Saving journalism, one newsroom at a time

This fall marks my 40th year as a college teacher. One of the great things about this technology is that it allows me to keep in touch with so many former students. It’s like an illustrated rolodex of my life.

How are you doing? (I’m OK — still rolling with the punches.)

I approach this milestone with gratitude for having known so many dedicated people. I hope the classes we shared were worthwhile.

“Was it good for you?” (It was for me.)

But I also realize that some of your greatest learning was committed outside of the classroom. So I salute all of you who learned how to be journalists at the College Heights Herald, the Oklahoma Daily, the Independent Florida Alligator or the Daily Free Press. Working for a campus newspaper is a tremendous experience.

It should come as no surprise that what we do is under attack. People who have committed their lives to keeping news flowing through these arteries of information are being vilified. We’re not enemies of the people. As I’ve always maintained, we’re the heroes, not the villains.

So keeping a student-run press free and independent is vital.

With Evan Katz in the Oklahoma Daily newsroom, 1985

I bring up all of this because I have been asked to alert you to a fund-raising drive for the Independent Florida Alligator. I spent 24 of these 40 years at the University of Florida, and I might be able to reach some people who might not be reached otherwise. (By the way: I’ll also happily try to help raise money for the Herald, the Daily or the FreeP. Ask, and I will do everything I can.)

If you were in my journalism history class — whether at Western Kentucky, Oklahoma, Florida or Boston — you probably heard me read attorney Andrew Hamilton’s statement at the trial of John Peter Zenger in 1735: “You see I labor under the weight of many years, and am borne down with great infirmities of body; yet old and weak as I am, I should think it my duty, if required, to go to the utmost part of the land where my service could be of any use in assisting to quench the flame of prosecutions upon information, set on foot by the government….”

(This Hamilton was not the subject of the musical. That was the other guy.)

And, considering we are in a death battle for the continued existence of free speech, this quote from Thomas Paine’s American Crisis — always a class favorite — comes to mind: “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. ‘Tis dearness only that gives everything its value.”

Some Alligator staffers at a McKeen Christmas party, circa 1988. Left to right, Frank Fernandez, Juan Borras, Jeff Gardenour and Carl Herzog.

I present a statement below relating directly to the fund-raising drive for the Alligator. I urge you to give and, in every way you can, to support the journalism in its myriad forms. To quote Tom Paine again, a little earlier in that same paragraph: “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

The major forces behind this fund-raising effort are David Dahl of the Boston Globe, Rick Hirsch of the Miami Herald and Aaron Sharockman of Politifact.

Read David Dahl’s note below. If you’re from Western or OU or BU, maybe use what they have done as a model for other fund-raising efforts. We need to stick together.

………………………………………………………………………………….

From David Dahl:

I’m writing to fill you in on the Alligator.

As you might have heard, a group of alums and current staffers are working to steady the finances of the beloved college paper and steer it toward a solid future in the digital world.

They’ve expanded the Alligator board to include Miami Herald Managing Editor Rick Hirsch and Politifact Executive Director Aaron Sharockman; decided to go down to publishing three days a week; and are now turning to our many alums and friends of the Alligator to raise money.

If you’re a friend with me on Facebook, you’re probably quite familiar with the importance of the Alligator as a training ground for young professionals in journalism, advertising and public relations. You may well have benefited yourself by working there.

Now it’s time to give back. You can make a tax deductible donation to Campus Communications, the 501(c)3 that runs the Alligator. The Alligator and its core group of supporters are trying to raise $250,000 by next spring to offset the costs of student stipends and advance college journalism.

Yes, that’s a lot of money, already hundreds of alumni and friends of the Alligator have indicated they are willing to help reach that goal.

To donate, you can use the Pay Pal link in the upper right hand corner of the Alligator’s site, http://www.alligator.org/

If you want more information about the Alligator, you can also fill out an online form to get on a mailing list. The address to sign up is: http://alligatoralumni.org/.

And of course if you have any questions or wish to discuss this directly, feel free to write for further information. dahl@globe.com.

Thanks very much for your consideration. We need your help!

August 9, 2017August 10, 2017

Travels with Charley (and Jack and Travis)

On the Ring of Kerry in Ireland. Travis, at left, set the timer for the picture and stood on a rock so he’d appear to be tallest. (He nearly is, even without help.) Then there’s Charley and me and Jack.

