New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
What I do want to nudge you to consider is this: everything you are passionate about at the national level has a local analog that needs your attention.
No, there haven't been any columns lately, and very few posts. This is to be considered a status report.
As confided previously, this blog is being allowed to wither on the vine. There's a place and time for everything, and 15,000+ posts during 16 years are enough. This particular soapbox is being dismantled. Another will be erected elsewhere, although it will not be entirely the same. ON THE AVENUES will make the transition. Beyond that, I'm unsure.
It is an oft-told story, but worth a quick rehash. NA Confidential arose from my deep frustration with the (seeming) pointlessness of political involvement at the "macro" level of nation state. Hours, days, and years arguing about what should happen "up there," but no real way to be heard or to influence the outcome. It's actually easier that way; it absolves the individual from doing anything about it except talk.
This was in 2004, and as the presidential contest approached (W's re-election would be a bitter disappointment), I decided to look out the front door, down the three-lane, one-way racetrack running past our house, and see what could be done at the grassroots "micro" level.
As noted, this change of focus played out over an unexpectedly lengthy period. Here's something I wrote at Fb yesterday, as we await confirmation that Trump has been dumped:
I thought this would be an excellent time to announce a return to active local participation, much like the Dick Nixon account at Twitter, given that I feel little different than I did in 2004 when W's re-election turned my interest toward the street outside.
Then it occurred to me that it took 13 years of local participation to turn this one-way street to two ways. That's right: 13 years.
Furthermore, since I'm not a Republican and am still effectively blackballed (blackmailed?) into silence by reigning DemoDisneyDixiecrats -- whose stripes haven't changed since Tuesday -- there's no pathway available to me to do much of anything apart from coded commentary, a nice reading list, plenty of alcohol and the occasional sausage.
Okay, so be it; consequently, the new web site will be called Expatriate in Place, or Open Air Exile, or something like that.
I'll be delighted when Trump departs. But it's the same unforgivingly stupid Nawbany outside these four walls.
It appears Joe Biden will win the election, but I'm not "celebrating" one damn thing beyond the singular and profound relief afforded by NOT being compelled to listen to Donald Trump's nonsensical, narcissistic bleating and babbling every single day of my life.
I have almost no confidence that the Democratic Party, as currently configured, can do much of anything positive in the years to come. My position has been, and remains, that in spite of differing appearances, our two major political parties are conjoined in their duopoly. If they both can’t be vaporized at once, one must collapse and the other will soon follow.
And I don’t care which one goes first.
Consequently, I have as little interest now, as in 2004, in wasting time debating broad macro topics with no conceivable way of being heard. But locally, the pillars of the community have me effectively blockaded, scourged and blacklisted, primarily because of the past 16 years I've spent reminding them of their tendency to be utterly without clothes (politically and in terms of consciousness, not -- heaven forbid -- in the sense of public nudity).
They're all in favor of truth, until the truth is they're undereducated, incompetent, and in many instances outright venal. It shatters their self-delusions, and they get touchy (but not feely). Tough shit, although I'll concede there's a price to be paid when you're the one spotted holding a ball-peen hammer.
What happens next? I don't know, and neither do you.
History has shown, time and again, that absolute certainty is a fool's errand. The pandemic already has proven that everything we take for granted and flip overnight into an entirely different reality.
So I plan to be loitering around the perimeter for while, working my two jobs, scanning the landscape, and forever mindful of the year 2015, when the incumbent mayor tried ineffectually to take a swipe at me: "Roger’s never done anything in a positive manner to help the city of New Albany.”
In 2017, I explained why he's completely full of shit in making this assertion, because he never spent a single day in his life being entrepreneurial with his own money, and I mention his haplessly ignorant words now only because they're a powerful reminder that there are numerous ways outside ruling elites, social cliques and "the HWC fix is in" to be involved, accomplish things, make a difference and agitate for change.
One of my favorite W.C. Fields stories may or may not be true, but it's a good one about the comedian on his deathbed.
As the end approached, on that Christmas Day in 1946, an old writer-friend named Gene Fowler entered the hospital room and there was Fields, a self-admitted agnostic, thumbing through a Bible.
“What are you doing, Bill?” asked the incredulous Fowler.
“I’m looking for loopholes,” Fields whispered.
Pretty much. NAC can die, because it will make the dipshits happy, and as such, it's my loving gift to them.
There still isn't a firm timetable for the conversion, although at this point it's reasonable to assume that postings won't come to a complete halt until later in October, or even early November.
As of now, I'll be reducing activity to only one post each day. There is much transitioning to do, and I'm busy with other tasks.
The new web site is built and functional. Now it must be decorated and some furniture moved inside. The NA Confidential archive, all 15,000+ posts since 2004, is secure; if tomorrow morning Blogger might sink beneath the waves, there'd be a backup.
It cannot be denied that I’m a slow learner, a late bloomer and a serial procrastinator.
This much is perfectly clear. Actually, I’ve never cared enough to even try dodging these compliments.
The odd part has always been that once I get around at long last to learning, blooming and/or making up my mind, it’s a done deal. Once a decision has been determined, right or wrong, it is pretty much irrevocable with me.
So it was last week when I awakened to thoughts about NA Confidential’s future, and concluded it has none, at least in its present format. I'll continue writing elsewhere, and soon the blog will cease to exist as an active, ongoing entity.
NAC began in 2004 as a way of channeling a long-gestating insight, this being the importance of grassroots localism. It was and remains my view that people tend to obsess about hugely complex national and international topics to the exclusion of approachable issues outside their front doors, and in their own communities, because theatrically pontificating in broad terms is easier than getting involved with the grit and grime of specifics.
NAC started out as a diary of sorts, a place to chronicle my journeys, promote the beer businesses I was involved with at the time, channel my inner Mencken, and write about anything I damn well pleased. Other folks helped out with writing (Randy, Jeff, Lloyd), and then they didn’t.
The blog grew into a public gathering spot, a function that ebbed drastically once social media exploded. All along, it was a spot to broach subjects no one else would. I followed these stories where they took me, and it didn't always make people happy.
They're entitled to their own opinions, although not their own facts.
NA Confidential’s first post was on October 22, 2004. Who even imagined we’d still be talking about it in 2020? I didn't.
You don’t need a gumshoe with rotten breath and one too many alimony payments to figure out the problem with this town. It’s something in the water that causes people here to lose their vision. Q: What do New Albanians call Southside's mashed potatoes? A: Freedom Foie Gras. Well, we’re here to change all that.
Ha!
Change all that?
A tad cheeky, and ultimately a point to debate, although others can decide the extent, if any, of the blog’s influence hereabouts. Irrespective, the blogging experience has changed me, and nowadays I’m at a crossroads amid the crossfire. Consequently, there are several good reasons for acknowledging various irrefutable realities and drowning the blog in the nearest available bathtub.
