From my “Murphy’s Law” desk calendar archives thanks to Aunt Evelyn, Uncle Pipey, and cousin Nancy:
Weatherwax’s Postulate: The degree to which you overreact to information will be in inverse proportion to its accuracy.
Goofy guy’s Analysis of Weatherwax’s Postulate: In these times, it seems everyone is reacting in accordance with this postulate regardless of where the information is coming from. Exponentially.
Really i’m not. Feelin’ Blue that is.
Oh, horse pucky…and i cleaned that up. By Easter Sunday, we will have hunkered down for 28 days. Four weeks. i think i would be okay with all of this if someone would quit telling me how bad it is and how great they are managing the crisis and give me some realistic expectation when it’s going to be over. If it were my choice to remain sequestered, i’d be okay, but these folks just keep talking about how bad it is.
i’m a little sad that folks are focused on blaming someone else for this pestilence, coming up with conspiracy theories, finding fault with the other political party, having it over hyped and under hyped and not knowing what is really going to happen and how it will affect our lives.
“Feelin’ Blue.”
And being a bit blue ain’t all that bad. i mean in some ways i’ve been a little blue since the first girl broke my heart, and being blue created Jimmy Reed and Muddy Waters and Lighting Hopkins and Willie Dixon and Sonny Boy Williamson. So in some ways, i’m okay with that.
But the Southwest corner has not only become vacant buildings and vacant lots and vacant beaches but has done so in a time of drear. i mean drear. The famous weather has forsaken us and wet skies of gray have become the norm for two months with the projection this dismal condition will continue for at least another two weeks.
So in the late afternoon, i have taken to retreating to my garage workshop and turn some LP records into digital form, usually with a Lagunitas “Little Sumpin” pale ale (Thanks, Alan Hicks). Yesterday, i picked out “Creedence Clearwater Revival,” their first album.
i was taken back to Boston, late autumn 1969. Andrew Nemethy and i, shipmates on the USS Hawkins (DD 873) drove from our new homeport of Norfolk (we regrettably had a homeport change from Newport, Rhode Island in July). We drove up in Andrew’s Fiat Spyder. Kathy McMahon (now Klosterman) had begun her graduate work at Boston University (i think it was BU) en route to her doctorate and special needs advocate of high order at the University of Miami, Ohio. She was rooming with a couple of her fellow graduates of Salve Regina, the women’s college in Newport, Rhode Island. We were taking a break before headed to different worlds. i had my orders to head to the Western Pacific in hand. i would be leaving in a few months. Andrew was trying to decide what was next.
We had a wonderful weekend. Tales abound.
But as i sat in my garage workshop, the last cut on side one began to play, i remembered going out on the street on mid-morning Sunday, perhaps to load up for the trip back to Norfolk. Don’t remember.
i do remember someone had their stereo speakers in the open window of another apartment on the street. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Willy and the Poor Boys” had just been released and whoever the stereo owner was had it blasting, echoing down the empty street of three and four-story apartments. i stopped and listened for about four cuts before returning to the apartment.
The last cut is “Feelin’ Blue,” but it had just the opposite effect on me the other day.
My kind of music.
i hope it makes you feel a little better in this time of pestilence.
My brother and Marty Snyderman have already commented on my earlier post about hard hit baseballs. Perhaps Rico wasn’t all that fast at that point in his career.
But it did bring up another hard hit ball i did not see in person. In the early 1950’s, i listened to Dick Shively and then Larry Munson announce the Nashville Vols baseball games. When someone hit a home run, Shively would began slowly with his natural voice, saying repeatedly, “It’s going; it’s going, it’s going,” with each reiteration getting higher pitched and louder until he and the ball reached their zeniths as the ball went over the fence, and Shively concluding with a scream, “IT’S GONE!!!” Munson, as i recall copied this home run narration of Shively’s.
In the one Sulfur Dell game against the Little Rock Travelers, the Vols were ahead in the eighth inning, 3-2. The Travelers player-manager, Les Peden, came to bat with a runner on. Peden hits a long line drive to left center, just left of the huge scoreboard projecting out from the fence. It was exciting already and Munson went wild, screaming his usual “It’s going, going, and hitting his highest note, “IT’S GONE!!!”
