Last night, i watched the San Diego Padres explode after seven innings to score eight runs in the eighth inning for an 11-4 win over the Los Angeles Angels. Watching four of the premier baseball players in the world (Machado, Tatis, Trout, Rendon) was exciting.

This year’s version of the Padres is exciting all of the time. They hit five grand slam home runs in six games. They run. They play great defense. Their offensive power is unlike any i’ve ever seen in San Diego, including the Caminiti, Finley, and Tony Gwynn years. Jurickson Profar, one of the lesser lights in the Friars’ starters, went two for three, a home run and two RBI’s last night.

Sure, that behemoth ninety miles north of here remains the creme de la creme  of the National League and perhaps the Major Leagues. Impressive. Winners and whiners all wrapped up in one (can you tell i’m a bit prejudice?).

This Padre going on is fun.

But as i watched last night, i find myself with mixed emotions.

For a number of years i have railed against the Yankees (since the 1950’s when the Kansas City A’s owner made big bucks by sending his best players to the Yanks), and the Dodgers (who i grew up loving when they were in Brooklyn, rooting for them against my father’s beloved Yankees), and then the Red Sox (when the guy who labeled them “the Evil Empire,” Larry Lucchino, turned around and acted just like them), the Cubs (i liked them and the Red Sox when they were the lovable losers) because of the money being exchanged.

Well, $300 Million for one player for ten years (Manny Machado) ain’t chump change, not to mention all of the other crazy money the Padres have spent on players and player development. So my Padres are in the same league (not baseball league, but money league) with all the other villains. And i fully expect the ticket prices (when fans can go) to rise precipitously, and will not be surprised if beer goes up to $20. This means, of course, that i ain’t going.

And there is another aspect i reconsidered. At the end of July, the Padres dealt 29 players one way or the other to acquire supposedly (according to the experts, of which i ain’t one) better players. And that doesn’t count the ones who left before the pandemic season began. Now i’m missing some of my favorites who left, Austin Hedges, Hunter Renfroe, Manuel Margot, Josh Naylor, Cal Quantrill, and Ty France. All gone. i find myself rooting for players i only know by reputation.

Flesh peddlers.

And the rich get rich and the poor get poorer. Why do owners spend megabucks buying championships to make more megabucks and why do players need $30 Million a year? If they continue to screw their fans monetarily, why aren’t they helping the less fortunate in the country? And why do players and their agents think they need several hundred million to PLAY baseball? And if they are going to demand those salaries, why don’t they put in back into helping others. And i am not talking about all of those wonderful foundations many of them form.

So essentially, the fans (me included) are rooting and spending for what? Money. Their money against everyone else’s money. Crazy.

Sadly, my rant is not going to change things. Today, the Padres new pitching star will be going against the Los Angeles (really, Anaheim) Angels (location change to attract more fans, i.e. more money). i will be watching.

And i love the way the Padres, new and old are playing. Excitement, incredible talent, laughing, having fun, playing the game the way it should be played.

And i’ll be rooting for them to win it all.

i’m just not sure why?

Please bring back college baseball soon.

let me feel the spray
one more time,
the salt spray from a wave
breaking over the bow
for
i seek reconnection to the sea
when
the sea was me
and
i was the sea
and
the rest of the world didn’t exist
as my ship plowed through cresting waves
which threw it willy-nilly, up and down
to rise and plunge again
bringing green water crashing
to the pilot house
to slide down and aft and over the fantail
and
the metal groaned
but
did not give
and
the steam hissed, bellowing even,
shooting through the pipes
to the engine,
then the reduction gears,
turning the port and starboard shafts
and
the screws whacking the deep underneath,
propelling the ship as forward
as the sea would let her go
and
the men rode her
like a bronco with spume,
not brave, not fearful,
just matter of fact,
knowing they had little power
over the sea and the grey metal
on which they rode;
i do not know if
this dance of power
entranced the others
but
i was entranced
watching, feeling, even smelling
this battle between
the two ladies i had come to love
and
still love
but alas,
only in my memories
and
oh, how i wish
i could feel the spray,
the salt spray from a wave
breaking over the bow
one more time.

It is a bit awkward for me. i’m not sure what the protocol is.

Kathie Marie Lynch Jewell passed away yesterday evening (August 29, 2020).

She is my former wife, or to paraphrase what her mother took to calling me when Kathie and i were divorced (“the father of my granddaughter”) the mother of my daughter.

The night after we met, she told Nannie Bettie, her mother, she had met the man she was going to marry. Just a bit over a year later, we became husband and wife.

We stuck together for six years. We had our good moments. We had our bad moments. She decided she didn’t love me. i eventually decided trying to continue to make the marriage work would be deleterious for her, especially for our daughter, and eventually i acknowledged to myself, for me as well.

As divorces go, it was a pretty good one, if there is such a thing. The top priority for both of us was to do what was best for our daughter. i think my being a Naval officer made it more difficult for all three of us. i was usually far away. But we tried. She tried especially hard.