Allow me to explore the reasoning.
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Localism? Not so much. Between our toxic social media fixation, the pandemic and Trump’s invasive cult of personality, interest in provocative takes on local matters in Nawbany has largely disappeared. Readership has responded accordingly, by plummeting. This should please my betters.
Part of this decline owes to the scattershot essence of Blogger; it is an utter piece of crap, and a dysfunctional platform overall. For at least a decade Blogger has been unsuitable for my intentions. Now it’s largely unusable owing to recent revisions, and I should have exited long ago when the going was good. That one's on me.
In addition, I turned 60 in August, and began paying attention to what the mirror (and my wife) was trying to tell me about the meaning of life. In short, it’s time for an autumn (of my years) deep cleaning and reboot. What better time than multiple, horrifying daily existential crises?
Then an e-mail notice came, reminding me it was time to renew my rogerbaylor.com domain name. Having finally learned a bit about WordPress owing to my position as digital editor at Food & Dining Magazine, and with the publication’s house web guru Jason around to advise me, starting anew at my own web site suddenly became an attractive option.
The year 2020 already was the most tumultuous year of my life, and probably yours, too. Why not end it with closure, by euthanizing NAC, and moving forward to something different?
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Of course there’s another aspect to the blog’s impending termination, a process which began in earnest the moment last year’s municipal election cycle concluded.
Jeff Gahan’s unprecedented third mayoral term (save for C. Pralle Erni’s four), and especially his increased margin of victory in the 2019 election, constituted voluminous (and perhaps inevitable) handwriting on the wall. It was a clear, unmistakable vote for civic fantasy, and against truth telling, whether by a malcontent like me or on the part of perpetually somnolent local newspapers … or anyone else, for that matter.
It was, in fact, a slam dunk.
Accordingly, a solitary dissident at a blog parked at the woefully deficient Blogger hell hole simply cannot hope to make a difference in such a dismal, uncomprehending milieu. Ironically, what it can do is make the dissident’s own position unsustainable -- and it has.
None of this thrills me, but the truth of it is simply undeniable, and that’s why I’ll go through the narrative a final time before NAC self-destructs. Accordingly, let’s award credit where it’s due, sans snarkiness.
I fought Nawbany, and Nawbany won.
That's it, in a nutshell. As an intelligent, well-educated and worldly person, I can fully appreciate the tactical deficit of my coordinates in this pandemic year, as pinned down in a fox hole with massed (metaphorical) artillery pointed in my general direction.
Well played, dominant cadres. I've learned that "it's the way things work here" is more than a recurring promise; it's a big-ass buzz saw, and I'm sliced, diced and vanquished.
Evidently “check mate” means the same thing in all of those European languages I wish had come easier to me so as to facilitate being a joyful expatriate. It looks like we’re marooned here until the house is paid off. After that, Ireland (or Malta, or Bolivia; whatever), here we come.
Verily, the governing Nawbanian clique's “lone dissident on the grassy know-it-all” containment strategy for the past seven years has proven to be highly effective. Granted, it took a few dozen of them to whip one blogger acting alone, but make no mistake: The lash of the nabob's whip is real, and accordingly, I’m whupped.
Cutting me off from any “official” political and governing dialogue is only a small part of it, because the community pillars have completely succeeded in institutionalizing a local perception of me as social misfit and pariah, to be shunned by “right thinking” people as if I were a member of India’s untouchable caste.
Evidently if you whisper often enough that Roger’s a dangerous nutcase, otherwise sane and intelligent people will start to believe it. The ones who don’t? They'll merely say they regret the inconvenience, but just can’t risk being seen with you – you understand, they’ll say amid the furtive glances, it’s just business.
Yes, I understand the obligations of current accounts, although frankly, some of you should be ashamed to spend hours denouncing the perfidy of national Republicans while simultaneously encouraging crickets to chirp when it comes to the eually repellant habits of local Democrats. That’s cowardice, and it’s also hypocrisy. I genuinely feel bad for you, but really?
Toss a starving dog a bone. Maybe just a wee shred of resolve, every now and then?
What’s more, in so many of these "tsk tsk" instances, it has not mattered in the slightest what I actually said or wrote to prompt a flurry of finger-wagging; folks have concluded automatically that I’m mistaken, not to mention disreputable, based on what they imagined me saying or writing, and not actually hearing or reading it. Purportedly it is understood by those who – you know – understand these sort of things.
Frustrating, but also quite brilliant.
I’m stymied, hung out and left to dry. Like I said, full credit where it’s due. The Kool-Aid is strong, and I am weak. Long live the junta!
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Furthermore, the ruling elite came to an astute recognition that while they cannot hurt me personally, people around me are vulnerable. It’s a crude, blunt-edged form of reprisal, as well as a highly efficient one. In good conscience I can no longer risk the threat of collateral damage to innocent bystanders.
Additionally, because the leading element in New Albany has successfully characterized NA Confidential in its diverse entirety as the equivalent of deranged snuff porn fetishism, the blog’s “brand” is compromised, stuffed into a straw man's cubbyhole and tainted by association.
Masterful, indeed.
My earnest efforts in 2020 to remove the political element from the blog have been easier than I imagined, but ultimately it's futile. The torture is unlikely to stop, the Blogger platform remains inadequate for future writing, and the blog as currently constituted is dead in the water, adroitly blockaded by local arbiters, blithely shunned by the aspirant vanguard, and abjectly short-circuited by its own host platform.
I can take a hint and surrender, dear (leader).
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Granted, I might start again at a new website and continue calling it NA Confidential. But it needs to be retired. At the forthcoming Roger Baylor Dot Com there will be an archive of the 15,000+ posts appearing at NAC since 2004, albeit completely inactive in terms of new content. It will be maintained strictly for historical interest, and as a sketchbook for future writing.
Resurrecting NAC wouldn’t be the same. I played the game and lost. So it goes. It may not have been fair or square, and yet make no mistake; I knew exactly the nature of the surreal absurdity I was getting into way back in 2004, purporting to chronicle the life and times of a city that hasn’t been on the cutting edge of anything since the 19th century, and probably never will.
As proof, note that in their most recent races, Donald Trump (Republican President), Jeff Gahan (Democratic Mayor) and Scott Blair (Independent City Council) each won the 6th council district by almost exactly the same percentage of vote as the others.
Huh? If you can explain that, then it’s your turn to grapple with this town’s psychotic DNA.
Looking at it objectively, NAC can be said to have accomplished some positive outcomes; just the same, it is exhausted. So is the blog's creator.
