A ‘derecho,’ disguised as a big thunderstorm, is about to roll in. (National Weather Service photo)
Warning: Old Man rant ahead.
I’m not really a Get-Off-My-Lawn! guy, but sometimes things really bring out the Geezer in me. And chief of among them are hip new words or phrases that come into vogue out of nowhere.
Derecho, for instance. I’ve already debated this on the 3 Old Geezers podcast with my fellow cohost, whom I will call “Geezer Steve.” Steve argues that derecho has been in play for years and I just haven’t noticed.
I object to that, because it’s only in the last, maybe a year, that I ever saw or heard the word. And I consume a lot of media.
If you are like me and confused as to what a derecho is, think of it as a big thunderstorm. That’s what we called them back in my day.
“Wow, look at that line of clouds, I’m pretty sure a big thunderstorm is about to hit.”
Willie Mays makes The Catch in the 1954 World Series
In his magnificent book “The Baseball 100,” author Joe Posnanski ranks Willie Mays as the top major league baseball player of all time. Better than Aaron. Better than Ruth. Better than Ted Williams.
Better than them all.
Here’s a sample of what Posnanski wrote about the Say Hey Kid:
“Who is the greatest player of all time? You know. Maybe your father told you. Maybe you read about him when you were young. Maybe you sat in the stands and saw him play. Maybe you bask in his statistics. The greatest player is the one who lifts you higher and makes you feel exactly like you did when you fell in love with this crazy game in the first place.
“The greatest player of all time is Willie Mays.”
Sure it’s Posnanski’s personal opinion, but who could argue? Mays played 23 seasons in the Major Leagues, from 1951 through 1973, but also played one season in the Negro Leagues. The list of the statistics he put together across the years is astounding.
To give his long career some perspective, I wasn’t born until 1953, and when I graduated high school in 1971, Mays was still playing.
Baseball and all of sports lost a titan this week in the death of Willie Mays at age 93.
It’s another loss of a part of my youth, which I’ve written about previously in this blog. I wasn’t old enough to be aware of Mays’ incredible back-to-the-plate catch in the 1954 World Series, but I’m pretty sure that by the time I developed an interest in baseball around the age of 8 or 9, I learned of The Catch.
Here’s a video clip that breaks down The Catch:
So we’re mourning more than just the passing of a bright star — maybe the brightest — but also the loss of another piece of our youth. Mays was a presence in box scores, sometimes on television and in baseball cards throughout my entire youth.
But it’s not just the death of Willie May that reminds me that time marches on. In the last month, the sports world has now lost three beloved giants of their sport. First was Bill Walton a couple of weeks ago, then Jerry West last week.
Time marches on, and we’re helpless to stop it.
So, the best we can do is preserve our memories, save our baseball cards and cherish our heroes who are still with us today.
Scott Kirk, president of the Abilene Flying Bison, introduces the new development league team on Dec. 14.
It’s funny how your memory can distort the facts over the years. When I first met Scott Kirk on the campus of Abilene Christian University in the fall of 1976, I was impressed because he had actually worked for a minor league baseball team in his hometown of Harlingen, Texas.
At least, that’s what I remembered from a distance of almost 50 years.
Scott recently corrected the historical record for me.
In reality, he actually worked as a sportswriter for the Valley Morning Star, covering the Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings baseball team that was based in Harlingen. He even took a year off from college to focus on the job as WhiteWings beat writer.
But I’m not letting the facts get in the way of my warm memory.
I remember Scott Kirk as a fellow student who was committed to sports journalism and loved the sport of baseball above all sports. He was and is one of my favorite writers both in college at the Optimist student newspaper and through a long career with the Abilene Reporter News after graduation. He closed out his career as a high school journalism teacher in Abilene.
By comparison, I was far behind Scott in my writing and reporting abilities when I landed on campus in 1976. But I loved baseball, and that sort of bonded us as members of the Optimist staff. We watched baseball on TV, talked baseball and drove to Arlington to watch the Texas Rangers play.
Scott and I have stayed in touch through the years, each of us playing a role in the other’s wedding, meeting in Dallas or Houston to watch baseball, and once playing a round of golf in 100+degree weather during a scorching Abilene summer.
Although he’s retired from roles as reporter and teacher, Scott continues to pursue his passion for baseball not only as a fan, but as someone working hard to bring a professional or semi-pro revival to Abilene. The west Texas city has been home to professional and independent baseball teams in both the distant and recent past.
