Chance of rain

Rain, rain, go away, but it's okay to stay today. (photo by Lon Horwedel)

It was raining when I woke up this morning. It started the night before last and hasn’t stopped; in fact it’s raining harder than ever.

The weatherman says it’s supposed to rain tomorrow too - not like it’s going to rain for 40 days and 40 nights, but it has been raining for 40 hours.

That’s all right; I don’t mind the rain ... oh, I used to mind ... I used to hate the rain. It kept me from playing golf or riding my bike. It soaked my shoes when I'd run, or rust my chain when I'd ride. 

The splattering rain on my face would annoy me to no end- so much so, I even wrote a poem about it in college called “I hate the rain.” 

But that was 25-years ago. Things change. Now I kind of like the rain.

I don't care if I play golf in the rain - it takes away the crowd, and I no longer feel the need to run or bike no matter what the weather. 

Rain makes me feel alive; it saturates colors while saturating me. It makes my sore throat feel at home and washes off my shirt sleeve after I’ve wiped my runny nose.

Rain knocks the leaves from the trees, then fills the street with swimming-pool puddles so they can swim. It drips down the back of my shirt collar and makes me cringe at its coldness. It splatters my glasses and gives me kaleidoscope vision.

Rain gives my windshield wipers exercise and cleans off the bottom of my shoes. It turns football fields to mud and cancels playoff baseball games in New York.

Rain brings out umbrellas for the wind to destroy. It makes earthworms surface and head for the sidewalk to die. It floods the gutters and seeps into my basement. It comes down in an assortment of directions and strengths - from drizzle to driving.

Rain has the unique ability to clean some things while making other things dirty. It’s a farmer’s best friend … and his worst enemy. It can irrigate his crops - or wash them away.

Rain can end a drought – or cause a flood, acting as Mother Nature’s Grim Reaper by accompanying hurricanes and typhoons on killing sprees. Rain can flush a life down an overflowing riverbank just as easily as it can rehydrate dying cattle.

Rain makes it okay to stay inside and not feel guilty. It turns books and music into my best friends and prompts me to feel creative. It sends me to the movie theater or the mall, or lets me just stay home and be alone.

Rain lets me daydream. It helps me formulate plans and prepare for the better life I’ll surely start to lead once it stops raining. 

But it hasn’t stopped - it may not stop for a while. 

It doesn’t matter - not today. Today is for dreaming. Today I like the rain.

Back to the basics

My daughters try to put on their 20-pound backpacks without falling over backwards while preparing for school Tuesday morning, October 20th. (photo by Lon Horwedel)

It’s not often that I feel sorry for kids in middle school. I mean, for the most part, I’ve been there and done that.

Puberty? -  Yeah, so what.

Pimples?  - Get some Stridex.

Broken heart? – It’s part of growing up.

But there is one thing today’s 11-13 year-olds have to deal with that is completely foreign to me – the 20 pound, scoliosis-inducing, bursting-at-the-seams backpack.

At some point in the last decade or two, the backpack has taken over as the main means for transporting everything but the kitchen sink to and from school (and judging by the weight of my two middle school daughter’s backpacks, I’m thinking the kitchen sink might be in there as well).

My oldest girl is an 8^th grader, my youngest a 6^th grader. They’re still growing - I think - it’s hard to say since various Jansports, Eastpaks and Swissmades are constantly pulling them downward.

The heft of their packs has gotten to the point where I’m beginning to fear for their health.  Since elementary school, their backpacks have continued to expand, even as their spinal cords have compressed. My great grandfather was hunchbacked from a life of hard labor - my daughters are becoming hunchbacked from a life of hardcover books!

Every morning I have the unenviable task of making my girls lunch and then trying to somehow smash the said lunches into their backpacks. Some days I just give up and hand them their lunch. Most likely, those are the only days they eat what still resembles an actual sandwich. On the days when I do manage to cram their lunch sacks into their backpacks, I’m pretty sure the contents have been smashed into some sort of peanut butter and jelly, potato chip, and granola bar paste – yummy!

How bad is it? Well, let’s just say they can’t even fit their backpacks in my car anymore; they have to throw them in the trunk (along with musical instruments, gym clothes and extra shoes). To them, it’s embarrassing enough they have to be driven to school by their old man in his Ford Focus, imagine how they must feel when that Focus is doing a permanent wheelie down the road and throwing sparks off the back bumper!

I suppose the backpack was a good invention. But maybe we’re starting to take advantage of the dual shoulder strap idea. Just because you can cram a lot of stuff into a backpack doesn’t mean that you should. If my girls manage to survive middle school without suffering a herniated disc … or just a plain old hernia, they may be equally suited for a career as a bricklayer, or a competitive weight lifter, as they are for college.

How their backpacks have even managed to stay intact is beyond me. I would have bet my life that a zipper or two would have given out by now. At the very least I figured the shoulder straps would have ripped at the seams. Amazingly, none of this appears to be true. 

Still, despite their strength and diversity, I’m left to ponder how helpful the backpack actually is to mankind. I had one as a camera bag for several years … and I hated it. Sure, it made it easier to haul my camera gear around, but just try and actually get to any of it – nearly impossible.