NAC is the only Nawbany blog that truly mattered, ever, except blogs seldom matter here, ever, especially when pursuing the sort of subject matter that differs with the prevailing "mentality" (rest assured I use this term guardedly).
In the beginning, back in 2004, good friends warned me that we're a barely literate, perennially dirty little river town, and likely would always be this way, forever.
I laughed.
I’m laughing no longer. Stick a fork in me, because I’m done.
To those who have read, thanks for reading, and for all your support over the years. When the new digs are ready, I’ll let you know, as long as you let me know if we ever arrive at answers to the opening questions.
New Albany is a state of mind … but whose? Since 2004, we’ve been observing the contemporary scene in this slowly awakening old river town. If it’s true that a pre-digital stopped clock is right twice a day, when will New Albany learn to tell time?
For one who is accustomed to recording his thoughts on paper, because he has always understood in his particular case that writing is the very best way to make sense of things, it follows that once properly ordered, thoughts can make the leap from written to spoken language.
Not before.
In short, if I cannot articulate a topic in writing, chances are I’ll do no better trying to explain it to you in conversation.
Some might say this process is bass-ackwards, given that the implications are broader than the enumerated recipe for Cincy chili or a description of what happened on a certain day in Moscow in 1999. Also involved are feelings and emotions encompassing far more complexity than the norm, which must be retrofitted in writing so I can convey them in chatter.
Naturally small talk can proceed without pre-authorization. That’s what it is: small, mostly inconsequential, and how about those Packers? An absence of forethought has fewer implications when little more than the meaningless passing of time is the goal.
But as the far too often maligned band Chicago’s keyboardist, singer and songwriter Robert Lamm once observed, “Time passes much too quickly, when we’re together laughing” (Beginnings, 1969), and later, “Forever is a long, long time – longer than we ever realize” (Forever, 1986).
“I wish I could sing it to you,” crooned Lamm during Nixon’s first term.
I’d settle for being able to write it, and now I’ll try to do so.
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A close friend from high school died recently. In itself, while profoundly sad, this isn’t unusual. It happens in turn to all of us, and with each of us.
Every rose has its thorn, and every beginning an end. We are finite creatures. We come eventually to a conclusion. In Lamm’s 80s-era ballad, he spoke of “forever” not as the cosmic duration of his love; rather, the active element of love ends with his death or his lover’s.
Consequently, Lamm promised, “I’m going to love you the rest of my life.” Life spans are the delineation of love, and a terminus. The word “forever” then is repeated, but ignore this. It is necessary for the song’s musical arrangement to make sense, not the sentiment itself.
After all, this is a pop tune, not theology.
When I say we were close friends in high school, it’s a statement of fact. We were very tight then. And, factually, our friendship did not survive for very long after high school. Alas, it wasn’t merely the expected usual happenstance that we went our separate ways, although geographically, we surely did.
There was a rupture of some sort. It definitely was an estrangement. A point came when he left no doubt that we were no longer friends. I’d run into him here and there, at reunions and occasion visits home. He’d acknowledge me, but a stiff Arctic breeze ran through the courtesies. I cannot recall having a substantive conversation with him literally in four decades.
Happily, by all accounts he lived a vigorous and productive life in California during the past 30-odd years, both professionally and personally. A lovelier family would be hard to imagine. To me, they’re his greatest achievement. His career in the film industry was stellar. None of it comes as a surprise to me, because we all knew he was destined for great things. There was no doubt.
And yet, those decades are Lindsey Buckingham’s second-hand news to me. My high school friend chose to exclude me from his life. My affection was unrequited. In the words of the Hoosier novelist, so it goes.
It puzzled me greatly for all those years, and always will. It also hurt tremendously, because to be brutally frank I idolized him, from the moment we became friends in 1974-75 all the way to the present day, even two weeks after he was claimed by cancer, far too young.
It’s an injustice, the c-word. I’ve been in pain and anguish, mourning his passing as intensely as that of my own two parents. My eyes are wet writing this. I feel so bad for his wife and kids – and one grandchild, I think.
Obviously, there’ll be no resolution now. Lamm was right. Time passed much too quickly; the laughter stopped too soon, and forever remains a long, long time.
But I will say this.
A few years ago it occurred to me that I’d always blamed myself for committing the offense, for doing “something” – whatever the hell this really means – to prompt the estrangement. Evidently it was easier, or maybe simply less painful, to carry this burden of guilt with me than admit that maybe my hero was anything less than perfect.
So, finally I stopped blaming myself. It wasn’t easy.
Life’s a mystery, and human beings are not mathematical formulas. We all are flawed, each and every one of us. Kaka can and will occur. I have dark patches, and the black dog has been known to come around. Maybe with him, too.
I’ll always dearly love my friend, and smile when I think about the old days – good, bad or otherwise. We were a good team, while we were. I’m sure he had his reasons, and I respect them. In the end, our separation was as much his loss as it was mine, a 50-50 split.
You did good, Mikey. You absolutely rocked it. I’ll always miss you. I’ll never forget you.
Goodbye.
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It’s funny, but for a very long time I resisted the urge to refer to myself as a writer, perhaps because we’ve grown up in a dysfunctional society that can’t fathom a person “being” something if it can’t be measured by time sheets or a tax return.
That’s bogus, of course, but it’s precisely who we are.
I’m the first to concede that four decades of purported adulthood spent writing sentences probably haven’t earned me a single year’s poverty-level American wage. Fortunately this isn’t the only way to look at it. Writing is what I do, irrespective of other considerations, and it’s been a part of what I’ve always “done.”
As far back as my package store days, stocking the famous “import door” of the walk-in cooler in the barren physical and intellectual wasteland of early 1980s downtown New Albany, I photocopied sheets at my own expense with beer prices and descriptions, and handed them to regular customers in lieu of a web site.
For the first ten years of the Public House, I wrote, edited and published the FOSSILS homebrewing club newsletter on basic sheets of paper with staples and stamps. The club was non-profit, but since our business hosted the majority of meetings and club members also were regular customers, there was a tangential and mutually beneficial relationship with revenues.
There you have it. I’m a writer.
I think and process information in terms of writing.
Most of the time I follow my muse from sheer compulsion, not in pursuit of pay. At times, the money comes. To me, it’s all good. We shouldn’t be asking people what they do for remuneration, anyway.
It’s gauche.
In closing, here’s a snippet of dialogue from Warren Beatty’s epic film Reds (1981). Beatty, as journalist/socialist John Reed, is meeting with factory workers trying to unionize when the cops arrive to break up the "unAmerican" gathering.
Cop: This is an illegal assembly.
Reed: Excuse me, Officer. These men have the legal right to assemble. That's all they're doing.
Cop: We know what the hell they doing. What the hell you doing?
Reed: Me?
Cop: You.
