and so the world is ending.
i’ll fix me up some whisky and
think about the lucky times i loved.
maybe something to scribble on the back of my baseball card
brewers baseball and things
brewers baseball and things
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March 12, 2020 at 2:42 am
I can surmise by this that you’re pretty freaked out by this stuff, just like I am. I don’t have to say what it is; that’s how much it’s on people’s minds lately whether they want to admit it or not.
The part about the scribbling on the baseball card instantly brought to my mind of former Cardinals, Phillies, and Angels outfielder John Morris, his mother Grace, and his father.
I didn’t know John while I was growing up; I grew up on Baldwin, Long Island and John grew up a couple of towns east, in Bellmore. I knew his mother Grace from when she and I were both patients in a hospital together from December of 1989 to about February or March of 1990. John had just been released by the Cardinals after playing with them since 1985, as I recall, and didn’t know where he’d be playing the next year and we played a game of ping pong together; he was a lefty batter in baseball and a lefty hitter in ping pong, as well. The game kept getting tied and you have to win the game by two points, and we kept going up and down and down and up until finally he won by a score of about 31-29 or something like that. He was a really nice guy. Grace was wonderful, too, and we had so many laughs while we were in the hospital. You wouldn’t think there were many laughs while you’re a patient in the hospital, but you’d be wrong. Grace Morris were inseparable in Winthrop Hospital in Mineola, also on Long Island, near where we were from.
Grace showed me a baseball card of John that he signed for his father. His father had been dying of cancer a few years before (I think it was cancer), and he eventually did die of cancer, probably not long after. But Grace kept the card with her. John had scribbled over his picture, very sloppily, “I LOVE YOU, DAD. JOHN” I found it very moving. Yep, major league baseball players are human, too. By the way, he wrote a book and the proceeds went to some Christian charity. Here’s the book. It was a pretty good book, and Grace was mentioned quite prominently in it, as were lots of true baseball stories. Here’s a picture of the cover of the book. I’m not being paid to plug the book, in case you were wondering. It’s called “Bullet Bob Comes To Louisville and other Tales From a Baseball Life”.
https://www.amazon.com/Bullet-Bob-Comes-Louisville-Baseball/dp/1888698209
Glen
March 12, 2020 at 12:25 pm
Hey Glen, thanks for the link to the book. I think I’ll get it and read it.
March 12, 2020 at 10:10 pm
So I’ve resorted to digging into my 1961 Strat-O-Matic set and doing a pre-NL expansion. I’m hoping that Robin Roberts is better than that 5.85 ERA and Norm Larker hits into some luck against lefties.
Bonnie Parker wrote poetry before she and Clyde Barrow were gunned down, and I cannot get that out of my head for some reason.
March 13, 2020 at 7:12 am
The first thing that pops into my head about 1961 is Eli Grba. I had one of his baseball cards. I know nothing about him, only that name, almost as short as Ed Ott.
W.k., I like your plan of revisiting the 61 Strat-O season. Enjoy! Keep us posted how it goes. Maybe you could report on games a little like that book The Universal Baseball Association.
Would Bonnie’s poetry be the first ever gangster rap?
March 13, 2020 at 10:57 am
To paraphrase The Great American Baseball Card Flipping Trading and Bubble Gum Book, not only did Grba have the hardest name to pronounce, he also had the worst stuff. Who knows? Maybe I will get all Coover with it.
Bonnie was big on rhyme and rhythm, so…