous votes we might still be stuck with the crooked and the clueless.

     Every year I pay property taxes and about 1100 dollars of that goes to Hercules.  This doesn’t include any other fees and taxes that I pay throughout the year.  I’m giving a fair chunk of hard earned coin of the realm to a bunch of strangers and trusting that they are going to take good care of it.  Taxes and fees are something we are all compelled to pay.  It doesn’t have anything to do with parties or ideologies. If you gave 10 Benjamins to someone to spend on your behalf I’m pretty sure you would make certain it was spent with your best interests in mind or at the very least not spent on a cockeyed scheme that was approved with nothing more than a casual wave of the hand.  As my wife put it, “It wasn’t their money.” I understand that when it comes to national and state budgets it is difficult to figure out just what is going on in such a massive money pot. But at the local level with smaller budgets and more visible projects it is easier to spot the accounting sleight of hand.

     One of the casualties of our internet, gotta have the information now society, is journalism.  There is a dearth of true investigative journalism, the kind of work that exposed a sitting President, Richard Nixon, as a blackguard and common criminal.  Investigative journalism isn’t cost effective these days.  It takes time to follow the trails and develop the story, and newspapers with dwindling circulations and ad revenues find themselves with little patience for a long story to pan out.  And so with a fourth estate that has to compete with sensationalism, dumbing down, raging ideologies and stories that are hustled to the public because speed counts over vetting, who is left to protect our interests?  The answer is in your mirror.

The Fourth of July

     “The second day of July 1776, will be the most memorable epocha in the history of America.  I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.  It ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion, to God Almighty.  It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore.”

     With this letter to his wife Abigail, John Adams captured the spirit of Independence Day celebrations yet to come.  And while Adams prophesied the tenor of future celebrations he missed the party by two days.  The second was indeed a day for celebration as, on that date, independence was declared by the Continental Congress.  On the fourth, the day we chose to celebrate, Congress voted to put the deed in writing, approving The Declaration of Independence, written for the most part as we all know (or should know) by Thomas Jefferson with some editing by some of his Congressional colleagues.

     Whatever the day, Adams got it right regarding the celebration.  It has traditionally become a day of parades, baseball games, band concerts of patriotic music, barbecues and fireworks, from small family displays to the big display in our nation’s capital.

     During my suburban youth, anticipation of the Fourth began around the middle of June. It was about that time that we would start to see the wooden fireworks booths show up on the El Camino Real, the main thoroughfare that ran North and South through the San Francisco Peninsula. The booths started as bare wooden shells but were soon decorated with red, white and blue signs, bunting and that familiar Red Devil logo.

     Going to the fireworks stand was right up there with getting the Halloween costume or buying the family Christmas tree. It put the official seal on an upcoming holiday. The Red Devil booth always had a chicken wire screen across the front opening which we peered through to browse the various assortments.  Assortments went by names us kids soon became familiar with. There were the Old Glory and Pirate packs; smallish boxes that didn’t warrant a second glance. Kids would pray that dad wouldn’t be so cheap as to buy one of those pitiful assortments.  One of those mini assortments meant certain neighborhood mortification for a kid.  We went straight for the huge Big Timer and Block Party assortments; dreams that went unfulfilled because the old man realized that this was an investment that would literally go up in smoke and he wasn't going to pony up 60 dollars.  Dad usually settled for one of the mid-sized assortments like the Colorama or Oriental Dragon.  If he was feeling particularly patriotic (read: had a few spare bucks) he might buy a couple extra giant fountain cones from the “a la carte” menu. Purchase made, we brought it home for dad to stash away until the Fourth.

    As June turned to July we were reminded of the impending big day by the increasing pops of firecrackers and detonations of M-80s. When we got older we were allowed to have firecrackers.  They were quite illegal but some dad in the neighborhood usually came up with a few packs.  Sometimes an older kid in the neighborhood, usually one of the “toughs” who smoked in the back fields, would sell us some of the pyrotechnic contraband. We imagined that our firecracker connections got their goods from some gang members in a dark Chinatown alley.  Friends and I would collect rotten apples from under my family’s tree, hollow out a hole with a nail, stuff in a firecracker, light it and toss the fruit grenade over the back fence.