Reed: I write.
Cop: You write? You wrong. Get him out of here!
Let the record show I have NOT so much as implied or suggested in the slightest that the policeman is employed by the city of New Albany.
For a long time, I haven't wanted to think too deeply about the part my childhood played in my development. Nothing overtly horrible happened then, mind you. It's just the way those experiences shaped future consciousness. We always had enough of everything in terms of material things. But what was my brain being fed?
I've remarked often on the pandemic's uncanny way of exposing our inner selves and amplifying what already was there. Personally, it reminds me of the places suffering from drought, where the reservoir levels drop and expose what was flooded so long ago.
This all started when I set down to think for the first time what it meant that my father was a fervent supporter of George Wallace. Subsequently, as much as I'd love to put all this back into the box and padlock the lid, various occurrences keep triggering memories of my earlier years. Last week a very big example of this occurred when one of my closest friends in high school died.
I'm still not able to comment intelligently about his passing, apart from acknowledging considerable grief and anguish. This reaction may make more sense if you know that we didn't have a conversation in the 40 years since; it was an estrangement at his behest, and I've no better idea today as to why it happened than I did at the time. Of all the male friends I've ever had, Mike quite might well be the only one I flat idolized. He was my hero, and he could do no wrong in high school. Now, even at the age of 60, I feel the same way in spite of it all that came between us -- whatever it was.
I'll never know what happened, and it's a tad overwhelming, as well as a miasma compounded on a daily basis by all the rest of the bat-shit-craziness gripping the rest of you populating this failed nation.
Clearly it's time to dispense with the narrative, 1960-1978. Perhaps I'm missing something important by closing the account, but at the same time there's enough chaos to manage without those ghosts tormenting me.
Ray Weatherholt died the other day at the age of 80, presumably from COVID complications. I never became altogether close to Ray, but always found him to be a genial human being of superlative integrity who enjoyed fooling people with a carefully crafted gruff exterior.
As a founding faculty member from 1967 at Floyd Central High School, Ray was among the last of a dwindling cohort. I’m told that after retirement from his job, he continued teaching others in various ways, officially and unofficially. It’s the mark of an old-school educator.
Ray did me a good turn once, and I never properly thanked him for it. Allow me to explain.
I had Mr. Weatherholt for biology at the start of my sophomore year. It was a required course, and he ran it as a self-pacing class, which I found to be a very big challenge given that (a) I could be a tireless bore-ass, and (b), biology, science and mathematics interested me not a single jot. Less than zero.
Humanities and history defined me, even then.
Consequently I sat in sophomore biology and did nothing for almost the entirety of the semester’s first half. The only clear memories I have of this class are watching the turtles in the big tank next to where we sat, and the listening to the FM radio playing a steady diet of Top 40, including Ambrosia's "Holdin' on to Yesterday” over and over again; to be fair, there might have been a Spinners tune in there, too.
The good turn?
Ray said absolutely nothing about my non-existent work habits to me or to my mother, his fellow faculty member at FC, until the official date came to send home progress reports, at which point he tersely yet accurately savaged me by noting in a single sentence my completion of a scant week's worth of work during the whole of the school year to date.
He was right, and it would require herculean measures for me to pass biology, entirely unacceptable for an athlete who should know better.
I was in big trouble, but also strangely appreciative.
You see, it's awfully tough being a teacher's kid. Her faculty friends constantly reported to her about my activities, and this was a source of consistent resentment to me as well as periodic embarrassment.
This incessant adult surveillance, while mostly well-intentioned, made rebelliousness harder than it should have been ... and I was all-in for rebellion. After all, the legendary Weekly Wad had appeared earlier the same calendar year.
Ray, on the other hand, stayed quiet and allowed me all the rope I needed to hang myself -- and I did exactly that.
Well played, sir.
Fortunately, everyone involved seemed to learn something from it. I learned that bad news coming all at once actually could be far worse for the serenity of my home life than the drip-drip-drip of teachers' lounge bulletins. And, I’d have to devise coping mechanisms for getting through tasks I detested, at least sufficient to pull Cs and remain eligible to have a life.
More happily, my parents and guidance counselor conspired to a consensus, finally displaying a level of reality-based understanding that Roger had no apparent aptitude for biology, science and mathematics at the supposed higher level of overall intelligence indicated by those ridiculous standardized tests.
I was quickly yanked from Ray's class and thrown into another self-pacing setting, this time for rudimentary students. Fine by me. I loved it. Good friends were there, and I even got a C in the end, because even I could grasp the utility of an open book test.
R.I.P., Ray Weatherholt. You were much appreciated, and you made a huge difference in countless lives, even if my revelation came for all the wrong reasons.
Narcissists don't care about others. When you don't care about others, it's easier to rationalize when they die. Let the rationalizations renew; after all, it's an election year.
There was always a logical, simple explanation for why cases rose through the end of June while deaths did not
... There is no mystery in the number of Americans dying from COVID-19.
Despite political leaders trivializing the pandemic, deaths are rising again: The seven-day average for deaths per day has now jumped by more than 200 since July 6, according to data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic. By our count, states reported 855 deaths today, in line with the recent elevated numbers in mid-July.
The deaths are not happening in unpredictable places. Rather, people are dying at higher rates where there are lots of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations: in Florida, Arizona, Texas, and California, as well as a host of smaller southern states that all rushed to open up.
The deaths are also not happening in an unpredictable amount of time after the new outbreaks emerged. Simply look at the curves yourself. Cases began to rise on June 16; a week later, hospitalizations began to rise. Two weeks after that — 21 days after cases rose — states began to report more deaths. That’s the exact number of days that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated from the onset of symptoms to the reporting of a death.
Many people who don’t want COVID-19 to be the terrible crisis that it is have clung to the idea that more cases won’t mean more deaths. Some Americans have been perplexed by a downward trend of national deaths, even as cases exploded in the Sun Belt region. But given the policy choices that state and federal officials have made, the virus has done exactly what public-health experts expected.
When states reopened in late April and May with plenty of infected people within their borders, cases began to grow. COVID-19 is highly transmissible, makes a large subset of people who catch it seriously ill, and kills many more people than the flu or any other infectious disease circulating in the country.
Terry Cummins died on June 8, 2020. He was an amazing man and a role model second to none; Terry literally retired and THEN began climbing mountains.
Rereading the following post, what stands out in hindsight is the fact that Terry still had another year and a half ahead of him.
Bon voyage; rest in power -- gentle, thoughtful and understated power, but power nonetheless.
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September 3, 2018
Terry Cummins keeps fighting -- and writing.
Terry and me, 2015.
Terry Cummins was an assistant principal at Floyd Central when I was a student. I got to know him all over again as an adult during the 1990s via the helpful medium of the Public House.
