The Glory Of The Lord Shall Be Revealed...

And All Flesh Shall See It Together!

There are times that are different from every other time... There are days that are different from the every day... There are human beings that are different from every other human being.

On this day we remember one of those times, hold up one of those days, and honor one of those human beings.

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was not just a Baptist preacher (though he was very much that), he was not just a leader for a disenfranchised and abused segment of our society (though he was that as well). He was... and is... an exemplar, an exceptional, even while ordinary, human being who stepped into his time, took on the mantel he was given and walked out to change the world.

This is what we remember today. This is what we hold to, and hope to yet become.

Rev. King did indeed have a dream, a dream of a "Beloved Community" where people might really be what we are meant to be and fully capable of becoming. Even though we are still struggling to become that, and even though there are many who would STILL keep us back from that greatness and that possibility. This day represents a time when we indeed CAN "become the change we want to see in the world."

Martin Luther King did it... SO can we... STILL.

The Game

The autumn of 1962 gave birth to my love affair with baseball, while at the same time sealing it in dismay. I was eight years old, growing up as an American kid in the Philippines, far away from most things familiar, with the exception of a ball and glove.

I preferred baseball to air, daily devouring the box scores in the ‘Stars & Stripes’ armed forces newspaper – research for my ongoing schoolyard arguments about the true eternal concerns of life. Which team was going to win the pennant? Would there be a triple-crown winner this year? Would someone break the home run record set by Maris in 61?

On and on our deliberations went, until they became an endless life of their own.

1962 brought the World Series that launched my decent into a lifetime of Yankee purgatory, when Bobby Richardson snared a line drive that ended all hope for the San Francisco Giants winning their first World Series since their departure from New York after the 1957 season.

Later that tropical autumn, a bunch of my buddies from boarding school and I carved out a makeshift diamond behind the screened porch of our dorm. Left field was a wide patch of swampy brush and weeds taller than we were, extending some twenty feet to a concrete block wall at the back of the property. No matter how hard we tried to direct our swings toward right field, it was inevitable that one of us would get hold of a pitch and seemingly drive the ball into heaven, only to have it descend into the middle of this jungle. Rule number one was that ‘he who hit the ball had to retrieve it.’ Kipling might well have used our tales of slithering creatures as inspiration for a new series of jungle stories, and though none of us ever proved we saw these larger than life serpents with our own eyes, we’d emerge from the neck high grass, ball in hand, breathless, embellishing yet another close encounter with the end of our young lives.

And back to the plate we’d go; until darkness chased us inside.

Baseball.

(from 'Flight From the Land of God' by Zachary Jack Marcus)

So Long Uncle Don

The ECKS dropped me an email today to let me know that her Uncle Don died this week and that she was in North Carolina for the funeral.

Don EUGENE Cardwell was a pitcher for the "Amazin'" 69 Mets, which is pretty damned impressive in and of itself, but before that, he played for the Chicago Cubs. A friend of mine in Petaluma, when he was a kid, actually saw Don play for the Cubs and one night when I was sitting in The Old Same Place talking about Marsha's Uncle playing for the Amazin' Mets he up and spouted off something like "Don Cardwell... played for the Chicago Cubs... had a no hitter... I saw him play..." I sat back, took another sip of beer and stared at him, speechless (which is something for me to be). Not only did my friend know who I was talking about, but he had seen him play! He even knew something about him that I did not... Don Cardwell, at the age of 24, had one of those moments in baseball that don't come around very often, and usually only come to the blessed... He pitched A NO HITTER.

The above video from You Tube shows you the last moments of that game and it's pretty damned inspiring.

It seems to me that this is what baseball is supposed to be about... in a time before players were paid the kind of astronomical salaries they make today, and before they felt the need to shoot themselves full of various chemicals in order to keep going and keep hammering and keep making the money... they played the game. And evidently (though I've never seen him myself) Don Eugene Cardwell PLAYED the game.

So thanks Don... thanks for being one of the heros... one of those guys that kids grew up looking up to and believing in and hoping to be some day.

Thanks.