DON'T TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME

Baseball isn't baseball anymore

It's that time of year again. Major League Baseball is in full swing. As for me, I think I'll just bunt.

Each spring a bit of that baseball spirit tries its damnedest to move me, for old time's sake. But it doesn't provide much more than a nudge.

I'm residing now in Lakeland, Florida....Winter Home of the Detroit Tigers!  Yet I didn't make it out to a spring game.
 
Baseball just isn't what it used to be.   For me, "used to be" was back in the late 1950's into the early 60's.

My father was a huge baseball fan. He devoured the box scores when the morning edition of the Des Moines Register arrived with it's trademark orange-tinted sports section.
 
My brother, Donnie, followed Dad's lead. He ate and drank baseball. He collected baseball trading cards and he slept in his baseball cap. He still owns a baseball that was given to him by an Iowa neighbor and was signed by Babe Ruth.

Donnie joined Little League as soon as he was old enough, back in the days when contests were played in late morning or early afternoon and there weren't a lot of vicious parents around to threaten the ump or ruin the game for the kids.

As we grew older, Donnie moved on to Pony League, then played American Legion baseball and as a young adult was pitcher for the Town Team in Fullerton, Nebraska. I always felt he had the talent to stay the course and eventually head for the big leagues.

Whether or not he had the desire has been left unanswered. During a Town Team game, a hard line drive shattered his pitching hand and retired him from the lineup. He didn't play ball after that.

My brother worshiped the Chicago White Sox. Dad's team was the Milwaukee Braves. When the franchise headed to Atlanta, Dad's heart went with it.

Some of that fanaticism was bound to rub off on the rest of the family.

Mom even grew to enjoy baseball and she got in the habit of listening to the local radio sportscast in the morning and writing down the scores of the previous night's games so when Dad came to the kitchen table for his coffee he could cop a fast glance at the outcomes of the late games that didn't make the newspaper deadline.

After Dad passed away, Mom continued to watch the Braves' games.

I never had the ability or the zeal to play organized baseball. But I always took part in the neighborhood sandlot games and loved it.

I knew by heart the batting lineups for the Braves, the White Sox, and the Minnesota Twins. That was in the days when the Twins was a young upstart team that was heir to the old Washington Senators club and had a power hitter named Harmon Killebrew and Jim Kaat was their pitcher. I remember when Kaat had his front teeth knocked out by a line drive.

Today, the only Major League names I recognize are the ones who have come under suspicion of taking steroids. Or those who just signed a multi-million dollar contract.

That's another thing, or maybe the biggest thing, that turns me away from baseball these days. The money. Not even so much the money, actually, as the greed that displaces the game itself.

In 1959, Warren Spahn was making something like $9,000 a year to pitch for Milwaukee. My dad was making more than that managing a fertilizer supply company in Emmetsburg, Iowa.

People like Spahn and Mantle and Drysdale and Aaron were every bit the household names that A-rod or Cabrera or Greinke is today. And they were known the country over without the benefit of cable TV or sports bars with satellite dishes that grab the signals from ESPN and ESPN2-222.

Those old guys just didn't make the deals that this generation's ball players are putting the ink to.  But oh, how those fellas loved the game. They took what was offered and they played their hearts out.

For me, today's MLB has no grit, none of the glory of yesteryear. If you want to talk real baseball, you have to look up guys like Alan Brown, a friend of our family back in Nebraska. We call him Brownie and he used to play on the Oakland A's farm team with guys like Reggie Jackson and Gene Tennace.

Then there was a bartender over in Fullerton. His name was Bags Umstead and he played a lot of ball in his younger years and could instantly tick off just about any name and statistic relevant to baseball. Sporting a few drinks under his belt, he would show up on Sunday evenings for a Town Team game, just to offer his support.

Bags has been gone a long time now but if you hang around the home team dugout at Fullerton's baseball diamond on a breezy spring evening, you just might hear his normally quiet voice break into a rather inebriated bark: "C'mon, you guys! Look alive in there!"

Those were the days when love of the game was woven into the American fabric. That was when the voices of baseball were Dizzy Dean and PeeWee Reese and the still reliable Vin Scully. That's when it was a game.