But the ball hit squarely against a telephone pole behind the fence and bounced back over the fence almost to the infield. With his voice breaking at his highest pitch and volume, Munson hoarsely in a falsetto screech screamed, “AND IT’S COMING BACK IN.”
Of course, it still counted and the Travelers won the game, but i will never forget that call.
This morning, William Brock, Jr. of Houston and a relative i’ve never met posted a brief history of the Astrodome with photos on Facebook. This allowed me to reminisce. The response i gave, with some edits and additions, to William on his post is below:
i saw the Astros play the Braves there (in the Astrodome) in August ’67.
Rico Carty was in left field for the Braves and had a running conversation with fans in the left field/bleacher corner. Somewhere in the middle of the game, Rico hit a line drive. Jimmy “Toy Cannon” Wynn in center field took a couple of steps in before the ball started rising. It cleared the leaping Wynn’s glove by inches. The drive hit in the middle of the fence in dead center. It bounced straight back to Wynn who twirled and threw to second holding Carty to a single. And Carty was one of the faster players in the league.
It remains the hardest ball i ever saw in person.
i saw the Twins’ Harmon Killebrew hit a 500 foot home run out of the park against the Yankees in spring training, 1961.
With my father at Sulfur Dell in 1955, i saw Dick “Doctor Strangeglove” Stuart hit an extarorinary pop up when he played for the New Orleans Pelicans (before he moved up to the Pirates)
— In researching Stuart to be sure i had my facts straight, i found on Wikipedia a nickname i had not heard before. Apparently, because of his fielding woes at first base, he was called “The Ancient Mariner.” According to Wikipedia, Stuart was given that moniker because the first lines of Coleridge’s famous poem are “It is an ancient Mariner, / And he stoppeth one of three…”
— The Nashville Vols catcher finally caught Stuart’s pop up standing on home plate. It had gone straight up and totally out of sight before coming back down.
In 1965, i saw the Braves play the Pirates in the first game in Atlanta after moving from Milwaukee. Willie Stargell hit a line drive home run to right in the 13th inning to win the game, 3-2. It was dramatic, but i don’t think it was close to being as hard hit as Carty’s single.
i did not see this one in 1960 except on replays i’ve watched probably a hundred times or more, and it remains my all time favorite home run ever, even matched against the only one i ever hit which was not that hard but rolled and rolled and rolled in left center where there was no fence on the Tiger’s ball field on Hill Street when i was a senior. It was Bill Mazeroski’s home run that beat the Yankees, 10-9, in the bottom of the ninth in the seventh game and got Mike Dixon and i in trouble for skipping the noon mess (written about here before). i can’t say it was hit hard, but it hit me hard and still does.
In 1961 as the Castle Heights catcher, i saw Arnold Umbach (who later pitched for the Braves) hit a line drive off Mike Gannaway and Mike Dixon did a similar act that Jimmy Wynn did later, coming in before the ball started rising. But Dixon leaped and caught the ball at the apex of his leap. That was a hard hit ball and one of the few i’ve seen actually rise during flight.
Yet, Carty’s single in the Astrodome remains the hardest hit baseball i ever saw.
This began with the idea of it being a couple of sea stories with some of my shipmate stories included. Mike Foster and i just recently reconnected.
As i began, i realized again how that short eight months were some of the most impactful in my life, determining the course i set for my Navy career. i also considered how it would add to my narrative for my grandson. So i began roughly about the time Sam’s mother was born.
i woke up thinking about it. In the middle of the night. Couldn’t get back to sleep for thinking about it. Didn’t want to forget what i was thinking about. If i had not been fearful of that, i probably could have resumed my slumber. Couldn’t. Had to get up and record it.
That happens quite frequently to me.
i used to wake up and start thinking about relationships going south and not understanding why. My brain would get entangled with why the south bound bond had deteriorated. Then, that ole brain of mind would start plotting how to turn it around with me knowing all the while that wouldn’t happen. But then, i have always been a dreamer, an optimist. Finally, i went to a counselor and she (Martina Clarke) was marvelous for me. i don’t think about those kind of things anymore. i accept the fact i can’t control others perception of me. i just have to keep trying to do what’s right. That happens when you get as old as me, i think.
But this was a whole different matter. These were positive thoughts, pleasant. i wanted to save them. Why? i don’t know. My only answer is i am a writer, always have been, just didn’t always admit it.
