Baseball Cards, Goodbyes, & the Menace

What follows will lack in fun and folly but occasionally one finds it necessary to address reality as plays out in front of us and there is simply no denying what’s happening. Part of this is surely a function of my getting deeper into my own personal 4th Quarter, but I fear there are other forces at play. As for the former, a week does not go by anymore when I am not told of the serious health issue or even death of an acquaintance, friend or loved one.

Larry Toppert, proud alumnus of Western and member of the TKE fraternity had lunch with buddies one day and suddenly died the next. Here was a man full of zesto and good cheer and boom, he’s gone. Dave Rodgers lived in Seal Hall at Western Illinois University when I did. He was a couple of years older and got me my first job as a desk worker and then helped me secure a position as a resident assistant. Dave was a mentor to both our sons and had a 40-year career as a math teacher. His real claim to fame was as a baseball coach and the baseball complex in East Peoria is named in his honor. He had a positive impact on countless young men over the decades and taught them not just how to play that game but also about how to live the game of life.  Diane and I had lunch with him in November and the three of us laughed and told stories, and it was one of those times when you are grateful for the people who really touch your life.  Soon after that, Dave’s health took a downward spiral; Coach Rodgers died late last month, another friend gone too soon. For both Larry and Dave, the 4th Quarter has ended, and it can’t help but make me conscious of the “tick tock” that plays in the back of my mind. 

To continue the baseball analogy, Peter Golenbock says it well in Whispers of the Gods, “Even today, on the dark slope of life, I cannot hold a 1950s Topps card without feeling, in a sensual way, the heat of a Bronx sidewalk, the thrill of fanning the cards to see ‘who I got,’ the taste of an orange soda and the smell and peculiar feel of the pink slab of bubblegum…I was young only yesterday.” It is both wondrous and cautionary that I somehow got from there to today. I can still remember how we used to take duplicate cards of long forgotten baseball heroes of yesterday and attached them to the spokes of our bikes to make that fluttering sound. Of course, our parents would holler at us and say, “You are ruining your spokes and the tires on your bike and your mother and I are not paying for a new bike.”

Our landline phone just rang and, yes, we still have one.  Our phone has been the same since September 1970.  It was a voice from my college days. I asked, “What’s up, good to hear from you.”  He replied, “I am in the hospital and they are trying to stabilize me so I can have quadruple bypass surgery tomorrow and I wanted you and Diane to know.”  Jeepers, we go back 58 years and were freshmen together at Western. I feel myself going further into the 4th Quarter. In spite of my health missteps in 2021, Diane and I are pretty lucky as last summer’s “adventure” turned out to not be as serious as we feared at the outset. With kids and grandkids all doing well, we feel lucky every day of our lives which leads me to the second segment of this melancholy discussion on life.

Complaints about “my world” are pretty scarce these days. Yes, I am ready for PEG—our acronym for the feeding tube–to be removed one of these days but by and large Diane and I feel blessed. Almost 54 years of marriage and the “magic” is still there and beyond that and family, nothing else really matters much. Yet, and suppose there is always a yet or an except for or wish this hadn’t happened, there are things on the national scene that seem more troubling than when we were younger. Diane and I watch the evening news most nights and things seem to get more depressing with each passing day. David Brooks, noted columnist for the New York Times does a segment on PBS national news on Friday nights when Jonathan Capehart and he analyze the news of the week. Recently, Brooks commented on the “rising tide of menace” that seems to permeate the country these days. There is a humbling of the national spirit as we sustain repeated blows to the nation’s morale. What does that mean? It means racism that puts entire ethnic groups under threat, feelings of angst when we just want to go out and buy groceries. As parents of children, it means fear of sending your children off to school wondering if they will come home to you at the end of the school day. It means watching the news and hearing that a ten-year-old girl, a victim of the Uvalde, TX, school shooting, could only be identified because she was wearing green Converse All Stars gym shoes. Imagine that, the AR-15 made her body totally unrecognizable as a human being.

I don’t pretend to know all there is about Roe v Wade, but the whole abortion/right to life issue has become not simply adversarial but now includes not just protests, but violent protests.  The cultural wars are becoming more and more acute and divisive. Our spirit sags as we try and figure out what to do to combat COVID in terms of vaccines and boosters and even more boosters. It means paying outrageous prices for fuel to propel our cars which has an overarching and profound effect on those least able to afford it. The same goes for the entire inflation conundrum that drags everyone down in ways as small as buying a loaf of bread to mortgage rates that will soon make it increasingly difficult to buy a home. And what about infants who need baby formula? We never had to worry about that. There simply wasn’t such a problem years ago.

Yes, these are challenges to be addressed in this country but try living in Ukraine.  We are shocked, amazed, and disturbed to see the devastation.  Putin is systematically destroying that once sovereign nation city by city and building by building. And if the Ukrainians prevail as we hope they do, what will be left of the country once the Russians pack up their artillery and depart.  I have put off writing about all this hoping it would get better, but, alas, it hasn’t.  I don’t know if it will, at least in my 4th Quarter. This leads me to think about the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Quarters that lie ahead for our heirs.  Surely we can do better.  We must.

I have to be hopeful as other options are too stark and depressing. Last month we celebrated Memorial Day; this month we marked the 78th anniversary of D-Day. They interviewed two WWII veterans, both 100 years old, on Omaha Beach where some of the fiercest fighting took place in 1944. The correspondents asked both men why they did what they did and what they wish for the United States moving forward.  The responses of both men were succinct and to the point. “It was our job and we want people to remember why we were there and not to allow our efforts to have been in vain.”  Food for thought for all of us, including our political leaders who need to find a way to stop the rising tide and atmosphere of menace and return us to a nation of hope, of prosperity, and of good will for all.