The Northward Contrail

For Ernie Harwell

You may know by now that longtime baseball broadcaster Ernie Harwell passed away yesterday.  In his memory, here's a link to his essay, "The Game for All America," and it beautifully captures what baseball is, at its best.

Pen pal

Baseball season is back.  It's this time of year I find myself wishing I could enjoy the game as much as I used to.  They've made it unwatchable now; the television broadcasts have so many graphics and so much whooshy crap intruding on it, too many of the current announcers don't understand subtlety, and all the emphasis on home-run histrionics (and how they got there) really turned me off.

(On the other hand, the other week hubby and I were at a pizza joint, and the television was tuned to the Cardinals-Reds game.  The sound was turned off.  I spent several minutes turned backwards in my side of the booth watching.  The word "longing" doesn't capture it.  I felt like a sad-eyed, whimpering puppy.  Baseball does that to me.  It makes me yearn for something that's gone.)

Something else baseball season does is make me remember someone who's long gone now.  In my hometown, there were a couple of ladies who lived up the street from us, a widow and her daughter.  We used to do their yard work and other odd jobs for them.  They were both up in years; the widow had to have been in her eighties, and the daughter had to have been around 60.  The daughter was housebound because of chronic illness; the only time she really got out was for another in a string of endless doctor visits.  

When I stopped doing yard work for people and started getting into other, steadier, better-paying lines of work, I fell out of touch with them.  A few years later, the widow passed away.  I felt awful for falling out of touch, so I wrote the daughter a little note and mailed it to her.  It generated a very kind response, and from there we got back in touch.  We'd write notes to one another, or sometimes she would call me on the phone and we'd talk for an hour or so.  On occasion, I'd go visit. 

We had a few common interests, but what brought us together was baseball.  She was a huge Yankees fan.  I mean, she bled Yankee blue.  She had autographed baseballs, game videotapes, books about the Yankees, even an old poster of Ron Guidry hanging up in her room.  Her favorite Yankees of all time were DiMaggio and Allie Reynolds.  Oh, she loved ol' Super Chief, and treasured the baseball she had that was signed by him.  (She was also very interested when I told her about the connection one of my professors had with Allie Reynolds, that he went to school with Reynolds' children.)

While my loyalties differed, that didn't stop me from feeding her habit.  We traded videotapes (she lent me her recordings of old All-Star games, and I'd tape games off satellite for her -- and when I was able to dub her copies of my videotapes of the 1996 World Series, she was beside herself).  We'd swap newspaper clippings.  Sometimes we'd swap other items; for instance, she gave me a note written to her by Bob Watson, the player turned Yankees general manager.  Another time, she was able to call in a favor with a friend who knew someone with the San Francisco Giants, and that's how I got a baseball signed by Dusty Baker. 

That's only part of it, though.  For me, if I have a friend with a shared interest, it becomes a lot of fun for me to find a Christmas present or a birthday gift that's special, or that someone couldn't otherwise get for themselves.  I knew my friend thought Derek Jeter was one of the greatest things to happen to the Yankees in forever, so one Christmas I ordered her a baseball signed by him.  I wish you could have seen her reaction.  I kept getting her gift subscriptions to Baseball Weekly, and the publication would send me a classic ballparks calendar each year (because that's where my interest in baseball really started, with the old ballparks).  One year's calendar featured a painting depicting the final out of the 1996 World Series at Yankee Stadium, so I took that, cut it out and had it mounted and framed, and gave that to her.  Oh, she loved it.  She would find me things and give them to me, and though I very much appreciated them, the best present I got each year was watching her.  It's sort of like part of the fun of being a parent at Christmas (or so they tell me, anyway) is watching the kids' faces light up.

There was one promise I kept making to her: when she got well, I'd take her to see the Yankees play.  I meant it, too.  She often told the story that she was to have gone to New York to see the Yankees play in the 1952 World Series, but got double-crossed at the last moment by her boss.  I may not have been able to take her to a World Series game, but I was definitely going to take her to Atlanta to see the Yankees when they came to town for interleague play or an exhibition game.  I meant it, too. 

But, it wasn't to be.  She never got any better.  I moved away, but we remained in touch.  The last time I saw her was at Christmas ten years ago, when I came back home for the holidays.  The last present I gave her was a copy of Richard Ben Cramer's then-new book about Joe DiMaggio, which had just come out; I went to the bookstore and bought it hours before my flight home.  We spent a couple hours visiting and catching up on things.  I wasn't following baseball as closely, but I was still conversant in it enough to keep up.