It's just not like that anymore. Baseball is still referred to as America's Past time. But for true baseball fans, the emphasis is on that word "past".


Copyright by Wendel Potter

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A Mother's Song

 by Wendel Potter

I'm 60 years old and down through the years I've been particularly close to two mothers.  One was my own mother.  The other is my wife, the mother of my children.

I've observed them both in action in the role of motherhood.  Their maternal styles differed as much as a lullaby and a dirge.

My wife was born to be a mother.  She is that first and foremost.

Motherhood is not a state.  It is an art form.  My wife is a damn fine artist.

When I look at my two sons I see their mother.  They share a triune soul. 

She lives for them.  Wherever they go in life, they carry her spirit and it is reflected in whatever they do.  

When I am proud of my sons, I am proud of their mother as well.

While "I love yous" are encouraged and often heard around our house, the love my wife has for our sons is evident even when unspoken.

Unspoken was generally the case where my mother's love for her children was concerned.  She was the product of a hardscrabble Irish-American farm culture.  Even soft-spoken displays of affection were not customary in her family.

It's no stunning admission when I say that I don't recall my mother ever telling me, "I love you." 

I'm sure she must have said it at some point when I was very young.  And I'm sure I told her the same, as children do.

I know there were times when she was pleased by my actions.  For instance,  when I was a small boy and we lived in Iowa, I would hike down the railroad tracks and stop along the way to pick cattails from a swamp.

I would return home with those cattails (really nothing more than butt-ugly weeds) and present them to my mother as though they were roses. She would always put them in a purple glass vase and set the horrible arrangement on the dining room table.

She was pleased that her little boy had picked for her what he saw as a bouquet of flowers.  She was proud enough to display the damn things for the whole family to see at dinner.

That was how she loved.

She cheered her children on in her heart and we were in her prayers, but she had a difficult time putting praise and encouragement into words that we would have cherished hearing.  She sang us a love song without music, with no lyrics.

That was Mom's style.  It was the only way she knew how to sing the song.

My sons are more fortunate than they might realize.  While they honor their mom on Mother's Day, she celebrates every day of the year as Sons' Day.

She can't help being a mother.  It's who and what she is. 

Her love song has words and music, melody and phrasing, and she sings it with perfect pitch. Our sons will always hear her tune.




**Copyright 2013 Wendel Potter**

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Resurrected Memories

 

 

Random Thoughts on Easter

by Wendel Potter

There is a weird irony about Easter.

Easter Sunday is one of the most devoutly observed high holy days in the history of organized religion. It is a solemn celebration of the glorious return from the dead of Jesus, who has been proclaimed as the one, true King of the Jews.
 
And how do Christians honor the greatest Jew of all time? We serve ham. 

We lay out an elaborate feast and if Jesus was to join us, he couldn't eat the meat.
 
I like Easter. When I was very small, Easter meant getting up early and searching for my Easter basket that had been filled with chocolate eggs and jelly beans and then skillfully hidden by my parents, under the pretense that the Easter Bunny had stopped by.

When I became old enough to go to church and began hearing the true Easter story, I just figured that the reason Jesus got up and out of the tomb early in the morning was so he could go hunting for his Easter basket.

Easter was always more than just a religious observance, though. It fired the starting gun for the spring/summer fashion season.

When I was growing up, everyone trotted out their best "Sunday go to meeting" finery on Easter. The church service, admit it or not, was nearly as much a festival of big fancy hats and a parade of new bright dresses as it was a worship session.

That was the women. Where men were concerned, Easter meant it was time to put away the dingy charcoal gray suit and sport a new blazer and lighter colored slacks.

Then, when the early 1970s rolled around, leisure suits made their grand entrance, along with spiffy white dress shoes. "White bucks" they called them in the 1950s when Pat Boone made them his trademark all year round. Mercifully, their rebirth re-died after a few years, along with the leisure suit.  And there has been no resurrection since.

But the crown jewel in the Easter basket is the Resurrection story. While the colored eggs, a mythical bunny (I'm pretty sure I saw him sneaking out of my neighbor's house last night....he wasn't home, but she was), marshmallow chicks and white bucks have figured heavily into the holiday over the years, the biblical account of a man rising from the dead 2,000 years ago remains the bottom line for celebrating Easter Sunday.

