The gifts came with a Christmas card, which included an explanation of the gifts.

Then, the Southwest corner took a turn toward Christmas. It wasn’t  a severe turn, more like a gentle curve toward Noel. The lows, which are the lowest when the old mariner begins his chores around first light, are waltzing between the high 30’s and low 40’s. i even played golf in the cool rain Friday and stayed in my wind shirt Monday.

Today, the front rolled in from the northwest. The wind smacked at 40 knots and the Pacific rain pelted me as i climbed my hill to lower and remove our flag, concerned the conditions might break the flagpole. The storm continued as i sat at my desk attempting to work on my response to the gifts. i looked out my window and the bougainvillea outside my office window had m morphed into a Christmas monster appealing to me to join it in a dance of carols.

If you care to see it threatening me, here is a short video:

bouganvillea christmas monster

The jolly Christmas monster spoke to me, “Quit fooling around on that response to your Christmas gifts. The gifts had caused me to stop for a moment, one of those times i have to catch my breath. They were postcards with Lebanon scenes on them. i will not describe the scenes or relate why they were sent here. That is reserved for the giver. But i had struggled to come up with an appropriate reply. The monster got me moving.

i will, however, let you know about the giver. She is beautiful, successful, joyful, and thoughtful. When we were growing up, i think i felt she was too beautiful to be interested in me. Of course, i was a teenager with every angst, doubt, desire, and all of the other rampant emotions of a teenage boy at the time, i.e., i didn’t think straight.

She and i reconnected at a high school reunion where i didn’t really belong but had been adopted by the class. We enjoyed our discussions.

Now, i have a relationship that is wonderful because she is a great friend. i want her to meet Maureen.

Thank you, Judy Lewis Gray. The gifts were wonderful and your friendship is the best gift of all.

Merry Christmas.

i reposted a column about this Navy yokel being away for several Christmases. Sean of the South topped me with this one. i’m gonna watch the original “Miracle on 34th Street” real soon and take a shopping trip to Macy’s.

Merry Christmas…and thanks, Sean.

https://seandietrich.com/ill-be-home-for-christmas/

Baseball has been a constant in my life.

It probably was the sport where i should have focused.  Football remains the most satisfying sport i played. i continue to believe the best all round sport for fitness is basketball. i really was too small for football and too short for basketball. i played them as long as i could. i played baseball until i was 46 — note i did not claim how well i played, but play i did. And i often wonder if i had the coaching they have now and concentrated on that one sport, if i might have been the follow-on-version of Nellie Fox.

i’m glad i didn’t because i enjoyed my time on the gridiron (as the old sportswriter for The Watertown (NY) Daily Times, Jack Case,  would call it) and on the hardwood, which Case probably called the basketball floor as well). It was time well spent.

In today’s world such focus on one sport is almost required. Playing three sports in high school is virtually impossible today. i think that is a loss for most youths nowadays.

Baseball (and softball), however, have been with me throughout. Golf now is my go-to sport, but only because age has demanded i halt my diamond activities.

During my time on the diamond, i collected a few hits and a lot of friends. Two of those friends have been constants in my baseball. One was with me from the start. The other shares a love of the game and a team in more recent years. All three of us had a strong bond with the Pittsburgh Pirates of yore.

All three of us would agree with James Earl Jones character Terrence Jones  in “Field of Dreams” when he urged Kevin Costner’s character Ray Kinsella not to sell the farm:

The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh… people will come Ray. People will most definitely come.

Mike Dixon and i were opponents in Little League and Babe Ruth League and teammates in American Legion ball when we went to the state tournament. We also played fast pitch softball on the Texas Boot team, even wearing the Lebanon factory’s boots for infield practice (Mike did not remember that little piece of trivia). That team beat all of its league opponents and then beat the all-stars of those other teams. Until we both left our hometown, we played backyard baseball of every variety.

Independently in the early 1950’s, Mike and i became big fans of the Buc’s” as announcer Bob Prince called our Pittsburgh team. We discovered our mutual fandom and built upon it. Although our love of the Pirates faded after Clemente, Stargell, and the others of our area were no longer there, we still rooted for them unless they played Mike’s Braves or my Padres.

When we went on road trips, Mike and i would quiz teammates on the bus rides as to the leaders in National League and American League batting averages, RBI’s, stolen bases, and home runs. Mike could hit for power and did so in baseball or softball into his seventies. He was a defensive strength in the outfield. He was much better at remembering all of the statistics. He was a better player and had greater knowledge of the sport than i did.

