If you want a profound Easter post, you can probably find one with very little effort, but, then again, nobody comes here looking for profundity.
No, the new life I'm excited about at the moment is that which begins at 7 pm, CDT, on Sunday evening. Jon Miller and Joe Morgan will welcome ESPN viewers to Fenway Park. The Boston Red Sox will host the MFYs in the opening game of the 2010 Major League Baseball season. And all will be right in my world again.
It has been a long time since November 4, when the MFYs beat the Phillies in Game 6 of the 2009 World Series. An insufferable football season was played to completion. College basketball and the NBA slog on and on. Do they still play hockey? Does anyone care?
This Sunday night, baseball will be back. Baseball means Spring. Baseball means that the Cubs have a chance to play in the World Series. Shoot, they could even win another one after 102 years. The Red Sox have done it twice after 86 years, and the White Sox got one after 88.
Bobby Cox will begin the last season of his Hall of Fame career on Monday. Tony LaRussa and Joe Torre will continue their progression towards Cooperstown. Albert Pujols will continue his reign as the best all-around player in the game. The Phils will seek their third straight NL pennant, and the Cards, Dodgers, Braves and Cubs will try to stop them. The MFYs will look to repeat, but my Beantowners will be hot on their trail. The Rays still have the core that took them to the Series in 2008, and in a new, openair ballpark in Minneapolis, Ron Gardenhire will find a way to keep the Twins in the chase in spite of already losing Joe Nathan for the season to Tommy John surgery.
A kid named Jason Heyward will play right field for the Braves, coming off a spring where he has looked every inch the best prospect in the game. Old veteran Mariano Rivera will try to be the Sandman for one more season. Chipper Jones will try to be Chipper Jones again, and Joe Mauer will try to be worth that contract.
I'll be visiting with old friends each evening. Vin Scully will call Dodger games for the 61st consecutive season, and Chip Caray will go back on Braves TV. Joe Castiglione and Dave O'Brien will keep Red Sox nation informed, while the execrable John Sterling will prove, once more, that all the money in the world can't buy class in the Bronx. John Rooney will try to make sense of the beloved Mike Shannon, and the Brennamans will see Reds fans through another season. Jon Miller, bound for the Hall of Fame as this year's Ford Frick Award winner, will once more provide the San Francisco Giants' fans with the best broadcast in Major League Baseball, while his protege, Dave Fleming, just gets better and better. Pat Hughes' good humor and Ron Santo's utterly blind loyalty will encourage, or more likely, comfort Cubs' fans all summer long.
Locally, we will occupy our seats at AutoZone Park throughout the summer as our Redbirds try to defend their Pacific Coast League championship. My granddaughter's baseball education began before she could possibly have known that she was at the ballpark. Baseball Second Grade will commence on April 16.
The next six months will be grand. The Perfect Game is back, and just in the nick of time. The old water heater flooded the house last week. The Career (sarcasm intended) is on the rocks. The winter doldrums have been brutal this year. My country lost its freaking mind over the idea that everyone should be able to get healthcare. Bush's idiotic wars have become Obama's idiotic wars, and for reasons that I will never understand, people still send their children to die in them. Patriotism? As though there is any reason we and our enemies see the world as we do other than the geographical accident of birth.
But Baseball is coming. Tony Campolo made a forture preaching that "It's Friday But Sunday's Coming." Good for him.
My message of hope tonight: It's still March, but Baseball's Coming!
Hallelujah!
Monday, March 29, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Who Would You Like to Be?
For several lengthy portions of my life (those not crowded with the exploits of various sports or political figures), if I had been offered the opportunity to be anyone in the world, my first choice would have been Jim Lovell. Long before he was immortalized by Tom Hanks and Ron Howard in a very, very good movie, Jim Lovell was an honest to goodness hero. Lovell flew fighters in the Korean War, and, familiar to the stories of many of the astronauts, became a navy test pilot later. He missed out on being in the Mercury 7 over a marginal medical problem. It wasn't enough to keep him out of the Gemini program. He flew Gemini 7 with Frank Borman, and again, with Borman and Bill Anders on Apollo 8.