The parting was the right thing to do, but hard, and with a terrible sense of loss. But i was never bitter. i loved her enough to be wed with her. We both had traits and habits we didn’t like in each other, but we had enough we did like, and we vowed to be together for the rest of our lives. It didn’t quite work out that way. i cared for her during our marriage. i care for her now.

She was a wonderful human being in many ways.

Her most wonderful trait was she loved our daughter and our grandson more than anything else on earth. i will never, ever be able to thank her enough for that love she had for them.

i shall not expand here on my thoughts of her. That is treading on dangerous ground, and i have already gone beyond the limits she would have wanted.

Kathie was a wonderful, loving and caring mother and grandmother. i loved her then. i love her now.

And tonight once again, i will shed a tear for her.

Rest in peace, my love.

While most of our country is obsessed with fear, hate and outright lies, i am reminded of a critical moment in my life.

Earlier this week, The New York Times picked up on the San Diego ABC affiliate television news story and reported an unnamed crew member of the USS Bon Homme Richard (LHD-6) is being investigated for arson in the disastrous fire that possibly put the capital ship out of commission forever.

The news took me back to my lone engineering tour. In 1973, i was assigned as the chief engineer of the USS Hollister (DD-788) home ported at Naval Station, Long Beach. The Hollister had just become a reserve destroyer in Destroyer Squadron 27. My engineering department had a master chief and two chief boiler tenders; two master chief, one senior chief and two chief machinist mates; and a full complement of the engineering crew. But because a reserve ship’s crew is to be augmented by reservists, i soon found myself with only one master chief, two first class boiler tenders, and one first class machinist mate. In addition, i had only a third of my deep hold engineers left. The other two-thirds were to filled by reservists one weekend each month and one two-week “active duty for training” or ACTDUTRA  each year. i quickly discovered that most reserve engineers don’t have the experience required to run a 600-pound steam plant effectively, and my department would essentially being trying to perform our duties while having only one-third of our personnel to do it.

i will not complain about that. It just wasn’t a real easy job.

Then came the incident that came to mind when i read the the new news about the Bon Homme Richard fire. We were in port getting ready to get underway in ten days for a week of exercises. The ship was cold iron, i.e. getting all of our services from the pier with no boilers or our own auxiliary power sources being used. i had gone home for the evening.

In the duty section was a malcontent. i do not remember his name. He had been in nuclear submarines and was promoted to third class nuclear machinist mate, but he had gotten in trouble and was reduced in rate to MMFN again. The submarine force did not put up with trouble, and the sailor was kicked out of submarines. With reasoning i never understood, the Navy decided the surface Navy should get the submariners problems. The sailor was transferred to the Hollister. Shortly after he came aboard, he went to captain’s mast again, reduced in rate to MMFA, was restricted to the ship for 45 days, had 60 days of extra duty, and lost half his pay for two months.

This did not improve his morale.

That evening, he was assigned to the mid-watch (00-04) as cold iron security watch in the main engineering spaces, the two fire rooms and two engine rooms. Shortly after he took over the watch, he opened the sea valves in main control, the forward engine room.

The command duty officer called me about 0415. It was a twenty-minute drive from our Navy officer housing in San Pedro. i put on my uniform and made it to the ship in less than fifteen minutes. The on-coming watch reported the flooding to the duty engineer as soon as his rounds took him to main control. The duty engineers and damage control personnel had closed the valves and began pumping the water out, but when my senior machinist mate, the lone first class remaining, and i got down to main control, the water level was almost below the lower level deck plates. The high point had been not quite to the upper level. About a dozen lower level pumps, some essential for the number one engine to operate, were under water, salt water.

We notified the chain of command. Shipyard personnel began almost immediately to work on the damaged equipment. but several of the electric powered pumps, the ones damaged the most by the salt water immersion, were sent out to local contractors, what we called “bicycle shops.” The first class and i began sixteen hour days running around Long Beach to these various shops overseeing the repair efforts.

Sometime before midnight before we were scheduled to get underway, the last pump was put back into place and proved operational. The Hollister made her underway commitment by the skin of her teeth.

The MMFN was charged and the captain assigned him a general court martial. It was time to turn my hat in the other direction. The sailor was still in my department, my responsibility, and his leading petty officer, division officer, and his department head, aka yours truly, had walked him through XOI (Executive Officer’s Screening Mast) and Captain’s Mast in the process to assign him the general court martial. Someone also had to counsel him on his rights and advise him on what choices he had. For some reason, his division officer was not available. So it was up to me.

i had him report to my stateroom/office/home. He sat in the extra chair as i sat in the one by the pull-down desk. i proceeded to counsel him. It was one of the strangest situations i have faced in my life. Here i was they guy who possibly would have gotten the worse from his criminal act, yet i was supposed to help him minimize what penalties he might receive.

I think i did that, give him the best chance he had in his dire situation.

Later when i was executive officer of the USS Yosemite, i recommended to the Captain we administratively discharge a sailor rather than assigning to a court martial. Captain Francis J. Boyle decided against my recommendation and assigned a summary court martial. Captain Boyle’s comment at the time was to the effect as CO he was responsible for ensuring justice be served. My reply was i understood and my job was to ensure good order and discipline.