Since then, one thing I've tried not to miss in the newspaper is his weekly column. In 2015, Terry wrote wonderfully about his wife's terminal illness and his own cancer diagnosis.
Vera died in early 2016, and several months later, Terry wrote one of his finest newspaper essays, bar none.
She’s been gone for seven months. It seems like forever, but I feel her presence that will not leave. Vera and I were married for over 61 years, which were packed full of all kinds of surprises, heartaches and emotions imaginable. When we chose to undergo frequent stubbornness contests, something had to give. An at-odds married couple can try discussing head-on conflicts, but it took several years for me learn to keep my mouth shut, and take her in my arms. If you do this, don’t ever whisper, “I think you were more stubborn this time than I was.” No, tightly squeeze her until her lips begin searching for yours. Then lead her to the bedroom no matter what time of day it is. It’s wondrous what love can do by what you do rather than trying to explain everything.
Terry bounced back from these reversals and beat cancer, only to face the same enemy for another round.
His most recent update came Saturday. If you've read Terry's writing, it makes perfect sense that he'd be chronicling his life as it is, right now -- without a trace of annoyance or self-pity, just the matter-of-fact perspective of a country boy who has retained bedrock values and an accompanying spiritual serenity.
Best wishes to Terry. What an inspiration he's been to all of us!
There’s no way to get around it. If you’re alive, you’re going to die. But I’m not ready yet. That’s too bad. If you’re up in years or your body is aging faster than it should, time is not on your side. Have you ever observed a beautiful flower keep its radiance indefinitely? Unless it’s plastic, it withers and returns to the earth to be regenerated again in the natural scheme of all life on earth. Unless you’re plastic, you’ll wither to dust and regenerate into eternal life, if you have faith and trust there is a Creator, an enduring, stable and abiding force.
But who wants to live a plastic, or artificial life? After fighting cancer for over three years, I’m weary of it. And after conquering colon cancer, which was like a long vicious dog fight, the remaining dormant cancer cells went to my bones and began thriving there. And now it’s another all-out battle to determine if my bones take me down deep or the poisons they inject inside me provide a bit more life of dubious quality. It gives one something else to agonize about — day and night ...
How and when will I pass on, and is there a way to prepare for it?
If you don't know anything about Larry Kramer, you should. Gay or straight, black or white, young or old -- whatever. He saw what was true and real, and dedicated his life to justice.
Crashing into the limits of his entitlement turned Kramer into an activist. “I grew up nonpolitical,” he told me in an interview some 15 years ago. “I was out in Fire Island laughing at Gay Pride marches on TV. What politicized me was a couple of friends dying real fast” — and his shock at the lethal indifference of government, medical, religious, and media institutions.
"Lethal indifference" is the universal in all this. The arbiters of established orthodoxy care little for those regarded as different, unless the "different" (are they really?) can be used as scapegoats for one or the other of polite society's myriad failings.
His jeremiads against the state and those complacent during the AIDS crisis galvanized generations of activists.
At that exasperated point (in 1991), Kramer had been sounding such jeremiads for a decade, and he did not let up in the nearly 30 years since, not until his death last Wednesday, at age 84. He is survived by his husband, David Webster; two generations of activists galvanized by his vision and fortitude; and untold numbers of people whose lives were saved because of his writing, the service organization Gay Men’s Health Crisis (which he cofounded in 1982), and the direct-action group ACT UP (which he cofounded in 1987).
"I don’t want to lose my anger," Kramer told The Economist in 2011. "There’s work to do."
Lewie Stevens, Lee Kelly, John Dougherty
and Kent Sterling (1978-1980).
A few years later, minus Stevens.
On Tuesday the NA Confidential blog observed a day of silence in honor of Lee Kelly, who died on Monday. It seemed the best way; for one day, I'd shut up and observe what everyone else was saying about Lee's impact on their lives.
And also by Matt Nash, with whom I share the periodically odoriferous distinction of being a former New Albany Tribune/News and Tribune columnist. Upon Lee's retirement in May of 2013, Matt recorded his thoughts, and has given me permission to repeat them here.
Matt's essay obviously was not intended as a eulogy, and that's why it's perfect. Lee's retirement proved to be all too short, and that's profoundly sad, but he also made a difference in the lives of hundreds, probably thousands of people. They'll remember Lee for the very same experiences Matt writes about here, and it's the accumulation of these little things that make up the best curtain call of all.
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NASH: The voice of the Bulldogs, by Matthew Nash (May 31, 2013)
When the final school bell rang at New Albany High School on the 2013 term, another legendary teacher left the building for the final time. He had a profound impact on me as a student and one of the few teachers that when I see them out in the community, I want to go up and engage him in conversation.
Next year someone new will come and take over at WNAS radio, but it will not be the same now that Lee Kelly has decided to hang up the microphone.
It is not an exaggeration when I say that I may not have made it through high school without his class and I am a better person for having him as an instructor. I was a kid that had a lot of potential when it came to studies, but I didn’t always apply myself as much as I could. A lot of the classes I took I thought were boring and did not interest me until I discovered radio. Although I did not pursue a career in broadcasting, I feel like that class helped me in many aspects of my life including writing this column every week.
I still remember the first day of class my junior year of high school. I had radio class second period and walking into the “station” back then was a little intimidating. The class was a mix of experienced seniors and the new juniors that all had to audition the year earlier in order to get in. As you walked into the suite of rooms that held the offices, transmitter, television production, editing and television and radio studios, you no longer felt like you were in the same building as the other 1,200 or so students in high school. You were part of something special.
At the top of every hour you were required to say what is called the “station identification.” Everyone has heard it a million times; it’s just so common we don’t seem to notice anymore. The “station identification” consist of the call letters and the city of license. The FCC requires all broadcast stations, television and radio to announce this as close to the top of every hour as possible. Mr. Kelly’s first job was to teach all new students how to pronounce it properly. Nearly everyone on first try would say dubya N-A-S when the correct way to say it is “double U” N-A-S.
Mr. Kelly helped with my interest in politics as part of our radio/television class. In conjunction with Mr. Dusch’s government class, we invited candidates to come and tape statements to play on the local cable station. It is still a huge part of local elections. I was a big part of that in my two years in his class and I later returned to tape my own segment when I ran for county council several years back. That was in the same studio that I used when I was a student with much of the same equipment. Construction had begun on the new studio and Mr. Kelly took the time to take me to the studio that was being built that they would move into the following year.