One night about three months later, the phone rang.  It was a weeknight.  It was my mother.  We normally talked on the weekends, so if it was a call during the week, it was something bad.  Sure enough, it was.  My friend had passed away.  I can't say it was much of a surprise, but it made me sad nonetheless.  (I never got a chance to make good on that promise, but somehow I think in the great beyond, she's getting a better view of the Yankees' exploits than I could ever give her.)

To this day, when I think about baseball, I think of her a little, and I miss her.

Here's your cues

The other day I reminisced about my days at the radio station working the auto racing broadcasts.  I also mentioned I'd saved most of my cue sheets from those days.  Well, I went through one of the many boxes of accumulated junk I have (oh, boy, will my estate have a huge bonfire someday when I'm gone and all the stuff I've saved for no reason gets disposed).  And I found one.

Here's the cue sheet for the 1992 Southern 500.  It's a typical cue sheet for the day, with the basic broadcast information on the front (satellite information, cues, emergency instructions, etc.).  On the back is an approximate rundown of the commercial breaks.  Which, of course, you could never count on as anything other than an approximation.  Almost never did the race go as scheduled (wrecks, delays, caution periods, etc.).  Sometimes, but not often, the spots would be run a little out of sequence, too -- not by much, but just enough to throw you off.  In this case, the 367 lap estimate didn't bear out because of weather.  Instead I had to sit by the board for a long time while NA$CAR decided what to do.  Sometimes, they'd fill if it looked like it was going to take a while, but other times they'd throw it back to the locals for a while and we'd go back at a given time for updates.  On one hand, it meant overtime pay for me, but on the other hand...I just wanted to get it over with.

Extensive instructions on the front instructed us on what to do if the satellite feed went kaput, and gave a lot of phone numbers for support purposes.  (I don't know if those numbers are still valid, but I've redacted them just to be safe.)  I remember worrying about what to do if it did.  Remember, I was the only one at the whole station when all this was going on.  I especially wondered what I'd do if we had to fall back on the 900-number option.  I had visions of that being the only option, and of the suits going into vapor-lock when the bill arrived.  

On the back, you can see where I rather sloppily checked off each spot as it aired.  You can also see an element of my "are we there yet?" mentality, with the notation "367 laps" at the top.  Down at the bottom, you can see what was more on my mind: my pencil calculations of how much I would make for the day's work.  My mind wasn't on car racing; my mind was on the video camera for which I was saving (because a friend and I was gonna make us some Important Movies). 

I found several others while looking through; not all of them, but several.  Among them, I found the cue sheet for that first race I did (the Watkins Glen race), the Pocono race where Davey Allison got hurt, and the following race at Talladega when Davey, still really beaten up, started the race.  Man, do I remember the pre-race show on that one: local favorite, lucky to still be alive, grunts through and gets in the car to start the race. 

I also found the cue sheet for the July 1992 Daytona race, which I remember for no other reason than that the station manager, who caught everything his kids got, was recovering from yet another illness that night but came in to work our broadcast of the Independence Day festivities at the local technical college.  I remember him in the production room, next door, editing again and again the music part of the show: Neil Diamond's "Coming to America" over and over.  (And over.  And over.)  And I worked the board that night as the show went on.  (That's right, kids...I worked the board as our station broadcast a fireworks display.  On radio.)

The '92 Southern 500, by the way, was one of three wins for Darrell Waltrip that year.  It would also be his last win.  See?  History, and I didn't care back then.  Grumble.

Racing memories, part II

After I left the radio station, I didn't think much about racing.  It went on in the background, of course, and my father remained interested.  But I wasn't, not at all.  My sport was baseball.  Oh, how I loved it.  I still didn't care for racing, though.

My old man, though, loved Dale Earnhardt.  It's not hard to understand why.  My dad's blue-collar, worked his way up from nothing to build what we had.  Earnhardt was the hero for guys like him, men who valued that kind of quiet resolve, the kind who took nothing off anybody.  One year, for my dad's birthday, I decided that instead of buying him a present, I'd build him one.  So I got one of the Revellogram kits of a Goodwrench Monte Carlo and built that for him.  It wasn't a great build; I wasn't interested in the subject, so I built it sort of halfheartedly.  I also didn't like that it was molded in black, so I had a devil of a time painting the chassis and roll cage.  (Note: you should have used a blocking primer.)  My old man liked it, though, and kept it on his desk for a long time.