That is when i remembered the Hollister’s  flooding, and i felt proud i had attempted to ensure justice was served  in that incident. i think it was another step in my understanding Navy leadership and how it was supposed to work.

The investigation of the Bon Homme Richard’s fire is far from being completed. It may be years before there is a conclusion. That arson was the cause for that calamitous fire makes a lot of sense to me. It will be interesting to watch this unfold.

As i learned on the Hollister in 1974, and the Yosemite in 1984, i hope justice is truly served.

When i grew up, children were to be seen and not heard. We, as Little Jimmy Dickens sang, got the “cold taters.” We vacuumed, mopped, stripped, and waxed floors, we washed, dried, and put away the dishes. We made our beds and our rooms were supposed to be and generally were neat and clean (after we got through messing them up). We gathered the wash off the line, folded clothes, washed the windows. We took the garbage out. As soon as able, we mowed and trimmed the yard, and around fourteen, Daddy had me in the basement crawl space cleaning out the clunkers (burnt coal) he had thrown there when we had a coal furnace. i’m sure i have left several things out.

Now, i’m not bragging or whining. It was just the way it was back then. And it was a whole lot easier than my parents had it. My father stoked the boiler with slag wood for my grandfather’s steam engine when he was six. At ten, he dug a storm shelter in their backyard, and when it was found the water table was too high for such, he dug a drainage ditch for about 100 feet to the street so they could convert that storm cellar into a root cellar.

Sounds tough? Well, i don’t recall being upset about any of it with the possible exception of clearing out the clunkers in the summer. From what Daddy told me, it sounds like he had about as much fun as i did growing up. It was just things we had to do and didn’t stop us from having fun.

i am not criticizing how we raise kids now. i’m not a child raising expert and it wouldn’t matter one whit if i was (unless, of course, i could make a couple of mill’ writing a book about it).

That’s just the way it was.

But what it did do for this dinosaur was to give him an appreciation, maybe even joy, at doing small tasks correctly. Between twenty and seventy-two years of age, all of my jobs required me to attack the big things, the alligators in the swamp, and many of the small jobs were left to subordinates. But i did my share when time afforded such.

Sometime after i retired (sic), er completed my Navy active duty service and had been mister mom for a while, i applied for a San Diego City job in HR training. i got to the final hurdle, an interview with three other trainers. Sitting in front of the three, i immediately sensed the male interrogator of the three was not a fan of folks with military backgrounds, especially officers, or perhaps he just didn’t like me.

i answered a bunch of questions easily and because of my Navy experience, especially my last tour as director of leadership, management, and equal opportunity training, my responses and record was acceptable.

Then the male interrogator casually asked (with what i took to be an antagonistic air), “Would you make coffee for the group?”

i got it. i knew his purpose. i explained i would be happy to make coffee and in my last job, although the boss and senior to everyone in my department, i made the coffee about ninety percent of the time, because unless i was facilitating a seminar, i was doing paperwork, administrivia, while my personnel were training.

i gather he didn’t like the answer. i didn’t get the job. Now and maybe even then, i’m glad.

In my old age, i have grown to appreciate the training i received growing up. The alligators are gone. There is no subordinate waiting for me to take care of the big stuff or make a decision. There is no boss (well, except for a wife) to expect me to do something. I pretty much decide what to do when i want to do stuff.

i’ve found a great sense of satisfaction in doing the little things, pretty much the same things i did growing up: washing the dishes, cleaning things, taking the garbage out. Yeh, we got a yard guy, a gardener and landscape artist who does all that yard work because he’s better than me and what he does pleases my wife. Yeh, we got two cleaning ladies who come every other week and clean the house thoroughly. And i am rather pleased there aren’t any clunkers to clean out of anywhere.

So i pride myself on doing the little things and claim doing such should be done by everyone to develop pride in themselves or something. Like the SEAL Admiral Bill McRaven pointed out in his retirement speech gone viral and in the book he’s written, Make Your Bed.

Then it showed up. Sarah confided in me about a week ago, she had found this great deal on the internet and had ordered a Robot Roomba for her mother.

i was aghast. First off, Maureen is the financial overlord of this place and spending money she believes is frivolous is at the top of her no-no list. Secondly, she had long proclaimed she didn’t like the things and wouldn’t have one in her house.

Wisely i kept out of it. Kept my mouth shut. But boy, i was one anxious person, sweating blood thinking of the upcoming chaos.

It arrived. As taught by Brer Fox, i laid low. Sarah set up the thing. Maureen was dubious. The next morning, the show was on.

Maureen loved it. Go figure. When it finished its mapping, its cleaning, it sent Maureen a message on her phone letting her know all was done and it was back in its nest.

i concede. No more vacuuming the floors. The dinosaur enjoys it too. Neat stuff.

Of course, i have to watch my step and it seems like its a blind puppy as it wanders around the house and bounces off the walls. i keep waiting for it to whimper. i almost talked to it the other day. i caught myself reaching down to pet it. If i was a true dinosaur, it would make a nice snack.

And i still have to wash the dishes.