I've been pondering the Resurrection of Jesus. If you read the New Testament's four gospels closely, you'll notice they each tell an Easter Sunday story all a bit differently, one from the other. 

The conflicts are slight:Who saw Jesus first? How many women went to the tomb? What time of morning was it? How many angels appeared at the tomb? What exactly did the women go to the tomb for? Were the women wearing their new spring hats?

Some historians say that the Gospel of Mark originally had no resurrection story, abruptly ending after the crucifixion, and that the final chapters were added by a different writer.

The apostle Thomas got the worst rap. We've all come to know him traditionally as Doubting Thomas, because he insisted he would not believe in the risen Lord until he had seen him and touched his wounds.

But no one else appeared to believe, either, until they themselves had seen Jesus. None of them really seemed to think he was coming back. As a matter of fact, in one gospel, Jesus chides all eleven, not just Thomas, for their lack of belief.

Of course, Thomas was disdained for other reasons. He was the only apostle to wear white bucks and a leisure tunic before Passover.

Now what if there had been no Resurrection story in any of the gospels? I'm not suggesting that there was no Resurrection, just wondering how we would react if Jesus had not bothered to appear in risen splendor to anyone?

Would any of his followers have still concluded that he had risen? Would we today just naturally assume that Jesus had come out of the tomb and ascended into heaven, even though no one could lay claim to having seen him?

He said during his life that he would rise again on the third day. For a true believer, shouldn't that have been enough? He said, "Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe."

The Easter story is one of the greatest stories ever told. But how great would our faith be if that story had not been told? If we still believed, it would be great indeed.

Just food for thought. Now pass the ham.


Copyright 2013 by Wendel Potter

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UP IN SMOKE

Houston, we've got a problem...and a pope

by Wendel Potter
reporting live from the Vatican
March 13, 2013


The voting process to elect a pope to lead the Roman Catholic Church turned to tragedy this morning for the sequestered conclave of cardinals who had just completed a third round of balloting.

It is a tradition of the church that, after the ballots have been counted, they are burned in a stove. When the faithful watching the chimney in St. Peter's square see dark smoke rise through the chimney atop the Sistine Chapel, they know that a pope has not yet been selected. White smoke means that a new pope has been elected and a formal announcement is imminent.

Today, as the ballots burned, no smoke of any color was seen. Italian fire marshals later determined that an obstruction in the flue prevented the smoke from venting, resulting in carbon monoxide poisoning that left 114 of the conclave's 115 cardinals dead.

Only one cardinal survived the mass tragedy, which means that he will be named Pope by default. I caught up with him at the emergency center of Gemelli hospital where he was treated and released.

His name is Cardinal Guido Sarducci, known better to American television audiences as Father Guido Sarducci, the priest who regularly appeared in the 1970's on the NBC-TV hit series, "Saturday Night Live".

Cardinal Sarducci looked pale and shaken as he stood in the hospital's rear parking lot, leaning against an ambulance and smoking his trademark cigarette.

"Cardinal Sarducci, can you tell me what happened on this tragic morning in the Vatican?"

"Well, we had been sequestered since yesterday, shut off from the outside world. They even installed electronic jamming devices in the floor so nobody could call out on their cell phones and leak any information to the media.

"It was driving me crazy. I mean, I have been the Vatican's gossip columnist for a number of years and calling in a hot story is part of my life. The other cardinals had their own issues as well. Some of them needed to call their bookies, others their lawyers. For whatever reason, I don't know.

"We decided enough is enough, let's get the show on the road and get us a pope before lunch."

"So you cast your third round of ballots first thing this morning," I said.

"First we celebrated the Mass. "

"Then you got on with the voting."

"No. Then we had coffee and doughnuts."

"Then you voted."

"We kicked a few names around, then narrowed it down to three candidates."

"How did you decide who were the best candidates for the papacy?"

"We do it this way." Cardinal Sarducci pointed a dancing finger back and forth. 'Mother-Mary-told me-to-pick-the-very-best-one'."

"That's a rather unorthodox method. So you narrow it down to three cardinals who hope to become the next pope."

"Popefuls, we like to call them. Yes, then we cast our ballots and the contestant with the 2/3 majority of the votes wins the beanie and the big ring."