There was a time when I questioned my sanity. It came as I contemplated a plan I’d had in motion for a year: taking my three adolescent boys on a road trip through Scotland, England and Ireland.

I would be the sole adult. I used the term ‘adult’ loosely, since the person-of-age here is me — not always the most practical guy in the world.

We flew into Edinburgh, rented a car, drove around Scotland and England, then flew to Dublin, rented another car — a nice BMW — and drove around Ireland.

Nice, simple trip. No real plan. Pure serendipity.

Here’s a brief scene from inside the car:

Aside from learning to drive on the other side of the road, everything went pretty well.

The trip is done now and I think the three weeks we spent together will loom large with me for the rest of my life. I’m not ready to write about it yet; I’m still digesting. But I will post some photographs here today and will post comments (and other pictures) now and again.

It was a long trip — perhaps a bit too long, we all agreed, but could not imagine doing it in less.

It was not hearts-and-flowers the whole time, either. There were some difficult moments.

But you know how … years after you’ve lived a certain day, you come to realize that that day was one of the important ones. That on that day, everything was right and you know why you were here on the earth. I’ve had that feeling before, when I took my Highway 61 trip, and I had it on this trip.

This was time I will always treasure with Jack, Travis and Charley.

So, for now — here are some pictures.

The boys with the stoned Beatles on the Liverpool docks.

It was hard not to have ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ playing in my head at all times.

With Travis and Charley at the Tower of London

Now when I hear ‘my heart’s in the highlands,’ I know what they’re talking about. This was on the way to the Isle of Skye.

Charley and Travis engaging in silliness. For some reason, they don’t often smile when their pictures are taken. It’s a McKeen Family trait.

Jack with another roadside attraction in Scotland.

American icons, painted on the walls of an underpass in London.

July 7, 2017July 8, 2017

The morning watering

I was tending to my flowers this morning and was struck by how beautiful they looked holding the beads of water. Thought I’d share this small moment, which has that intimate vibe of Smile, not the towering grandiosity of Sgt. Pepper.

July 5, 2017July 7, 2017

Out of the sandbox

The Boys at Zuma Beach, 1967. Left to right, Carl Wilson, Alan Jardine, Brian Wilson, Mike Love and Dennis Wilson.

At the beginning of 1967, Brian Wilson was on top of the pyramid.

In the previous year, he’d made Pet Sounds, one of the most influential albums in recorded history, then produced a stunning, shimmering song called “Good Vibrations.” With Brian Wilson as producer-arranger-composer, the Beach Boys had become America’s pre-eminent rock band.

The word was that Brian Wilson was a genius and that he was to American music what Magellan was to world travel.

Most of this ‘genius’ speculation was based on Brian’s work-in-progress, an album to be called Smile that would serve as his “teen-age symphony to God.” Brian’s idiosyncratic music, paired with the intense and playful lyrics of Van Dyke Parks, were the stuff of rock-critic legend. Reporters chronicling the making of Smile gorged on Brian’s eccentricities, including his filling his dining room with sand, so he could move his piano into the room and wiggle his toes as he composed.

As I say: at the beginning of 1967, he was on the top of the pyramid. By the end of the year, he’d tumbled from those staggering heights.

Lots of reasons, but the one that seems to have earned the most favor over the years: The Beatles surpassed him. The British group produced Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and left the Beach Boys in their stellar wake. Since Sgt. Pepper strove for — and achieved — grandiosity, Brian probably thought Smile — with its celebration of small moments of joy — might not stand up.

Whatever the case, he cancelled the album after Pepper‘s release and withdrew the band from the Monterrey International Pop Festival. Those two events are seen as crippling the Beach Boys as a significant rock’n’roll band.

(Though tragically unhip in America, they remained revered in Great Britain, where they were arguably more popular than the Beatles.)

To recover, other members of the band coaxed Brian back to life on the ground. They built a studio in Brian’s house and cocooned him, which kept him away from the great studios — Western Recorders or Gold Star — and the session players history has dubbed the Wrecking Crew.