     On the afternoon of the big day, parents started to ration out some of the goodies from the fireworks boxes. We were given the little boxes of Black Snakes, small black tablets that when ignited emitted a coil of ash that resembled a black crepe worm.  Afternoon turned to evening and dad would start the barbecue. After dinner as the skies darkened we would use the coals in the barbecue to light some sparklers as the next preliminary to the big show.

     Darkness fell, families gathered on their driveways and the show began. We sorted through the assortment because it was important to the success of a display to set off the fireworks in just the right order, leaving the biggest cones for our grand finale. Dad would be sure to heed the warning printed on the side of each firework: Warning: Emits a shower of sparks. Set on level surface. Light fuse and get away. Do not hold in hand.  Do not hold in hand; we marveled that anyone would be stupid enough to actually hold those things while it was in its showering glory.  A kid’s rite of passage was to earn the privilege of being the one to “light fuse and get away.” We covered our ears for the shrieking Piccolo Pete and Calliope Vesuvius and ooohed and aahhhed at cones called Silver Flower Fountain, Super Jumbo Cone and Yankee Doodle Salute.  At evening’s end Dad would gather the corpses of dead fireworks into the center of the driveway give them a quick spray with the garden hose and leave them to be picked up the next morning.  We never did go see the big fireworks display in San Francisco which often, almost as if by tradition, would be hidden by the famous fog bank. To this day I’ve still never seen the San Francisco display.

     Since my youth my observance of the Fourth has changed. I’ve taken in some July 4^th ball games, watching either the A’s or the Giants. One year my wife and I spent the Fourth in the Sierra back country where we pitched our tent near a mountain lake that we had all to ourselves. During  a brief stint of Civil War reenacting I marched in the Redwood City Fourth of July parade and a year later spent the long weekend at Gettysburg, taking part in the reenactment of the great battle.

     The “safe and sane” fireworks have long disappeared, having been outlawed in nearly every Bay Area community.  After getting married and having kids, we moved to the East Bay and every Fourth we brought the children to see one of the local community displays over San Pablo Bay. As the kids got older we focused less on the fireworks and more on barbecue, inviting friends and family over for ribs, links, cornbread and salads.

     Nowadays, I still tend the barbecue and my wife makes the salads.  After everyone has had their fill of ribs and chicken, and darkness falls my children will bring their their children to watch the fireworks. My son's wife is a nurse now and there will be times when her patriotic observance will be duty at the VA Hospital; and you know there might not be a better gig on the Fourth of July than taking care of our veterans. My son-in-law is a firefighter and his Fourth will often be observed by pulling duty and possibly tending to some knot head who contrary to the instructions didn't get away after lighting fuse or held a Yankee Doodle Salute in his hand. 

     I still enjoy the Fourth of July. I enjoy it because it’s a time for family and friends. It’s a chance to see the excitement of my children's young families and their anticipation of the big booms and bright cascading showers.  Our nation has made more than it's share of mistakes.  It is after all made up of fallible people who through either good intentions or bad sometimes lead us down the wrong path.  But it is a nation that was founded on a unique ideal and it has tried to live up to those ideals and in very many instances has succeeded.  And so I also enjoy the Fourth because it’s a good day to just reflect on our country being a pretty doggone good place to be.

Waste not...

     The Travel Channel has a new show called, Man Versus Food Nation. It’s a spin off of Man Versus Food in which a fellow named Adam Richman would tour the country taking on “food challenges.” Richman’s challenges included eating gargantuan plates of food or dishes so spicy they cause tears, profuse sweating, a seared palate, and the delayed vengeance of “what goes in must come out”, proving beyond all doubt that foolish behavior carries its own rewards.