"So this morning you voted. Then the ballots were put into the stove and burned. Then what happened that led to this awful event leaving 114 cardinals dead?"

"While the ballots were burning in the stove, I began to feel a little light-headed, so I asked if I could step outside for some air. Nobody answered, so I figured it was okay. I went outdoors, got some air, had a cigarette. It was only when I returned that I noticed something might be wrong."

"What did you find when you returned to the conclave?"

"All of my colleagues were stretched out on the floor, face down. I felt terrible. I immediately thought I was late for worship service.

"Eventually, I realized that the cardinals were dead."

"So you called the police or the paramedics or what did you do?"

"I called no one. Remember, we were forbidden to use our cell phones. Anyway, I began feeling sick again, so I went back outside and alerted one of the Swiss guardsmen by throwing up on his shoes."

"And he called for help?"

"Later on. He's not allowed to move until after the changing of the guard."

"I understand that the authorities think the stove's flue was obstructed."

"Yes. It seems a large white dove with a golden halo had built a nest over the smoke stack."

"With the other cardinals dead, this means that you will become the next pope. How do you feel about that?"

"I like the Popemobile. I can't wait to get it out on the road and see what she'll do."

"What name will you choose. Will you be John Paul III?"

"No. No more John Paul. I'm going with Pope George Ringo."

"My condolences on the loss of your colleagues and best of luck in your papacy."

"Bless you."

There we have it. A new pope. Pope George Ringo I. And the Holy Father told me his first order of business is to return to "Saturday Night Live" where he will ceremoniously rip up a picture of Sinead O'Connor.

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Copyright Wendel Potter

Unfair...unbalanced...inaccurate

Rit Dye and the Wearin' of the Green

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Our youngest son was born on March 17, 1987.  Our baby has grown up. I don't know where the time has gone.

I remember it was raining that morning when we checked into the hospital at seven o'clock. It poured most of the day. But by 4:30 that afternoon it was raining God's good graces. We had a baby boy.

Our intention was to name him Zachary James. When we laid eyes on him, however, he just didn't look like a Zachary at all.

Since it was St. Patrick's Day, we changed course and went for the Irish. Ryan was a name my wife was fond of, and I recalled that my Grandpa Mullen's mother's name had been Mary Ryan. It seemed like a logical choice.

For Ryan's middle name, our doctor humbly suggested Patrick -- it was his middle name -- and of course, it fit the Irish holiday theme. So Ryan Patrick it was.

St. Patrick's Day conjures up a lot of great memories for this dyed-in-the-wool Irish Catholic. Although, dyed-in-the-kettle might be more accurate.

When I was a first-grader in Catholic school back in the predominantly Irish town of Emmetsburg, Iowa, I had the distinction of being chosen to play the lead in our parish's annual St. Patrick's Day pageant. I was to portray an Irish country lad named Paddy Padraic.

I'm not sure if Sister Mary Ann Dolores picked me for the role because of my acting ability (my resume was blank up to that point -- I was only 7 years old); or perhaps it had something to do with my flute playing.

Let me explain that one. Every one in our class that year had bought little flutes fashioned with an aluminum tube and plastic bell and mouthpiece. They were called flagolets, as in "fladge-o-lets."

Lack of musical talent aside, I was probably in trouble right from the beginning because I mispronounced "flagolets." The day the flagolets arrived, we all excitedly began trying to play them. I said to the nun, "Sister, listen to our flatulence!'

One of the songs in the accompanying songbook was called "The Wearin' of the Green," so Sister chose that one for the pageant because the lyrics spoke of an Irishman named Paddy, so it fit nicely with the script. Some of the children were picked to play the song on their flagolets, others were picked to sing in the chorus. I was given an acting role. Hmmm.

In keeping with the St. Patrick's Day theme, Sister wanted me to wear a green shirt. She sent a note home to my mother.

Now Mom wasn't the type to run right out and buy her son a brand new shirt in March. Mom bought our clothes once a year, in August, when the stores offered back-to-school specials.

So she went through the shirts in my closet and came across a long-sleeved dress shirt that was pink (I believe it was a hand-me-down, probably from my sister). Then she went to the store and bought a package of green Rit dye. (Apparently they were running a March special on Rit dye).

