It's not Winning or Losing it's how you play the game

After hearing about Notre Dame Cathedral I have been in kind of a sad mood and on the way home I was listening to broadcast about the old days of the coalfield ball teams in West Virginia.
I don't know if other people experience it but there's always a memory that comes flooding back with certain associations that is at such an extreme level that it almost gives you cold chills thinking about it. That memory will need some explaining and I'm going to try to do just that with the story I'm about to tell you.
I can't say that I was a saint by any means but I did try to play by the rules as much as I could. Some of my examples when I was growing up were not exactly what they should have been, but not all of them. I can remember wanting to play basketball desperately but I was not good enough for our school team and I knew that so I tried out for the church team and lo and behold I made the team. You know what, I was shocked too! I worked hard and got frustrated one day in practice with what I was being taught and said something to the coach that I probably shouldn't have, I apologized and he forgave me, so I was back on the team. Finally, we started playing other churches. In the league we were in we played all around Memphis. One day the coach pulled me from the bench and told me to go in and take out a player? I did not understand and I asked somehow for clarification. I didn't remember exactly what I said but he said don't break anything but put him out of the ballgame. I was shocked but I wasn't the brightest bulb in the box in those days, yes, I was a little nieve in those days and I did so want to play basketball so I did as I was told.
We were lined up for a free throw and I came up and under him with a knee in his thigh to do my best to hurt him just enough to keep him off the floor for as long as possible. The official, you know the guy with a striped shirt and black pants, pulled me to the side and told me if he ever saw me trying to hurt another player he would make sure that I never played in any league again.
 I lied to him and

said I wasn't doing anything. He told me he wasn't born yesterday and he had played basketball himself and knew exactly what was going on and to just mind my pees and
cues and I would be all right, otherwise, it would be trouble.
Something like this came up later in my life and I think I've told a little bit of the story before. I was umpiring a baseball game and the game was extremely close. I was sweeping off home plate and thought I heard someone say don't let it hit you in the head but take the hit. I thought maybe I heard it wrong so I didn't think much about it but I did see the coach talking to one particular player. The first batter hit a double and the second batter hit a single and then the young man I saw talking to one of the coaches of his team came to bat and I noticed he was just a bit anxious and he was bobbing and weaving in and out of the strike zone which, in itself, is not incriminating but it made me a little more curious than normal. I was watching him just as close as I was watching the pitcher and the strike zone. The picture wound up looking at first and second, he threw the ball and it was looking like it was going to be a perfect strike, then I noticed the young man crouch into the strike zone and pull his leg up as if to step into the pitch to hit it. I noticed the strangest thing, his eyes were closed as tight as they could be and he was making a face as if someone was about to give him a shot of penicillin. Then I heard a thud, the baseball hit him directly in the shoulder which was right over the strike zone. He
made no attempt to move out of the way or fall to the ground or any movement like he did not want to get hit by the pitch and that's just not natural. A lot of things raced through my mind,
the coach that asked him to do something that was unsportsmanlike and who I presumed was a coach asking a child to put himself in danger for a game, this not only was unsportsmanlike but it
was dangerous. A batter can not block the plate and the strike zone by the rulebook. I could've called it a strike and or if I thought that the player was doing it intentionally I could
call him out, and I did. I also walked over to the coach and told him why I called him out and I said if I could prove what I suspected I would not only rule the player out but that I would
see that he never coached again.