When Vandy rose to prominence in college baseball, we once again shared a passion for a team. During my time at Vanderbilt, Mike would occasionally drive to Nashville and sit on the right field berm with me,  and we would watch the ‘Dores on sunny afternoons at Hawkins Field.

We were constant. Mike left me this past autumn. There is a hole in that constant of baseball for me. When there is some tidbit of hot stove news about a major league team or i learned of a news item about the Vandy Boys, i reach for my phone to call Mike and get the real skinny before i realize he won’t answer. i miss him.

The other constant is still here. Jim Hileman and i began going to games at Qualcomm Stadium with family members in the mid-80’s when Maureen and i returned from Florida and my penultimate Navy tour. Then on September 28, 1988, just Jim and i went to a game to see if Orel Hershiser could break the consecutive scoreless inning record against the Padres. He did, stretching his scoreless inning to 59. Hershiser and the Dodgers lost, 2-1 in 16 innings, with a superlative pitching performance by Andy Hawkins matching Hershiser through those 10 scoreless innings before relievers took over and the Padres’ catcher, Mark Parent, hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the 16th after the Dodgers had pushed across a run in the top of the 16th inning.

By the time it was over, only about 500 fans remained in the stadium. Jim and i were still there, high up in the plaza right field level. The game lasted 4 hours and 24 minutes. By the time it was over, Jim and i had discussed our favorite Pirates, the great seasons, the great players, our experiences, including Jim describing catches and throws he saw Roberto Clemente make during games Jim attended at Forbes Field when he was growing up in Pittsburgh.

There are lots of things you can talk about during a game lasting nearly four-and-a-half hours. We knew we both liked golf but i think that baseball game cemented our enjoyment of playing golf together.

We didn’t establish that Jim was proud of being an “asshole.” He remains the king but is admired by our mutual golfing buddies who even attempt to reach Jim’s heights in that category but fall woefully short. Still, it is something we all brag about. And underneath that mantle of assholedness, Jim Hileman is one of the nicest, most caring men i have ever known. i just wasn’t aware of either as we sat in those stands now gone.

Finally after those 4 1/2  hours, we talked ourselves into buying Padres season tickets for the next year. We shared those tickets for 13 years or so, although we had dropped to half-season tickets in the early 90’s.

i wish i could give Mike what i’m giving Jim this year. i can’t.

Mike’s and my passion for baseball remains a constant.

Jim will get his gifts soon. They will have some relevance to baseball.

Merry Christmas, Hileman.

Compared to my Vermont family’s snow, or for that matter my Tennessee family’s December chill, it is shameful of me to write about Christmas weather in the Southwest corner.

Monday, when i was outside after sunset, i had to wear a top shirt. We have a fire going in the hearth and nearly all of the windows are closed. i was cold when my telephone golf buddies teed off at Cottonwood at 7:30. i was in a short-sleeved shirt and wishing i had on shorts when we finished.

Yet, Christmas was in the air. Christmas. Yeh, it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas. i’m feeling it, too. i hung “NOEL” last week, and i will be  posting other of my Christmas misadventures from the past in the next couple of weeks…if i can find them.

Friday, i felt it was beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. Not because of the weather. Maureen and i made our second visit, this time with friends, to the old Naval Recruit Training Station chapel, now preserved and a venue for shows and weddings. The whole NRTC has been turned into a huge shopping area  with a few townhomes added to the mix. Many of the old buildings have morphed into unique purposes.

The first night we went, we listened to Vivaldi. Friday, it was Mozart by a string quartet. It was beautiful.

Although it wasn’t exactly Christmas music. It was beautiful and the musicians were…well, they were rather unbelievable to me.

It was Christmas to me. i could feel it. i have experienced such feelings before, not always about Christmas. This one kept telling me it was about Christmas. It wasn’t about blow-up lawn decorations or even the rather incredible tree Maureen and Sarah decorated. It wasn’t about gifts under that tree and all of the other presents under an untold number of trees, real and fake — we gave in due to travel and got a fake one several years ago; i still miss the cedar trees we cut down on “Papa” Wynn’s farm — it was not even about that fat old man dressed funny and riding a sled from ages past. The Christmas feeling wasn’t about caroling and cantatas, one of the latter which we will watch from long distance when my sister and her granddaughter perform in the one on Signal Mountain this coming Sunday.

Friday evening, it wasn’t even about Little Lord Jesus lying in the manger under that mysterious big star, the baby lying in that shed and the curious mix of shepherds and wise men surrounding the shed in which he lay.