Back in the 1940s and ’50s, it was home to a minor league team named the Abilene Blue Sox. There were two versions of the Abilene Prairie Dogs, one that played on the ACU campus from 1995-’99 and again for a one-year reprise in 2012.. Scott served as official scorer for the 1990s version of the Prairie Dogs.
Fast forward to Dec. 14, 2023. Scott’s vision for another Abilene baseball team became reality with the announcement that the Abilene Flying Bison developmental league team would begin play in May on the home field of McMurry University.
Turns out the person who made the announcement before about 150 people at a downtown Abilene events center was, wait for it, Scott Kirk, who is now President of the Abilene Flying Bison.
Scott’s wife, Nancy, posted a photo on Facebook of her husband making the announcement, so I called him to get the story of how it happened.
It begins with Scott connecting with George Lessmeister, a Kansas City resident who was scouting for a city to locate a team in a proposed developmental league, which would be unaffiliated with Major League Baseball.
“George Lessmeister’s involvement came through National Sports Services, which owns and operates several collegiate teams and also matches prospective owners with franchises,” Scott told me. “NSS and Ventura Sports Group are the co-founders of the Mid America League.”
It was a natural connection because of Scott’s long presence in the city of roughly 125,000 residents, and his past roles with previous teams.
AN ASIDE TO THE STORY: There’s an Oklahoma connection to all of this. Lessmeister previously considered locating the team in Edmond, where it would play on the UCO baseball field. But a deal could never be consummated.
I asked Scott how the team was named. The Bison part is easy because of the city’s location in an area where the buffalo once roamed. The team added “Flying” as an homage to Dyess Air Force Base, Scott said. Dyess has a big local presence from its location on the west side of Abilene.
So, what about the league the Flying Bison will play in and where are the other teams located?
“We’re going to be playing in what is known as the Mid America League,” Scott told me. “It’s a developmental league with no Major League affiliation. The players are going to primarily be collegiate players. We can have guys who might have played pro ball for a couple years, and they can play for us. We just can’t pay them.”
Five cities have been identified for the six-team league, Scott said. In addition to Abilene, there are Sherman, Texarkana and White Oak, all in Texas, with the fifth team located in my home town of Fort Smith, Ark. Scott said the league is close to announcing the sixth location.
Here’s what I found out about the league on the Mid America League website:
“The League will play a 68-game schedule to start in late May and run through early August, concluding with playoffs to determine the League champion. The League will also be contracting with Opendorse to implement a program offering Name, Image and Likeness opportunities for players.”
Wait. NIL for an independent baseball league?
“I know it sounds like pay for play, but those are the rules we live by,” Scott said. “There are literally dozens of collegiate baseball leagues across the country. I would say there are probably 200 collegiate teams. One league, the Northwoods League, has almost 40 teams.”
I looked up the Northwoods League, which plays in the upper Midwest, and its website showed 25 teams in two divisions.
OK, Mr. President, what’s the next step for the Flying Bison and the Mid America League?
“Get a season completed,” Scott said. “If you complete your first season, your chances of success are better.”
So, Scott Kirk’s baseball story has come full circle. He DID have an unofficial affiliation with the Rio Grande WhiteWings. And now he’s leading a long-sought baseball revival in Abilene.
“The motivation for bringing a team to Abilene has always been about doing something that contributes to a sense of community in the city,” Scott said. “The overarching goal has been to build a venue that could serve as the home for a sports team in the future, whether it’s the MAL team or another team. If there’s a place for the team to play, it increases the likelihood of baseball or another sport to continue to play in Abilene.”
Maybe my memory from long ago wasn’t so faulty after all. Facts is facts.
For the past five months, I’ve walked around our house carrying a massive tome that resembles those old giant-sized King James Bibles that are cherished possessions of many families.
Only this Good Book is titled The Baseball 100 (2021, The Athletic Media Co.) and written by long-time baseball writer Joe Posnanski. It was a birthday gift last April from my friend Ed Godfrey.
Thank you, Ed.
If you’re not familiar with Posnanski, he made his reputation as the baseball beat writer for the Kansas City Star newspaper before moving on to Sports Illustrated, NBC Sports and The Athletic, among his credits. Today, he’s publishing his prose on his own blog at JoeBlogs.
