Best-Selling Humorist.
Up today at BARDBALL.COM:
The Wings of the Bird
Every kid thinks that he
Could mow down the heart of the Yankees order
If given the chance,
And someday everybody gets that chance,And it’s good luck to talk to the ball,
And cheers are love that never dies,
And the world would love you if you showed them who you really are,
And magic can happen at any time.That kid never dies.
That kid was the Bird.
There has been too much death to start this baseball season. The superstitious among us (which probably means every baseball fan, at some point in his or her life) might say it’s a bad omen, that we should stop the season now before something else happens. But if baseball is like life, then death certainly is a part of it.
First Nick Adenhart is snatched away by a drunk driver after an exciting start to a promising rookie year. Then, Harry Kalas, the voice of the Phillies, passes out in the broadcast booth and dies after 44 years of broadcasting. And Mark Fidrych, one of the most fabled Tigers of all, dies after an accident at his home in Massachusetts.
Three men, at different stages of life. Accolades won, fame flying by, promise unfulfilled, love and loss. Time, the avenger.
The only one of the three I know anything about is Fidrych. In his rookie year, I was 15, and was slowly abandoning baseball as uncool compared with music and the arts. (It was easy to turn my back on the Tigers, since they were heading straight downhill from the years I really loved them, from 1968 to 1973 and the firing of Billy Martin. My friends weren’t too into the sport, nor was my family. I only learned years later that my father didn’t take me to many games was that he hated baseball. Wish I could say I’m a third-generation fan with an unbroken streak of Opening Day appearances, but this is not my legacy.)
But you didn’t have to be a baseball fan to enjoy Mark Fidrych. He had enough enjoyment bubbling out of him that there was plenty to spare. Talking to the ball, grooming the mound, he seemed like a loon–maybe not the kind of bird he would appreciate being compared to–but he certainly didn’t care. A nonroster invitee, he was living every fan’s fantasy–“Just give me the chance, and I’ll strike out the Yankees. Just give me the chance.” But he was no clown, and he wasn’t a fluke. He had a wonderful delivery, doing things with his curve and slider that players 10 years older couldn’t do. Watching him win was kind of like being in love for the first time. It was a beautiful, perfect thing, and wouldn’t last in this world.
That bicentennial year was pretty crappy in Detroit. All the teams were losing. The auto industry was chugging along making Cougars and Delta 88s, but the factories were old and the unions were bloated and something about it felt corrupt. Disco was on the rise. Nixon had resigned 18 months before, and the hippies were getting fat and/or psychotic, and my 15-year-old mind just kept saying, Something’s not right these days.
But Fidrych was a good thing. There was no whiff of cynicism or greed or entitlement about him. He was a pure soul, and stayed one even after knee and arm injuries took away his control. And in all the years since he retired, by all accounts, he never felt anger or self-pity or regret about how short his career was. He was happy pitching, was grateful for the chance, then was just as happy driving a gravel truck, marrying his love and fathering a child. That is the legacy of the Bird. And he’ll always be that. And while I rarely find that peace of mind, I’ll always be grateful to have seen it in a guy like him.
As I saw in the comments of Cardboard Gods, Rookie of the Year Forever.
“Cremating the Curse”, which happened Sunday out in Schaumburg, was one of the stranger events I’ve ever taken part in. Part fan convention, part book signing, part reading, part funeral/wake. Nearly 1000 people showed up, according to one person, which will be a boost to both book sales of Cubbie Blues and Chicago Baseball Cancer Charities (who received a portion of the door and do get a portion of book proceeds).
The event, which was hosted by Tom Dreesen, was meant to lay to rest all the curses that have plagued the Cubs through the last century. So speakers gave quick eulogies for things like the billy goat and the black cat and Steve Bartman. The speakers were all contributors to the Cubbie Blues book, including Rick Kaempfer, Mary Beth Hoerner, Julia Borcherts, and Bill Hillman. Then the items or totems we brought along for the curses were laid to rest in a Cubs-style coffin, carted off by pall bearers (including a few former major leaguers and Ronnie Woo-Woo (who frankly always unnerves me)) and placed in a hearse. From there, they were taken away to be cremated. Later, they will be placed in a Cubs funeral urn and auctioned off for the Chicago Baseball Cancer Charities.
