BASEBALL TRADITION – A TREASURE TO ENJOY

Baseball lives from generation to generation

Watching MLB.com as my beloved Phillies scratched and clawed to a season ending victory  last evening the memory tape rewound again and again as to how  fortunate we are to be a nation of traditional baseball fans. In the mid 194o’s my grandfather  sat next to me as the Phillies announcer  read the ticker tape account of the games from Shibe Park in Philadelphia..  Legends were born with  Robin Roberts, Richie Ashburn, later Mike Schmidt.  TRADITION , honoring those who went before.  Sixty five years later  we locker room jocks originally  from Central Pennsylvania are now feverishly tweeting about the upcoming playoffs. Amazing the continuity of loyalty which was planted in our psyches as a child.

45,000 screaming  Brewer fans watched their long maligned heroes capture home field advantage in the playoffs  yesterday..  A new TRADITION  for a team playing in a 21^st century park with Fielder and Braun potential Hall of Famers.  Fans remember 20 years ago when the legacy  let by Robin Yount brought home the bacon. The beat continues in brew city. Loyalty runs deep in Milwaukee and West Allis and on the banks of the Fox River.

Then there is the collapse of the Red Sox – What are Yastremzki and Ted Williams thinking?  How could decades of pride and TRADITION crumble in September?  Tears are streaming from the shadows  of the Green Monster. Alas,  Fenway park will shake again with cheering fans when spring comes in April.

The grainy pictures of Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth hitting balls into the seats in New York.  Sandy Koufax and Bob Feller throwing hard strikes barely i to the naked eye.  No matter where your loyalties lie, what your station in life, baseball binds us all together since the 1800’s.

And now it is October ( remember Reggie Jackson).  Face book and Twitter are humming with  good natured partisan discussions.  We are joined together by the social media as never before.  It used to be 4-5 guys at the local bar discussing who would win what.  Now there are thousands joining in the chat.

We are reminded of that song from “  Fiddler on the Roof”.  TRADITION.  The game is now international. Players from Dominican Republic, South Korea, Japan, Venezuela ,  etc.  Politics is a non factor –can he hit? 

Anyone checking the  nationality of the great Manny Rivera? – nah, the question is can anyone get a hit off him in the 9^th with the bases loaded.    It’s about wins and losses: Home Town Pride: and for Brewer fans – Bob Uecker and Uzinger Sausage. 

The leaves are falling here in the Midwest.. and cases of Miller Lite are being consumed as we lustily cheer for our October heroes.  While the politicians pontificate, procrastinate, and pander, the rest of us sit back and enjoy a true American  treasure – Baseball TRADITION.

 

 

Stumpy- Hel Lived Alone and Died Alone

Stumpy – He lived Alone and Died Alone
Snug in the farmlands of Eastern Pennsylvania
Surrounded by the prosperous home of Hershey Chocolate.
Close to the jobs making machine of the State Capital
Our town sleepily goes unnoticed from generation to generation
A typical All – American small town.
Great schools, no crime, boy meets girl, everyone knows everyone
A Norman Rockwell terrific type of place to live.

That is …. If you didn’t live on the wrong side of the tracks OR
You moved into town from “outside” of the area OR
If your IQ was apparently below the median OR
IF you were non athletic, not a Phillies fan, and “not cool” .

So it was with “ Stumpy”
He came to our town at age 11 from West Virginia
All of the above: academically slow, overweight, “ Not Cool”

He tried, struggled, dedicated himself to fitting in.
Joined the Boy Scouts, played the saxophone,
But no one would invite him to their house,
Always the last chosen to be a team mate in this high competitive
Jock centered school that produced running backs for Penn State
He stood alone, humiliated, knowing the feeling of being ostrasized

The Gods quite frankly were not kind to Stumpy and his late father
Life was just plain cruel and unfair.

At about age 13, those in Troop 66 of the Boy Scouts of American
Treked gleefully out of town to our home in the woods – Bull Frog Valley
A bucolic place of rustic buildings, woods, baseball fields
The”merit badge” capital of the region. Studying the trees, tying knots,
A place to freeze in the winter and revel in Penn’s Woods the other seasons.

Stumpy was standing alone, off to the side as usual
Watching, biting his lip, leaning, yes hiding against an oak tree
The others, swinging golf clubs, pretending they were like
The local hero – Arnold Palmer playing at the Hershey Country Club

Out of no where, the sun splashed 3 iron cut through the air
Whirling and diving like the blade of a helicopter
Slicing into the side of Stumpy’s forehead like a Scimitar’s weapon.
We stood there as he fell: in a heap: blood soaking into the oak leaves
Mezmerized in day time sleep, we watched as Stumpy didn’t get up
He didn’t holler: we didn’t laugh at him – this was adult stuff
Blood and flesh were everywhere.
We had never seen the face of death, the smile of the devil before
Oh yes, Stumpy was taken to his family doctor
A fly by night chiropractor know as being cheap but not very capable
He told Stumpy’s forlorn, mom :
*who wore the faded, shapeless smock of the Appalachians,
*was bereft of her front teeth: the others yellow and decaying
* overweight from a diet of soda and noodles

You get the picture- a desperate middle age woman alone in this world
With a teenage son, scrapping to give him a better life away from the hollers.
The doctor’s ill fated, stupid recommendation – take him home, let him sleep
On the couch .. he will be just fine.
You know the ending… Stumpy went to sleep, and never awoke.
He was buried alone.. quietly.. just a well intentioned county minister and his mother at graveside
Even in death this “ caring, Christian Community, could not cross the road
And be the Samaritan so talked about in their churches on Sunday.