This was originally published as a previously scheduled guest post for Baseblog94 on July 29, 2013. I had no idea when I agreed to do this, on this date, that what I eventually wrote would be the subject of that post.
The initial response to it, from friends, family, and a lot of folks I've never met, was overwhelming. I'm re-publishing here, with additional photos.
This is the piece I hoped I would never have to write.
I haven’t always been a Baseball fan, or a Cubs fan for that
matter, but when I was young I was. How
that happened and how it worked out is a very exhaustive story with many
tangents that tie in to other stories about me that don’t always have anything
to do with Baseball. Many of them tie
into my personal “Tale of Two Dads,” but I’m not going into that here. On July 10 of this year, I lost Pop, who was
one of those Dads, and two weeks later my heart is still broken.
Pop was a lifelong fan of Baseball, and at an early age I
was enthralled at his knowledge of the game, as well as his stories about
seeing young Roger Maris play with the Indianapolis Indians against his local
Omaha Cardinals in 1956. He grew up a
Dodger fan and idolized Pee Wee Reese.
When I was a lad, he took me to my first professional Baseball game, the
New York Yankees versus the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park on August 1st,
1979. It was Thurman Munson’s last game,
and also the last game I would attend with Pop for nearly 30 years.
Pop wasn’t the kind of person you’d think would be a
Baseball coach; he was a Theatre Educator, and was instrumental in rebuilding
the Theatre program at Highland Community College in Freeport, Illinois. I can’t recall how he got involved at the
managerial level of Little League Baseball, but my brother played (I didn’t, I
tried a little but I couldn’t even put on a fielder’s mitt the right way) and
he ended up as the Coach for a team that was more like the Battlestar Galactica
of Freeport Little League than it was like a potential championship squad.
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There was a sprinkling of raw talent
(including a kid he called “Palmer” because he looked just like Jim Palmer, a
great pitcher whose real name I still can’t recall) but there was enough #want
present for Pop to guide them to the city championships, a trophy they proudly
claimed. I watched most of those games
(and the practices) and marveled at how unique he was compared to the other
coaches; we won over his charge with applied confidence, attention to minutia
and fundamentals, and through the ring of discipline. I understood later how he used the same
skills to direct plays and work with young college students, as he did to
manage a winning Baseball team that wasn’t a favorite to do so.
Over the years, Pop became a Cubs fan. We lived in the proper geographic locale for
this, and the benefit of access to just about every game through WGN broadcasts
helped out as well. He had intense and
profound relationships with his friends and colleagues at the time, friendships
that would endure until his death. Most
of them were probably Cubs fans as well.
In later years, we talked Baseball quite a bit. He didn’t share my twisted ‘yin-yang’
admiration for the Cardinals (it took lots of ‘splaining to bring him to an
understanding of why I had a Cardinals cap in my collection) but was mostly
complacent about the White Sox; they were a Chicago team and deserved a nominal
amount of respect for that. We didn’t
watch a lot of Cubs games together, but sometimes we’d exchange emails about a
particularly memorable contest or talk about them on the phone.
My family relocated to Louisville in the late 90s; during
one of my folks’ early visits I pulled Pop aside and we went on a solo trip to
Louisville Slugger Field to see the newly-erected statue of his childhood
hero. He told many after the fact that
it was one of the neatest things he’d ever seen in his life.
When my oldest daughter started attending high school at
duPont Manual in Louisville, Pop immediately emailed me to let me know that Pee
Wee also attended school there. I was
never able to host him at a Louisville Bats game, but we did visit the
Louisville Slugger Factory & Museum together, and spent the better part of
an hour reviewing all of the player names burned into wood on the foyer wall.
Pop wasn’t surprised at all when I started writing about
Baseball; I had been a casual writer most of my life and he enjoyed reading my
work and discussing it. During my first
Brother-in-Law Baseball Tour of 2009, we scheduled a stop in Peoria to see the
Peoria Chiefs at O’Brien Field, only a few minutes from my folks’ house in East
Peoria. I wrote a little bit about it and
posted photos and scoresheets
here.
I’m not usually adept at taking advantage of photo
opportunities when they arise, but as we entered the concourse and were
admiring the Pete Vonachen statue, I was seized by the moment and handed my
camera to an usher.
My brother-in-law Mark and I were picked by Pete Vonachen’s
granddaughter (who was working as an usher at the ballpark) to participate in
an On-Field Sack Race after the first inning, because we looked like “a couple
of fun guys.” We had to report to the
field during the first to prepare for the race, Pop was kind enough to handle
my scoresheet while we did so. I revised
some of his play notation, but didn’t touch his filling in the lineup for me.
It was one of my best memories ever.
