It was a good day up until the end.

We played golf with Pete and Nancy Toennies, a great matchup and with the rain last week and assorted obligations, it had been a while. Nancy and Maureen were in a cart. Pete and i walked, our preference. i began terrible and ended pretty good, much better than the other way around. This foursome has fun together and that is most important.

And then, we had a late lunch, early dinner at the Brigantine, the Coronado original. Covid and California had stopped such a treat before Christmas and dining, although outside, began again last week.

The Brig has been one of my go-top places since…oh hell, i lost track. i do remember Wednesday nights. The legendary JD Waits and i shared a condo in the Coronado Cays with a boat slip below our patio where JD’s 25-foot Cal was moored. Wednesday’s JD and i would hit the Brig, have a Manhattan…or two, and then dine on their salmon with hollandaise sauce with a nice wine, finishing with a Courvoisier and a cup of coffee. Their margaritas were the best in town.

It changed of course. Went upscale, opened up a couple of more. The original expanded, got modern, prices went up. But the Brig is still my Brig. Had a couple of oysters on the half shell, still wishing i had ordered the half-dozen, and then a waygu beef burger with fries. As Bob Seger sang Brigantine, “You’re Still the Same.”

So we get home. i’m feeling cocky, and with my recent exchanges with Bill Hager about “Red Ryder,” i was ready for an oater. The news with its bleakness and it’s yanking our chain, and it’s selling stuff was what i put on briefly. Then, i quietly asked Maureen if she would mind my watching a western, adding if she did, i would go to the front room and watch one there. She said no, put in her ear buds, and began reading a book on her Kindle (i think: i’m still too stubborn to read anything that doesn’t have paper pages i can turn).

i turned to the Starz app, scrolled down to the “western category” and scrolled to the right, after a dozen or so, there it is: Bob Steele in “Ambush Trail.” Now i loved all of the western movies, even after they turned violent and bloody and gory and in technicolor or whatever they call it now. But the old oaters remain my favorite. And Bob Steele was my favorite. Oh there were about twenty or thirty western  heroes and certainly Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and Gene Autry were the most famous. My favorite was Bob Steele. Lash Larue would have been right up there with Bob, but Lash with his 18-foot bullwhip for disarming villains, was mostly in the Saturday serials by the time i got to watch him. Bob Steele was in movies. AND he didn’t sing. He just rode his beautiful horse, fought for justice, the American way, and against the villains, always fighting fair, and only winging the bad guys.

So i watched Bob Steele once again be instrumental in fighting and fighting and fighting (i think there were at least eight fistfights) for western justice ending up triumphant, with no singing.  He had a sidekick, Sam Hawkins, who was really Syd Saylor, who made bad jokes. The plot was twisted and not all that terrific, but it didn’t matter. i mean there were two people actually killed by the bad guys and there was not one drop of blood anywhere near that black and white screen. Nobody was bludgeoned to death or cut into pieces and the good ranchers were saved from the nefarious freight supplier (with horse and wagons of course)

i was in oater heaven.

Maureen would occasionally look up from her kindle and shake her head. i think she was wishing she had taken me up on going to the front room. i mean this lady, along with her younger daughter, watch all movies, especially hen flicks i have mentioned, classics, period pieces, English stodgy stuff, all Academy Award movies. i think i noticed her nose was turned up when i praised Bob Steele.

i went to Wikipedia. i found Bob’s story and his filmography. The guy was amazing. His first movie was silent in 1920. His last was in 1974. In between he appeared in more than 200 movies, most of them westerns. And he could sing, but he didn’t in the westerns.

So i brought out my computer and showed Steele’s filmography to Maureen. She was unimpressed. Looking for someone to understand, i showed the filmography to Sarah. She scrolled through about twenty and said “yeh.”

So the night didn’t end all that well. But then i got to thinking:

Okay, okay, the realism was lacking. i figure i’ve got enough stupid realism around me i don’t need it in movies. Yeh, the acting wasn’t academy award quality, but there are a whole bunch of academy awards for stuff i found…unenjoyable and that is just me being nice.