The opposing coach couldn't understand my reasoning because he was on the opposite side and couldn't see the boys face like I could. Mr. Haney, yes, Wallace and Ramona and Diane's father (childhood friends) was there for the next game or he may have even been one of the opposing coaches (I don't remember) also chastised me for the call I made and I felt like I was totally alone with the decision that I had made and I also questioned myself for a split second, but I knew in my heart it was the right decision that I had made.
I, for one, don't believe that someone that a child should look up to should ask them to do something that should not be done whether it's morally or ethically or in the spirit of the game. Winning has little to do with it, it's that you will always be someone that they look up to and someone that they need to have as a role model and mentor and, as such, asking them to do
something they should not do is breaking a sacred trust because remember it's not whether you win or lose it really is how you play the game.
I have to tell you that most of my coaches through junior high and high school were people that I could look up to and almost always were of the highest character and I love them all dearly and would not take $1 billion for the time that I spent with the coaches and players of the teams that I was on. Yes, winning means a lot but being able to look at yourself in the mirror and saying to yourself I tried to be the best I could be, for me is more important than any amount on any scoreboard could ever give you.
It seems that nowadays that the little white lies are accepted no matter what the reason. It seems that making choices between the lesser of two evils is acceptable. I, for one, stand with you and
promise you that I will never accept cheating, lying, stealing or any other less than ethical behavior in my life. I am no saint and do not expect you to follow me. If you look you'll see I do not have
nail scars in my hands, but I try each and every day to be like the Man that did.

Rough Road in Italy

I have taken many an adventure with my wonderful wife Ursula, but the last one was to Rome and Vatican City. It was magical, the sights and attending mass at St Peter’s was a highlight of my life and while we were there the Pope spoke to the crowd and said a blessing for us all.

We walked all over Rome and took the train and cabs to all our destinations. I must say that we never felt unsafe at all. The price of the trains were very reasonable compared to other places where we have been.

We went to all the sights we had time for. The Coliseum built in AD 72 to AD 80, the Forum and the ruins at the Palatine Hill, the Castle St. Angelo and the Trevi Fountain. Yes, we threw a coin in the fountain so we will return to Rome.

The thing that made it magical had more to do with a chance encounter with a road that had a sign in Italian that said rough road, as we went to a restaurant that Ursula’s father had a picture taken at the end of the Second World War. The road that I am speaking of, as I said had a sign in Italian that I could not read and it was only blocking half the road, so like any good American tourist I went around it and, as Shirley Temple used to say, “oh my goodness”! It was, first of all, in the middle of nowhere and I must say if there is a middle of nowhere it was that road in Italy.

Back to the road now, the conditions of the road were really rough at first and, like any thing that I do, it was destined to get even rougher. The sides of the road had collapsed in places and the bridges also looked as if chunks had fallen out of them. I kept moving forward as my poor wife Ursula melted into a nervous pool of Jell-O. We finally got up to the very top of this mountain road and it didn’t look any more pleasing to the eye than the rest of the road had before. There were at least 1000 foot drops or more on the right side of the car which made Ursula’s nerves of Jell-O at this point even more shaky. I, however, had all the confidence in the world that we were going to be safe “after they pulled our mangled bodies from the Fiat we had rented”. At least then you wouldn’t have to be listening to this story. Yes, I was starting to get a little bit worried, “yeah like I was already sweating bullets”, the road actually seemed just a little bit better, “but you had to drive around the big huge holes in the road for it to be better by the way”. We finally got to the end of our rough road and came to what we would’ve called an expressway that also seemed to be closed. Luckily, we saw a couple workers on a part of the expressway that was closest to us, so we asked them in our very best interpretation of an American tourist trying to make someone understand what they are asking that doesn’t understand English. Somehow he understood us and pointed to go back down the road and take the right but before the closed sign. We were to turn across the medium and turn left and it would take us to our destination. Luckily for us it did and no mishaps or rough roads on the rest of our trip to the town of Bornio in Rovigo and the restaurant called Trattoria al Ponte.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                              We also went to Sienna, Lake Como and Milan.

Music of My Time

I am feeling very nostalgic for the music that I grew up with. I don’t think rap is musically singing. I don’t particularly like the direction music is headed. Everyone sounds like they’re back in the 1950’s with the old mics that caused the sound to echo. This echo however is no accident, they use the echo to hide the fact that most of today’s artists can’t hold their notes properly. That’s not to say that I personally could sing any better even with an echo correction.