Apollo 8 flew around the moon.
They flew around the moon.
Three American men in a tin can flew around the back of the moon, that part that faces away from Earth and out into space.
They were the crew that made the Christmas Eve broadcast back to us in 1968. They (and it depends on whether Lovell or Borman is telling the story of just who held the camera) got the first shots of the "Earth-rise" over the moon's horizon. They are breathtakingly stunning photographs to this very day.
Apollo 8 and the Christmas Eve telecast are the earliest memories that I have, outside of family life, of something good and positive. The first memories that I carry, outside the family, are of the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Perhaps that's why our parents were so determined that we watch Lovell, Borman and Anders on Christmas Eve. 1968 had been a horrible year of assassination, Viet Nam, Chicago and Nixon.
Lovell flew next on Apollo 13.
He, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert had the rollercoaster ride of all rollercoaster rides. An explosion in an onboard oxygen tank cost them their opportunity to land on the moon. It very nearly cost them their lives.
Their survival is testimony to the intelligence and training of the astronauts and the Mission Control staff, and the sheer determination and leadership of Jim Lovell. He willed that spacecraft home.
Lovell is a modest man. His wit is self-deprecating. He is often to this day applauded for his strength and toughness in that toughest of circumstances. He often pokes fun at being lauded for a failed mission.
Lovell is a man of courage. He is a man of science. He is a man of intellect, loyalty and character.
Jim Lovell is 82 years old today. And he is still one of my heroes.
Happy birthday, Sir. And thank you, again.
Apollo 8 flew around the moon.
They flew around the moon.
Three American men in a tin can flew around the back of the moon, that part that faces away from Earth and out into space.
They were the crew that made the Christmas Eve broadcast back to us in 1968. They (and it depends on whether Lovell or Borman is telling the story of just who held the camera) got the first shots of the "Earth-rise" over the moon's horizon. They are breathtakingly stunning photographs to this very day.
Apollo 8 and the Christmas Eve telecast are the earliest memories that I have, outside of family life, of something good and positive. The first memories that I carry, outside the family, are of the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Perhaps that's why our parents were so determined that we watch Lovell, Borman and Anders on Christmas Eve. 1968 had been a horrible year of assassination, Viet Nam, Chicago and Nixon.
Lovell flew next on Apollo 13.
He, Fred Haise and Jack Swigert had the rollercoaster ride of all rollercoaster rides. An explosion in an onboard oxygen tank cost them their opportunity to land on the moon. It very nearly cost them their lives.
Their survival is testimony to the intelligence and training of the astronauts and the Mission Control staff, and the sheer determination and leadership of Jim Lovell. He willed that spacecraft home.
Lovell is a modest man. His wit is self-deprecating. He is often to this day applauded for his strength and toughness in that toughest of circumstances. He often pokes fun at being lauded for a failed mission.
Lovell is a man of courage. He is a man of science. He is a man of intellect, loyalty and character.
Jim Lovell is 82 years old today. And he is still one of my heroes.
Happy birthday, Sir. And thank you, again.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Alex Chilton is Gone
Is it a needless redundancy to say that Alex was an artist, and a different sort of bird? Of course it is. But he was.
Alex was working with Chips Moman and Dan Penn when he was barely old enough to drive. The band was the Box Tops, and another group of Memphis kids changed music, again. The Letter and Cry Like a Baby are the most enduring cuts. They stand up to this day. The lead vocalist is a big part of the reason why. (The Box Tops went through several incarnations, one including a drummer named Thomas Boggs. He would later take his TGI Friday's experience and open a restaurant in his home town, and then a series of them, called Huey's. And he gave additional generations of Memphis musicians a place to play.)
After the Box Tops went their separate ways, Alex bounced around before landing in Big Star with Chris Bell, Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel. There would have been no alternative music movement without Big Star. Period.
Where did Peter Buck's jangling guitar come from? Big Star. Where did Michael Stipe and Eddie Vedder find their inspiration as lyricists and lead singers? Big Star. Or, more specifically, Alex Chilton. Where did the model for records lost as record companies went to pieces or turned on their own artists? Big Star.