      In the original, Richman took on the challenges himself. In the new version he recruits his fans to….well, I simply couldn’t do justice to the show by describing it myself, so from the program’s website; After 3 years of eating his way across America, Adam’s heard the Man v. Food Nation …they want a piece of the action. Now, Adam is recruiting local talent to take on their beloved hometown challenges. As Adam samples the local flavor of every location he visits, he'll look for fans to walk in his shoes. Richman has apparently retired his fork and hung up the bib to become coach, mentor and cheerleader.  So the basic premise of the show is that Coach Richman travels the country to instruct other culinary jocks in the nuances of eating anything from a 5 pound Stromboli to a 12 pound hamburger. This is truly bringing sport to the masses; something akin to Tom Brady teaching a Southie to throw a tight spiral or Tim Lincecum schooling a bleacher bum on the finer points of the cut fastball. 

     And why would someone want to try to eat a pizza the size of a dining table? The Man Versus Food Nation website poses just that kind of insightful question; “Is it for the glory? Is it for the honor?  It’s for neither, the website says; Adam and his Man v. Food Nation are doing it for the love of the game, as they work together to defeat these edible "beasts" and celebrate the community that created them.”  I suppose this is proof that alcohol, vanity and the hunger (no pun intended) for that 15 minutes of fame have absolutely nothing to do with it. This is not only a celebration of sport and community; it’s democracy in action showing the world that in this great land of opportunity, just as anyone can be President of the United States, even the little guy can achieve gluttonous greatness. Why this is enough to stir the soul, bring a tear to the eye and make you want to salute the flag. It’s as American as baseball and mom’s apple pie (a 10 pound pie that you have to finish it in 45 minutes and you can’t get up from the table during the challenge).
     In a recent episode this guru of gorging visited Albuquerque, New Mexico to mentor three “warriors” named Travis in the fine art of eating a dish called Travis on a Silver Platter; an 8 pound burrito hidden under a mountain of French fries. No, no, no; they didn’t team up to eat one Travis. Each Travis got a Travis of his own, which he had to finish in an hour or less.  The Travises battle bravely but in the end they sat before their platters of leftover beans, tortilla, fixins and fries in stuffed, subdued defeat. One Travis finished about three pounds of burrito, another about 4 pounds and the third Travis had barely scratched the surface of fries. All told about 15 pounds of spuds and burrito looked to be destined for the dumpster.