Instead, Carl Wilson helped his big brother to make “music to cool out by.” The other members pitched in. If their musicianship was not at the level of the session pros in the Wrecking Crew, then so be it. They worked toward a simpler sound. For some reason, Brian had his piano detuned, so it sounded like the kind of thing you’d heard when friends got together in the basement after a few beers.

In place of Smile, the Beach Boys produced Smiley Smile in September 1967 and Wild Honey in December 1967. And ‘produced’ is a key word there. The earlier Beach Boys albums bore the ‘Produced by BRIAN WILSON’ credit. Now the jacket said, ‘Produced by THE BEACH BOYS.’

This music was the antithesis of Sgt. Pepper or The Notorious Byrd Brothers or anything by Jimi Hendrix (who sealed the doom of the band’s hipness with his “may you never hear surf music again” hidden lyric on “Third Stone from the Sun”). As Roger McGuinn of the Byrds said of 1967, all the artists were trying to out-weird each other.

The Beach Boys had done weird, with Smile, and found it not to be suitable.

Click on the image for the remastered “Darlin’ ” from “Sunshine Tomorrow.”

They never tried to be something they were not. And what they were was three brothers and a cousin from the suburbs. So the heavy intellectual stuff and pomposity didn’t fit well. Years ago, a writer put it nicely. Wish I could remember his name or the correct phrasing, but it was something like “We are a confounding country. We can put a man on the moon but we can’t stop people from wearing spandex pants to the mall. The Beach Boys will drive you crazy that way too.”

In short, you’ve got to be willing to take the goofy with the great.

When Smiley Smile came out, it was largely panned, though it’s an excellent album. But since it was the ‘Instead of Smile‘ album, it was held to an impossible standard. As Carl Wilson said, “It was a bunt instead of a grand slam.”

A mock cover of the never-released pseudo-live album, “Lei’d in Hawaii.”

The recorded-in-the-living-room vibe gave Smiley Smile a wholly original sound. After a live album in Hawaii was discovered to have been poorly recorded, the Beach Boys took this new homegrown work ethic into a studio where they tried to fix the live album with some live-in-studio recordings. They abandoned that project and instead went back to the living room and made Wild Honey, the closest thing the group ever recorded to a rhythm and blues album.

This has always marked the beginning of my favorite period in Beach Boys music. When the mass audience and the new ruling class of rock intelligentsia looked elsewhere, the Beach Boys made music for themselves. This wonderful era is now chronicled in the two-disc history 1967: Sunshine Tomorrow (come on boys, pick a title).

What we have in Sunshine Tomorrow isn’t a collection of snippets and scraps. Producer Mark Linnett has taken these old pieces and put together a new piece of work — not just a document of a creative period in the band’s life, but something that stands up today. This is a glorious album.

‘Sunshine Tomorrow’ features 65 tracks over two discs.

Linnett sets the stage by starting with Wild Honey in a new stereo mix. He then works through some session outtakes and live performances. As brilliant as that is — and Wild Honey has some of the best Beach Boys songs ever — it’s the Smiley Smile sessions that provide some of the great delights.

Wisely, Linnett leaves off “Good Vibrations” (Brian didn’t want it on the original album anyway) and he uses the backing tracks of “Heroes and Villains,” instead of the vocal, which would have contained those wonderful but overwhelming lyrics. Linnett eases into the Smiley Smile material with revelatory backing tracks, gradually building to the wonderfully weird and stoned-out “Wind Chimes,” “Cool, Cool Water,” “Vegetables” and “Little Pad.”

From there, Linnett goes into the faux-concert album as the scaled-back homegrown Beach Boys recreate their Hawaii setlist from the poorly-taped concerts on Oahu. (Brian had come out of performing retirement to join the band on stage.) These quiet versions of “California Girls,” “Help Me Rhonda” and “Surfer Girl” are wonderful reinterpretations.

The five performing Beach Boys in 1967. Left to right, Carl Wilson, Alan Jardine, Dennis Wilson, Bruce Johnston (Brian’s stage replacement) and Mike Love.

If I never hear “Surfer Girl” again, I’d be okay. But here, it’s done in a laid-back style that renders it a whole new song. Mike Love loses his usual braggadocio and “California Girls” becomes a gentle lament. (Love’s singing throughout is reserved. He pulls back on the usual swaggering bullshit and sings with tenderness.) Alan Jardine changes the perspective of “Help Me, Rhonda,” turning the story around, so it’s more of a “Help You, Rhonda” now. They sound remarkably like the Ramones doing “Beat on the Brat.”

