MY PHONE

                                                          

I recently purchased a new phone. After my wife passed away I felt it was important to have a phone on me at all times. Not just for safety reasons but for reference reasons because I had relied on her so much to remember things we both needed. Addresses and phone numbers. Birthday and anniversaries or appointments, you name it she was my go to gal.  So when I bought the new phone my old one was crammed with all of this information but the phone was dead. Through the magic of I-Cloud I was able to retrieve all of that and now I had a new phone with all of my old information that I had accumulated over the years downloaded into it.

That brings me to this. What if we could take young people that are going out into the world right now and give them all of the things we have learned that worked for us and, didn’t work for us, and say, “Here let me save you a lot of the trouble of having to learn this the hard way.” But wait, aren’t we doing that now with school and books. Yes, to some extent we are and it’s called history but they still have to accept it and learn it and that doesn’t always happen and I’m not sure how much schools even teach history anymore.  No, what I’m talking about is a mass transfer of information in the flick of a switch. Just like my new phone was programmed, you wouldn’t have to start over; you would all ready have the basics. You could expand on it or ignore it but you never really had to learn it.

Now the young people are saying, “Get out of here. We’ll learn it the same way you did.” To that I say. “Some of the mistakes I made in life were downright painful. Ordinary mistakes we all make and you want to make them for yourselves? If there were a way to make a drug addict experience the pain, suffering and shame of withdrawal before they ever started, most wouldn’t make that choice. If there were a way to make a driver experience what he would be going through when he drove drunk and killed someone, he would call a cab. I could give you a hundred examples.”

We are the sum total of our life’s experiences. The problem with that is a lot of us are over the hill before we really are, who we were meant to be. I have always said, “I want to be fourteen and know what I know now.” You see life is one big learning experience but it’s hard to read the book and learn anything from it when the story isn’t finished. That, for so many years, you relied on your likes and prejudice’s to guide you, and now you’re relying on actual experience.

What if we could delete all the bad preconceived opinions we once had and what we would download in these young minds would be only based on facts. That just like the information I downloaded on my new phone from ‘I cloud,’ it was only after I had gotten rid of the bad stuff.

THE BOYS OF SUMMER ARE BACK

                                    

Sometime in the next few weeks, an umpire will stroll to home plate, reach in his back pocket, dust off home plate and yell “Play Ball.” Yes, the ‘Boys of summer’ are back. Also sometime this summer, I will point the nose of my car east and head to Cooperstown. It has been on my bucket list way to long. I probably will want to be alone as a wander through those hallowed halls touching the plaques of those who have immortalized the game. Remembering special moments, when many of them were suited up and playing America’s past time. I am sure it will be emotional for me. There is something special about baseball and its not just it’s storied history I talk about. No, it’s the fact that its one of the few sports that your physical size doesn’t hold you back. It’s a sport for everyone that truly wants to play.

While in Cooperstown I want to stand in front of Harman’s plaque and remember once more this easy going slugger, who hit balls that had upper deck labeled on them the moment the ball and bat collided. How he always laid his bat down gently and jogged around the bases, almost as if the roar of the crowd embarrassed him. I want to stand in front of Kirby’s plaque and hear Jack Buck say, “And well see you tomorrow night,” as Kirby celebrated with the crowd during the 6^th game of the World Series with Atlanta. I want to remember the day Rod Carew toyed with the 400 mark and I was there. Then there are all of the other immortals. Babe, Ted, Stan, Joe, Willy, some of the heroes I grew up. Pitchers like Bob Feller and Herb Score with blazing fastballs and they could get them over the plate. Pitchers like Sandy Koufax that had hitters shaking their heads as they walked back to the dugout after watching a curve ball that came from somewhere outside of third base. Managers like Casey Stengel, John McGraw and Leo Durocher who studied the game, simply to outwit the other managers.

It was a time when ball clubs had farm teams, to cultivate their own athlete’s talent and players came up and played their entire careers for one club, one group of fans. It was a time when the ‘Knot Hole Gang’ got you into the old met for a few dollars and hot dogs cost a buck. You could wear your tee shirt with pride for twenty years, because that player wasn’t going anywhere. Then big money got in the way and it all changed. Unions and agents and owners in conflict all of the time and in the end, the fans were the big losers.

Grantland Rice, the great sports writer wrote and I quote. “For when the great scorer comes to call against your name, He’ll ask not if you won or lost but how you played the game.” I guess that’s the part I choose to remember and not what’s happened to the game. I’ll still be there in the stands, win or lose and cheer for my team and then go home and wistfully and quietly remember how it used to be. I leave you with this.“Oh somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright. The band is playing somewhere and somewhere hearts are light. And somewhere men are laughing and somewhere children shout. But there is no joy in Mudville---mighty Casey has stuck out

THE GREATEST GENERATION

                                               

I used to think during all of these bye-gone years that I was part of the ‘Greater Generation’ but after doing some research I found out I was really part of the ‘Silent Generation.’ A lot of the people of the silent generation were born during the great depression. Although my parents did experience it, I did not, but I still grew up expecting and getting a hard life. I was born during World War II and although I remember only bits of the end of it, I do remember the pride that existed in this country afterwards. Our country had fought and won a huge battle against tyranny. In the aftermath the rest of the world looked us up to and we enjoyed our hard fought victory, wearing it proudly on our sleeve. Then generation-by-generation, we let it all the glory slip away.

 No one really remembers those times anymore that fondly because the generations of today seem to march to their own drummer. Our country has changed immensely and that’s not a criticism, it’s a fact. This isn’t a condemnation of today’s younger generation-- its just an effort to explain how vastly different we were. We lived in a country back then where love of country was high on the list. We started class in school each day by reciting the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’. Our small town had thirteen churches and my own parents brought us up with a love of God and Country and that often translated into respect for our friends and family.

We had no cell phones or video games and in most case no televisions. The words “go outside and play” came right after your own words, complaining of being bored. There were no health clubs, yet people had far less problems with weight control. There also were no fast food places, and you ate together as a family. Then you burned a lot of calories with that “Going outside and playing” thing. Oh, they hadn’t yet proclaimed the evils of smoking and a lot of people did it and I don’t know whom to call more stupid-- the people back then who smoked or the people today who smoke, after seeing first hand what it did to their friends and family in the past.

Our cars had lead in the gas and that was bad but then we had mainly one auto to a family. For the most part we repaired them ourselves. We ate a lot of fat in our diets back then because that was before we knew words like cholesterol but most people worked hard at their jobs and today that is still a good remedy for that. Kids all carried knives to school but no one stabbed anyone. Our school therapist or counselor was called,” Mom and Dad.” Our historian was called “Grandpa and Grandma.” The town cop was everyone’s friend and the lawyers in town hadn’t learned yet how to be ambulance chasers. The politicians were more in tune with their constituents and not the lobbyists who today finance their campaigns.

I could go on but I won’t. For every action there is a reaction and that is as true today as it was then. So why the big difference? My theory is it has to do not so much with how we live today-- but with the death of common sense. It has to do also with our loss of personal responsibility and our tendencies now-- to blame others, and always have an excuse for our own stupid mistakes.