Overloaded backpacks also have the undesirable visual quality of looking like a diaper in desperate need of changing. Not only that, but backpacks sadly have cut into the natural social order of middle school boys by depriving them the opportunity to carry a girl’s books home from school.

If that’s not reason enough to find an alternative way to haul books, I don’t know what is.

Iowa and the Ghost of Ray

Iowa and the Ghost of Ray - A short story

IOWA

I’ve always been a light sleeper - even when I was a kid. That’s why, as a 6-year-old, the shadowy figure standing in my bedroom doorway at 4 a.m. didn’t frighten me one bit. I knew it was just my dad coming in to say goodbye to my brothers and me before leaving on his yearly pheasant-hunting trip to Iowa.

My brothers were sleeping, but I was wide-awake. Of course I never let my dad in on that little fact when he kissed me goodbye on the forehead. As soon as he left the room I would wait to hear his car pulling out of the driveway and wonder why he left so early. Then I would drift back to sleep and dream of Iowa.

That was nearly 40-years ago. A lot has changed in that time. My dad stopped hunting pheasant a long while back, but the memories of his trips to Iowa remain some of his fondest.

As for me, I’d never been to Iowa in my life. Never had any reason to – at least until last week when I was sent to Iowa City to photograph the Michigan versus Iowa football game.

My original plan was to take the entire family, but apparently the appeal of a 7-hour drive through cornfields wasn’t strong enough to get them on board. So I found myself alone on the morning of October 9th, packing my car full of camera gear, golf clubs and CD’s, before heading west … alone … on the very same route my father had driven childless many times before me.

Ten minutes into my drive it became crystal clear why my old man enjoyed his Iowa trips so much. The lure of the highway and the lack of noise from the backseat are powerful narcotics. With only myself as company, I stopped when I wanted, ate when I was hungry, peed when I had to pee, and sang as loud as I pleased to songs I wanted to hear.

Even though I’ve never been all that close to my father, at that moment I felt a real kinship with him as I plowed westward on I-80 through a driving rain. My fears of falling asleep at the wheel were unfounded. My mind was alive with thought the entire drive. Not even the hypnotic rhythm of the windshield wipers could put me down as I crossed the Mississippi River and entered the state of Iowa for the first time in my life.

“So this is Iowa.”

Iowa came as advertised - basically Ohio, just further west. Maybe a little hillier than I thought, and more trees for sure, but for the most part it was corn and farms - farms and corn. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I like cornfields. Corn is America’s crop - knee-high by the Fourth of July; lush and green by mid-summer; dry and brittle in the fall. I especially like it in October right before they cut it down to nubs.

On a rolling landscape, cornfields become a canvas for both man and nature. Whether they know it or not, farmers weave beautifully intricate patterns of green, yellow, crimson and brown, up and down the land. Pieced together like parts of a quilt, the beauty is there if only you open your eyes and look.

For the last two hours to Cedar Rapids I decided to turn off the music and enjoy the hum of the road mixing in with the fields of soybeans and corn.

This is our country’s homeland. Where things are their most real.

A few weeks ago when I was walking my son to school he asked me what was the most important job in the world. I had to pause and think, but I told him I thought being a farmer and a carpenter were the most important jobs, because if you can grow your own food and build your own shelter, what else do you need?

Now I was in the land of reality - a land of carpenters and farmers. I felt safe - I felt at home, but after 7 bleary-eyed hours on the road I also felt extremely tired as I pulled into Cedar Rapids at dusk. For the first time in a long time, I knew I was going to get a good night’s sleep.

THE GHOST OF RAY

After a quick shower and a bite to eat I turned on the television set in my hotel room to watch the American League playoffs. I didn’t know how long I would last, but watching baseball in Iowa seemed as perfect as the drive.

Iowa, after all, is the home state of hall of fame pitcher Bob Feller - the “Heater from Van Meter” as he came to be known after leaving his dad’s farm as a 17-year-old to pitch for the Cleveland Indians. Iowa also is where they filmed “Field of Dreams” one of the greatest baseball movies of all time, so what better place to watch a ball game than Iowa?

Sleep, as it turns out, won out over baseball by about the fourth inning of the Yankees –Twins game. There would be no light sleeping for me on this night. With the television still on, I was long gone, fast asleep with no chance of a comeback – at least so I thought.

… the ball came from down low, so low the pitcher’s knuckles seemed to scrape the mound as he let fly with his dangerous spitter.

The clock said 2 a.m. as I dragged myself out of bed to go to the bathroom. I turned off the television then stumbled through the dark to try and find the toilet. All the years of getting out of bed in the middle of the night to bring a crying baby to my wife for a feeding had left a permanent mark on my biological clock. Now it was a true rarity if I made it through the night without waking up at least once - sometimes twice.

No matter, it was always better to void my bladder than to try and go back to sleep fully loaded. Sure enough, within five minutes I was out cold once more.

… scuffed on the cover and blackened from mud, the ball sailed high and inside.

“Not again!”

I dragged myself out of bed for the second time. The clock now said 4:15, but that was Iowa time, to my body it was really an hour later.

“Geez, I gotta get a prostate test when I get back to Michigan.” I said to myself, not remembering the enormous amount of pop I drank in the car during my road trip.