The real surprise is the concert-in-the-studio version of “You’re So Good to Me,” from the 1965 album Summer Days. Brian Wilson’s new arrangement is much richer than the shrill chant from two years (and a lifetime) before. If only the music business still revolved around singles, this would be a good one.

The group also does some then-current songs by other groups: “With A Little Help From My Friends,” “The Letter” and “Game of Love.” The combined Carl-Brian-Mike shared lead vocal on “The Letter” is particularly fun. (By the way, the set ends with a thrilling a cappella “Surfer Girl.”)

This was a great period for the group and to hear them and marks Carl Wilson’s emergence. Though in retrospect we can see he had the best solo voice, he was not eager to sing lead vocals. He carried “Pom Pom Play Girl,” but it was “Girl, Don’t Tell Me” from 1965 that he considered his first lead. Then big brother entrusted him with “God Only Knows” and “Good Vibrations.” If that doesn’t demonstrate trust and respect, I’ll eat my Volkswagen.

Baby brother Carl Wilson not only moved into the front-man role for the Beach Boys in 1967, he began his long career of trying to hold the group together.

Carl is all over Wild Honey and his love of rhythm and blues comes out in his unrestrained, fluid vocals. He does a tremendous cover of Stevie Wonder’s “I Was Made to Love Her” (listen for the you-son-of-a-bitch hidden lyric) and “Darlin'” is irresistible.

As McGuinn said, everyone was trying to out-weird each other, but the Beach Boys were hanging out in Brian’s living room, singing rhythm and blues around that deliberately detuned piano. The slightly off sound of the music — and the overall dominance of the piano — gives the music of this era a resonance.

Who knew that the Beach Boys would be the harbingers of what would start happening that very month Wild Honey was released.

Tired of the grandiose bullshit (he thought Sgt. Pepper was a piece of crap), Bob Dylan came out of his 18-month seclusion and produced the quiet masterpiece, John Wesley Harding. It was Dylan’s way of grabbing rock’n’roll by the lapels and saying, “Pull yourself together!”

Soon, the Beatles were cutting out all of the studio gimmickry and promising to ‘get back.’ Meanwhile, the Byrds and the Band were discovering what today we call roots music and Americana.

In a way, the Beach Boys were there first.

July 4, 2017July 6, 2017

Going off the cliff

If anything good has come out of our culture in the last 18 months, maybe it’s that us Clueless White Guys are beginning to understand the problem.

To many of us, the election of the Pussygrabber in Chief was like sticking our heads in a sink full of ice cubes. And not long before that, there was that viral video showing a woman walking around the Five Boroughs getting catcalled by everything male.

As a Clueless White Guy, I’ve got to tell you how much those two events affected me. When I saw the catcalling video, I asked my adult daughters if that’s really what it was like to be a woman. Yes, they said, and worse.

And then that vile, groping guy got elected president.

This is all heavy on my mind as I read Becky Aikman’s new book, Off the Cliff. Aikman tells the story of the making of Thelma & Louise, and all of the behind-the-scenes battles to get the story on screen. The story of two renegades from sexual oppression and violence, it was the work of Callie Khouri, who became the first woman in 60 years to win a solo Oscar for screenwriting.

Since the film became such a touchstone of popular culture – 25 years ago now! – it might come as a surprise to Clueless White Guys what a struggle it was to make.

The lead roles were played by women! That’s as rare as frost on a frying pan! A story about women — note plural — that did not cast them in the standard roles of “mom” or “hooker” (or perhaps both at once).

The script was by a woman! Great mother of jabbering Jesus! Since when does that stuff happen?

And, of course, the director was the guy who made Alien. Yes! This makes perfect sense!

Off the Cliff doesn’t tell a story that merely pits women against men. The director, Ridley Scott, is as much of a horndog as the rest of us, but he is drawn to the story and making Thelma & Louise was his education and consciousness raising.