I long for the days that everyone had their own unique sound. I also long for the time when all genres of music were played on most radio stations. I remember that WHBQ radio station would play pop, blues, rock, Soul, Country and yes even some of the old standards from back before our day. I have called myself and others of my generation the Ed Sullivan generation and I must slightly expand on that statement. The Ed Sullivan show introduced us to all kinds of music not just rock, country or Motown but his show introduced us to Opera and even Broadway musicals with the cast of those musicals performing it. As a matter of fact a young teenage Monkee was in one of those Broadway casts, yes, Davy Jones from the Monkees was in one of the Broadway musicals that was on the Ed Sullivan show before he had ever even thought about joining a band called the Monkees. Now that I have established the fact that the band is called the Monkees,Renata Tibaldi, Joan Sutherland, Richard Tucker and Franco Corelli, just some of the great Opera stars that appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

I can still hear Davy Jones singing the song “I’d do anything”.

When there was something special at the Metropolitan Opera, Ed Sullivan would have the likes of,

Renata Tibaldi, Joan Sutherland, Richard Tucker and Franco Corelli, just some of the great Opera stars that appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

I guess it’s not really the bands themselves that I am nostalgic for but rather the happiness and the joy and, yes, even the adventure that music brought me. The rock stars that appeared on the Ed Sullivan show are just as unbelievable, Bill Haley and the Comets, Bo Diddley, Buddy Holly, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Dave Clark Five, Elvis Presley, Jerry and the Pacemakers, Janis Joplin,

Jefferson Airplane, the Mamas and the Papas, and of course many more artists than I can list that definitely deserve mentioning but I must at least name one group that made musical history by being on the Ed Sullivan show, none other than the Beatles. What more can I say about a group that changed our way of life.

With money from my first job I purchased a tape recorder “a cassette tape recorder”. The first cassette I purchased was Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple.however. My favorite album that I had of all times was Rare Earths Get Ready with the best drum solo ever. I have tried to find a recording of Rare Earth’s Get Ready that had that same drum solo. I don’t think it exists anymore. On some of them that drum solo isn’t the same and on others it has been shortened and doesn’t sound the same. I guess it could also be that an old man’s memory of what he heard back then was much better than it really was. I don’t want you to think that I was only into rock ‘n roll, folk music and Motown and soul, because I wasn’t. I listened to country and what I like to call clean jazz and New Orleans jazz that made reasonable musicality and melodic sense.

I also remember the first LP that I ever got for Christmas. I told my mother that I wanted After the Gold Rush by Neil Young and she came back to me after searching most of the department stores in Memphis at that time and she said she couldn’t find it. I told her there was a little record shop on the strip, “the Highland strip” near Memphis State University. She was very reluctant to go in there so she gave me the money and my father drove me there and I purchased the album, but she didn’t let me open it till Christmas day

I know you’re going to ask what made me so nostalgic for those times and, the truth is, I was watching CBS’s Sunday morning where they showed that the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art has a display now of all of the wonderful instruments that made those beautiful sounds into songs. Just as it took Masters to create the beautiful paintings in that museum it took Masters of those instruments to make those incredible memories come to life. Believe me I’ve picked up a guitar too and it’s not easy to make them sound beautiful and I must admit it’s extremely easy to make them sound horrible.

Everyone knows where they were at the most horrible times of our life and everyone knows where they were when they heard that special song or saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show on February 9, 1964.

It’s the comfort that music brought us at the worst possible moments in our lives that is a testament not only to the music but to those that made the music. There are so many songs that remind us of the days of our lives as we struggled to become who we are. I am not proclaiming that music is spiritual because I don’t have to, the very basis of the Christian religion is the teachings of the Bible and it said in those sanctified pages “make a joyful noise unto the Lord”.

I know because I have listened to the beautiful noise that those artists made to the Lord that it was not only a blessing to Him but to us as well. We are coming to the age now where a lot of those artists are aging to the point that they are no longer making music and as I am getting older too, I understand that our capabilities are not what they once were. But I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that the music played in heaven is like those radio stations that used to play all kinds of music that we loved with endless music that we will hear when we enter our heavenly home. It will be some of the best sounds that angels have ever heard. We will miss those musical geniuses that have gone on before us and I can’t wait to hear the new songs and music they are making.

We grew up listening to the music of our time, we made friends and laughed and played to the music of our time, we fell in love with that special one with the music of our time, and I for one will be laid to rest with the music of our time.