Nothing much happened with me and racing from then until 2000.  I met someone, and my life was completely different afterward.  Turned out, he was a racing fan.  And an Earnhardt fan.  Why was it I kept ending up with Earnhardt fans?  Inevitability, I guess.  That was fine.  At first I hated racing, and I hated sitting around watching races when we could have been out doing something else (I especially remember being a little grumpy sitting around on a Saturday night watching the July race from Daytona, which was the last thing I wanted to do then).  

But, somehow, it grew on me.  I'm not sure why.  As the season went on, I started caring about it.  I think part of it was that, at a time when I was living far away from home in a strange and scary place, it reminded me of home.  It was something Southern I could hold on to in a place that didn't seem Southern.  And as I was surrounded by people who seemed shallow, it seemed like Earnhardt was somebody familiar, somebody with depth and character and strength, and I really came to appreciate what my new mate, and my dad, saw in him.  I slowly started to assemble my own cast of good guys and bad guys: gritty respect for Dale Earnhardt (and the related interest in Junior); affection for outspoken and doughily handsome Tony Stewart; a perpetual underdog's sympathy for hapless Michael Waltrip.  And, likewise, the consternation that somebody like Jeff Gordon could provoke.  (He was too much like a racing version of Ned Flanders for my tastes.  And too successful.  With time, I've come to appreciate Gordon a lot more, but back then, ooh, I couldn't stand him.  He reminded me too much of the popular kids in high school who always won the Student Council elections, won all the awards and everything, and ran with the "in" crowd.  Now, though, let's just say there are plenty enough folks who have come along since that now make me think Gordon's okay, and now I don't mind when he does okay.)

One Saturday during our weekly hobby shop visit, I picked up a Revellogram kit of Tony Stewart's Pontiac.  Just a tiny taste, I told myself; just something to have some fun.  But, oh, how the car kits soon after multiplied.  There were so many different cars I wanted to build.  They were colorful and interesting and complicated.  In a way, all those tiny parts reminded me of those wonderfully complex kits they made in the 1950s -- the cutaway nuclear submarines, for instance, where it's a dozen miniature dramas in injection-molded plastic.  

So by the time the 2001 Daytona 500 came around, I was fully interested.  I'd been following things.  I was hoping to see a black #3 car in Victory Lane.  But I also remember watching that race with kind of an eerie, sick feeling in my stomach the whole time.  It's almost as if I was picking up on some vibe that something really bad was going to happen.  When the inevitable "big one" happened, the one that looked scary, it turned out to not be that much.  But the smaller one near the end, the one that looked innocuous, turned out being the one that justified my sick feelings.  (No, I'm not linking to that one.)  Right at what should have been a great moment -- a perpetual underdog winning the season's marquee race -- came heartbreak.  We got the feeling, as the television screen showed the ambulance driving off just a little too slowly, that it was a lost cause.  We were correct in our assumptions.  What happened in that last turn that day broke my dad's heart.  He took that model I built him of the #3 car, put it in a box and stored it on a shelf in his closet.  It took him a while to get over, and to this day, I still think he mourns a little bit. 

Over time my interest in stock cars grew, and then waned.  I saw things happening that I didn't like, and I saw things that I felt should have been addressed go neglected for far too long.  I also didn't like how commercial it was getting.  It was neglecting its roots.  It was eating its young.  It was getting too much like showbiz.  My interests started moving towards the sports car series, thanks in part to hubby's fascination with it.  The sports car series aren't as widely-known, but they can really be entertaining, and they also seem a little more accessible.  Success hasn't (yet) spoiled them.  (I also started getting interested in Formula One, thanks in some part to a certain pen pal who is also a motorsports fan.  Now, I know my interest in F1 seems weird given that I've just decried the carnival commercialization of stock car racing, but I got interested in F1 knowing full well what I was getting into.  I knew from the start that F1 was a soap opera, and I think that's part of what attracted me to it.  That, and how exotic it is.)

So that's the history of me and motorsports, boiled down to a couple of not very interesting blog posts.  The older I get, the more interested I become in the stuff I lived through, but didn't care for at the time.  There are things that bring back so many memories, and there are model projects I have planned for the near future.  Before too long, I'll be building models of a #7 car and a black #28 car. They'll remind me of a couple of good racers who were gone too soon, and of all the Saturdays and Sundays I spent at a radio board as they made history.