It’s obvious that Posnanski’s first love is baseball, and, in fact, his latest best seller in a long line of bestsellers is entitled ‘Why We Love Baseball.’
Anyway, back to The Baseball 100. I read it slowly and savored each individual profile of what Posnanski considers to be the best 100 players in Major League history. When I first opened the book, I flipped hurriedly through the pages until I found the Nolan Ryan chapter, just to make sure Posnanski included Big Tex.
Ryan came in at No. 50, and the logic of that ranking was that about half the baseball world (me included) thinks he’s one of the top pitchers ever, while the other half sees him as vastly overrated.
So, then I went back to the beginning and read the book through. What struck me was how often father-son dynamics played into the development and character of so many players.
For instance, let’s consider Oklahoma native Mickey Mantle. Mantle’s father, Mutt, began pitching to him at their Commerce home when the Mick was 6 years old, making him bat from both sides of the plate. Mickey didn’t exactly want to be a switch hitter and wasn’t certain he wanted to be a baseball player from the start.
But his dad willed it even before he was born.
“Mutt knew with a chilling certainty that his future son would be called Mickey, after his favorite ballplayer, Mickey Cochrane, and that Mickey Mantle would be the best ballplayer of them all,” Posnanski writes.
Mickey Mantle did turn out to be one of the great all-time Major League players. He was the All American boy who led the New York Yankees to seven World Series titles in 12 appearances from 1951 to 1964.
Ranked No. 11 all-time by Posnanski, Mantle also was an alcoholic who cheated on his wife and was mostly absent from the lives of his children. I’m pretty sure Mutt’s obsession shaped Mickey beyond baseball.
You learn how flawed so many of our heroes were in The Baseball 100, from Mantle to Pete Rose to Ted Williams to Barry Bonds to Roger Clemens. The Baseball 100 also shares stories about baseball heroes who were model citizens, like Ozzie Smith, Stan ‘The Man’ Musial, Derek Jeter, Albert Pujols and Brooks Robinson, to name a few.
But the theme of overbearing fathers came up again and again. Consider George Brett, who is a contemporary hero to those of us of a certain age and who comes in at No. 35 in Posnanski’s rankings.
“Fear drove George Brett,” Posnanski writes. “His father, Jack, made sure of that.”
No matter how well Brett played or what amazing stats he put up for the Kansas City Royals, it was never good enough for his father. Never.
In fact, on the night before Jack Brett died of cancer, he spoke to George on the phone and asked him how he did that day. George told him he went 0-for-4. “Well, did you at least hit the ball hard?” his dad asked. “I did, Dad,” George lied to his dying father. “I hit it hard.”
Brett had struck out three times that day.
Then there is Pete Rose at No. 60. We all know how his story played out, the betting on baseball, the relentless chase of the hits record, the womanizing, the Charlie Hustle reputation.
What Posnanski tells us is that Pete’s father, Harry “Big Pete” Rose never gave him the opportunity to develop as a person. Big Pete saw him as a Major League star, and turned him into a switch hitter at 8 years of age. He even demanded that his Little League coach let him switch hit.
It’s the Mickey Mantle story playing out all over again in Cincinnati, Ohio. Except Pete Rose was banned from baseball for life for betting on the game he loved.
And then there was Ted Williams, an all-time player and war hero who fought fans, the media and his own demons. Posnanski doesn’t write about an obsessive father in his life — he barely knew his father — but does quote Williams’ own daughter who said that her father was mentally ill.
“My father was sick,” Bobby Jo (Williams) said. “And it’s a damn shame that, because he was Ted Williams and because nobody wanted to tell him like it was, including myself, he suffered and progressively became more ill by the years.”
In addition to father-son relationships, there is another major theme that runs through the book.
Posnanski writes extensively about the plight of African American stars who never got the chance to play in the Major Leagues. For decades. they were forced to play in the largely invisible (to the white audience) Negro Leagues. Their stories come to life in The Baseball 100, as well.
So, who does Posnanski rank as the No. 1 player of all time? I’ll leave it to you to get a copy of this outstanding book and find out for yourself.
Hint: Say Hey when you finally figure it out
Read The Baseball 100 and savor the stories of the heroes of our youth.