I can still see my mother dunking that pink shirt into a kettle of dye until, like magic, it turned a lovely shade of shamrock green. Which was just fine with me because I never was comfortable wearing a pink shirt to school. I felt like a member of that girl gang from "Grease."

Well, the pageant came off without a hitch. I was one proud Irishman standing on the stage in the church basement in front of all the parishioners and wearin' my green. And Sister Mary Ann Dolores was so happy. She didn't have to listen to my singing or my flatulence.

So as the Irish blessing goes, may the road rise up to meet you, may the wind be always at your back, and may God hold you in the palm of His hand...just pray that he doesn't squeeze.  

Happy St. Patrick's Day.

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Musical Memories Evolved From Monkees

 

(I wrote this column several years ago and thought I'd re-run in light of the passing of Monkees member Davy Jones.) 

 
I'm going to let you in on a secret. I had to work up my courage to put this in print. I am a Monkees fan.

Several years ago, one of my treasured Father's Day gifts was a Monkees' greatest hits CD. I asked and I received. The Bible was right…for a change.

Now, I'm as willing as anybody to admit that The Monkees was not a group that ranked especially high on the list of all-time great technical musicians, and that in the beginning they were merely four guys thrown together in 1966 for the sole purpose of creating a silly television comedy series, with the bottom line being, of course, to make money.

The newly invented pop band/TV stars did their job much better than anticipated.  In the ensuing years, their TV show not only harvested high ratings, but The Monkees sold millions of albums and endeared themselves to a generation of bubble-gummers.

This all started back when I was about 14 years old and could chew bubble gum without pulling out any crowns.

Listening to Monkees music today sparks some fine memories. Mostly of sitting in the kitchen on winter nights, listening to my favorite AM radio station -- 1520 KOMA, out of Oklahoma City.

After dishes were washed and my parents had retired to the living room to hog our only television, I'd sit on a stool at the counter, with the kitchen light turned off and the darkness illuminated only by the radio dial while the Top 40 lit up the airwaves.

Besides Monkees, there were Beatles, Stones, Kinks, Hermits, Troggs, Buckinghams, Tremeloes, Doors, and Mamas and Papas.

Music has an uncanny ability to touch the human soul and be retained somewhere in the subconscious. How many times have you heard a golden oldie that transported you back to a particular moment in your past? You suddenly remember what you were wearing, who you were with, what the weather was like, and so on. The most minute details of a tiny grain of time become perfectly clear to you again.

When I listen to The Beatles' "Abbey Road," I'm 17 years old for a fleeting instant and cruising the streets of Fullerton, Nebraska with my friend, Steve, riding in his sister's Malibu. Hearing Three Dog Night's "Eli's Coming" reminds me of after-ball game dances at the American Legion Annex.

The first time I heard Waylon and Willie's bar anthem, "Good Hearted Woman," was from the jukebox at J&L's Tavern in Fullerton, and still when I hear that song I find myself back in that bar for a split second.  Then I drink a beer as a tribute to those good times at J&L.  I like tributes.
 
Some great musical moments were spent in the kitchen, listening to KOMA. I even have to chuckle at the occasional intrusion. For instance, when my Dad would gruffly holler from the living room to "turn that thing down. I can't hear Gunsmoke!"

Or when he would refer to what I listened to as "that wild yeah-yeah-yeah music."

Dad always claimed that my music made no sense, that it was just a lot of noise and the lyrics couldn't be understood. You know, the same kind of things people my age say about the music children today are listening to.

Except we're right and our parents were wrong, that's all there is to it.

Whenever I hear The Beatles' "Yesterday," I recall an evening when a singer of Dad's generation was on television, doing a rendition of "Yesterday." My dad sat back in his chair, nodded his head, and proclaimed, "Now that's a decent song." When I told him that Lennon and McCartney had written it, he refused to believe me. "Well, they must have stolen it!"

I have to admit that, over the years, Dad was willing to give my kind of music a listen and even grew to like some of it. It must have been when Bing Crosby recorded "Hey Jude" that Dad decided "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

I haven't reached that level of tolerance yet when it comes to a good share of the music that today's youth is tuning in to. But then, with Golden Oldies of the 50s, 60s and 70s still playing today on FM stations all over the nation, and popular as ever, why even bother to make concessions?