My head was throbbing and I had a nasty kink in my neck. Hotel pillows never seem to agree with me, and this hotel wasn’t about to break that streak. I swam around under the sheets for the next 15-minutes trying to get comfortable, or at least find a position that might undo my kinked neck. This time, with my bladder completely empty, I knew I was due for a good, solid, three-hour chunk of uninterrupted sleep.

… it was cloudy and hot that August afternoon. The batter didn’t see the darkened, mud-covered ball coming inside on him. He never moved an inch to get out of the way when the ball exploded into the side of his skull.

Startled awake, I sat up.

“Damn!” I thought I turned off the stupid TV.”

The clock read 6:15 – the TV was off. For the third time I tried to get back to sleep.

… the ball shot back to the mound. The pitcher picked it up and threw to first thinking the ball had hit the bat judging by the loud crack it made. But there was no baserunner - he never left the batter’s box. Instead, he lay there motionless – fresh blood pouring from his ears, nose and mouth, turning the brown dirt of New York’s Polo Grounds into a bright shade of red.

“What the …? Man, I must be dreaming.”

The clock said 6:30. It was still dark outside. From the corner of the room came a soft-spoken voice.

“Go see Ray.”

For some reason I wasn’t startled. I’d had dreams like this before. I relished them - so real they stick with you a while. In the darkness, I could see the outline of an elderly man sitting in the corner.

“Go to the field.” The elderly man whispered. “Go see Ray, tell him Carl sent you.”

“This is crazy, what the hell is this, Field of Dreams part II?” I said.

“Go see Ray.” The man said again. “Tell him I’m sorry.”

… players rushed from the dugout to help the batter to his feet. A few steps later, he collapsed again - this time for good. Fourteen hours after being struck in the head by a high, inside spitball, the batter died in a New York City hospital with his pregnant wife and teammates crying at his bedside.

"Go where?” I asked.

“Tell Ray I’m sorry.” The voice said again. “Tell him I wish it were me.”

The morning light poured in through my hotel room window and finally jostled me awake for good.

“Man, what a strange dream.” I thought to myself as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and went to look out the window.

It was snowing.

"You gotta be kidding me!" I said out loud. "October 10th and it's snowing?"

I had planned on playing golf during the day since the football game wasn’t until 8 o’clock that night. In fact I was excited to add Iowa to my growing list of states where I’d played golf. But those plans now had been swept away by record low temperatures and a very unseasonable snow shower.

With roughly 10-hours to kill, I headed off to breakfast with a state map in hand to try and figure out how I was going to spend most of my day.

“Maybe I should go see Ray.” I laughed to myself as I sat down to eat. “Whoever the hell that is.”

Since my dream seemed so similar to the movie “Field of Dreams” I decided to see how far it was to the site where they actually made the film 20-years ago.

The waiter told me the movie was filmed in a town called Dyersville, and, as luck would have it, Dyersville was only a couple of clicks north of Cedar Rapids – about an hour’s drive away.

It was settled. My plan for the day was to head to Dyersville on a snowy October morning and see the site where Shoeless Joe walked out of the cornfield to play ball with his dead buddies. But before I left, I headed back to my room to check the rest of the day’s weather, grab my camera and do a little research on the site.

The weather report said the snow was expected to end before noon, so that was no problem. I also found out the site was free and open to the public through November – so that was even better.

I knew the story of “Shoeless” Joe Jackson quite well. Cut down in his prime not by tragedy, or injury, but by then baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Jackson, and seven other members of the 1919 Chicago White Sox, were banned from baseball for life by Landis for supposedly fixing their World Series clash with the Cincinnati Reds that year. Shoeless Joe would never play in the majors again. Worse yet, despite having a glove that was dubbed “where triples go to die, and the third highest career batting average ever (.356), Jackson remains an outcast from the Baseball Hall of fame.

These facts I knew - what surprised me was to learn that Jackson and I had the same birthday, July 16th - albeit, 77-years apart.

Halfway to Dyersville I started thinking about the movie and how much fun it must have been to make such a cool flick about such a great game. James Earl Jones was great, Kevin Costner too, and Ray Liotta as “Shoeless” Joe was ….

“Wait a minute … what the hell?” Suddenly it began to dawn on me.

“Ray Liotta?… Shoeless Joe? … the same birthday? …go to the field? – GO SEE RAY!”

“Nah, that’s just nuts.” I said to myself thinking of my dream. “Nothing but coincidence - besides, who was the old guy in the corner?”

Before long I was pulling into Dyersville, a small farm town that seemed like every other farm town I’d driven through on the way there. When Hollywood picked up and left the town 20-years ago, they certainly didn’t leave any Hollywood behind.

The site was three miles out of town, and amazingly, it looked exactly the same as it did in the movie. There was no Hollywood magic here. The field and the house weren’t put in by special effects, the cornfields weren’t props - everything was exactly the same.

The place was open, but I had it all to myself. As I strolled out onto the field, I realized that not only did the field look the same as it did in the movie, the dimensions of the diamond actually were correct as well.