Ozzie Smith’s St. Louis Cardinals teammates celebrate his game-winning home run vs. the Dodgers in the 1985 playoffs
Editor’s note: My friend Ed Godfrey grew up in Eastern Oklahoma as a passionate St. Louis Cardinals fan, a devotion that began by listening to their games on his family’s big console radio. More than 50 years later, Ed remains a baseball fan and still follows the Cardinals with the same passion as he did as a 10-year-old Stigler Little Leaguer. I asked him to write about what sparked his fandom for the team from St. Louis, and he obliged with this essay.
By Ed Godfrey When I was a kid, baseball was king. That gives you a clue to how old I am. Yes, I am old enough to draw Social Security.
Ed Godfrey
I played Little League baseball, proudly donning the uniforms of King’s Tire Service, Guaranty Abstract and Davis Packing Company, some of the generous sponsors in Stigler who allowed the town’s pre-teen youth to live out their summer dreams on the ball diamond.
Like the Cardinals great utility man in the ’80s, Jose Oquendo, I would play everywhere on the field at some point. Dad nixed my playing days at catcher after just one game because he was afraid I would get hurt.
Center field was my best position, but I also took the bump a lot. I didn’t have Nuke LaLoosh stuff, but I could do what often none of my other teammates could do. Throw the ball over the plate.
Man, I loved baseball. Whenever I had a dime, I would ride my bicycle the six blocks from home to the Five & and Dime store in downtown Stigler and buy a pack of baseball cards.
I was a pretty avid card collector in the early ’70s. And yeah, I stupidly put some of them on the spokes of my bike and glued others in a scrapbook, but most of my treasures are still intact. Thank you, mom, for not throwing away my baseball cards.
As you get older, I think the more you want to go back and be a kid again. That’s why I still buy baseball cards today. Nostalgia.
Back when I was a kid, I didn’t miss the major league game of the week on Saturday afternoons. Yeah, we got one baseball game on television each week. I also loved This Week in Baseball narrated by Mel Allen.
And I was a frequent listener of Major League Baseball games on the radio. This is how I became a St. Louis Cardinals fan.
First of all, the Cardinals were really good in the late ’60s. When I was 7, they won the ’67 World Series over the Red Sox. Then when I was 8, they lost the ’68 World Series to the Tigers.
(Don’t ask me about the ’85 World Series against the Royals, I am still ticked off about Game 6. Now, Game 6 of the 2011 World Series Game 6, that one was magical)
For many years, the Cardinals were the only major league team west of the Mississippi River and they developed a loyal following thanks to mighty KMOX-AM radio, which had a long reach throughout the South and Midwest.
KMOX helped turn countless families into Cardinals fans since 1926, including a kid in Stigler, Oklahoma.
When the Cardinals played on the West Coast and games started past my bedtime, I would sneak a transistor radio under my pillow so I could still listen to the broadcast without my parents knowing.
Otherwise, I would listen to games on our bulky old stereo-record combo that we had in our living room. In 1971, and I can still hear Jack Buck’s call of Bob Gibson striking out Willie Stargell to end the game for Gibby’s only no-hitter of his career.
“If you were here, it would have made you cry,” Buck proclaimed.
I wasn’t there but I felt like I was, thanks to one of the great baseball announcers in history.
When the Cardinals made the playoffs in the ’80s, every game, of course, was televised. But I turned the volume down on the TV and tuned in the radio for the play by play to listen to Buck. I got to hear his great “Go Crazy” call in the ’85 National League Championship Series against the Dodgers when Ozzie Smith unexpectedly hit the game-winning homer in Game 5.
I did “Go Crazy” in my apartment in Edmond, leaping from the sofa and landing on my knees in front of my TV in celebration.
A few years later I started dating my future wife. She tolerated my obsession with the Cardinals and actually enjoyed listening to Buck’s voice, even though she knew little about baseball.
Instead of going out on the town one Friday night, she drove from Norman to my apartment in Edmond and agreed to watch the Cardinals-Braves game with me on what was then Ted Turner’s superstation, TBS, which carried all the Braves games.
I promised we would go out for dinner after the game. It lasted 22 innings. My man Oquendo even came in and pitched when the Cardinals’ bullpen was depleted. (Told you he was a great utility player). He pitched several scoreless innings, but the Cards couldn’t get him a run and they lost.
Linda watched all 22 innings and never complained. Maybe she slept through an inning or two, I can’t remember for sure, but the point is she stayed until the end and then drove back home in the early morning hours. As Buck would say, “That’s a winner.”