And you know what? Bob and his good guys won. He made me feel good about the world.

So i’m planning on watching more oaters. But it will be in the front room. By myself.

Sometimes, it feels like it was a thousand years ago.

It was 1971, May, late May. i had dreams. There are about a million things i could include here about me, but that’s not what this is about.

This is about Jack Case.

Jack Case was my boss. He was not Grantland Rice. He was not Red Smith, Jim Murray, or my hero Fred Russell. Jack was from a different world from the one i knew. He was an upstate New York old time sports writer. The world was different. The times were different, and Jack…Jack certainly was different.

My job was to take his place.

Jack was retiring at the turn of the year. John Johnson, my Vanderbilt fraternity brother, was in line eventually to become the publisher of The Watertown (NY) Daily Times, succeeding his father. John had asked me before i headed to Vietnam if i would like to work for the Times after that year and my release from active duty. While plowing the sea between Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, i assessed that would be the best option for pursuing my goal to become a sports writer, columnist, and author. i jumped at it.

So after our wedding Kathie (nee Lynch) at her parent’s home in Paris, Texas, we drove to Watertown.

That’s when i met Jack Case.

Jack was a portly gentleman with a wry smile, a sincere man devoted to his sports writing with unwavering allegiance to his newspaper and his hometown. He was also old enough to have become what i am now, a curmudgeon. He was a lovable one. We don’t know about me on that point yet.

Jack had been writing sports since the 1920’s. He loved sports language. All coaches were “mentors.” All football fields were “gridirons.”

Jack looked like an old-time sports writer. He wore a suit, white shirt, and tie, every day. He never left the building without his brown fedora, and because of the climate close to the Canadian border, he often sported a thick, worn overcoat.

We called him “the dean of sports writers in the north country.” He was.

i had learned sportswriting from JB Leftwich at Castle Heights. i learned how to write sports columns by reading Fred Russell every day except Sunday for twenty-four years. i learned the underbelly of running a sports department and how to make up a “hot type” page from Bill Roberts of The Nashville Banner.

i learned from Jack Case how to do it all for real.

When i took his place, i announced i would not write a daily column. i felt until i had the wide knowledge of sports in Northern New York and access to a number of national sports figures, i would be struggling to come up with something every day, and the column would show that it was just writing for filling space. i didn’t want to disservice the readers.

In retrospect, i wish i could have come up with a way to get Jack to write a column on a regular basis after he retired, perhaps one or two a week. i would have called it, with his permission, “Just in Case.”

i did get his opinion on several crises in national sports crises and quoted him on several occasions, but that idea of a column from him had merit.

Jack had access to many of the sports figures of the time. On the day he retired, December 31, 1971, i ran a full page of photos of Jack with some of the bigger stars of the past.

In one dated 1926, Jack is standing in front of several trees. The tall stocky guy in a sports jacket and bow tie with a pipe in his right hand next to Jack  is Lou Gehrig, one of the noblest of all sports figures and “The Pride of the Yankees.” In another, he is beside a microphone interviewing Walter Hagen on WWNY radio.

In a head-to-calf fur coat standing next to Jack in December 1952 snow is Sonja Henie.

In the middle of that page is (yeh, i saved that page) Jack playfully separating Maxie Rosenbloom, the former light heavyweight champion, from Max Baer, the former heavyweight champion whom you might remember more about his son, the junior Max who was “Jethro” in “The Beverly Hillbillies.” They are promoting a “revue” later staged at the state armory in Watertown (1946).

One photo that took my breath away then and did so again while i gazed at it just now is Jack with Roy Campanella in his wheelchair. After his illustrious career with the Brooklyn Dodgers was ended by an automobile wreck, Roy was often a motivational speaker, this time at a Watertown Elks meeting.

At the bottom, Carmen Basilio is at the microphone with Jack when Carmen after he claimed the welterweight championship. The other photo on the bottom is Jack with four of the Boston College 1941 football team that went undefeated and won the Sugar Bowl.