     Of course gastronomic excess has always been available to the masses. Mere mortals have only to go to the local strip mall and visit the all you can eat buffet, where for the price of a double sawbuck you can take multiple trips to the warming table and load your plate with heaps of soggy fried chicken, leathery beef, squishy fish sticks, Salisbury steak in brown goo and various kinds of mass produced starches. Posted signs admonish patrons to take only what they can eat but invariably the eyes become bigger than the stomach and those five buttermilk biscuits in sausage gravy that looked so manageable and yummy at the warming station suddenly start to look a bit overwhelming after the half dozen chicken legs and the mound of grayish, green bean casserole have settled into the belly. A sigh of satisfaction, lay down the napkin, lean back and let the busboy scrape a plate of barely touched food into the trash.
     And so because every story, good or bad deserves a moral, equally good or bad, we come to one here. It’s a moral that has nothing to do with clogged arteries, adipose tissue or consuming calories that reach into the 5 digit range. Hey if you can eat that 48 ounce porterhouse with a stuffed potato, order up. Back in the day, when my metabolism raged out of control many was the Friday evening when I sat in front of an extra-large pizza and a pitcher of beer, shared nary a solitary slice or a single drop and left a clean platter and an empty vessel.  And it isn’t a moral about badly cooked food or food so drenched in hot sauce that it’s just this side of toxic. Not everyone is impressed by cassoulet or a Michelin star. That’s why Papa John sells lots of pies and Applebee’s has lines out the door.
     This moral is about a patent disrespect for a basic necessity of life; food.  And it isn’t just disrespect for that necessity but disrespect for those who lack that necessity.
     When you face off against the 12 egg omelet and three pounds of hash browns challenge the odds are that a half a dozen of those eggs and a fair amount of taters will end up in the trash while you find yourself huddled in a corner of the bathroom vanquished by breakfast, hurling your meal and dreaming of that photo on the tavern wall that could have been. I wonder how much food winds up in the dumpster or down the toilet all to satisfy some misguided quest for entertainment. Oh I know, there are those who’ll dredge up that wise guy response we all made to our mothers at one time or another when she told us of the “starving kids in India.” “Well box it up and send it to them COD.” But doesn’t this go beyond just the wasted food?
     There was a time when overeating was something people did at a wedding reception or in a moment of weakness to “cure” a bout of depression. Gluttony has somehow managed to become not only an entertainment fad but a distorted sporting event. Don’t believe me? Just tune in ESPN on July 4^th to catch the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest. That’s right, ESPN the self-proclaimed worldwide leader in sports will feature Joey Chestnut going down on a bunch of wieners (and to think I once considered log rolling contests on Wide World of Sports to be phony sport). Through the medium of television, binging has gained popularity, acceptance and a sort of whacked out culinary cult following which undoubtedly has encouraged restaurant owners everywhere to invent their own contests; challenging all comers to eat some gut busting or tongue scorching meal. And why not? Someone has to be a bit of a fool to choke down a dozen nuclear wings and we all know the old saying about what happens to a fool and his money. And the fool usually brings along an entourage of fellow fools to watch. And so, while Mr. Restaurateur might be on the hook for a free meal on those rare occasions when someone actually beats the challenge, he’s already made a bank roll on the posse’s bar bill. When it comes down to a choice between the morality of wasting food or having a few more bucks in the till at the end of the night, money, to  borrow from Bob Dylan, “doesn’t talk, it swears.”
     Sure some of you are taking me to task right now, for being a spoilsport, a stodgy old fogy, pooping the eating party. Why should I get my moral back up you ask? Well because this is my blog and I can, but the more important reason is because of the way I was raised. I’m one generation removed from folks who at some time in their lives found food hard to come by. My father lived through the Great Depression and while his family managed to put food on the table it was a valuable commodity, its scarcity was frightening and it wasn’t wasted. My mother lived in Italy during World War II, a place and time in which bread was worth its weight in gold. My parents never forgot how precious food could be and so when I was a child at the dinner table what we put on our plates ended up in our bellies. The “clean your plate” lecture I got didn’t come with a story of some faceless hungry waif in a land I'd never heard of. It came with real life stories from parents who lived with the real possibility of going hungry. And so I dutifully cleaned my plate every night. Leftovers were served the next day for lunch or combined to make a stew. That little fistful of pasta at the bottom of the bowl became part of a delicious frittata the next morning. I recall a visit to my family in Italy. We had just finished a steak dinner and as I pushed away my plate I was scolded for wasting food. For the life of me I couldn’t figure out what was waste until I noticed a few scraps of meat on the bone. Chastened, I retrieved my plate and cleaned the bone. Extreme? Maybe, but these were people who had learned the value of food the hard way. The lessons have remained with me. You know that heel at the end of a loaf of bread that usually ends up in the trash or as food for the pigeons? It’s perfectly good toasted and served with a layer of Nutella. I'm not too proud to pick up that chop bone and gnaw off the last threads of meat. When I have to throw away food that’s gone bad I do so with a measure of shame.
     America truly is a country of plenty and we plenty take it all for granted. We are a nation of shameless wasters. In 2008, The New York Times reported that Americans threw away 27 percent of the food available for consumption. That waste amounted to 30 million tons per year or 12 percent of the total waste stream. It’s only gotten worse as the total waste in 2011 as reported by the EPA was 34 million tons, or 14 percent of the total waste stream.
     The question is often asked, “Why do they hate us?” When we say they; “they” usually refers to folks from other, often impoverished, countries. The jingoistic, often angry and defensive response to the question is that they are jealous.  Maybe they aren’t jealous but angry and insulted that we take our riches for granted; because they have to work many hard, back breaking, spirit crushing hours to put scraps on the family table. They live with the sword of hunger dangling over their heads. Often what they have for a pantry is a dumpster or the local landfill which we cavalierly fill with mountains of wasted food. What they live in constant, nagging fear of not having enough of, we use as an entertainment prop or as equipment for a phony sport.
     My maternal grandmother who lived through two world wars and knew intimately the want of food used to always say, “It’s a sin to waste God’s food.” I’m not sure if the greater sin is actually wasting the food or having such a cavalier attitude towards something that people die, even in our own country, for the want of.