I don’t listen to Cardinal games on the radio anymore because Buck and his broadcast partner, Mike Shannon, are no longer with us. Nothing against the new announcers, but it’s not the same for me.
This summer, I even stopped watching the Cardinals on TV because they stink this season. It’s been a long time since they have been this bad.
Well, the truth is I haven’t quit on them completely. I still sneak a peek once a while to see if the bullpen is going to blow another game and then I start cussing when they do.
The showdown recently in the Tennessee Legislature
A few days before Oklahoma voted down a proposal to legalize recreational marijuana across the state, a friend and I discussed the issue over coffee. He said he was voting ‘yes’ to the initiative, despite the fact that he has no interest in using marijuana.
I asked him why.
“I want to stick it to The Man,” he said.
I’m right there with you, my friend.
Sticking it to The Man has become a personal avocation for me as I’ve approached my angry old man years (GET OFF MY LAWN!).
Of course, defining exactly who ‘The Man’ is can be a moving target.
In my mind, The Man is an older, wealthy white guy sitting in a corner suite in a tower office, pouring money into campaigns and candidates that promise to resist change at all costs or take America back to the 1950s.
You know, when everyone knew their place. Wink. Wink.
I am a child of the South, so I know how Jim Crow laws were enforced by The Man all over the South until the mid-1960s.
The emergence of MAGA and Red State legislators in today’s world have an eerie resemblance to their ancestors who set up a society in which white folks were guaranteed by law to be the ruling class.
Some famous examples of sticking it to The Man from the past:
Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat to a white person on a bus in Montgomery, Ala., and helped launch the Civil Rights movement.
Clara Luper led a group of young people into a downtown Oklahoma City drug store in 1958 where they sat at the lunch counter until they were served in a time when Jim Crow laws still enforced segregation.
Jackie Robinson became the first African-American to play in a Major League Baseball game on April 15, 1947 when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Major League Baseball had operated as a segregated sport for almost a hundred years.
Want to see a current-day for-instance?
We can look to the Tennessee legislature to see The Man in action. Less than two weeks ago, the white Republican legislative majority was so offended that people protested lack of restraints on purchase and ownership of assault weapons that they expelled two Black legislators who participated in a protest on the floor of the House.
The two offending legislators had joined a group of young people making their voices heard after a gunman used a high powered rifle to kill six children and teachers at a Nashville elementary school.
Less than a week after they were expelled, county commissioners in Nashville and Memphis reinstated both legislators. Now that’s sticking it to The Man.
I took great pleasure in seeing their reinstatement.
Yet another example of sticking it to The Man, which in this case was an institution: Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s embraced a system of statistical analysis that turned the way of judging talent by Major League Baseball upside down.
Sticking it to The Man has been a common theme in movies across the years. Perhaps my favorite is the movie Office Space, which follows a group of young office workers stuck in mind-numbing jobs with an over-the-top intrusive manager and a balky printer.
They stick it to The Man in several ways, but my favorite is a scene where they load the hated printer into the trunk of a car, drive it to a remote location and take out their anger on it with a baseball bat — in slow motion.
Watch the scene here.
My attempts to stick it to The Man are more low key. For instance, I once worked in an office where we were forbidden to download any unapproved software, including my browser of choice, Google Chrome. The IT department told us it ‘did not support’ Chrome, so we were stuck with Microsoft Explorer.
Then a coworker discovered that we could download Chrome without it being blocked by the IT lockdown. I downloaded it and used it for years of software bliss and satisfaction in knowing I was sticking it to The Man in a small way.
OK, I know that’s not a society changing act like leading a group of students to a lunch-counter sit-in. My place in history is on a much, much smaller scale.
But I’ve used the power of the vote to support causes like the expansion of Medicaid in Oklahoma and medical marijuana, both of which had heavy opposition from those in power.
When both of those questions passed, I celebrated to myself, knowing that I had a small part in sticking it to The Man.
Anticipation, because there’s even more drama to play out in real time over the next two weeks.
And then there was something we all needed. Diversion.
OK, it’s not an emotion, but diversion is important because there’s a lot of disturbing events like war, economic upheaval and political turmoil that greet us daily. The NCAA Tournament provides much a needed respite.
So, that brings me to the point of this blog post. Hello, Spring!
The NCAA Tournament — and all of sports — make this the most wonderful time of the year.