Racing memories, part I

I've had an odd, prickly relationship with motorsports.  I spent many earlier years not caring much for racing, but later on it would come to be a pretty big deal in my life in a few ways.  The funny part is, now I look back on some of the memories from when I hated it -- when I was exposed to it but didn't care, or when it was nothing more than a means to a paycheck -- and realize that I blew off some great moments.

In my younger days, I was obsessed with cars.  But I didn't care much for them when people had hot-rodded them.  I didn't understand why, for instance, you'd take a perfectly nice '57 Chevy and stick a big ugly scoop on the hood, redo the interior, and all that sort of business.  The historian influence was in me even then: the car should be a reflection of its times, or so I thought.  I didn't care much more racing cars; they seemed unreal, exotic, too artificial.  But, my age was in single digits.  I remember asking for this racing car playset one Christmas; it included a plastic wind-up version of a NA$CAR-ized Chevy Caprice, a two-door version of the car we had.  My first act was to rip the racing decals off it and try to turn it into a "stock" stock car.  I didn't like the big logos and what all on it.  I just wanted a normal car.

In the background was the occasional racing thing going on.  Everybody knew who Richard Petty was, because he was just so darn famous, showing up in the STP commercials and everything.  Cale Yarborough wasn't far behind, because for a while he was sponsored by Hardee's, and Hardee's restaurants were all over the South like kudzu.  Darrell Waltrip, his youthful brashness still at full volume, his hair still in that sort of goofy bowl style, was hard to miss.  Stubborn, indestructible Bobby Allison was still out there, too, plugging away and winning races.  I knew who these folks were, but somehow they didn't matter that much.  They were famous people who drove cars, and that was the extent of it.

There was a period when we'd go see anything with Burt Reynolds in it, so I remember going to see Stroker Ace when it came out.  (I now own it on DVD, and while it's a terrible "adaptation" of a terrific book, it's still a hoot to watch to see so many famous racers in their younger days...and a memorable, profane cameo by Ken Squier.) We'd also watch The Dukes of Hazzard each week, though the significance of the Dukes' racing aspirations was completely lost on me.  (The fact that Waylon Jennings was the narrator was a little more interesting to me, as were the bungling antics of Boss Hogg and Sheriff Roscoe.) 

My father didn't like the idea of going to a car race (I remember him making some crack about "I don't want to go watch these cars go around like mice in a circle"), but he did listen to racing on the radio.  Sometimes, we'd go out for a drive on Sunday afternoons, and my father would tune in the car races on the radio.  On other lazy afternoons, car races would be the only thing on television that was halfway interesting.  For whatever reason, we watched the 1985 Daytona 500, and the memory that sticks out isn't Bill Elliott's win, but Lake Speed's emotional interview after a surprise second-place finish by his little team.  (I didn't understand the context back then.)  There were other little things, too; for instance, I vaguely remember the flamboyant shooting star that was Tim Richmond (mostly thanks to an Old Milwaukee commercial I must have seen a hundred thousand times in 1985), and folks like Darrell Waltrip and Dale Earnhardt would whiz by in the background of my awareness.  And some guy named Kulwicki kept getting mentioned a lot on our local stations, too.

(Tim Richmond, by the way, is another too-forgotten character who fascinates me.  The relationship between him and crew chief Harry Hyde was the basis of another laughably regrettable movie about racing, one that came out in 1990 that was basically the same movie the same star and production team had done three years before, but with race cars instead of fighter jets.  Why are there so few good motion pictures about racing?  For my money, the only movie about racing in the last 25 or 30 years that's come anywhere near being accurate, oddly enough, is Talladega Nights.  But, I digress.)

In 1992, I got a call from a local radio station.  I'd submitted a resume the previous year, and a new program director had gone through the files and found it.  My first job was running the board during the Motor Racing Network and Performance Radio Network events.  I was a young college student, very idealistic, and car racing represented a lot that I wanted to leave behind.  But, it was a paycheck, and I figured that if I started with the drudge work, things would come in time.  The first race for which I worked the board was the 1992 Busch race at Watkins Glen.  Over the coming weeks and months, I was at the board when a lot of things happened.  I remember being there when Davey Allison had his frightening wreck at Pocono.  I sat at the board that afternoon, wondering if I'd just heard the radio announcers describing a fatal accident.  But, sure enough, he grunted back to start the next race, and I remember all that drama. 