* * *
Recently, i hooked up (electronically) with an old shipmate. We have been communicating quite a bit about Navy things. Mike Foster is the president of World Wide Realty Solutions out of Connecticut. But in 1972-73, he was one of the four OOD’s on the USS Luce (DLG 7) with me, often relieving me on watch. Our communication has brought back recall of the shortest and one of the most rewarding tours i had in my Navy career.
There will be some repeats of my other seas stories in here. Yet, my experience on the Luce should stand as whole as i remember it:
It was a defining eight months of my life. It began because i had applied and been accepted for recall to active duty. i was one of six officers accepted back in that year as surface line officer. A primary reason my application was successful was Captain Max Lasell, the commanding officer on my first ship, the USS Hawkins (DD 873), had appeared before the board and recommended i be accepted.
As with all things, i wasn’t sure i was doing the right thing, but i felt was necessary to adequately provide for my family. i had a promising career (i felt) ahead of me in sports journalism. i was the sports editor of The Watertown Daily Times, a model of excellence as a mid-size daily in upstate New York. i had been successful enough to either rise further in that organization or attain success by moving on to a major daily in a big city. i was confident of my future but the rules of the guild kept management from paying me enough for adequate financial security. Had it just been my wife and i, we could have toughed it out, but our child was scheduled to arrive on the scene. i couldn’t see ends meeting. Thus, i applied to get back in.
Another little problem was my reserve status. Even though i was accepted back for active duty, i was informed if i did not achieve becoming a regular line officer (a designation of 1110, rather than 1105) within a year, i would be discharged. That would have made our situation untenable. So the heat was on.
Our daughter Blythe was born July 7, 1972. i left the newspaper as August rolled around, carted my wife Kathie and our daughter to Paris, Texas via my home of Lebanon, Tennessee, parked them with my in-laws and left at the end of the month to catch my new ship, the Stephen B. Luce somewhere in the Mediterranean.
i flew to Newark and then caught a MAC (Military Airlift Command, an Air Force organization) to Rota, Spain. After a day, my next flight was to Naples. A LDO lieutenant and two chief petty officers took our one night of liberty to find an off-limit area, not because of the red lights but because one of the chiefs had heard of this great Italian restaurant in the forbidden sector. And so, we went. Somewhere in the middle of Naples, we cut off the main street and walked up a stairway. Now, this was not an ordinary stairway. It was about fifty or sixty feet wide, a street not for vehicles really with a stair level every ten feet or so. We walked up those stairs for about a quarter mile. The chief who had hooked into this adventure nodded toward a single door among the many.
i still don’t have a clue how the chief knew of this place and i am dumbfounded as to how he might have located it. This was long before Google maps. But there we were four Navy personnel in civilian clothes deep in the heart of Naples somewhere, with no capability to speak Italian surrounded by oh, about a gazillion Italians who could not speak English.
We walked in. There were about six tables the size of card tables, covered with white table cloths and a wine bottle candle in the middle of each table. Three of the other tables were occupied. We were led to one in the middle of the room. in a room about twenty by twenty feet. i am not even sure we ordered. i don’t remember a menu. Perhaps the chief used a hand signal.
Quickly, four drinking glasses came out and shortly afterward a bottle of wine, unlabeled with the cork halfway out was placed next to the candle setting. A basket of bread soon followed. Then after about five minutes, the waitress, a portly, dark complected woman, brought out four white plates filled with…yep, spaghetti and meatballs.
Oh lord, was it good. In my recall, it was the best. Everything was perfect. My kind of place. at the top of the front wall, they had a television, i’m guessing a 15-inch set. The ’84 Munich Summer Olympics were on the screen in Italian of course. It was the track and field events they were showing — this was prior to the terrorist killing 11 Jewish athletes, one of their coaches, and a police officer by “Black September” Palestinians. When we finished our meal and the second bottle of that red wine, chianti, i don’t know, but it was good; paid and tipped generously; nodded and nodded our appreciation, we left.
i don’t know how but the chief got us to the main street, we caught a cab and went back to the US Naval Base.
It was good. The next morning, i was the only one to catch a flight to the Kerkyra International Airport on the island of Corfu off the west coast of Greece. i arrived in the mid-afternoon, looking forward to a night on a Greek isle. That’s when i learned the ship would depart for a big exercise the next morning. i stayed aboard and hit the rack early.
Good start to a deployment? Maybe.