I’ve posted some pictures to my Facebook page to give you an idea of what was going on. It all took place inside a real funeral home, if that’s not obvious, and the Cubs casket is a real deal. You can buy one for yourself, if you are so inclined. I think the coolest thing of the day was the appearance of “Mr. Ivy,” dressed as a portion of the outfield wall. He stood about 10 feet tall on four-legged stilts, and…..well, just check out the pictures. I think he’ll be in a lot of highlight reels this year.
There are also some pictures at the Facebook page here.
For the record, the following is what I said as I eulogized and laid to rest the curse put on the Cubs by Illinois First Lady (Macbeth):
This curse I am laying to rest has not been retold charmingly in folklore. It will not be repeated on ESPN highlight reels. It will not have cute T-shirts printed up, if only because the language and photo would be so unappealing.
This curse I am laying to rest was hidden in transcripts of federal wiretaps of our former governor, as he walked around in the sunshine and rainbows of his last days in office. We know the corporate Cub apparatchiks were looking for state funding to preserve Wrigley Field. We know that Sam Zell said he was interested in tearing the place down and erecting a stadium along the lines of Coors Field in Denver. We know that the governor offered to get state money to preserve Wrigley Field— if the Tribune leaned on their editorial board not to be so nasty.
All caught on tape. All repugnant. All a violation of governance and public finance and freedom of the press. And who chimes in to make it all worse? Who makes it a real Cubs Curse? Illinois’s own first lady—Lady Macbeth, that is, as written by David Mamet, Dick Mell’s cute and cursin’ daughter, the Rasputin of Ravenswood Manor, Patti “Potty Mouth” Blagojevich.
It wasn’t enough that the Cubs’ playing field was being used in a chess game among soulless power brokers. It wasn’t enough that a worst case scenario of Tribune ownership and government intervention was being discussed. No, Patti had to scream in the background of one of her desperate husband’s phone calls and let loose a vile, “Hold up that fricking Cubs manure…Fudge them!”
She may have been invoking Serbian black magic; sorcery is one explanation for how her husband had until then managed to stay one step ahead of the law. If so, that magic had obviously passed its “sell by” date. So, not only did she curse the Cubs with magic, it was also faulty, expired, curdled magic.
And these people were supposed to be Cubs fans. North-side born and bred. Cub fans from the cradle. Occupying the halls, doorways and phone booths of the highest office in the state. The betrayal was enormous, because it was so close to home. And the curse, uttered after its fresh date, by a hopeless third-rate wheeler-dealer with a bad haircut? Such an unstable abomination can be lifted only by burning. But who to burn? It might be pleasant to think we could resurrect the Spanish Inquisition in Springfield. But since corruption is not a capital crime in Illinois, but only a gentleman’s pastime, in order to lay this curse to rest, we’ll have to burn Patti Blagojevich in effigy.
Begone, thou corrupt crone. Begone, thou house-peddling harridan. Begone, thou greedy gone-to-seed gorgon.
“Fudge the Cubs”? Patti, you’d best hope that your hubby gets sentenced to a prison full of Sox fans. That shouldn’t be too hard.
Just a quick note to tell any Cub fans out there that on Sunday afternoon, I’ll be participating in a very strange ceremony at a funeral home in Schaumburg. (Yep, that’s first time I’ve ever typed THAT!) We’ll be having a wake/eulogy/exorcism for all the curses that have afflicted the Cubs over the years: Merkle, Billy goat, black cat, Bartman. Mine is a super-secret new curse, but I’ll give you a hint: It was uttered by the former first lady of a certain corrupt Midwestern state, whose husband was just indicted with a sledgehammer yesterday.
