Monday Morning Quarterback 1.09

Back to the Monday Morning Quarterback thing after a full three-days of pushing my Squidoo lens promoting public awareness of Chiropractic Stroke. If you didn't get a chance to read it you definitely should-- especially if someone you care about visits a Chiropractor. The story generated over 100 hits on the blog from 37 unique visitors who, hopefully, forwarded it on to others that will read it soon and forward it... and so on, and so on, and so on.

I am encouraged that it did so well but I am still looking for ways to take the Site viral. Anything that any readers can do would be tremendously helpful as I am only one person with a job and a family and hoses that need to be taken into the garage before we get our first freeze of the season tonight. SkeetzTeez is doing pretty decent too. Looks like it is going to be our biggest month yet:

Top five keywords that resulted in visits to SkeetzTeez or SkeetzTeez Blog:

5. Jonas Brothers and Sarahcuda (tie)

4. Trivia

3. Chiropractor

2. Stroke

1. Suck for a Buck

Top five designs sold at SkeetzTeez:

5. I Survived a Major Brain Injury and All I Got was this Lousy T-shirt

4. Saturday Night Live- Schweddy Balls

3. McCain/Palin (McMaverick/Sarahcuda)

2 Big Brother (Sister)

1. Slapshot- Charlestown Chiefs

I couldn't figure out the run on Charlestown Chiefs T-shirts until I realized that they were selling in threes-- the kids are buying them to dress as the Hanson Brothers for Halloween; every time I think the McCain/Palin design is done, I sell another one; and I don't understand how trivia often makes it on the search list as I don't have anything directly relating to the subject. Maybe I should! Notes from the weekend:

• Since when did all suspects become Persons of Interest? Would you be more willing to turn yourself in if you were named a person of interest rather than the suspect-- whether you were guilty or not? To me, they are one in the same.

• Did I miss when they moved the end Daylight Savings Time? I thought it was always before Halloween. 

• What ever happened to taking things you found around the house and making your Halloween costume? You have to spend a fortune on something the kids are going to wear, if your lucky, a couple of hours.

• Have you seen the adults' costumes available? They are either too gross or too revealing. The women's outfits look like hussies, harlots, hookers or whores.

• Do 11-year-olds need to bring two forms of identification? A local municipality passed legislation limited trick-or-treaters to 12 and under between the hours of 5:30 and 8:00. That should open up the streets for vandalism for all the 14-year-olds after 9:00.

• How is that working for you?

• Why does no one use the word hussy anymore... or harlot, for that matter?

• Isn't it about time that we can vote over the Web? The Internet has made the gathering of information, in almost every form, many times easier for both the gatherer and the provider. Why can't they come up with a way to vote in general elections that way too?

• Do you think the media, not the advertisements but through polls and such, influence the elections? I tend to think hearing poll results can make a difference how people vote or, even more notably, deter them to vote altogether because they assume that the race has already been decided and their candidate has either won-- and doesn't need the extra vote, or lost-- and

the vote is wasted.

• When is this season going to end? Looks like the World Series is going to drag on for, at least, another day or two because of rain, of all things. Get your Old Time Baseball T-shirt while you can before I switch it over to the Old Time Football Design.

• Who would've guessed? Our Fantasy Football team defeated the guys in first place this week, climbed out of the cellar and are only three-and-a-half games out of the lead halfway through the season.

• What should we name our new baby boy? Vote over there somewhere ------->

That's all for me tonight. I work-out and diet for good health but, because of the regimen, I am too tired to enjoy it.

Read this. Buy T-shirts. Peace.

Man on First...

We went to a graduation party in the Summer so, naturally, there were a lot of teenagers there. I'm not the type to sit around and make conversation with people I don't know very well so I grabbed a Wiffle ball and bat and asked my Dad if he thought we could get a game started.

I should have known what we were in for from the condition of the equipment-- still in it's original packaging-- not a scratch on it. Wiffle balls are best used after they have been well broken-in for a season or so. They are made from a space-age polymer that resists cracking even after hundreds of long balls. Incredibly enough, I have seen more shattered storm windows from well hit Wiffle balls than broken Wiffle balls under normal use.

After a few minutes of "sidewalk scuffing" (a proven technique of rubbing the ball on a rough surface, such a concrete, to speed up the aging process) my Dad and I were playing a leisurely game of catch. It didn't take long for us to collect a few spectators, as the only type of people that like making conversation with people they don't know very well more than me, is teenage boys. It didn't take very long for us to have enough people to start a game either because teenage boys find it hard to turn down a challenge-- especially from a guy old enough to be their father and his father.

