Monday 6/19/23
Luis Aparicio led the league in stolen base nine times. He's a member of the Hall of Fame first and foremost for his sublime fielding ability, and then secondly as a result of his base stealing prowess. Do you know who stole home more times than Luis Aparicio?
That's right, my man Dave Kingman, purloiner of the plate.
Kong!
One of the books I'm working on right now is called The Diamond Mirror: Life Lessons Gleaned from Baseball's Reflective History (Essays).
The soon-to-be-completed piece on the purity of Dave Kingman's vision will be in it.
Several observations:
You don't always say the truth right away. But a time may come when the truth is the only thing that can be said and it's not wrong to do so.
There is nothing that people find more interesting than themselves. The irony being that so few of them are interesting at all. What does that say about how much of the world is lost on the people in it?
People are often hypocrites about their own health.
Some news regarding the woman I had mentioned the other day, whom my mom had encountered a couple times at the supermarket having walked there, despite her age and the onset of dementia. Come the end of the summer, she'll be moving into the same facility where her husband--who has dementia--is currently residing. They will be together, at least. In the meanwhile, my mother will be helping her out with trips to the grocery store and she'll also take her to visit her husband. There's also a restaurant she really likes, and my mom will go there with her to lunch. A text from this son to his mother regarding all of this:
Thank you for helping that woman. I know I can count on you to do the right thing in a world where fewer and fewer people do.
So that is my little update.
I have acquired a copy of the Beatles' first BBC session with Ringo Starr from October 25, 1962, which turned up after sixty years. For timeline perspective: Starr joined the band in August, first single "Love Me Do"--which is played at the session--came out October 5--and they'd close the year with their final trip to Hamburg.
Something I wrote elsewhere for Father's Day:
Some men are just natural born fathers. They look out for others and are always there for you. They have no excuses, and they live their life such that everything they do also seems to say, “whatever you need, I am here,” while helping you understand that little matters more than the difference—the real difference, not the grandstanding difference—between right and wrong.
My own father, who died when I was twenty-five, was like this. We spent long hours talking in the car as we rode from one rink to another when I was a child, and that time was the best time I could have ever spent.
Patrick Theberge is also a father in the best sense of the word and in knowing him that way, I have made decisions over the years about the person whom I’ve worked to become.
There’s more to being a father than “you’re my child.” The caring heart of another impels us to do right by ourselves and the hearts of others.
In this regard I’ve had one amazing father and known another I could look to as if he was my own.
When I watch The Rifleman, I end up thinking, "What did you expect to happen here? They call him the Rifleman." Seems like you really should know what you're getting yourself into.
Henry Goldblume on Hill Street Blues is the Linus Van Pelt of the show.
Watched Malick's Badlands. It's the best from him and it's fine but not anything more. He was a better filmmaker when he was direct like he was here. It's direct but wry. The problem is is that it doesn't add up to a whole lot. It's a movie you watch, not an experience you have.
Shaved for the first time in over a week, so that's an improvement.
On Saturday I ran 10,000 stairs, which is pretty good in and of itself, but I ran the entire 10,000 without taking a break. The most amount of stairs I had ever run straight before was 5000. Then yesterday I did 5000 straight. These were all on the main stairs at City Hall.
This morning I have worked more on the story I wrote Saturday called "If You Could Only Pick One to Sodomize, Which Would It Be?" that is unlike anything and also "What the Mouse Knew."
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