The pitching mound was truly 60-feet from home plate, the bases were 90-feet apart, and it was roughly 300 feet down the line to the cornfields in left and right - 400 or so to dead center. Instead of golf clubs, I wish I had brought with me a bat, ball and glove – even though it was only a shade above freezing.

Despite the raw temperatures and the biting wind, like all ball diamonds, it had a calming effect on me. The rustling corn stalks in the outfield, though, seemed a bit scary.

“Go see Ray.” I chuckled nervously to myself. “Well, I’m here Ray, now what?”

… she couldn’t take the grief any longer. She pulled the plug on the poison, drank it down, and then slowly drifted off to death while her daughter slept in the next room.

“What was that?”

Without knowing why, I walked toward the corn in centerfield. I had heard something - probably the wind - but if Ray was there and I was supposed to find him, the cornfield seemed as logical a place as any to start looking.

It had been a long time since I’d been in a cornfield - about as long as I could remember. But there I was, walking into the same place “Shoeless” Joe had walked out of 20-years earlier with the cameras rolling.

About 20-feet in was all I could muster. I didn’t want to chance “crossing over” into some other dimension. My wife and kids expected me to return from Iowa, not disappear in a cornfield with a bunch of dead ballplayers.

The wind was howling, but inside the cover of the cornrows it was calm – and warmer.

“Ray, are you here?” I whispered half serious. “Carl says he’s sorry.”

… the girl’s fever wouldn’t break. The measles were taking their toll. Within days she would join her mother and father in death.

Behind me the wind picked up and sent a chilly blast of stale air rustling through the corn. I turned around only to be smacked in the face by the sharp, serrated edge of a cornstalk leaf. It hit me so hard it knocked my glasses off my face.

Immediately, my eyes began to water in the cold wind as I struggled to find my lost spectacles. Through my watery-eyed, blurred vision I tried to spot them on the ground, but couldn’t.

“Crap, where did my glasses go?”

Careful not to step anywhere lest I crush my only eyewear, I bent down and gently swept the ground with my hands. They were nowhere to be found.

Thinking they may have fallen into the open neck of my coat, I slowly stood up and began to pat myself down when another gust of cold, stale air rushed down between the cornrows like a freight train. The wind gust hit me full on and nearly knocked me off my feet.

Staggering to maintain my balance, I saw something move just above my head. I squinted hard enough to make out what looked like a young man wearing a ball cap emblazoned with the letter C. The figure drifted in and out of focus as my eyes watered even more from the cold wind.

Normally I would have been scared out of my wits, but for some reason I wasn’t frightened

“Ray? … Is that you?” I asked.

The wind died down and my eyes stopped watering long enough for me to get a clearer look. Nothing was there – just me, and a bunch of dead corn.

I continued to search my body for my glasses and was relieved to find them awkwardly snagged on my coat pocket. At the very least I knew I could now safely drive my car back to Cedar Rapids.

I’d had about enough of my adventure in the corn so I put on my glasses and turned to leave, but as I spun around I noticed there were cleat marks in the soil behind me – very distinctive cleat marks. Cleat marks only made from baseball spikes.

“That’s crazy.” I thought to myself. “Who would actually wear their baseball spikes out here?”

Oddly, the cleat marks went in only one direction - toward the ball field. But the marks stopped at the last row of corn, three or four feet shy of the outfield grass - they never crossed over into the field of play.

I turned behind me to see how far back I could trace the cleat marks, but they were gone. I looked down at my feet where the last set of cleat marks had stopped ... they were gone too!

Now I was frightened.

“Ray? Is that you?”

It was dead calm.

“Okay, that’s it. I’m outta here.”

I wheeled around one last time to head for my car and leave the Field of Dreams for good, but I couldn’t move - something made me stay.

There were no more voices. I saw no more visions. But I stayed nonetheless.

I stayed and I sat in brittle rows of centerfield corn on a cold October day in Dyersville, Iowa. I stayed and I watched as light snow began to fall upon both the corn and me as I tried to figure out what I was supposed to do.

Then, just as simple as that, it all came together. For one brief moment the dials in my brain all fell in line and it became crystal clear.

“Ray? … Carl? … Tell him I’m sorry? … Ray isn’t Ray Liotta!" I exclaimed. "It’s Ray Chapman!… and Carl is ... Carl Mays!”

Ray Chapman was the Cleveland Indians shortstop that was killed when he got hit in the temple by a pitched ball in 1920 ... a ball pitched by Carl Mays!

The C on the hat - the cleat marks stopping before they got to the field – “Go see Ray.” Ray was here - here in the cornfield. Ray was the one who was supposed to keep playing on the Field of Dreams - not “Shoeless” Joe Jackson.

Jackson got to play a whole other season before he was banned from the game, and even then he supposedly played minor league ball undercover. But Chapman was cut down in his prime - killed by a wild pitch at the age of 29 - he never got the chance to play again.

Ray Chapman and “Shoeless” Joe Jackson were teammates on the Indians for three years before Jackson was traded to the White Sox. The film got the wrong player - they should have picked Ray!

“RAY.” I called out.

“RAY CHAPMAN ... go play ball Ray - Carl says he’s sorry.”

Again, it was dead calm.