There is one more photo, taken in 1939. I placed it in the upper left corner, to me even more prestigious than the one to the right of Lou Gehrig. Jack is in the foreground with his ubiquitous cigar. Posing in his boxing shorts and gloves in the center is Ray Robinson. Ray was the first, the real Sugar Ray, Sugar Ray Robinson, regarded by many pugilist experts (yep, “pugilist” is the word Jack would have used) as the best boxer of all time.

Sugar Ray attributed his nickname to Jack Case. After winning an amateur bout in upstate New York in 1939, Ray was visited in his dressing room by Mister Case. As he was leaving, Jack turned around and said, “Ray, you are as sweet as sugar.”

Jack Case was one of a kind in the “Golden Age of Sports.”

It is good to remember him.

i just had this thought wander into this somewhat messed up brain. My following thoughts were 1) i shouldn’t post this, 2) Since i am going to once again forego following a wise thought and post this, i hope Maureen can take a joke.

It has been a good day in the rain. i minimized  the amount of rainfall in a Facebook post earlier. It wasn’t. Maureen has been working on some felting magic project most of the day. Sarah was at work. i continued on the second draft of my book, realizing what a huge undertaking it was to get it right and escaping with another post i will add later. Now, i’m working in my office while Maureen is finishing another gourmet meal.

When she works and cooks, she watches about 4,678 movies on a continual repeat wheel. Her favorites are those movies with Diane Keaton, Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, and Alex Baldwin.

Tonight, i got in trouble.

i have watched a number of “chick flicks” with her, enjoyed them. Really.

Tonight, it dawned on me the ones she watched the most were those with the older actors and actresses.

So, being me, i asked her tonight why “chick flicks” with older actors and actresses weren’t  called “hen flicks.’

She hasn’t spoken to me yet.

i am posting this here because i wanted to make it available for everyone i know. My entry when i shared my brother’s post on Facebook is included.

Once more, thank you, Joe.

https://firebrandmag.com/articles/salvaging-catholic-spirit-in-the-context-of-contempt?fbclid=IwAR3bSBF7L0KcSbvzkVDuVsYhwX4f4fA_eXmU6DXDNgJCrmTLLH29E29Cib0

Thank you, Brother. i wanted to add my thoughts, not only about my sadness over where my church is headed, but how our country, our world are in the grass below the elephants. But Donald Haynes writes it all better than i could, and if he chose to add his words, Joe would go deeper and more accurately into the problem. i hope those who read this, think and contemplate how they might change for better facing and solving this problem. i am sad, deeply sad. Thanks again, Joe.

When i heard yesterday afternoon, i choked back a few tears. Then i started checking out the news, the sports, the social media, and this morning, the newspaper.

He came from another era. He not only lasted but succeeded in becoming a legend, a history maker in the next era and the next.

i shall not try to add to the tributes for Henry Aaron, except two.

Today, driving to the VA for my first COVID vaccination, i heard a quote i thought captured what the man accomplished: Muhammed Ali once said that Hank Aaron was, “The only man I idolize more than myself.”

The other quote which has been replayed and quoted in writing numerous times after the sad news broke yesterday came from Vin Scully announcing the game for the Dodgers when the Atlanta Brave became the most prolific home run hitter in major league baseball and still holds that record if you don’t count the steroid enhanced performance of Barry Bonds. When Aaron hit his blast to go past Babe Ruth, Scully announced:

A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world. And it is a great moment for all of us, particularly Henry Aaron, who was met at home plate by not only every member of the Braves, but by his father and mother.”

That pretty much tells how much this man meant to baseball, our country, and the world.

i have provided the link to today’s “Sean of the South” column. He covers the emotion better than i could. But even more impactful for me was the quote of Howie Bedell at the end of the column. It echoed how a number of other quotes have described Henry Aaron. It is also the description i found to be the best for my father, and what i hope will eventually be subscribed to me.

“…Hank Aaron was a good man.”

https://seandietrich.com/hank-aaron/