Two things became, painfully, obvious shortly after the game started. One, they had never played by these rules before. Though we explained all of the rules prior to the first pitch, we had to stop several times to go over them again. It really is very simple: you swing and the catcher catches the ball-- your out; foul tip is an out; a caught fly ball is an out; over that sidewalk on the fly is a home run; any other fair ball is a single. No... you don't run the bases. No... there are no walks (or even balls), doubles or triples.

Now these are not the official rules of Wiffleball. These are the rules I learned from my Dad and he learned from the street when he was a kid in the late 40s and 50s. They are, probably, closer to stick ball rules as that's what they played before the Wiffle ball was invented and easily accessible to everyone. These were our rules when we played in our yard or anywhere else that we had numbers on everyone else.

We ran into many different rules growing up. Many were regional, by neighborhood, but even then, there were sometimes different variations of the game played on the same street. Some gave you three strikes or didn't require the catcher to catch them; some didn't count the foul ball as an out or counted a cleanly caught ground ball as an out. I've seen games played that they try to keep track of balls and strikes and Cox's group used to play with a trash can behind the plate-- if you hit it with the pitch, it's a strike... nonsense!

The Official Wiffleball Website, has the official rules and there are sanctioned leagues out there now that play by there own sets. All-in-all there are some differences, but the one thing all of the rules have in common is... no base running. That is why the phrase "Man on First" was first uttered and why it is one of the most common memories of a man's childhood. 

One of the best things about Wiffleball is that it can be played with as few people as two or three. The game was also developed to be easily played in backyards, side lots, city streets and alleys or even indoors. These two important features didn't allow room for bases, much less, running between them, therefore "man on first" was stated after a single was hit and often between batters and even pitches to remind all the players that there was an invisible "man" on first base and that a dinger would score two, instead of one.

The other thing that I noticed very quickly, is these kids had, not only never been taught how to properly throw a Wiffle Ball, they had probably never seen anyone who has. This was obvious in that, besides watching me pitch like I had two heads, the confident (almost to the point of arrogant) little bastages, literally, couldn't touch any of my stuff with the bat. They would step their cocky punk-arses into the box and then quickly duck back out as the little white ball, that seem to definitely be directed right at their head, curved away, crossed the plate, and landed, gently, into the waiting hands of my Dad-- right down the middle. 

I would let up a bit on the second and third pitch to reassure them that, even if they do catch one in the face, back or nads, it isn't going to hurt them. It's a Wiffle ball, for God's sake. The laws of physics won't allow an object with this light of a mass to accelerate to speeds greater than 23 mph. Then I come in with a riser that looks so inviting as it floats to the plate, tailing in slightly towards the right-handed batter, that the kid can't resist swinging for the fences-- Whiff! (How Wiffleball got it's name.) 

My Dad still moves pretty good for an old guy and there aren't too many that I got past them that he didn't scoop up. I think I saw a little more of a pep in his step, too, when we started to gain a little respect from the juvenile delinquents. The kids were pretty amazed with our skills and even asked us to show us a few tricks. Some of them even listened when we explained how to throw a screwball or slap at the ball with the bat instead of swinging for power.

 

I feel bad that those little twerps made it through there whole childhoods without playing Wiffleball. What else did they miss out on? 

I learned a lot of lessons growing up from Wiffleball and other games like it. I could go on-and-on about the secret to curving the ball (don't try so hard) or other uses for the Wiffle bat (snipe-hunting, bottle-rocket-launching, sword-fighting) and things like that for hours but I, unfortunately, don't have that time right now. I will find it, though, soon and write about some more fun stuff in future postings. Right now, we will leave it on hold... Man on First. Buy T-shirts. Peace.

My Two Cents

I am fortunate to work for a company that realizes the value of training their employees and supports the belief by providing opportunities to learn about work, home and life related issues. Part of the training program includes a speaker series that features business, industry and community leaders speaking on a variety of topics. Yesterday, I sat in on a session with, John Mozeliak, the General Manager of Major League Baseball's St. Louis Cardinals.

Mr. Mozeliak was very cordial and I was somewhat amazed at how down-to-earth he seem while holding a position that only 29 other people have in the whole world but every red-blooded, American boy, man or person, would give up their left arm for. I was also surprised at his relative youth and felt that I was listening to someone in my generation speaking as opposed to my Dad's generation-- possibly another indicator that I am getting old.