The brief snow shower had passed, but I was getting pretty cold, and this time I really did get up and decide to leave. I walked out from the cornrows and headed toward the infield, never looking back even though I could hear cornstalks rustling in the wind behind me.

“Go and play Ray.” I whispered under my breath.

“Go and play.”

... I rolled over. The clock said 7:15.

Note: Ray Chapman remains the only professional baseball player ever killed on the field. The spitball thrown by New York Yankee pitcher Carl Mays put a three-and-a-half inch depression into Chapman’s skull. Chapman’s wife Kathleen, who was pregnant with their unborn daughter at the time of his death, committed suicide by drinking poison six-years later. Their daughter also would tragically die from the measles a year after her mother's death.

Mays, who was never well liked in the majors before he killed Chapman with his fateful pitch, was hated by many afterwords – especially by Ty Cobb, who handed Mays this note after Chapman’s death ...“If it was within my power‚ I would have inscribed on Ray Chapman’s tombstone these words: ‘Here lies a victim of arrogance‚ viciousness, and greed.' "

Had Chapman lived, many felt he would have been a sure bet for the Hall of Fame. Ironically, his replacement, Joe Sewell, lived to be 90 and was enshrined in the Hall of Fame.

As for Mays, he went on to pitch many more successful seasons after Chapman’s death. He died in 1971 at the age of 79 never fully able to live down that horrific August day in 1920 calling it “the most regrettable incident of my baseball career …I would give anything if I could undo what happened.”

Despite having more than 200 career victories and a lifetime earned run average of 2.92, Mays has been left out of the Hall of Fame, most feel because of the pitch that killed Ray Chapman.

Following Chapman's death, league rules mandated that baseballs could no longer be used in game play if they became scuffed or muddied, but wearing batting helmets (which would have saved Chapman’s life) didn’t become mandatory until 1971 - the same year Mays died.

Falling

(photo by Lon Horwedel)

“Whoa – what just happened?” Red said to himself as he regained his bearings.

He tried to look around, tried to move, but he couldn’t budge an inch. All he could do was stare straight ahead. Suddenly, to his horror, Red saw the rest of his family high above him slowly coming into focus.

“No, this can’t be.” He cried.

But it was true. Red was on the ground.

He’d heard this might happen. Rumors had recently grown from whispers to shouts amongst his brethren in the branches. They said their new color was a sign the end was near. But Red didn’t believe it - he couldn’t believe it.

“How could this be the end?” He scoffed at his friends, admiring his bright, new crimson coat.

He ignored all the talk - dismissed it as gossip.

The tales of aunts and uncles being shredded to bits by lawn mowers; the fables of grandparents being incinerated in roadside ditches; the horror stories of cousins being pressed between book pages or turned into compost – all so unbelievable.

But here he was, sitting in the blanket of green grass he’d only ever seen from on high before this moment. Cool and wet and nowhere near as comfortable as it looked, the pointy tips of the grass blades pricked at Red’s undersides. If not for the round, soft leaves of clover, it would have been no better than resting on a bed of nails.

Up to that point, Red never paid much attention to the grass. It had always been “down there” he had always been “up here.” He was better than grass. Smarter ... loftier ... safer! He never dreamed in a million years they would ever meet.

Oh sure, every now and then Red would peer down at the emerald carpet covering the roots of his home. He even felt genuinely bad when the man with the noisy mower would come by and hack up any dissenters bold enough to reach for the sky. The slaughter was unfounded; the screaming unbearable, but the stupid grass never learned its lesson, it just kept growing and reaching before being cut to pieces.

Somehow, most of the grass survived the weekly carnage. Red even noticed that he and the grass had become the exact same color by the end of May.

But not anymore.

The bloodroot color of Red’s skin now stood out against the lush, green grass with screaming severity. He was alone now, easy to spot – defenseless. If the man with the mower came by now, it would be light's out for Red.

Somehow he had to find a way back to his branch. How he wound up on the ground in the first place was confusing enough, so getting back to the tree was going to be tricky.

Falling was scary. Red didn’t even remember letting go as he spun in circles on the way down. He wasn’t quite sure how his stem just “broke free” from the branch. In fact, he’d been careful to always hang on extra tight after a summer thunderstorm sent several of his friends to their untimely deaths.

Red had been feeling a little weak lately, but he chalked that up to a cold. He attributed his change in skin color to maturity. It was true he was no longer a young bud, but Red was far from dry and brittle.

When Red finally hit the ground the landing was soft and painless. But now the grass was making him itch, worse yet, it began to snicker at his fate.

“You think you’re so great.” Grass said. “You think you’re so smart. Well look at you now Mr. Bigshot. How does it feel to be down here on the ground with all of us lowlifes, huh?

Red was scared; the grass had him hooked in its grasp and wouldn’t let go.

“The rakes will be out soon.” Grass said. “That's if you’re lucky enough not to be mown to bits first!”

“Why won’t you let me go?” Red begged. “What have I ever done to you?”

“You – you and your condescending friends," Grass snarled, "you all think you’re so great – so pretty. Well how do you like it now?

“Please, this is some kind of mistake, you don’t understand.” Red pleaded.