For instance, when the NCAA Tournament crowns a champion the first week in April, Major League Baseball will be celebrating Opening Day in parks around the country.
And the OKC Dodgers open their season on March 31. The NBA playoffs begin in mid-April — hopefully with the OKC Thunder as a play-in qualifier. The Masters. The NFL Draft. The Kentucky Derby on the first Saturday of May. There is the women’s NCAA Tournament along with college softball and baseball. And hockey playoffs, as well.
It’s been a long, cold lonely winter for many people, so the sports calendar tells us “here comes the sun” in both a literal and figurative sense.
Sort of like the renewal of life that Spring itself brings, we find joy and hope, anticipation and welcome diversion in the Spring sports calendar.
Thanks to the NCAA Tournament for kicking it all off with an incredible level of excitement.
I’ll celebrate it just like this every Spring.
Arkansas coach Eric Musselman goes shirtless in celebration of victory over Kansas.
Gaylord Perry pitching for the Seattle Mariners in 1982. (Associated Press photo)
Editor’s note: Major League Baseball and its fans lost Hall of Fame pitcher Gaylord Perry on Thursday, Dec. 1. Perry pitched in the first Texas Rangers game I ever witnessed in Arlington, so I wrote this post to commemorate that event and what I remembered from seeing the Hall of Famer pitch in the game.
Let me tell you the story of my introduction to the Texas Rangers.
In the spring of 1976, I moved to Abilene, Texas, to go to college at Abilene Christian University. I was transferring my credits from a community college and started at ACU in the second summer semester while working at a small retail store in Abilene..
Anyway, I drove back to Fort Smith to visit my folks the week of Independence Day, and then drove back to Abilene on Monday, July 5.
I had grown up a St. Louis Cardinals fan, but became acquainted with the Rangers through their radio broadcasts after moving to Abilene.
So, as I was driving down from Fort Smith that Monday, I tuned the radio to WBAP 820, the Rangers flagship station. I learned they would be playing a home game that evening.
Perfect timing.
I detoured into Arlington and got to the ballpark about an hour before game time. I had read about how sparsely attended Rangers games were at that time, so I was surprised to find the parking lots surrounding Arlington Stadium almost completely full.
I parked and walked to a ticket window, where I was told that the only tickets remaining for sale were general admission in the outfield. It was a July 4 sellout.
Good enough for me.
I bought a ticket and found a spot deep in left field bleachers next to a man and his son, who was approximately 6 years old. The guy had a transistor radio with him that was shaped like Mickey Mouse and had the volume and tuning dials in the ears.
The Mickey Mouse radio was tuned to WBAP, so we had radio play-by-play throughout the game while sitting in the stands. I guess that’s how we rolled in 1976.
Don’t remember much about the game except for the fact that the Rangers won and I got to see all-time great Gaylord Perry pitch for Texas (I was saddened to learn on Monday that Perry had passed away.)
My real adventure started after the game as I left the stadium. I did not know my way around Arlington and had no map to consult. So, as I left the ballpark I found myself on Randall Mill Road, which I thought would take me back to I-30 and then west to Abilene.
Instead, Randall Mill Road seemed to go on forever with no sign of the Interstate. Finally, after seemed what was about an hour on the road to nowhere, I pulled into a 7-11 to ask for directions.
“How do I get to I-30,” I asked the clerk behind the counter.
He pointed to the west. “It’s right there.”
Sure enough, I had come within a few yards of the Interstate without realizing it, although I was actually now in Fort Worth.
So, about 11:30 pm on Monday, July 5, 1976, I pulled onto I-30 West and headed for Abilene and the rest of my life.
But I drove into Abilene now a Texas Rangers fan and a memory of watching Gaylord Perry pitch in a Major League game.
A group of OKC adults turned the Northeast High School baseball field into their own ‘Field of Dreams’ for an afternoon
Moneyball is one of my favorite movies. It shows the impact that using computer statistics to drive player development had on Major League baseball and the Oakland Athletics in the early 2000s.
The movie features a host of memorable scenes, including one where Oakland outfielder David Justice asks new first baseman Scott Hatteberg what he feared most at the position.
Hatteberg had been a catcher all of his professional career, and to that point had never played even an inning at first base.
“A baseball hit in my general direction,” was Hatteberg’s honest reply to Justice’s question.
That’s exactly how I felt Sunday afternoon as I stood in right field at the Northeast High School baseball field.