Welcome

This blog is this baby boomer’s view of America; its culture, politics, society, as an American Dream, as a concept and an ideal. It is life in America; the lives of others and of course, my own experience during my nearly six decades and the myriad changes I’ve witnessed and been a part of.  It is news, commentary, interviews, a lot of vignettes, my own personal discoveries and changes and well, whatever else I might come up with.

This has been my land for going on 58 years. At some point, probably around the 10^th year I cajoled my parents into buying a Time-Life History of the United States. I don’t think that I actually read more than 50 pages in all of those volumes but I was captivated by the pictures, drawings, political cartoons, maps and photographs chronicling our history. Those books, unread, stimulated a fascination with American History and lead to many books read and finally a degree in History from Santa Clara University.

                The goal at the time was to teach history but shortly after graduating I got myself sidetracked. Thirty seven years later I’m a purchasing agent. Get a history degree, be a purchasing agent; the logical career path, right? My interest in history never waned and so I’ve continued to read, study on my own and take the occasional college course with the notion of getting a masters.

                Some years back I took a short plunge into living history, joined the National Civil War Association and became a Civil War reenactor; Company A, 2^nd Massachusetts Cavalry, also known as the California 100. During my “service” with the cavalry I never once got on a horse. While I think they’re beautiful animals I’m deathly afraid of them after having, years before, taken a fall at the end of an uncontrolled gallop. I joined the cavalry because I thought the uniforms looked cool and that alone is probably the most realistic aspect of my living history stint. How many young men in the vast histories of every nation, tribe or group joined some form of the military because the uniforms looked cool? During that period I was actually able to try my hand at teaching history both in the field, to visitors at the reenactments and in schools where I went in full gear to give talks about the Civil War. It was a time in which I immersed myself in the Civil War, some of it often splashing on my family who after a very short time got sick and tired of it all. After a few years I “retired” from the cavalry but like many old “soldiers” I still have my uniform which I occasionally trot out to regale (bore) some unfortunate visitor.

                Upon my return to civilian life my interest turned to other aspects of America (I mean how many books can you actually read about Pickett’s Charge before you’ve exhausted all the possibilities).  And so in the last few years I’ve taken on religion in America, politics, some economics (although I’m flummoxed by it), culture, society and the mystique called the American Dream.

                I continue to be engaged by the story of America, its history, people, culture, society, as a concept, and as a place that people yearn to immigrate to as my mother did when she was an Italian war bride and my wife and her family who came from the Philippines.  But make no mistake, this boomer’s view is not a jingoist view.  I don’t subscribe to “my country right or wrong” because while my country has often been right, it’s also too often been wrong.

                So I guess the next logical step is a blog. It’s been in the works for over a year now, has gone through various versions in my head and in the computer, been stalled and put on the back burner. Maybe fate intervened when I broke my leg and grounded me with a choice of writing or watching endless hours of cooking shows on television. Since I can only stomach about 5 minutes of Guy Fieri here I sit at the computer.

                I was raised in San Mateo, California, just south of San Francisco and have lived all my life in the Bay Area. I live with my wife of thirty years in the East Bay. We raised a son and daughter; got them through college and now they have families of their own. My son a marketing analyst and his wife a nurse live with their daughter in the shadow of my and my son’s alma mater. My daughter, married to a fire fighter lives a short 15 minutes away and takes care of her two babies while preparing to be a teacher.

                This post serves merely as an introduction to me and to this project.  I invite comments, the stories of others and discussion.  America is, in theory at least, the land of free speech. To that end I invite opposing points of view. I do ask that those with opposing views keep them clean and polite. As the gate keeper, so to speak, I do reserve the right to delete any posts or comments that are objectionable or simply hate filled bile. I hope all readers will enjoy.

   And by the way, I still have that set of Time-Life books. Maybe it will inspire my grandchildren.