Somewhere, I still have most of my MRN cue sheets from back then.  For whatever reason, I saved them, and I'm glad I did.  I'll have to go through them and figure out which moments from that great season I got to hear as they happened.  The worst part of it is, though, I wasn't interested.  I had no love for the sport then.  It might have helped had we had a television in the control room.  Had I been able to watch the races on television (which would not only have necessitated a television, but also cable, which I doubt our cost-conscious station owner would have allowed), I might have been able to build some interest.  But, it didn't happen.  I also didn't like that car races were unpredictable, that delays and cautions prolonged my stays at the board, and that throws to the locals from the networks could happen very quickly and with little notice.  And, oh, did I hate rain delays.

To this day, I regret that I wasn't interested, because 1992 was a season like few others: the drama of Davey Allison in a year full of triumphs and danger; the retirement of Richard Petty and the debut of Jeff Gordon; and a tight race for the championship that went down to the last moments of the season's last race, and was won by a stubborn, determined independent in a story Hollywood couldn't have scripted.  I didn't work that race; I was on the early Sunday shift at that point, so I missed history being made.

In early 1993 I was put back on race duty, and this perceived 'demotion' led to my eventual resignation from the station.  (I was young and full of myself.)  The one memory I do have is broadcasting that year's Daytona 500, which I remember for no other reason than watching it on the little television in the AM control room, and watching Kyle Petty and Bobby Hillin get into it (which starts about 6:45 into this clip).  Again, because I had no context, I couldn't understand why those two were getting into it, and because of that, it took me a long time to like either one, really.  

I got out of it in March 1993 and didn't pay much attention.  But horrifying things happened that brought it back to my mind.  A few weeks after I quit, Alan Kulwicki was killed.  Then a few months later, so was Davey Allison.  Those were names I'd heard week after week, and even if I didn't particularly care then for the sport they were in, they were still names I knew, still people who were real somehow to me.  And, abruptly, they were gone. 

Tomorrow, thoughts about motorsports in my life since radio.  The theme of "inevitability" comes up.  Stay tuned.

Daytona, back in the day

A few weeks ago I picked up this book, read it through in a weekend.  It's one of the best sports books I've read in a while -- funny, vivid and well-done.  Early on, it retells the story of the 1979 Daytona 500, the one we all remember with the fight at the end. 

As longtime readers will know, for many years we've made annual trips to Daytona Beach.  Sometimes we've gone to see the 24-hour race, and other times we've just gone for a long weekend.  It's a special place for us both; it was the destination of the first overnight trip we took together, and for hubby it's a special place because that's where he went to college, learning how to work on airplanes.  Sometimes he'd get to help out at the Speedway, lending a hand in the parking lots, and sometimes he'd be in the neighborhood when history was made.  (My favorite is his story of being around there in 1983 when a certain Mr. Foyt, whose original entry retired early, was called back in to help another team and emerged victorious in his first Porsche outing).  

Daytona Beach was expanding like mad the first time I visited ten years ago.  Now, it's unrecognizable from even then.  Every time we go back, hubby looks for familiar landmarks, and they're going away too.  And, of course, Daytona International Speedway looks nothing like it did back then.  The track's the same shape and Lake Lloyd is still there, but it seems everything else has been so extensively modified, rebuilt or replaced that it's hard to recognize sometimes.  I can see pictures of how the place used to look, or see old television footage, and remember seeing it on television when I was a kid.  Now, sometimes, you have to remind yourself it's the same place.  Different, but it's the same speedway.

With that in mind, here's some footage from that first televised flag-to-flag Daytona 500 in 1979.  This piece gives you a good overview of the challenges of televising it, and also a taste of how significant it all was.  (It's also enjoyable to see Ken Squier talk about it -- and to see footage of a younger Ken Squier and David Hobbs -- and it's also neat to see and hear the original billboard, with longtime CBS Sports announcer Don Robertson's voiceover.)  Then here's the opening laps, which were run under caution.  Yes, it's a parade with no excitement (save for a Brock Yates interview with Herb Nab -- and, unfortunately, footage of a horrifying crash from the previous day's Sportsman race that, while it didn't kill one of the drivers involved, did leave him a prisoner in his own body for the rest of his life).  But it's worth watching because it gives you so many chances to see what it used to look like there.  It was the days before the colossal grandstand down the back stretch, before the Winston Tower, before the huge country-club looking garage and hospitality complexes in the infield.

(For the record, I think I may vaguely remember that weekend in 1979.  If memory serves, we were among those blitzed by the weather, and we were without power most of that weekend, so I doubt we watched the race.  I don't think I would have remembered it if we had, anyway.  Most of what I remember involves huddling by the fireplace in the den of our then-new house, and spending the night in sleeping bags.)