“Oh, I understand perfectly.” Grass replied. “You spend all your time up there safe in the sky while I get stomped on by kids all day, sprayed with chemicals every week, infested with worms, dug up by squirrels and pissed on by dogs! The only thing you have to worry about is the occasional caterpillar. What’s not to understand?"

Red started to cry.

“Quit your whimpering!” Grass demanded. “This will be over for both of us soon enough.”

“What do you mean, both of us?” Red asked.

“We’re doomed maple boy!" Grass said. “It’s October pal, you and me are on our way out.”

“On our way out where?” Red asked.

Grass started to laugh.

“We’re dying Red!” Grass answered. “Well … you’re dying, I’m just dormant.”

“That can’t be.” Red insisted. “I’m only five-months old.”

“How long did you think you were gonna last, big shot? Grass asked. “Did you think you were immortal? Did you think you were an evergreen? Read my lips Red – you are DECIDUOUS!"

“It can’t be true – you’re lying.” Red said.

“Am I? Grass responded. “Look at your skin pal, it’s already starting to shrivel and curl. You got a week if you’re lucky, maybe two if it’s cold. You fell early Red, you weren’t supposed to be here for another couple of weeks and now you’re already starting to decompose.”

“Stop it!” Red screamed at the grass. “Just shut up – you’re wrong. Do you hear me? Wrong!!!”

“You believe what you want to believe ol’ buddy," Grass said, continuing to laugh, "but if I were you, I’d pray they mow us down before the snow flies."

Then Grass stopped laughing and pulled Red closer to the ground.

"Don't worry Red." Grass whispered. "It’s a mulching mower, got blades sharp as razors - you won’t feel a thing.”

Red tried not to listen, tried not to look. He closed his eyes and dreamed of spring. The air was cool on his surface, but the sky was gray and still.

There was no breeze to free him, no way to get back home, so Red did the only thing he could do...

He lay on the grass and prayed the mower woudn't come.

While you were sleeping

Superior Twp. firefighters stand guard over the charred remains of the Thompson block warehouse in Ypsilanti's Depot Town, Wednesday morning. (photo by Lon Horwedel)

While you were sleeping a whole other world came to life...

While you were sleeping the owl outside your window turned into a vicious killer. The homeless man on the corner slept outside on a bench in relative warmth … if only for a few more days.

While you were sleeping your local hospital delivered three newborn babies … and pronounced four patients dead.

While you were sleeping drool ran out of your mouth onto your pillow, a huge house spider crawled across your face and four millipedes mated on your kitchen floor.

While you were sleeping your motion-detecting front porch light was set off six times by a family of raccoons, then skunks, as they made their nightly rounds from house to house.

While you were sleeping a fire destroyed a historic building in Ypsilanti’s Depot Town, a Japanese teenager got ready for school, a rotted-out tree fell in the forest.

While you were sleeping you soaked your sheets with sweat, had four dreams you won’t remember, rolled over 14 times in bed - and stopped breathing twice.

While you were sleeping the dew fell, another wrinkle began to form on your face, your arm fell asleep, you passed gas without knowing it, a possum got hit by a truck.

While you were sleeping your neighbor beat up his pregnant wife, two cats fought in your backyard, a drunk driver slammed into a telephone pole and your power was out for 15 minutes.

While you were sleeping your eyes were rapidly moving, your foot was twitching, you snored without knowing it and you involuntarily scratched your knee.

While you were sleeping, the moon arced across the sky, the temperature dropped 15 degrees, your bladder slowly filled.

While you were sleeping your TV was still on, you got up to empty your bladder, you turned off the TV.

While you were sleeping, earthworms were hard at work, your fingernails grew, you scratched your other knee.

While you were sleeping two teenagers were making out, an old barn collapsed in Wisconsin, somebody famous started losing their fame, the latest trend began forming in someone's head.

While you were sleeping all these things were going on as you chiseled away a third of your life – the best third.

Go back to bed.

National Pastime: Batman

Ron Reed, Milan, hits baseballs at Elbel Field in Ann Arbor earlier this month. (photo by Lon Horwedel)

The following is the final installment of a two-part series on our national pastime. The first part, "Arms Race" dealt with my decision to coach my son's Little League team. This story "Batman" is about Ron Reed, a 61-year-old Milan man who enjoys nothing more than hitting baseball after baseball in an empty park.

There was nothing special about last Thursday as I drove down Hoover Street in Ann Arbor. Just another summer day like any other.

Sunny, fairly warm, puffy white clouds dotting the sky. A good day to get lost in a daydream, which was exactly what I was doing when it was interrupted by a loud CRACK!

I’d heard that sound a million times before. It was the unmistakable sound of a baseball being hit hard with a bat, and not just any bat- a wooden bat.

Soon after, another loud CRACK filled the summer air, then another … and another. I spun my car around and drove toward the source of the sound, which turned out to be nearby Elbel Field.

There in the field, well off in the distance, a solitary older gentleman was tossing baseballs in the air and whacking them across the field, one after another - CRACK! … CRACK! …CRACK!

I’d heard tell from some of my baseball friends about an older fellow roaming around local ballparks, smacking balls into the distance for no apparent reason. They said he was strong as an ox with forearms bigger than Popeye’s, toting a bag of baseballs on his hip and a wooden bat on his shoulder. Apparently his goal was to pick out a target several hundred feet away and proceed to pepper it with perfectly hit baseballs.