It was a very interesting and informative discussion for me, being a baseball fan, but I didn't see anyone in the room nodding off so I suppose even those that have indifferent feelings toward the sport enjoyed it to some degree. He went on for 20 minutes or so about how he was a salesperson and a manager, and tried to show some parallels between what he does and what we do-- a point that I had to differ with, to some degree, as he mentioned how his annual payroll budget was in the hundreds of millions of dollars and his performance reviews are daily and conducted by the national media.

Mr. Mozeliak, then impressed me by opening the floor for questions and answering in a straight-forward and casual manner. He handled some pretty tough questions from a few dedicated fans of our beloved Cards that had recently gone on an ugly losing streak and had all but been eliminated from the playoffs. I guess that he is used to getting a lot tougher questions, from a lot more difficult people, in a lot more hostile environments than from the 20 or so of us in the room.

I asked him if was still a fan of the game and if it was as fun as he thought it would be when he was a kid, now that it is, first and foremost, a business to him now. He gave me a good, solid answer and gave us an example of how it is sometimes hard to balance the two with a funny story about Ron Vallone. I wish I got a chance to ask him about the struggling economy and how he thought it was going to impact baseball.

I am no financial analyst or CPA, so much of the stuff that is going on right now is over my head, but even the average Cub Fan can tell you that if Americans start to go through some rough times, financially, the entertainment dollar is the first thing that gets eliminated from the family budget. This not only means sports, but movies, concerts, vacations and then things like cable or satellite TV, club memberships and video games.

It's just common sense that you get rid of the things that you can live without before the necessities like food and shelter and the Internet. I often whine in this blog that the younger generations have gotten lazy because things have become too easy and they haven't had to go through many challenges in their lifetime, but I think this time is different. We are in store for a very difficult situation in this country's economy-- the most difficult that we have seen in a long time, if not our lifetimes.

Did you ever ask, in High School or College, "Why do I have to learn History? How is this going to help me in the real world?" and had someone answer you with, "Those who do not learn from history, are bound to repeat it..." Maybe that's part of the problem. There are very few people left that remember what led up to the Great Depression and no one else did their studies.

I don't believe anyone is "putting partisan politics aside". I do think they want to solve this "grave economic crisis" but I think both the Republicans and the Democrats have their own agendas-- for goodness sake, people, we are 40-days away from the Presidential Election! (I have to take some time to write about the "terrorism-conspiracy-theory" in the next few weeks.) I am confident that we are going to make it through the next few years and eventually, this too, will all be history that we can forget, but we are probably going to experience some hard times along the way.

I think the politicians can be on the right track as long as they use a little common sense. I understand the need to use tax-payers money for a bailout of financial institutions, but it is ridiculous to think the dudes with the golden parachutes would get one dime of my hard earned dough-- they may have to dump the Summer Home, but Winter is coming anyway. 

I also have a concern with comments about how we can't let working-families lose their homes to foreclosure. Let's face it-- for the past ten or so years we have been giving outrageous mortgages to individuals who "as long as everything went as planned and the stars aligned and we didn't hit any bumps in the road for the next say... 30 years, may-- let me emphasize-- may be able to afford their dream home..." Real life doesn't work like that!

I told my 20-year old nephew this only the other day, "Hope for the best, but plan for the worst," when we were discussing his grand plan to move out of his parents' place and into a rental. I was being sincere with the advise but I really doubt that he will follow it. He's got big ideas and can't have "the Man" holding him back. I really hope he is successful, but I bet he wont even begin to think of what he is going to do if he isn't.

Lack of common sense, overconfidence in ourselves and others, laziness, greed and fear seems to be the recipe for the soup that we've gotten ourselves into now and it is going to take a little time and a bunch of people blowing before it cools down enough for us to eat. OK, I'll admit that analogy was beyond stupid but I got on a roll and couldn't stop.

I don't know, for I am not in charge of a multi-million dollar budget or thousands of families' financial security-- though I feel a little sorry for those who are-- I am, merely, a simple artist, trying to make a buck or two and, possibly, make someone smile, or think, or feel good about themselves or someone else for a brief moment (so buy a T-shirt).

In the mean time I will continue to hope for the best and prepare for the worst. I suggest that you do the same.

Peace.

Memories of "The Lot"

Every young boy dreams of being famous-- usually a professional ball player of some kind or maybe an astronaut, or performer. They are going to conquer the world, discover new things, have millions of fans, break world records or be declared a hero. When I was a young boy, I did most of my dreaming where a lot of children do, on "the lot".