Sitting in that pew in that old chapel so well maintained where thousands of sailor recruits sat for years and years listening to a chaplain, the feeling that overcame me was not bigger than that. Oh, no. Not bigger. It was inside. It was about peace, good will to men (that’s all of us, by the way). It was about Noel.

It was Christmas.

Christmas decorations are going up a bit early for me this year. It seems to me back home growing up, we cut down our tree on Wynn “Papa” Prichard’s farm about a week before the big day, decorated it that evening, hung the stockings, hung a wreath on the door, put some lights around the door, and took it all down the day after Christmas. In our neighborhood, about one-quarter of the houses have blow-up dolls, reindeer statues, lights enough to provide electricity for a small city among other amusements. They put them up a week ago.

i gave in this year because i wanted to get it out of the way. And so begins the Christmas season. And with that, i offer my traditional repeat of a column i wrote for the Lebanon Democrat about a gazillion years ago. Merry Christmas with this year’s version of Noel:

Notes from the Southwest Corner: An Embarrassing Christmas Moment

As I have noted previously, I am (will be) in Tennessee for Christmas, not in the Southwest corner. The below events, however, did occur near San Diego.

Have you ever had one of those days when everything turned into an embarrassment? I had a champion day like that several years ago.

It started innocently while I hung our outdoor decoration, a home-made “NOEL” sign from the eave of our garage, hoping to get it up before my wife’s friends arrived for their Christmas dinner.

Maureen and her six friends have been meeting monthly for dinners for 15-plus years. They had this December dinner catered, did it up right. It was Maureen’s turn to be hostess.

It was dark when I began. I was at the top of my step ladder attaching the second of two wires from the sign to a hook secured to the eave when the ladder lurched and toppled. I grabbed a metal ornamental grating above the garage door.

There I hung, my arm intertwined with the “O” of the sign. If I tried to drop, the sign could catch my arm and do some pretty bad stuff.

I yelled, but Maureen had Christmas carols at top volume and didn’t hear. I tried to think of what to do while simultaneously wondering how long I could hold on. The dog wandered underneath, occasionally looking up as if I was a very strange person hanging there.

After several minutes, a neighbor’s son and friend pulled into the driveway several houses away. As they emerged, I swallowed my pride and yelled “Help.”

At first, they could not discern who was calling. Then they spotted me and came to help. The dog decided to protect me and began barking threateningly. The boys hesitated. I assured them the only danger was being licked to death. They finally righted the ladder and helped me down.

I thanked them profusely and then studied whether I should tell Maureen or not. Now that I was back on solid ground, I decided it was too funny not to tell her. She was incredulous and not particularly amused.

I did not realize my embarrassment for the night was just beginning.

While Maureen made final arrangements for her dinner, our daughter, Sarah, and I went to a local spot for supper. The little place was an oasis of sorts in Bonita, where there were only Mexican, Italian, and fast food restaurants. The attraction was being different and having a wide-range of ales and beers for golfers finishing a round across the street.

When we arrived, two couples were at tables and three guys sat at the bar. As we neared the end of our meal, the largest of the guys at the bar walked to the door and then turned back. I noticed his eyes seemed glazed. Then he walked back to the bar.

Suddenly, this guy and the one on the other side grabbed the guy in the middle off his stool, slammed him into the wall and started pummeling him with their fists. The three male diners, me (instinctively) included, approached from one side and two cooks approached from the back. Sarah had retreated to the door with the two lady diners. I grabbed the big guy. He spun and fell backward, slamming us into our table, knocking it over with shattering glass. It gave me some leverage, and we spun to the floor with me on top and knocking the wind out of the big guy. The other two diners helped me hold him until he calmed down. The cooks had quelled the other assailant. The two left quietly.

Even though the waitress wanted us to not pay our bill, we paid and left for home. On the way, I talked to my daughter about what I should have done (directed her outside before joining the fray) and what she should do the next time if she were ever in a place where a fight broke out (get out and away and not come back until she was sure it was over).

I was feeling pretty good as we arrived home. Then Sarah dashed out of the car, ran into the house and yelled to her mother in front of the caterer and her six friends dressed to the nines amidst fine china, Christmas decorations, and haut cuisine, “Mom, Dad got in a fight in a bar.”

Some days, I just can’t get a break.

May your holiday season be embarrassment free.

“As i have done in the past several years, i send you my Christmas greetings. May all of you have a most wonderful and amazing Christmas Season, and please, please, please (as James Brown would implore) remember the reason this all occurs every year.

NOEL.