Up to that moment I thought he was just an urban legend, but it had to be him. Who else could it be?

Even from a distance I could tell he was older, and he sure enough had a bag of baseballs hanging from his hip. I couldn’t really tell if he was aiming at anything in particular, but he most definitely was making solid contact with each and every ball he tossed into the air and smacked into the field.

Quickly, I parked my car on the street and set off toward the middle of the field. Needless to say, the older fellow was surprised to find a guy with a camera walking toward him.

I arrived at his small grouping of well-placed baseballs sitting in the middle of the field before he did, so I reached down and scooped up a few. When he got closer, he put up his hand and signaled to me. I tossed him a ball which he effortlessly caught and deposited into the bag on his hip.

“I’ve heard about you.” I said. “You’re the old guy my friends have told me about - the guy who loves to hit baseballs.”

The old man smiled and held out his hand.

“Ron Reed.” He said, introducing himself.

“Hi Ron, nice to finally meet you.” I replied.

I shook Ron’s hand and immediately wished I hadn’t. My hands aren’t small, but Ron’s large, powerful, meat hook swallowed my hand whole, grinding my knuckles into powder with his bone-crushing handshake.

“You’ve got a pretty strong grip there, Ron.”  I said, freeing my pulverized paw, then rubbing it to try and bring it back to life.

Ron held out his hands and began to examine them. The top of his hands were raw and cracked, the undersides were a mountain range of thick calluses.

“I do have strong hands,” Ron said. “you wanna know why?”

Before I could guess, Ron gave me the answer.

"It’s from being a tradesman for 32-years – that, plus I hit 500-600 baseballs a day.”

“That's a lot of baseballs." I said.  

For the next five minutes Ron, a 61-year-old from Milan, went on to tell me how God had blessed him with a very special skill and that very special skill was his ability to hit a baseball with both power and precision.

His voice became excited as he talked about his hitting prowess.

“I still got a lot of major league skills.” Ron proclaimed. “I can really thread a needle, in fact, God has blessed me so much I can stand right here and drive a ball up into that light post.”

Squinting in the sun, I looked up to the light post some 300-feet away and nodded politely, but I was somewhat skeptical.

“That’s pretty intense, isn’t it?” Ron said.

Again, I nodded.

Then he promised to put on a show for me.

“Let me warm up, then we’ll have good time.” He said.

After scooping up the remainder of his baseballs, we walked over to the far side of the field where Ron had a blanket laid out in the grass. On the blanket were five brand-new Louisville Slugger baseball bats, a Rawlings glove and an equipment bag.

It was a strange site to say the least. The bats were fanned out in a perfect pattern on the blanket as if they were sunning themselves - much like the co-eds not far from where we were standing.

All the bats were long and skinny – they were, in fact, fungo bats. The type of bat a coach uses to hit fly balls to outfielders during practice. The five bats sunning themselves on the blanket looked as if they’d never been hit. The same couldn’t be said for the bat in Ron’s meaty hands.

“Look-ee there,” Ron said, pointing to the barrel of the bat, “I’ve hit the sweet spot so many times the bat is starting to splinter.”

He was right, the barrel of the bat looked pretty shoddy - as did the handle. It was rubbed raw, right down to unstained wood from his powerful grip. Even when he was talking, Ron would grip, then re-grip the bat, grinding the handle in his powerful hands with nervous energy. I half expected sawdust to fall from his palms when he finally let loose.

After stretching a bit, Ron decided he would hit some balls from the edge of the outfield grass at Elbel’s softball field. To start, he picked out a target nearly 290 feet away – a trash can sitting against the fence separating Elbel Field from a set of railroad tracks.

“I’m gonna put this one in that trash can.” He said.

Ron reached into his bag and pulled out a brand new baseball. He put the tattered bat on his shoulder and took a deep breath before tossing the ball high in the air. As the ball reached its apex, Ron locked his focus on the ball, squatted down a bit with his muscular legs, then began his ferocious attack on the ball.

His left leg strode forward, planting firmly in the grass as he spun his hips toward the target. His shoulders began pulling the bat into position before his thick forearms took over. Before long, the lag created by the quick, unfurling of his body, snapped the bat through the impact zone like the cracking of a whip; his powerful wrists and hands delivering the 36” long Louisville Slugger onto the ball with a thunderous smack.

The ball soared high into the background of the beautiful blue sky. Ron paused as the ball kept climbing. At first he looked concerned, then he began to smile.

“That one’s a good one.” He said.

The ball started well left of his target, but soon it began slicing back a bit, and before long it was heading right for the trash can.

“I took a little off of that one to control its flight.” Ron said.

Seconds later the ball crashed into the outside wall of the trash can.

“Ohhhh!” Ron screamed. “I just missed it.”

“What do you mean, you hit the can.” I said.

“Yeah, but I wanted to put the ball in the can.” He answered.

As Ron began picking out other targets in the distance, he told me how he’d discovered his knack for hitting balls at specific targets at a young age.