Go ahead and let this generation of teenagers pierce their tongues and bang their heads to Ludacris, Ke$ha, Black-Eyed Peas, and Timbaland. 

Me? I'll be in my kitchen with the lights off and traveling back in time while quietly rocking out to "Pleasant Valley Sunday."

And perhaps drinking a tribute. Or two.

Hey hey I'm a Monkee. Yeah yeah yeah! 



Rest in peace, Davy....and thanks for the memories

Riding Harleys with Jesus Christ and Nixon

Not long ago, a friend and I were discussing world-famous personalities and he asked me who would be my choice if I could sit down in private conversation with one celebrated person.  Without hesitation, I  answered "Warren Buffett!" 

Then I qualified my pick:  he had to be drunk and in the mood to give away money.

So my friend redefined his terms. Historical and dead. 

Well, then.  An obvious pick might have been Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, when the fellow asked me to select a figure from the past, I immediately said, "Jesus Christ!" Then I added, "That's a tough one."

Of course, there are those who would take exception to placing Jesus on the Dead List.  Jesus is risen!  they would say.  He's alive!

But if we're going to split fundamentalist hairs, Jesus was dead from Good Friday afternoon to Easter Sunday morning.  So technically speaking he earns a spot on my friend's "historical and dead " list.



But actually I wouldn't want to waste a pick on Jesus, since I plan to one day meet him anyhow. And it won't make any difference whether or not he's drunk and giving away money.

So after much pondering, I went out on a limb: I told him my choice would have to be Richard Nixon.

Either my friend was astounded by this or he, too, was voicing his preference for Jesus Christ.


"Richard Nixon," I told him, "had a great and twisted political mind. It would be a hoot to slam down a few beers and shoot the breeze with Tricky Dick. Besides, it was said that Nixon understood the game of football better than most NFL coaches."


So there we have it. Nixon was my final answer. But that wasn't the final question.


As we talked about past history (is there any other type of history, by the way?),  the "what if" game got more interesting when we started discussing our teenage years in the 1960's.


I mentioned that it would have been fun to hitchhike cross-country and have seen San Francisco during the Summer of Love, when hippies converged on Haight-Ashbury and bands like Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead were changing the face of music and ushering in the psychedelic age.

My friend asked me, "What if you could go back and do things differently? Would you have tried LSD?"


I guess he was just assuming that I've never actually dropped acid. 


"Yes I would," I replied. "But only before 1966 when it was legal and widely used by the CIA and the United States Army for mind control experiments. I'm still an upstanding citizen and a patriot at heart."


Then we talked about moments in history that we wish we could have witnessed first hand. My friend mentioned such diverse events as the parting of the Red Sea and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.


Me? Woodstock. Those were three magical days in history that will never be duplicated in any way, shape or form. 

I would like to have been there,  listening to the music in the midst of those 300,000 young people peacefully pressed together in the heat and the rain and the mud the sweat and... I guess, on the other hand, watching the video isn't too bad, either.


And I would like to have stood along the mourning route and saluted when that train passed by, carrying Robert Kennedy's body on the journey to his final resting place,  along with America's hopes and dreams that had been derailed while the train rolled on into the Senator's last sunset.


I've wished, too, that I had learned to drive a motorcycle. Movies like "Easy Rider" and books such as "On the Road" instilled a wanderlust in many of us in our younger years and we could see ourselves cruising the byways of America on our Harleys with life clipping along, our faces set hard against the wind.


Actually, the only time I ever drove a motorcycle was when I was 16 years old and a friend just bought a Honda 90. I lost control of it almost immediately, starting in an alley and ending up in my friend's back yard where I repositioned his little sister's swing set.


I never tried again. I should have.


In reality, we can't go back and change things. Choices and decisions are made as we go along and they become like handprints that harden in the concrete of the sidewalk we follow through life. Good or bad, we've made our mark. That is how history develops.


But playing what-if can be kind of fun. For a brief moment we can go back. We can change things in our minds and make them turn out the way we want. We can even ride Harleys with Jesus Christ and Nixon.

Copyright 2011 by Wendel Potter

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