Studio head Alan Ladd Jr. also pushed the film, and we learn how he was the rare executive to move into production films with strong female leads. It was Laddie (as he was called), who suggested to director Scott during that earlier collaboration on Alien, “Say, why don’t we make a woman be the hero?”

Sigourney Weaver, here is your career.

The two stars of the film, Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis, were not the first choices. It was going to be Jodie Foster and Michelle Pfeiffer. Then it was Meryl and Goldie.

Sarandon is the hero of the book, both for her principled character as an actor and in the role she played, but also as a mentor to younger artists such as Geena Davis and … well, and nearly everyone else she comes across. She understands the characters and knows the power of the story. And she stands up for Davis when she catches the slightest whiff of exploitation.

And who better than Susan Sarandon to be charged with consciousness raising?

(Offscreen tidbit: George Clooney was turned down for the role that Brad Pitt got. This is the film that made Pitt into a star. Would the cosmos have evolved differently if Clooney had gotten the part? Discuss.)

There are a lot of great making-of-the-film books out there, dating from Lillian Ross’s magnificent Picture (about John Huston’s struggle to make The Red Badge of Courage in 1952). Later entries included John Gregory Dunne’s The Studio (about the horrifying Rex Harrison version of Doctor Doolittle), and Julie Salamon’s The Devil’s Candy (about turning The Bonfire of the Vanities into a film).

Aikman’s book is one of the best of the making-of subgenre and certainly one of the best books about filmmaking since Peter Biskind’s Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.

But Off the Cliff is not just a book about making a movie. It’s about the culture that so devalues the contributions of the majority of its citizens. Aikman doesn’t preach; she doesn’t need to. The story is up on the screen.

April 2, 2017July 7, 2017

Masshole

When I drive, I become a beast. I swear nonstop and call fellow drivers a number of unattractive words. For the good of all humanity — and my blood pressure — I take the train to work. This is the design I proposed for Massachusetts plates a few years back. Sorry to report that the Commonwealth has yet to adopt it.

March 28, 2017July 6, 2017

Care for a slice?

Frozen pizza on the traffic island at Beacon and Park, Boston.

March 16, 2017July 6, 2017

Dream of a different Stipe

I had a two-part dream last night.

Michael Stipe approached me, asking if he could teach a section of our beginning writing class at BU. I said sure, and we began working out a teaching schedule.

Then I woke up, went to the biffy, and then when I returned to sleep the dream resumed. That doesn’t happen to me very often.

Michael and his people (two or three, far short of an entourage) and my colleague Sarah and I were never able to work out a schedule because of his other commitments, but he kept gripping the edge of the table, saying, “Dammit! I am determined to make this work!”

Then I woke up again. Michael, if you’re out there, we would love to have you teach for us.

February 13, 2017July 6, 2017

Rosie the Riveter reboot

Millions of women entered the work force during the Second World War and the ‘We Can Do It’ image of Rosie the Riveter became a frequent symbol of that change.

Saturday Evening Post illustrator Norman Rockwell made a couple versions of Rosie on his own — one modeled after Michelangelo.

But the image has persisted long after that war, even as American women were encouraged to vacate the workplace and return to the kitchens of post-war America.

It’s good to see the Rosie symbol returning in the aftermath of the Women’s March of January 21, 2017, and the comments by Senate leader Mitch McConnell, made in an attempt to shut down Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Great new slogan — and, I’m proud to say, inspired by my senator, Elizabeth Warren. This image is available on mugs, posters, T-shirts and hoodies. Click here to see the whole array and the profits go to support the women’s-march movement.

February 12, 2017July 6, 2017

Let us now praise baseball nicknames

Pitchers and catchers reported this week for spring training, the annual ritual I miss so dearly since moving from Florida. Baseball has been much on my mind.

File this under “library, treasures of the.”

Whenever I’m blue, I get a book down from the shelf, turn to page 78 and begin to laugh.

It’s The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book and it’s one of those things available by special order. You can also find a used copy online, often for assloads of money.

Whatever the cost, it’s worth every penny.

You can also find it at the library, which is a pretty cool place. It’s like the Internet, only with stuff printed out.

On page 78, the authors simply list their favorite nicknames of ballplayers. I’ve never needed more than five bites of the first column before I begin to feel better.

I present this selection of names as a public service to all humanity. If only the United Nations General Assembly would join me in my mission to bring peace to the world . . . .