The ceremony will be held with a book signing of Cubbie Blues, the anthology I helped with last year. It looks to be a very good time, and part of the proceeds of the book sales will go to Chicago Baseball Cancer Charities. There will be a whole lot more going on, so check out the details at the publisher’s website, and come on out if you can.
zymurgy – a branch of applied chemistry that deals with fermentation processes (as in wine-making or brewing)
embosk – shroud or conceal, esp. with plants or greenery
dirhinic – affecting both nostrils alike
peroration – a flowery, highly rhetorical speech
pendeloque – a usually pear-shaped glass pendant used for ornamenting a lamp or chandelier
vitraillist – a maker or designer of work in stained glass
anastrophe – inversion of the usual syntactical order of words for rhetorical effect
callidity – craftiness, cunning shrewdness
kakistocracy – a government by the worst individuals
meliority – the quality or state of being better
For background on this issue, check out the Detroit Free Press:
For all the times you’ve prayed to me,
Beseeching for a victory–
“Let him strike out,” “We need this hit” –
And clogged my in-box with this stuff,You choose to hold Opening Day—
Praise be to me—on Good Friday?
People, watch you don’t make me mad,
Or I’ll give the Tiges what the Lions had.
Work these into your conversations this weekend. IT PAYS TO INCREASE YOUR WORD POWER!!
turgescent – becoming swollen, distended or inflated
sesquipedalian – characterized by the use of long words
percipience – capacity to sense or come to know or recognize mentally, esp. something that is hidden or obscure
insurrecto – a person who rises in revolt against civil authority or an established government
pecksniffian – hypocritically devout; displaying high-mindedness with intent to impress
nugacious – trifling, trivial
sanguivorous – feeding on blood
exaugural – occuring at the close of a term of office
deglutition – the act or process of swallowing
ramage – the boughs or branches of a tree
(And out of all those words, the only one that was accepted by the WordPress spell checker was percipience. Go figure. If you have percipience, you probably already have.)
Growing up in the Detroit area and following Tiger baseball, fans were blessed with the announcing skills of two fine Southern gentlemen, Ernie Harwell and George Kell. And while Ernie might have been the soundtrack of our summers from 1960 to 2002, that shouldn’t take away from the skills of George Kell. Thoughtful, knowledgeable, and of seemingly infinite good humor (especially when the team was losing, as it often was), George Kell never let himself get in the way of the game. Teamed with Al Kaline, their low-key demeanor belied skills learned on ballfields for decades.
It’s a tribute to George (and to Ernie a little) that a vast majority of us Michiganders will put on a southern drawl when we ask, “How ’bout them Tahgers?” This might make the state seem more southern than it really is (and it’s still pretty southern, with all the transplanted Tennesseans and Kentuckians who came to work in the plants after WWII). When games got exciting, his baritone voice got a curl in it that raised the hairs on the back of your neck, seemingly out of nowhere.
You don’t appreciate the great ones until they move on and are replaced. And George Kell was one of the great ones.
The Detroit Free Press tribute to him is here.
Last Friday I was back at it, serving as a judge in the citywide Scripps Spelling Bee. I served as a judge last year, and remember sitting in the audience when my son competed four years ago. Also on my panel was newshound extraordinaire Carol Marin, who is a neighbor of the school–St. James Lutheran–that hosted the bee. Oh, it was a time for five-day deodorant pads. The tension was so thick in that room we had to take extra time to tell the kids to get up and shake their arms.
My hardest job up at the table was holding my emotions in check. When a kid has been trying very hard for a couple of rounds, and succeeded in spelling all the ridiculous words that have been thrown at him, it breaks your heart to watch him or her stumble over a word for a hard German cheese (Backstein), or a mountain village in the Caucasus (aul). I recognized one girl from another year when she competed. A dead-ringer for Drew Barrymore, she was probably a fourth grader when I first saw her, and was now a poised sixth grader. She lost in the later rounds, and kept a stiff upper lip, even with her whole family right there in the front row. Almost all the kids tried really hard (some were completely expressionless), and it was wrenching to watch them go down, but there has to be a winner. WBEZ was there covering it, and they’ve posted a slideshow of the day. Click here if you want to see that.
