Yep… nothing like a ‘dog at the the ballpark.  In Nashville we have “The Sounds” , our minor league team (currently affiliated with the Milwaukee Brewers).  It’s hard to beat going out to the park on “Dollar Dog” night, getting about 3 of ’em and a “hand cramper”  (beer so cold it does just that), and then head on down for a prime seat on the first base line.   One of the great things about minor-league baseball at this level, it’s usually possible to make the decision late in the afternoon on game day that you want to go that night, and still get GREAT seats.   Sometimes I just go by myself. Sometimes I take my boys.    Either way, it’s special.

Back a little over four decades ago, like many kids my age, I had a baseball card collection.   I’m sure at least SOME of them came from the Woolworth “5 and 10”.   For you youngsters, that means they sell things for a nickel or a dime.   In fact, we CALLED it “the dime store”.  Some of them may have come from the drugstore too.  Or the gas station.  We didn’t HAVE “convenience stores”, presumably because there was no need.  People were seldom inconvenienced in those days.

As I have written before, I grew up in (what seemed to me) a big house on South Clark in my hometown of Mexico, Missouri . The even bigger  house next door on the corner of Central and South Clark was where Lawrence Roberson lived, who owned the Pontiac/Oldsmobile dealership down the street.  That’s why we ALWAYS drove a Pontiac at our house.  Yep,  Dad was a confirmed Pontiac man.

The Roberson’s grandson from St. Louis, also named Lawrence, would come for a visit pretty often, especially during summers when sometimes he’d stay a week or more with his grandparents.  “Little Lawrence” was a HUGE Cardinals fan, and loved to collect baseball cards as well.  He was much more serious about it than I was, and sometimes his passion to have a particular card would lead him to make crazy trades.  In fact, he’d trade almost ANYTHING for Cardinals stuff.  Even the crappy cards.   If it had a Redbird on it, he HAD to have it.   There was also a kid named Toby (I don’t recall his last name ….  just that he had a flat-top crew-cut) who lived down on South Washington who was a year behind us in school.  He also collected and traded cards with us.  The three of us would sit out beside the Roberson’s house under a giant shade tree, drinking grape Nehi from the Gulf station or the Cities Service station next door, and trade cards as if we were building a franchise on MLB draft day.

I was never into the card collecting in such a big way as to organize the cards in a book s, binders, folders or anything, I just had a few big stacks of ’em held together with rubber bands.

So Little Lawrence, Cardinal faithful, would trade anything at all for Cardinal stuff.  I mean, he was relentless in his support of the hometown boys.  Since I was relatively egalitarian in my approach, I ended up trading him out of some great cards.   Even had a Pete Rose “Rookie of the Year” card.  I think I had to give him a Bob Gibson, and maybe a couple of third-stingers .   Now, this was NOT the Rose “Rookie Card”  which at one time several years ago actually commanded pretty high prices (and I don’t know, may still) but the “Rookie of the Year” card… still a prize, but not so valuable.  I also remember having cards for Al Kaline, Don Zimmer, Hoyt Wilhelm, Boog Powell, Orlando Pena, Dave DeBushcere, Willy McCovey, and a bunch of others.  A lot of real prizes in there.   I think I actually did have some Cardinals cards that I was able to keep out of Little Lawrence’s hands.  Another Gibby, a Curt Flood, Tim McCarver, Orlando Cepeda, Dal Maxvill, and of course…  Lou Brock.  GOTTA have Brock.

I know I still had those cards at some point years later later when I was in High School, after we’d moved around the corner to another house.  Still in a stack, still with rubber bands, stashed in a remote corner of a bottom drawer.  But like so many other kids, I have no idea where they went. Probably stuck with a clothespin to the spokes of  a niece’s or  nephew’s bicycle wheels, or maybe just thrown out like so much garbage  (i.e., treasures) when my parents moved again when I went off to college.  I believe that’s what happened to my beloved Hector Heathcoate lunchbox with matching thermos.   Look it up.  I dare ya.

*sigh*

So anyway…..

Once, at the Audrain County Fair when I was probably about 9 or 10, they had a raffle drawing.   Tickets went into the drum of a concrete mixer, where they tumbled around and around, until they drew out winning numbers for all kinds of prizes.  A country ham, a fishing rod and reel combo. a certificate for free oil changes, etc.   I did not know it, but one of my dad’s friends had bought a ticket and had given it to to dad to hold for me.   I won a transistor AM radio.  (FM? What’s that??)   It was this clunky looking beige thing, in a brown leather case with a thin shoulder strap, and an earpiece that had little loop of wire to hold it on your ear.   Straight from Japan.  Exotic!!!  I remember how that radio smelled.  (strangely pleasing) And the static sound and whistles it would make as I would twist the two dials… one to adjust volume, one to tune in the station. It was about half the size of a cereal box. And it ate batteries.  Even at that size, it was considerably smaller than the old vintage Bendix art-deco radio with the Bakelite case that sat on the shelf by my dad’s easy chair.  Now THAT one would be worth a few pennies today.

In bed at night, I’d lie there with the window open ….  a breeze blowing in rustling the curtains, the smells and sounds of summer leaving me feeling like I was floating in the ocean.  I would tune my transistor radio to KMOX, the Cardinals flagship station, and listen to Harry Caray (up through ’69) and then later Jack Buck calling the late games.

How could I not be reminded now as I look back, of James Earl Jones (as Terrence Mann) delivering his speech from the movie Field of Dreams …

 The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by it like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again.

Man.  One of the best movie speeches ever?   It’s in MY top ten for sure.

What I wouldn’t give to be sitting under that tree now, drinking a grape Nehi, and making a deal…. “Ok Lawrence, I’ll give you a Curt Flood, a Bob Gibson, and a Cardinals team card AND this whole unopened pack of Topps, for that Mickey Mantle and that Willie Mays.”    Or maybe lying in bed listening to the game in one ear, the crickets and the traffic out on the highway in the other…. a train whistle somewhere barely perceptible in the distance.   “Bottom of the 6th, the Cardinals leading the Cubs 5-2, two outs, nobody on.  Cepeda strolls to the plate, Brock on deck.  It’s a fine evening here at the park, folks.”

What I wouldn’t give to be there.   I close my eyes and I am.

All that was once good, and that could be again.

Terrence (James Earl) is right.  Something about this world is askew.   But a gauzy-eyed look back at the past doesn’t really help, does it?    Certainly doesn’t fix anything.   It’s not that there isn’t good in the world.  Of course there is.  And if we’re open to it, it is there for us to experience every day in countless ways, both small and immense.  Yet, especially on those days when we are bombarded with news of the latest tragedy or a story about some inconceivable inhumanity, or as we encounter people who seem to have lost the ability to even treat one-another decently, it is hard to deny that something IS askew.  It sometimes seems as though our basic social contracts have changed.

No, we can’t go back to a “simpler time”, not even a little.  Not really.   But we’ve got an awful lot riding on learning to live with respect for, and to act in service to, our fellow travelers on the planet.

Here’s an idea.  What if we just learned to “Do the loving thing” as often as we could?   What if??    It may be our only hope.

Maybe now more than ever.

All that was once good, and that could be again.
All that was once good, and that could be again.   
All that was once good, and that could be again.

If you’re looking for a mantra, you could do worse .

love,
John