#1 Record changed music. Third/Sister Lovers blew music up. By that time, the band was a conspiracy between Chilton, Stephens, Jim Dickinson and a lot of Memphis musicians, the great Richard Roseborough in particular, but Richard's another story.
Everything that would arise in Rock and Roll for the next 40 years has its roots in Third/Sister Lovers. That's not just my opinion. Michael Stipe said so. Peter Buck said so. A Who's Who of the alt rock generation agreed.
Alex had a third career as a solo artist. Like Flies on Sherbet is the pick here. It is weird. And brilliant. And free. Like Rock is supposed to be. Alex got it. Or it got him.
Chilton managed to keep the relationships alive no matter how the artistic temperament affected him and his colleagues in the various bands through the years. He and Stephens picked up Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow to perform and record as Big Star off and on for 15 or 20 years. Several versions of The Box Tops have appeared at the Beale Street festival and other settings recently.
Big Star was set to play a benefit for the Overton Park Shell (corporate name ignored intentionally) on May 15. I hate like hell that we won't get that show.
Thanks, Alex, for keeping the faith. Thanks for bearing witness to the truth that still lives and breathes at this weird, funky, inexplicable doorway to the Delta. Thanks for everything you shared with us. And thanks for that moment you shared with me at the Beale Street Festival, when the sound wasn't set up to suit you, so you jumped down off the stage and signed autographs, posed for pictures, talked and laughed until it was brought to your liking.
Rest well, brother, even if it is far, far too soon.
Alex was working with Chips Moman and Dan Penn when he was barely old enough to drive. The band was the Box Tops, and another group of Memphis kids changed music, again. The Letter and Cry Like a Baby are the most enduring cuts. They stand up to this day. The lead vocalist is a big part of the reason why. (The Box Tops went through several incarnations, one including a drummer named Thomas Boggs. He would later take his TGI Friday's experience and open a restaurant in his home town, and then a series of them, called Huey's. And he gave additional generations of Memphis musicians a place to play.)
After the Box Tops went their separate ways, Alex bounced around before landing in Big Star with Chris Bell, Jody Stephens and Andy Hummel. There would have been no alternative music movement without Big Star. Period.
Where did Peter Buck's jangling guitar come from? Big Star. Where did Michael Stipe and Eddie Vedder find their inspiration as lyricists and lead singers? Big Star. Or, more specifically, Alex Chilton. Where did the model for records lost as record companies went to pieces or turned on their own artists? Big Star.
#1 Record changed music. Third/Sister Lovers blew music up. By that time, the band was a conspiracy between Chilton, Stephens, Jim Dickinson and a lot of Memphis musicians, the great Richard Roseborough in particular, but Richard's another story.
Everything that would arise in Rock and Roll for the next 40 years has its roots in Third/Sister Lovers. That's not just my opinion. Michael Stipe said so. Peter Buck said so. A Who's Who of the alt rock generation agreed.
Alex had a third career as a solo artist. Like Flies on Sherbet is the pick here. It is weird. And brilliant. And free. Like Rock is supposed to be. Alex got it. Or it got him.
Chilton managed to keep the relationships alive no matter how the artistic temperament affected him and his colleagues in the various bands through the years. He and Stephens picked up Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow to perform and record as Big Star off and on for 15 or 20 years. Several versions of The Box Tops have appeared at the Beale Street festival and other settings recently.
Big Star was set to play a benefit for the Overton Park Shell (corporate name ignored intentionally) on May 15. I hate like hell that we won't get that show.
Thanks, Alex, for keeping the faith. Thanks for bearing witness to the truth that still lives and breathes at this weird, funky, inexplicable doorway to the Delta. Thanks for everything you shared with us. And thanks for that moment you shared with me at the Beale Street Festival, when the sound wasn't set up to suit you, so you jumped down off the stage and signed autographs, posed for pictures, talked and laughed until it was brought to your liking.
Rest well, brother, even if it is far, far too soon.
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