This year I was struck by the timeliness, or lack thereof, of some of the words. For someone who grew up in the 1960s like me, a muumuu is not an exotic item (a faux-exotic one, sure, but hell, Totie Fields used to wear them). Whether that would make it easier to spell or not, I don’t know, but certain words I feel familiar with (struedel, parfait, lariat, wampum) were probably very foreign to these kids. And while I shouldn’t make generalizations, I wonder if city kids have any idea what a paddock, a wiseacre, a cadenza, or a babushka is. The kids showed us that familiarity isn’t crucial for spelling, but I think it would have to help at least a little bit.
Eventually we were down to two kids, a fifth grader and a sixth grader who went back and forth with correct spellings, obviously having memorized the list of 250 words that everyone had been given. As a judge’s prerogative, we turned to another list of 250 words that the contestants had never seen before.
We got through about a dozen more words, back and forth, but eventually the champion spelled two words correctly in a row. (One more word trapped in time that a late contestant didn’t know: McCoy, as in “the real McCoy.”) This second list had some terrific words that I intend to use in my everyday conversation, just to keep people on their toes. As the Reader’s Digest used to say, It Pays To Increase Your Word Power!
graphospasm — a hand or finger cramp brought on by excessive writing.
flurriment — a state of being agitated
spilth — something that has been allowed to pour, splash, or fall out (as of a container) and be wasted, lost or scattered
frigorific — causing cold (not “Friggerrific!”, though that might become a favorite expletive)
Yiddishkeit — Jewish way of life
rantipole — characterized by a wild unruly manner or attitude
succivorous — feeding on the sap of plants
fanfaronade — empty boasting, bluster
quodlibet — a subtle or debatable point, often a question posed for argument or disputation
breviloquence — shortness of duration of speaking.
And with that, I will save the rest of the list for another day.
When we switched my daughter’s grade schools last year, one of the enticements we held out to her was that the new school would, like the old one, put on a student play every year. This little lure, along with the help of some new kindhearted friends, helped her transition from a little place she’d been attending since pre-school to a much larger and more demanding grade school.
Anyway, I thought the schoolwork was demanding until I saw the school play this past weekend! It was a huge production, all on the stage of the rented Portage Theater in Portage Park. There were 104 kids in the production, but that number counts the K-first graders and second and third graders, who came out in separate groups and sang “You Gotta Have Heart” and “Consider Yourself at Home”, respectively. Still, it was a HUGE cast to put on a stage.
Liesel played the co-host of a game show called “Marooned,” which suspiciously resembled “Survivor,” where groups of favorite childhood characters–from fairy tales, classic stories and video games–had signed up to compete. Apparently, everyone needed the publicity to keep their personal franchises profitable. Man, are we raising a bunch of market-savvy, world-weary kids around here!
Anyway, it was a terrific time, with seven original songs, plus choreography. The kids rehearsed long and hard, and it showed in some very spot-on performances. That’s Liesel in the front in white.
And this year, as in years past, I accepted the assignment to create or locate the props needed for this tropical showdown. (Thankfully there were a lot of other people working on the set itself.) The job ended up being a lot of banners and picket signs–no giant food like other years, drat the luck–but it was still fun. The pictures below show some papier mache skulls I made to top some flagpoles, plus large pieces of a puzzle emblazoned with the tiki icon for the winning team. I didn’t strictly freehand the puzzle pieces, but I was still pretty impressed with myself for getting them to look good.
I haven’t been on the intertoobs much today, but I can’t believe I’m the only person who read this headline in the morning Tribune and found it funny:
Just proves that, sometime or other, we’ve ALL been winners!
A busy day is about to get crazy-busy, so I thought I would post this link to an article in this morning’s Chicago Sun-Times discussing the strenuous process of getting accepted in one of Chicago’s selective enrollment high schools. (For my earlier post on this topic, click here.)