Back then Mr. Kelly planned and chaperoned a spring break field trip to New York City every couple of years. Looking back it must have taken a lot of guts to take a bus load of 17- and 18-year-olds to The Big Apple like that. I was part of the group back in 1987 and I still have many fond memories. Besides seeing the usual sights we saw two Broadway plays, “A Chorus Line” was in the middle of its record run and Neil Simon’s “Broadway Bound” — the third part of his semi-autobiographical trilogy staring Linda Lavin and Jonathon Silverman. We also caught a glimpse of Morgan Fairchild during a tour of the NBC building “Thirty Rock.”
We were able to see how a television show was produced when we got up early one day and went and saw “The CBS Morning Program.” Back then Mariette Hartley was the host and Mark McEwen was the weatherman. A pre “Full House” Bob Saget had a comedy segment in that program and warmed up the audience before the show. Recognizing that everyone was wearing our station logo sweatshirts he started a conversation with members of our group. He even joked with one of our other chaperones about how unfortunate it was to be a teacher with a name that was phonetically the same as a feminine hygiene product.
When I was in grade school we would listen for our favorite song on WNAS and even called the request line to hear it. We would wake up in the winter when there was snow on the ground to hear Mr. Kelly tell us whether or not school was in session during his “Coffee with Kelly” morning broadcast. For years before high school I would listen to him announce basketball on 88.1 and still do to this day especially during tournament time. Following Bulldog football and basketball will not be the same now that Lee Kelly has retired.
The moniker “Voice of the Bulldogs” was given to the radio station many years ago. I believe that it should be permanently retired along with Mr. Kelly as a tribute to his years of service to the radio station, the school and to our community.
I wish Mr. Kelly all the best during his much deserved retirement. With his voice I am sure he could have had any job he wanted in broadcasting and made as much money as he needed. He chose to teach high school and was able to touch thousands of lives over his 40 years at WNAS New Albany. I am a better person for having him as a teacher and proud to call him a friend.
Two of these snippets pertain to recent deaths. The third describes an apparition.
To be honest, I had no idea who Gene Deitch was, and I'm grateful to my friend W for making me aware of his passing, but more importantly, about his life, especially as "the only free American living and working in Prague during 30 years of the Communist Party dictatorship"
Eugene Merril Deitch (August 8, 1924 – April 16, 2020) was an American illustrator, animator, comics artist, and film director. Based in Prague since 1959, Deitch was known for creating animated cartoons such as Munro, Tom Terrific, and Nudnik, as well as his work on the Popeye and Tom and Jerry series.
Several days after arriving in Prague in October 1959, Deitch met Zdenka Najmanová, the production manager at the studio Bratři v triku where he worked. They married in 1964. Deitch's memoir, For the Love of Prague, is based on his experience of being what he called "the only free American living and working in Prague during 30 years of the Communist Party dictatorship". According to Deitch, although he was followed by the StB and his phone was tapped, he was never aware of their presence and was never interrogated nor arrested.
Deitch died in Prague on April 16, 2020, at the age of 95. Shortly before his death, Deitch had noted intestinal problems.
I might have met Deitch on the street without knowing during one of those many days I spent in Prague. Back in America during COVID times, there was an incredible coincidence.
A 100-year-old World War II veteran who died from Covid-19 lost a twin brother to the 1918 pandemic a century earlier, his grandson said.
Philip Kahn is the oldest veteran in Nassau County, New York, according to his family, and had been fearful of another pandemic happening in his lifetime, his grandson, Warren Zysman, told CNN.
"It was something he brought up quite frequently," Zysman said. "I would have conversations with him, he would say to me, 'I told you history repeats itself, 100 years is not that long of a period of time.'"
Kahn and his twin brother, Samuel, were born on December 5, 1919. His brother died weeks later, his grandson said.
I read elsewhere that when Kahn developed a cough, he knew exactly what it might signify, and told family members that our government could have acted sooner and more decisively with containment measures.
To conclude, not so much a death ... although Anwar Sadat's family might disagree.
The unmarked plane belonged to Air Sinai, which only flies between Cairo and Tel Aviv. In 1979, Israel and Egypt signed a historic peace treaty, overseen by the United States, which inaugurated diplomatic relations between the two countries and made Egypt the first Arab nation to recognize the State of Israel. Air Sinai, founded in 1982, fulfills a term in the treaty that had to be implemented within three years of signing: the two countries must maintain active civilian aviation routes—meaning there always had to be a direct flight between Israel and Egypt.
First, all due respect to the late Orson Bean. He was a ubiquitous figure back in the day, a half-century ago, when I actually watched television.
Yesterday Bean was killed by a driver, maybe two of them, although Hollywood Reporter can't decide for sure.
Seriously, I can't make up these things. Small wonder that outrage over drivers killing non-drivers is lacking when we can't even speak clearly about the facts.
Orson Bean was struck by car (in the headline).
Then he was hit by a car (body of the story).
Then he was hit by a vehicle (same car; first vehicle, body of story).
Only then was he struck by a "second driver," which police say was the fatal act of homicide, and you think for a brief moment maybe the style guideline says one must attribute death to drivers and simple non-fatal maulings to cars, but then the authors write bothdrivers remained on the scene.
So ... which is it? Drivers, cars, vehicles? Why weren't the attacks on Bean ALL attributed to drivers, who happened to use their cars as murder weapons?
He was a standout on Broadway, played Mr. Bevis on 'The Twilight Zone' and was related to Calvin Coolidge and Andrew Breitbart.
Orson Bean, the witty New Englander who starred on Broadway, was a longtime panelist on To Tell the Truth and played the dour owner of the general store on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, died Friday night after being hit by a car in Venice, authorities said. He was 91.
The Los Angeles County coroner's office confirmed Bean's death to the Associated Press, saying it was being investigated as a "traffic-related" fatality. It provided the location where Bean was found, which matched reports from local news outlets.
L.A. police told The Hollywood Reporter a pedestrian in his 90s was walking eastbound in the area of Venice Boulevard and Shell Avenue at 7:35 p.m. when he was hit by a vehicle.
A second driver then struck him in what police say was the fatal collision, and both drivers remained on the scene, L.A. Police Department Capt. Brian Wendling initially told local stations, which identified Bean based on eyewitness accounts.
Two decades ago John Bierly was a Public House regular, hanging out with late afternoon coffee drinking students. The exact circumstances elude me, but this is how I met him.
A few years later, we bought the house adjacent to the Stemm dental office, where John worked for two decades. Consequently for the past 16 years, I've seen him coming and going almost every day.
John always waved, and occasionally in nice weather we'd have a chat standing in the driveway.
In all this time I can't recall John having anything bad to say about anyone; he always was polite, pleasant, and friendly. While I can't claim to have known John very well -- I readily concede to being oblivious to John's national recognition as a writer and reviewer of Batman (see below), Star Wars and other such creative genres -- it's not hard at all to see why he inspired love and devotion on the part of his friends.