"The lot" can mean different things to different people. It can be an empty field, common ground, or even a parking lot. In our case, "the lot" incorporated all of these as it was the Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church Campus, occupying most of the inside of the suburban block that many of us lived on or near. 

It was a fairly small parish of, probably, 400 families. The campus was comprised the church building and a school with five classrooms and a multipurpose room. If you don't count the metal, shed-like concession stand, that was all of the structures so there was a ton of open space. There was a quad area between the two buildings that was kept up nicely but rarely used and a very large area that we just called "the hill" but it was really just a slightly sloped piece of land, running from the school down to the street that was supposed to be used for a gymnasium that was never built. The athletic field and the large parking lot took up most of the rest of the space. I always thought the parking lot was extremely large for a parish our size as I don't think I ever saw it more than 3/4 full-- even for Easter Vigil. All that space made for a huge amount of room to play. 

Kids today don't play like we used to. They need a coach and a referee and a permission slip to play. They need warm up exercises and family members in the stands and they need a cool, healthy but tasty treat after they formally line up and parade past each other slapping hands and chanting a monotone, "good game, good game, good game...".

I can think of maybe nine days that I wasn't up on the lot, after school when it was in session and, basically, all day in the summer, from the time I was able to leave the front yard and cross the street on my own until I was able to drive. We would all congregate, choose up teams and play until the fight broke out or it got dark, at which point we would drag all of our stuff home until the next day when we would do it all over again.

There was no schedule-- no set time to start. Everyone would just show up and as soon as we had enough to play it was go time. If you showed up late, you sat out until another came to make the teams even or were designated, "all-time-hiker" (or catcher, or goalie). 

Captains were usually the two oldest, biggest or the best athletes and the last person picked was probably the youngest, smallest and most uncoordinated. This practice may seem cruel, by today's standards, but I prefer it to giving every kid a trophy just for showing up. It was honest and let you know where your strengths and weaknesses were and made you determined to improve. 

Everyone was playing for themselves. There were no parents to make proud or girls to impress except the ones that were playing with us and we were an equal opportunity organization-- the girls were treated like boys. This, generally, made it all fair and fun.

Disagreements on the field were kept on the field. We called our own fouls and made our own penalties and if we had a problem working something out, as a last resort we had a "do-over". More often than not a escalating disagreement, bordering on a fight, would end the game for the day but because there was no clock we needed something to mark the end of the day. After all, we still had to make the trek home before the streetlights came on and, back then, we didn't have cel phones that we could use to call Mom and have someone pick us up.

There were no set seasons for particular sports on the lot either, although we were more likely to be playing Indian Ball than Roller Hockey in the dead of summer and we would usually stick to one pastime for a week or two before we got bored. We tended to mix it up pretty much but, living in Soccertown, USA, we naturally mix in a little more of that the the others.

"The field" was in pretty poor condition through most of the year. The infields had no grass and it was sparse and clumpy in the outfields. It was set up differently for baseball and soccer through parts of the year but we could do either at any time. We would usually play soccer on the quad though because it made it tough to run the whole field with less than eight or so guys per team. 

Hockey was played at the far end of the parking lot where it was not unusual to see just as many skated players as those in street shoes playing together. This is also where the basketball hoops were located. Although it was set up so you could play full court, we rarely played anything more than HORSE or "around the world".

"The hill" was where would normally play football. A quick poll of the available players would determine whether the game would be tackle or touch and with a real ball or the Nerf. We would also fly our kites and, when it snowed, sled on that hill, not that I would consider them sports, but it was cool because every kid in the neighborhood knew that was the place to be.

I wouldn't really consider Fenceball a sport either, but we played it more than any of the other stuff. I have no idea where Fenceball came from. For all I know, it was played only at OLM by only the kids on that lot. I'm not completely sure that my friends and I didn't invent the game. All I know for sure is that I kicked that ball up against that fence more times than I can begin to count. I kicked it with friends, strangers and by myself. I kicked off the bomb (a bad thing) and I kicked it off the post (a good thing). 

It is a very simple game with almost no rules-- you get one-touch to make the ball hit the front of the backstop fence (without using your hands). If you miss you are out and last one in... wins! There were variations over the years that, for the sake of time, I won't get into here and now... maybe on a future post. 