Out of the blue yesterday, a reporter calls me up to talk about the process. We chatted for a while, then he asked if it would be possible to get a photograph of the prospective high schooler in question. By coincidence, Liam would be at Northside College Prep later in the evening for orchestra class. So we met the (is it redundant to say “harried”?) S-T photographer, snapped a few pics of Liam with his axe, and Boom! Liam gets to take his first dive into the news hole. I hope he doesn’t become addicted to fame.
And I hope everyone who reads the article is aware that an ellipsis is a device for showing that other parts of a quote had been cut. It might look like I’m offering St. Ignatius faint praise, but really, the two halves of that quote were separated by a lot of other verbiage. I was very excited Liam was accepted at St. Ignatius. In fact, I’m sorry I won’t have excuses for shopping and eating often in Little Italy (near the school), but now I’ll get to sample all the middle Eastern and Korean places near Northside Prep.
(I’m having trouble uploading the picture that accompanied the Sun-Times article. Do you think there is an embedded code to keep me from using it? I was able to download it to my laptop fine. Oh well. Check the article for the original picture.)
To celebrate the wearin’ of the green, I present here a video of me nephew’s band, Grand Rapids’ most popular Irish band, The Waxies! Give em hell, me boyos, and one fer Uncle Jamie!
Branden blames me for getting him hooked on Irish music and history, because one night I went on too long with snippets I remembered from college history class. Didn’t know I had the rabble rouser in me, but maybe it just takes the right audience. I can take the blame for the black cap as well. I lent it to him once, and have given up hope it will ever make it back (not that I’d want it at this point).
For more on the Waxies, check out their Facebook page and their MySpace page.
Slainte!
The reading for Mark Caro’s book The Foie Gras Wars went very well last night. He sold a lot of books, and his girls were very cute in their demand for the spotlight and the microphone. But the biggest surprise was the cake below, which his parents had made and brought to his reception after. This should be the standard, I think, for what all book signing cakes should be held to. This picture might not show it, but the cake was about 4 inches high, layered with chocolate, fudge and bananas (and thankfully no meat or organ products). Congrats to Mark, and our waistlines.
A couple of years ago, my friend and Trib writer Mark Caro found himself covering an odd spat among Chicago celebrity chefs. One chef (high-strung, combative, perfectionist, and a sucker for publicity) made it known through Mark that he had decided not to serve foie gras at his eponymous groggery. He stated further (okay, no need to be coy, it was Charlie Trotter) that he would like to eat the prepared liver of chef Rick Tramonto “as a little treat.”
A year later, through some silly aldermanic shenanigans, Chicago had the distinction of being the first city in the world to ban the sale of foie gras in restaurants. Restauranteurs dared city health inspectors to prevent them from serving it. The city’s top hot dog chef (and no fool about publicity, either) managed to become the first chef to be fined for serving his foie gras “dog”. Suddenly, Mark had a front row seat to the emotional battle over the fattened goose liver. And so, he decided to write a book about it.
“Foie Gras Wars” is now in the stores. Mark will be signing some Thursday night at 7 pm at the Borders at Clark and Diversey. Come on out and support him. (For a good article on the book, check out this from the New York Post.)
I’ve had the chance to read some chapters over the past two years. It’s a very entertaining and even-handed story, one that presents many facts and viewpoints but avoids easy answers. Mark even threw himself into the coverage by attending a goose liver weekend at a farm in France, where he learned the issue from the “inside out”, as it were. Once he had his research done, he told me he’d really learned a lot about food choices and this little delicacy, and that his cholesterol had gone through the roof.
In these economic times, macaroni and cheese might be on more people’s minds than foie gras, but keep an eye out for this book and pick up a copy. It’s a fascinating look into politics, money, class, the artisanal food movement, and our relationship to nature and what we put in our bodies.
UPDATE: Here’s a good article about Mark in the Chicago Reader. He’ll also be signing at the B&N in Old Orchard in Skokie next Thursday.