It's going to be very strange not seeing John bounding from his car at lunchtime carrying bags of food for the folks at Stemm's. I don't know what else to say except to wish peace and love to his family and friends.
Yes, John Bierly was the best damn writer BOF has ever had, and I don’t think anyone who has written for me — including yours truly — would disagree. But most importantly, John was an awesome human being.
Whenever I had some bad times with BOF for various reasons, John always reached out to make sure I was OK and to tell me he was there for me and had my back.
Allow me to begin my lamentation about the passing of a legend with a travel story from Bayeux, France, on July 16 in 1985. I was two months into my first trip to Europe, and was bunking in a Normandy hostel with five other travelers.
One of them, Bruce, hailed from Canada. He was blonde, sparsely bearded, quiet and analytical.
This is not to say Bruce wasn’t capable of being intensely opinionated, as I learned later when I offhandedly remarked that Keith Moon of The Who was rock’s greatest drummer.
Bruce quickly became red-faced, proceeding not only to make a convincing and fully detailed case that Rush’s Neil Peart was far better as a drummer -- in fact the best ever -- but adding that Peart wrote challenging lyrics, and besides that, Canadians in general were key contributors to the history of rock and roll all across the board in spite of what perpetually clueless Yanks AND Brits insisted on thinking.
Canadians were not supposed to be chauvinists, were they? I didn’t think so, either, but here was an example of one. But Bruce was passionate, bright and articulate, and I learned much from him during the coming days -- while choosing my comments very carefully.
And as it pertains to Neil Peart, drummer from Rush who died three days ago, it turns out that this Canadian guy named Bruce, who I met 35 years ago in France and Belgium for a grand total of four days ... well, he was absolutely right.
Peart was better than Moon, and he may have been the greatest drummer of all time, at least in the rock genre. As a lifelong fan of Moon the Loon, that's not hard at all for me to say. Peart was a fan of Moon's too. I close with a story relayed by Rolling Stone.
Peart grew up in Port Dalhousie, a middle-class Canadian suburb 70 miles from Toronto. As a teen, he permed his hair, took to wearing a cape and purple boots on the city bus, and scrawled “God is dead” on his bedroom wall. At one point, he got in trouble for pounding out beats on his desk during class. His teacher’s idea of punishment was to insist that he bang on his desk nonstop for an hour’s worth of detention, time he happily spent re-creating Keith Moon’s parts from Tommy.
Ginger Baker made it to 80 hard-lived years of age, so it can't be said that he died too young; seven years ago in his review of the documentary Beware of Mr. Baker, David Fricke referred to the bloody-minded drummer's improbably long life.
The second-best rock documentary of the year, after the poignant comeback story Searching for Sugar Man, is that film's wild opposite: a stranger-than-fiction portrait of the heroically talented, thoroughly misanthropic drummer Ginger Baker. Beware of Mr. Baker – directed by Jay Bulger and now playing at Film Forum in New York – covers the genius, terror and improbably long life of a man who hit the jackpot early, with Cream and Blind Faith, then repeatedly sabotaged his success, reputation and personal life with a hair-trigger temper, poor financial choices and a preference for drugs and exile over attachment and responsibility. The consequences dog him to this day.
Baker's musical legacy is astonishing, so rather than dwell on the obvious merits, let's have a glance at this very British term, bloody-minded(ness).
The behaviour of someone who is very determined and makes things difficult for others, often by opposing their views for no good reason:
"He was losing patience with her bloody-mindedness."
"Our neighbour refused to chop down the tree out of sheer bloody-mindedness."
"His bloody-mindedness meant that he was never going to be a team player."
"She doesn't care what anyone thinks and her success is due to her sheer bloody-mindedness."
"A mixture of courage and bloody-mindedness has carried him to this point."
It is with considerable relief that I decree the non-applicability of this phrase to my own person, since my bloody-mindedness always comes equipped with plenty of good reasons.
One malign influencer has gone, and of course that's for the greater good, but Koch's passing does nothing to alter the rot because his money remains right here, undoubtedly to be used for the same nefarious ends as before.
The late Koch brother bought influence using PACs and other proxies. A prank call to Scott Walker revealed the truth about how the Kochs had their way with Republican politicians.
... Enter Scott Walker, a struggling Wisconsin politician who was angling for a governorship. The Kochs threw their support behind Walker, with David Koch declaring: “We’re helping him, as we should. We’ve gotten pretty good at this over the years. We’ve spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We’re going to spend more.” According to The Palm Beach Post, where the quote originally appeared, Koch used “we” to refer to Americans for Prosperity, the group that he and his brother used as one of their vehicles for manipulating our politics.
Even before he knew the Kochs personally, Walker recognized what the brothers had done for him, and for ambitious young men like him. Spending by the Kochs, via direct donations and independent expenditures, played a definitional role in generating the “Republican wave” of 2010, the year Walker was elected.
Walker’s understanding of this debt led to an incident that revealed much of what Americans will remember about David Koch, even though he was not an actual participant. In February 2011, as tens of thousands of teachers, nurses, librarians, and their allies marched in opposition to Walker’s attack on unions and collective-bargaining rights for public employees, the phone rang in the governor’s office. The caller identified himself as David Koch and was put through to Walker.
The caller—a brilliant prankster (the late Ian Murphy) who was pretending to be Koch—was soon trading notes with the governor about the “vested interest” that Koch Industries had in Walker’s assault on unions. The 20-minute conversation revealed the obsequious deference of an elected Republican governor to the benefactors of his 2010 race—and, as it would turn out, of the campaigns that followed for Walker, who faced a citizen-demanded recall and tough reelection fights before he was finally defeated in 2018.
Here’s the critical exchange from 2011:
Koch caller: “Well, I tell you what, Scott: once you crush these bastards I’ll fly you out to Cali and really show you a good time.”
Walker: “All right, that would be outstanding. Thanks for all the support in helping us move the cause forward…”
Koch caller: “Absolutely. And, you know, we have a little bit of a vested interest as well. ”
Walker: “Well, that’s just it.”
Yes, that is just it.
The manipulations of democracy that David Koch and his brother funded—extreme gerrymandering, defenses of an Electoral College that has prevented popular-vote winners from becoming president, voter suppression schemes, and assaults on unions—did much to elect Republicans like Walker. But the most recent Republican president has turned the movement David and Charles Koch envisioned toward extremes that more closely mirror the fever dreams of their father. And if Democrats ever get their act together, they will, for the sake of not just their party but the future of society and the planet, be required to upend what the Kochs have done.
So the full measure of David Koch’s influence has yet to be made.