Still, to this day, some 25-30 years later, however, I can still visualize every inch of that dusty field-- especially the screen and the infield where we played Fenceball. I still dream, literally, of playing on "the lot" and conquering the world, discovering new things, having millions of fans, breaking world records and being declared a hero. 

I wonder if the others that played like that have as fond of memories as I do? In the case of our lot, they can be bittersweet memories because the lot doesn't belong to OLM anymore. Reorganization of the Catholic parishes in the area left it vacant and it was eventually sold to the public school district. I still drive by every once in a while and even stopped a time or two. They have left it, pretty much, unchanged-- yet it is very, very different.

Several years ago, I started writing my life list-- things I wanted to make a point of doing in my lifetime, but I put it aside, unfinished, a short time later. When I had the stroke, I guess because it was a reminder short a lifetime is, I dug it back out. The first entry on the page is "Go up to the lot and play Fenceball with my son."

I think he is old enough now to kick and still young enough to be impressed when I tell him that I hold the world record for kicking a soccer ball up against this fence...

...he may even declare me a hero.

Check out the latest addition to the Old Time Sport Series: When it was more than a game--Soccer: If it moves, kick it. If it doesn't move, kick it until it does.

Hard Ball: The Sad Tale of Big Mac- Ten Years Later

Apparently, this week marks the tenth anniversary of Mark McGwire's memorable season. Big Mac hit his 62nd home run of the 1998 season breaking the longstanding record held by Roger Maris. The local sports talk radio station was asking listeners if they remembered where they were and what they were doing the night that McGwire sent the long ball over the left field wall like it was an event like JFK being shot or 9/11.

I do, sadly enough, remember were I was that evening but that is more because I was struggling with a serious bout of depression, at the time, and spent almost every night in this particular place. As I remember the people in the bar that night, pretty much, went crazy-- similar to the reaction when the Cardinals won the Series. Maybe it was the overall depression but I was not at all impressed with the so-called feat.

Baseball as a whole, needed McGwire to break that record. They needed the race between him and him and Sammy Sosa, that had been building all year, to climax that September night. The climate in MLB was poor before that season. A recent strike had disheartened many fans and there was a shortage of family-friendly stars. McGwire and Sosa got everyday people talking hardball again and became heroes to the kids.

Although I was way too old to be considered a kid by almost anyone and I didn't care particularly for any of the players, I was still a fan of the game, but there was something about what was going on in this circus they called America's past-time that didn't sit right with me. Not that the league was, intentionally, doing something shifty but things didn't seem to add up.

There was a lot of talk, around that time, about the ball being juiced. Statements from the league and Rawling's officials denied the accusations and independent tests from outside parties failed to produce results except a bunch of cork, yarn and horsehide.

Even at that time, if they would've looked at the baseball players instead of the baseballs, they probably would've found their juice a few years earlier than they did during the Congressional hearings on the steroids scandal. I really, really hate the idea that many young peoples' heroes were taken down-- that, in some cases, the truth came out and, in others, the line between truth and lies became harder to find or disappears, altogether. I also hate that legendary players like Hank Aaron and Walter Johnson, as well as thousands of lesser known men, who didn't have the steroids and growth hormone, are being forgotten-- with a career full of statistics being swallowed up and spit out by the modern day likes of Barry Bonds and Roger Clemons.

I am not claiming that the old timers didn't have their own way of gaining an edge. We have to remember that even though it's a game-- it is still big business with big money implications. I know players that used things that "weren't exactly against the rules" to find that edge in much lower levels of organized sports than the Bigs. Even if drug testing cleans the game of all steroids and HGH, (some of) the professionals are going to find something else to stay ahead of the game.

I do believe now, unlike ten years ago, the MLB is serious about cleaning up the sport. All the bad press about these players has the public asking, "How could the league not know this was going on?" Honestly, even if you ignore McGwire's acne problem, look at the size of this guy! Muscles weren't meant to be that big. That's why a bad step out of the box can put a guy on the 15-day IR and why baseball careers are shorter than they were in other eras and so many ex-ballplayers walk with a cane.

Maybe some day they will work out this mess and they can spend all of their time on something really important, like discussions on whether or not to reinstate Pete Rose to be eligible for the Hall of Fame. For me... I'm still a fan of the game but there are very few players that I will root for. Player's don't want to be our kids' role models? News for them: I don't want them to be.

Stick with the Old Time Baseball: When Hardball Was Played Hard. Get the brand new T-shirt at: http://www.cafepress.com/skeetzteez/5966673