Pop had been acting kind of funny for a few weeks recently,
and on Sunday July 7th, he had a seizure at home and was taken to
the hospital. A CT scan and angiogram
revealed a rather large aneurysm (5.5cm in size) at the base of his brain. He was responsive, yet puzzled, after the
seizure and the doctors were considering surgery. I rushed over to Peoria to see him, arriving
late that Tuesday evening. On the way
there, I listened to the Cubs gloriously vanquish the Angels 7-2 on WGN Radio
itself (not Gameday Audio as I have to do at home). It seemed as if it was meant to be; I could pick
up WGN clearly just as the game was starting, and the contest took me swiftly
through dismally barren areas of sparse 3G coverage. By the time the game was over, I was less
than an hour from my destination.
It was also a wonderful distraction from the grim
expectations of what would I would see and learn about Pop’s condition when I
arrived.
I arrived at the hospital in Peoria just after 11pm. My mom had just left a few minutes prior, and
I nearly elected to stop at my folks’ house, get some rest, and visit Pop first
thing in the morning. I changed my mind
just as I approached; I had been driving a lot that day and really wanted to
see him. I was only concerned that I
would disturb his slumber (waking up Pop had never been a good idea, ever).
The room was dark, Pop was laying on his side asleep. He looked a lot better than I had expected he
would. I gently touched his hand,
without fully opening his eyes he grabbed my hand and sighed, “Ah, you made
it.” We talked about my day, my trip,
his day, his trip, complained about doctors for a little bit, and then as it
typically did, the conversation drifted towards Baseball. He wanted me to validate (as he usually did)
that the teams I have been following are still terrible, and I did…but, yes,
the Cubs won HUGE tonight!
“Pop, did you get to watch the game?”
“Yes, I watched the
whole thing! It was amazing! 5 home runs!! Where did that come from?”
“Who knows! Frustration and lots of grit and hustle!! They
should have saved some for tomorrow night!”
“Oh, you got that
right…but the Angels are supposed to be great!”
“Go figure, the American League offense is always superior
during interleague play! Strategy! (in my goofy voice) Thuuuhh Amehhhhrican
Leeeeeeegue!!”
Pop shakes in his
trademark ‘silent earthquake laugh’…no sounds emit, but his entire body
trembles the heartiness of his laugh, which means he REALLY thought this was
funny.
“Ha ha, I’ll never let go of that!”
“Stephen, this team is
really going to be something else in a couple of years…I can tell.”
(I find out later from my mom that after the Cubs game, she
changed the channel to the Cardinals game and Pop wanted nothing to do with
that.)
We talked about books, my wife and kids, and then soberly
turned towards his condition and the discussion about surgery we’re supposed to
have in the morning with the doctors and their staff.
“We’re going to see
some videos!”
“Darn it, I forgot my 3-D glasses!!”
Silent Earthquake
Laugh, a second time.
As I stood up to leave, I gave him a hug and a kiss on the
cheek.
“Good night, Pop…I’ll see you here in the morning for
breakfast.”
“Come on up, I’ll fix
you some eggs.”
That was the last conversation I, or anyone else for that
matter, would ever have with him. Two
hours later, while at my folks house discussing Pop’s condition with my mom, we
received a phone call from the hospital that Pop had taken a turn for the
worse. We were there in 5 minutes. A second seizure had occurred, and he had
stopped breathing. As I arrived, one of
the medical staff handed me his glasses as they were inserting a breathing
tube. He looked completely
different. Another CT scan confirmed
that the aneurysm had started to leak, enormous pressure on his brain was
causing severe damage, and within a few hours it was made clear to us that his
brain activity was not favorable, and that he would never recover.
Pop passed away at 7:37pm on Wednesday, the 10th. I hadn’t slept, nor had I left his side since
returning that morning, his glasses still in my pocket.
I didn’t know it at the time, but Christmas 2012 would be my
last with Pop. My gift from my folks was
a subscription to Baseball Prospectus, as well as a Peoria Chiefs cap and
banner. I had asked for those, the
latter to commemorate our game together a few years back and to herald the
transition of the Peoria club from a Cubs affiliate to a Cardinals
affiliate. What I also received, and
hadn’t asked for, was a copy of Edward Achorn’s “
Fifty-Nine
in ’84,” the story of Old Hoss Radbourn and ‘bare-handed baseball.’
One of the activities Pop enjoyed participating in while
living in Central Illinois was the renowned “
Cemetery Walk” at
Evergreen Cemetery in Bloomington. One
of his favorite characters mentioned in the program was Old Hoss Radbourn; upon
receiving the book he told me for the first time that he enjoyed Evergreen so
much that my folks decided to secure interment arrangements there, barely a hundred yards away from Radbourn’s gravesite.
He always wrote something in the leaf of every book he ever gave me,
this one was no different:
“I’m
anxious to hear your impression of this interesting era in your favorite
sport. Hoss is buried in Evergreen
Cemetery in our own Bloomington, Illinois.
There are plans underway now to develop a one man show about him. Enjoy every minute!”
Reading this after his death sent some chills through my
being. Pop was a true
Hall-of-Famer. I’ll miss you buddy, you
were a hell of a guy. GO CUBS!!!
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