John Paul Stevens has died, and coverage of his passing is rightly focused on his Supreme Court tenure. But the drop-dead incredible thing about Stevens -- as sportswriter Dave Zirin pointed out immediately upon hearing about Stevens' death -- is that he almost certainly was the last living witness to Babe Ruth's alleged called shot in 1932.
It boggles the mind of a baseball fan.
Stevens lived long enough to witness the Cubs winning the 2016 World Series and ending a championship drought that predated him by more than a decade. He said he experienced October anguish up close as a child: in 1929, when he attended Game 1 of that Fall Classic at Wrigley Field, and in 1932, when he was on hand for Game 3, aka the day Babe Ruth called his shot. The Cubs lost both games. He recounted those visits in this Chicago Tribune article.
The retired Supreme Court Justice is dead at 99 years old.
It can be argued, and convincingly, too, that things began to go sideways in this country on December 12, 2000, when the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case of Bush v. Gore, which handed the presidency to George W. Bush. In his dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens saw it coming.
What must underlie petitioners’ entire federal assault on the Florida election procedures is an unstated lack of confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state judges who would make the critical decisions if the vote count were to proceed. Otherwise, their position is wholly without merit. The endorsement of that position by the majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most cynical appraisal of the work of judges throughout the land. It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today’s decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year’s Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the Nation’s confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.
This part sounds important, too.
He was a Republican judge, appointed by an unelected Republican president, who lived long enough and served long enough to become the leader of what became the liberal wing of the Supreme Court. How much did things change over his 35 years on the Supreme Court? Appearing with Rachel Maddow on Tuesday night, longtime Supreme Court chronicler Linda Greenhouse pointed out that Stevens was the first Supreme Court justice confirmed after Roe v. Wade was decided and, not only were his confirmation hearings not televised, but Stevens was not asked a single question about abortion.
After Ball Four, sports hagiography was never the same. I was fortunate enough to speak on several panels with Bouton — including one in Boston with historian Howard Zinn, where Bouton and Zinn, longtime admirers of each other, met for the first time.
Bouton with Zinn?
How could I avoid being a Jim Bouton fan?
In my experience, Jim Bouton wasn't just the quirky character who wrote "Ball Four," the book that opened the door on what really goes on behind the curtain in Major League Baseball. To me, he was more of an anarchist. (The Village Voice even referred to him once as "Baseball's Bolshevik.") He didn't just like to challenge authority, he reveled in it. He loved throwing grenades into foxholes to see what would happen and where the debris landed.
The preceding excerpt is from a column by Tony Dobrowolski in the Berkshire Eagle from Pittsfield, Massachusetts, a city that figured prominently in what I believe was Bouton's final book, FOUL BALL: My Life and Hard Times Trying to Save an Old Ballpark."
In his first diary since Ball Four, Jim Bouton recounts his amazing adventure trying to save Wahconah Park, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Host to organized baseball since 1892, Wahconah Park was soon to be abandoned by the owner of the Pittsfield Mets who would move his team to a new stadium in another town---an all too familiar story.
Coincidentally, we drove through Pittsfield in route to Northampton MA on June 29, at which point we were only twenty miles away from Bouton's home in Great Barrington.
How influential has Bouton's Ball Four been in my life? Well, it's been 45 years since the first time I read it, and numerous anecdotes not only are fresh in my mind, but remain part of my daily repartee.
One of them is about a Seattle Pilots teammate who had a particularly vehement spat with the umpire behind home plate. Weeks passed, stars aligned, and this hitter again came to bat, with the same umpire calling balls and strikes.
The first pitch was ridiculously far outside, and the umpire decisively called it a strike. Bouton's teammate stepped out of the box, but said nothing. The next pitch was two feet high, and the batter somehow tommy-hawked it off the outfield wall for a double.
The umpire turned to the Pilots bench and said, "See? It makes him a better hitter."
Then there's the one about Bouton's former teammate, the legendary superstar Mickey Mantle.
It was the mid-1960s, and the Yankee dynasty was beginning to fade. The aging slugger Mantle arrived at the ballpark massively hungover and was given the day off by the team's sympathetic manager, but late in the game, with the Yanks behind, Mantle was needed to pinch-hit.
Half-blind with pain and the effects of the previous evening's dissipation, "The Mick" lofted a majestic game-winning home run.
He slowly circled the bases and returned to the dugout to greet his cheering teammates, saying to no one in particular: "You have no idea how hard that really was."
John Thorn is the Official Baseball Historian for Major League Baseball, and as Thorn rightfully gushes, Jim Bouton is the author of Ball Four, one of the most influential books of my reading life. In the early 1970s, my copy looked just like the one pictured here. Not unexpectedly, an overview of Ball Four by Mark Armour at the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) website is among the most complete that I've seen.
Today’s fans and writers, children or young adults when they first devoured the book, re-read it every two or three years. The book is universally viewed as well-written, provocative, thought-provoking, and funny. It is difficult to imagine that such a book could be controversial, that its author would be shunned by people within the game for many years, and in fact is still shunned. It is so.
Thorn takes the story from here.
Jim Bouton: An Improvisational Life, by John Thorn (Our Game) ... What emboldened me to approach (Jim Bouton) was my knowledge of his ongoing efforts to bring baseball back to Wahconah Park in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, which had hosted baseball on this same spot since 1892. “It might interest you, Jim,” I offered, “that baseball was played in Pittsfield a full century earlier, and I have evidence of a prohibition against its play anywhere near a newly erected church. The actual document, I was told by the town clerk, survives.” This stunned him. It was a great way to promote Pittsfield and his campaign. We became fast friends. He and his colleagues went on to scour the town’s archives and unearthed two manuscript copies of the “Pittsfield Prohibition” of 1791 and, barely a month after our conversation in Hackensack, we held a press conference. Because the ban placed baseball — as played by that name — in 18th-century America, the discovery turned out to be an international event. (For more about the Pittsfield story and what it means, see: https://goo.gl/BH9nOc) ...
There have been a couple "vintage" baseball games played in metro Louisville during recent years, and I've always been out of town, which is frustrating.
... A Vintage Base Ball Federation followed, with games in a number of locations for several years. I was involved in all of it, but for me the principal benefit of reviving the old ball game was the friendship with Jim that continues to this day. Though we get together with our wives regularly for dinner at a favorite neighborhood restaurant, I confess to being star-struck still — and not because Jim won twenty games for the Yankees a couple of times before I went off to college. He is the man who wrote Ball Four. I will not detail Jim’s life here. His biography is wonderfully sketched by Mark Armour in an entry for SABR’s Baseball Biography Project (https://goo.gl/Xre4Gs). Permit me to focus now on Ball Four: its landmark place in history; the revolution it inspired; and the importance of the impending sale at auction of its underlying notes, drafts, audiotapes, and related materials, whose very survival was largely unknown.
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