I love this book. I have the original, from 1973. This is the cover of the 1991 reprint. Click on the cover to see if you can track down this book through third-party sellers. It is a treasured part of my home library.

If this was read aloud before that body, in all the languages of earth, we could achieve a just and lasting peace.

It’s hard to fight when you’re laughing.

(I use the Rocky Bridges card as an illustration above. The nickname ‘Rocky’ isn’t nearly as funny as his real name — Everett. But Boyd and Harris write an essay on every baseball card in their book and the essay on Bridges is probably the funniest.)

Unfortunately, the tradition of baseball nicknames seems to have been lost. Since Boyd and Harris compiled this list four decades ago, there haven’t been too many colorful additions. Chris Berman does his part on ESPN. There was a player on the University of Florida baseball team some years back named Dave Majeski. I tried to get one of my sportswriter friends to work Purple Mountains Majeski into his story one day. He did, but it didn’t catch on.

The baseball nickname is the entymological equivalent of the dodo. So appreciate these names while you can.

Bless you, Brendan Boyd and Fred Harris. Your book is a treasure.

(Insert drum roll . . . )

Read this aloud at the office. Suggest new names for your pals. Fuck bringing sexy back. Let’s bring nicknames back.

(Big rimshot here . . . )

And now, broken down into alphabetical order, the silliest baseball nicknames we can find:

A: Wagon Tongue Adams, Snitz Applegate, Bow Wow Arft.

B: Bee Bee Babe, Sweetbreads Bailey, Rattlesnake Baker, Belve Bean, Bananas Beans, Desperate Beatty, Boom Boom Beck, Jittery Joe Berry, Hillbilly Bildilli, Red Bird, The Darling Booth, Goobers Bratcher, Bunny Brief, Chops Broskie, Turkeyfoot Brower, Oyster Burns.

C: Scoops Carey, Ding-a-Ling Clay, Whoops Creeden, Crunchy Cronin, Dingle Croucher.

D: Daffy Dean, Peaceful Valley Deizer, Hickory Dickson, Bullfrog Dietrich, Buttermilk Dow, Pea Soup Dumont.

E: Piccolo Pete Elko, Slippery Ellam.

F: Broadway Flair, Sleuth Fleming, Suds Fodge.

G: Inch Gleich, Gabber Glenn.

H: Snags Heidrick, Bunny High, Bootnose Hofman, Herky Jerky Horton, Twinkles Host, Highpockets Hunt.

J: Bear Tracks Javery.

L: Candy LaChance, Whoop LaWhite, Bevo LeBourveau, Razor Ledbetter, Grasshopper Lillie, Memo Luna.

M: Cuddles Marshall, Humpty McElveen, Beauty McGowan, Sadie McMahon, Boob McNair, Spinach Melillo, Earache Meyer.

O: Peach Pie O’Connor, Orval Overall.

P: Pretzels Pezzullo, Cotton Pippen, Pinky Pittinger, Primo Preibisch, Truckhorse Pratt, Lumber Price, Shucks Pruett, Shadow Pyle.

Q: Wimpy Quinn.

R: Icicle Reeder, Raw Meat Rodgers, Half-Pint Rye.

S: Slim Sallee, Horse Belly Sargent, Skeeter Scalzi, Silk Stalking Schafer, Wildfire Schulte, Steeple Schultz, Blab Schwartz, Pius Scwert, Twinkletoes Selkirk, Colonel Bosco Snyder, Spook Speake, Fish Hook Stout, Inky Strange, Sleeper Sullivan, Homer Summa, Suds Sutherland, Ducky Swann.

T: Patsy Tebeau, Pussy Tebeau, White Wings Tebeau, Adonis Terry, Cannonball Titcomb, Turkey Tyson.

U: Dixie Upright.

V: Peak-a-Boo Veach.

W: Podgie Weihe, Icehouse Wilson, Kettle Wirtz, Chicken Wolf.

Z: Zip Zabel, Noodles Zupo.

For more fun along these lines, I heartily endorse The Outside Corner’s “All Innuendo Team,” featuring Rusty Kuntz, Stubby Clapp, Johnny Dickshot and many others.

I love baseball — Lord help me, I do.