Happy fun reading for Friday

In lieu of any content of my own (which wouldn't be interesting, anyway, given how little I've accomplished the last couple days), some things written by others:

:: Reflections of a former sports nut on why he quit.  I know how this guy felt.  I used to be the kind who would be genuinely dejected when my favorite team didn't do well, and then one day I said "enough."  Now I watch it more for amusement than anything else.  (And when a team I don't like does well, I remind myself that, regardless of what happens, I still gotta get up and go to work the next day.  It does wonders for my perspective.)

:: Happy fun reading about a tour of a Titan II silo and the security measures meant to keep from blowing ourselves up unless it was the real deal.  This makes great bedtime reading.

:: And, since I'm fascinated by evangelists, here's an interesting take on Oral Roberts, who was finally called home this week, and his influence on modern evangelism.

Making the world turn just a little bit better

It was a nice, quiet weekend for us.  We really didn't do much.  On Saturday, hubby went into town to run some errands and brought back take-out Chinese for lunch.  I even watched some college football while waiting for him to come home.  And I don't even watch college football.  But that's how contented I felt on Saturday; it just felt right somehow to have a game on the television during a quiet Saturday afternoon.

Yesterday I took care of the household chores that had gone undone for too long.  That included getting the upstairs workshop in order.  I'd let it fall into disorder yet again, with multiple half-complete project cluttering up the bench and a bunch of other stuff strewn about.  So I spent an hour or so getting things into some sort of shape, putting some things back on shelves, and so forth.  The world runs a little better when your work space is better organized, so that made me happy. 

While I was at it, I started looking at one project, a model ship, that I'd been feeling low about and left in limbo.  I did a little touch-up sanding on it, took it down to the garage, and shot some primer on it.  It turns out that project isn't nearly as awful as I'd feared, so perhaps I'll move forward on it soon.  I hope so, anyway.  It could potentially be a very interesting finished project, so keep your fingers crossed.

Oh, and I got two of the best nights of sleep I've had in a long time.  That always makes for a good weekend.  Especially when the coming week will be demanding, as usual.

Artifacts

A few things I've found or seen over the last week have stuck with me.  They all have to do with the media and big moments.  I figure I'll work with them in chronological order, so here goes:

:: First, 71 years ago last week was the "War of the Worlds" broadcast.  The story's been told and re-told again and again, and there's much out there in the way of fact, myth and legend about it.  Anyone who knows anything about broadcast history is well familiar with it.  I've listened to the tapes of it over and over again, and know the broadcast pretty well, down to the pauses and intonation and all the little eccentricities.  Or, at least I thought I did.  Seems recent discussion on a listserv to which I subscribe has brought to my attention a second recorded version.  The listmaster's blog has a post offering one version as a podcast, and it's my understanding the other version will be available soon.  This blog's worth watching, and I'm eager to get the "other" version when it's available.  It may not differ that much from the one I already know, but I am a completist and all that, so bring it on, I say.

:: Second, if you're a Mad Men addict like I am, you know this week's episode dealt with a certain watershed event in the nation's history (and, considering how well-trod that event has been, handled it about as well as one could). It's raised the question about if real-life weddings did indeed go on as planned that mournful weekend.  The New York Times "City Room" blog investigated, and the findings are very interesting.

(Bonus link: Courtesy of OfficeTally, here's a link to a slideshow with a somewhat facile, but still very interesting and amusing, matchup of Mad Men characters with their Office counterparts.)

:: Finally, next week's installment of 30 for 30 will be about "Jimmy the Greek" Snyder, one of my favorite now-forgotten oddball characters from my childhood sports-viewing memories.  He's somebody I grew up with (since Sunday NFL games were required viewing at our weekly family dinners at my grandparents' house), so I am really looking forward to this one, and I know the footage will bring back an awful lot of memories. 

The past is gone before you know it

While I'm trying to get some work done today, here's a piece of poetry from a couple years back.  The subject has been a melancholy fascination of mine for a few years, and I've stood at that fence and looked at the past rusting away, longing to go aboard if even for a few minutes, wishing I could have known the great ship when she was alive and well and full of vigor.  (Warning: Don't click that last link unless you want to mist up a little.) 

:: As if that's not depressing enough, Ernie Harwell, legendary voice of the Detroit Tigers, is ill.   This world turns much too fast.