I was there at the invitation of my friend, Russ Florence, who invited a group of fellow adults to “have a catch” with him. A lifelong baseball fan, Russ began his informal monthly “catch” several months ago.
It was sort of a Field of Dreams-come-to-real-life opportunity for those of us who once played the game or have followed it all of our lives.
The baseball dreamers who came out Sunday included several guys my age or older, a few younger and a couple of women who showed more agility than most of their male counterparts.
I dug my old baseball glove out of the closet and joined about a dozen others at the Northeast field.
Unfortunately, the experience revealed exactly how the passage of time has robbed me of athletic ability, real or imagined.
Once upon a time, I thought of myself as a pretty good baseball player. Now that was in Little League in College Station, Texas, followed by Pony League as a 13- and 14-year-old.
Here’s how it went five decades later on a warm November afternoon beneath a bright blue sky.
First, we warmed up by playing catch with a partner about 40 feet away. I put most of my throws into the ground in front of him or several feet to his left.
My shoulder ached after about 15 minutes. My glove hand screamed with pain from catching baseballs in the heart of the mitt.
Then came the real embarrassment. I stood in right field as Russ hit flies and grounders to players stationed at infield and outfield positions.
He hit one in my general direction.
My feet felt like they were in quicksand as I “ran” toward it. I could not bend over far enough to even make a stabbing attempt at a catch.
I hung my head in shame. No one seemed to notice.
Russ hit about three other balls in my direction. I managed to catch one on the bounce barehanded, but caught none before they hit the ground. I decided if a ball wasn’t hit within three feet of where I was standing, I had no chance.
But the day wasn’t a total loss. I had the opportunity to visit with some old — and new — friends. The weather was pleasant watching from the dugout, where I spent much of my time.
“It really scratches an itch for a lot of people,” Russ told me afterward. “None of us is as good as as we once were — or as good as we THINK we once were. I’m glad you were there.”
Thank you, Russ, for inviting this ‘ghost’ of a former player to experience your OKC version of the Field of Dreams.
Even if it brought home a sobering reality of aging.
OU softball players lead fans in a cheer during a break in the action at the Women’s College World Series
As I was watching the Women’s College World Series game between OU and James Madison the other night, I was fascinated by how much enthusiasm and joy the players bring to the game.
They cheer and chant in unison in the dugout, they celebrate big hits, runs and good fielding plays. The OU players even came out of the dugout a couple times to lead fans in a cheer.
I fired off a text to a friend who was also watching the game on ESPN. “Softball needs some unwritten rules that suck all the joy out of the game just like baseball,” the text said.
I was kidding.
But it made me realize how much of a contrast there is between baseball and women’s softball. In baseball, it’s all about “respecting the game” or “respecting the opponent.”
No emotion allowed.
Translated, that means you never, ever act like you are enjoying the moment after a home run, a strikeout or a big fielding play.
OU player celebrates a home run as she rounds the bases
Baseball has been losing fans by the millions in recent years, and I’m convinced that the ridiculous unwritten rules have played a role in that. Today’s fans — especially young fans — want to see games played with enthusiasm and emotion.
There is evidence of late that some of the unwritten rules are being rewritten. I’m talking about the way that big hitters like Fernando Tatis Jr. flip their bats and pause to watch their home runs go out of the park before celebrating as they round the bases.
So far, it appears that no one has retaliated by hitting Tatis in the head with a 98-hour bean ball. So far.
But baseball always wants to draw a line in the sand, and there seems to be a hard line drawn at emotion.
By contrast, the women’s game is such a breath of fresh air. I’m taking joy in their joy.
Their game is a celebration, and I’m celebrating along with them.
Back in the 1940s and ’50s, it was home to a minor league team named the 
I asked Scott how the team was named. The Bison part is easy because of the city’s location in an area where the buffalo once roamed. The team added “Flying” as an homage to Dyess Air Force Base, Scott said. Dyess has a big local presence from its location on the west side of Abilene.
Otherwise, I would listen to games on our bulky old stereo-record combo that we had in our living room. In 1971, and I can still hear Jack Buck’s call of Bob Gibson striking out Willie Stargell to end the game for Gibby’s only no-hitter of his career.
The Mickey Mouse radio was tuned to WBAP, so we had radio play-by-play throughout the game while sitting in the stands. I guess that’s how we rolled in 1976.