“When I was 13 me and my brother Bob had just finished a Little League game and we decided to stay and play a little longer.” Ron said. “The field was by a dirt road and this old car went by and I said ‘Bob, I’m gonna hit that car right in the side’ – you know, it was all wrecked and everything – and I tossed it up and hit it … BINGO!”

Ron chuckled while recalling the story.

“Well, my brother says to me, ‘You got lucky.’ And I said, ‘No, I tried to hit it.’ So a dump truck goes by and I tell Bob I’m gonna put one right in the box of the dump truck. And I did! I mean it went right inside the box. Ain’t that cool?”

After smacking a half dozen more balls into the stratosphere, Ron and I walked out to retrieve them once more.

On the way back to the infield he showed me how he initialed all of his baseballs with the name of Jesus before putting them into play. He told me how much better he would be hitting if he had on his baseball cleats (he’s wearing running shoes) and was using his favorite bat (a bat he’s dubbed “Silent Thunder”).

Still, for the next 20-minutes Ron hit balls off the cross bars of Elbel’s soccer goals, smacked line drives between the fence and a row of light posts, and rolled balls to a stop on his blanket. It was a true hitting display - cleats or no cleats.

I asked Ron what all of this meant. He is, after all, a 61-year-old man. What was the purpose of hitting 500-600 baseballs a day?

“I’m an athlete – I’m trying to stay sharp.” Ron said.

“My aim is to travel the country putting on hitting exhibitions.” He continued. “It’s all part of what I like to call the magic of baseball.”

Magic or not, I was sold, but it was time for me to go. I said goodbye to Ron, careful not to shake his hand again, I patted him on the back instead.

I then turned and headed for my car on the street, leaving Elbel Field behind me in much the same way I had arrived - with the joyous, unmistakable sound of a wooden baseball bat smashing a cowhide sphere high and far into the air.

CRACK! 

National Pastime: Arms Race

(photo by Lon Horwedel)

The following is the first of a two-week series of essays about the game of baseball. This week’s essay “Arms Race” deals with my decision to coach my son’s Little League baseball team. Next week’s essay “Bat Man” is a story about Ron Reed, a 61-year-old Milan man who whose love of hitting baseballs takes on epic proportions.

Arms Race

Not to brag, but I was a pretty good athlete as a kid - maybe even a standout as 10-year-olds go.

I picked up sports quickly and easily - then mastered them almost as fast. In Little League I tossed four no-hitters, batted over .600, and played third base like a vaccum cleaner – nothing got by me. I was so good there was never a doubt in my mind I would become a professional ballplayer when I grew up.

My control on the mound was uncanny for a kid. I beaned only two batters my entire career and rarely walked a hitter unless it was intentional. I threw plenty hard too, chucking 45 to 50 mph fastballs as 10-year-old and 65 mph heaters by the time I was 13.

And then it was over.

By the time I was 15, I had peaked. My fastball never got any faster and my uncanny control had backfired on me. With little fear and faster bats, kids now were smacking my pitches all over the park knowing I would always throw strikes.

It was embarrassing. My no-hitters had turned into “no-outers.” I was lucky if I lasted three innings before my opponents put up a 10-spot on me. My dreams of a major league career were dashed, but my love of the game never waned.

As a fan, I faithfully suffered through losing season after losing season of Cleveland Indians baseball while they consistently gave up 10-spots to their opponents in a manner which I was all too familiar. As a player, I had a resurgence of sorts playing co-ed softball in college, but it wasn’t the same. Nothing against softball, but it’s just not baseball. So after college I put the glove in the closet and went on with my life.

And that’s the way it remained for nearly 20-years. Sure, there was the magical run of the Cleveland Indians in the mid-90’s where they sold out 425 straight home games and went to two World Series (of course they lost them both). But as for me actually playing? I didn’t so much as even play catch.

That all changed when I was lucky enough to get married and have three kids whom inherited their father’s love for baseball. Truth be told, they weren’t much good to me at first. Their throwing was terrible and they couldn’t catch worth a squat. Not to mention our games often had to be put on hold so I could change their diapers. Still, I tried and tried and they seemed to enjoy watching their old man chase after their errant tosses.

It was frustrating, but it was an important lesson for me - I just didn’t know it at the time. My kids were teaching me patience; something I desperately needed – and fast!

Patience, it turns out, is exactly what you need as you watch your once-awful kids slowly turn into pretty good ballplayers in the span of only a few years and a few thousand backyard tosses. And not only did they improve, but I had the nice side effect of getting my throwing arm back in shape as well.

In fact, my youngest son got so good I decided it was time to take my love of baseball one step further and take on the task of coaching his 10-and-under travel baseball team for next season.

This meant I needed to host an open tryout to find the best 10-year-old ball players in Ann Arbor. To get the word out, I contacted every Rec & Ed baseball coach telling them to send me their best players. To try and reach even more kids, I also put an ad in the local paper. I didn’t know what to expect, but I assumed we would have about 25-30 kids show up for the tryout.

Earlier that week I attended a different tryout to see how their coaches ran things. I noticed they used a pitching machine when the kids took batting practice. This was okay, I guess, except every kid knew exactly what to expect after two pitches. At that point, I decided I would throw live pitching at my tryout to see how well the players would adjust to different pitch locations. Besides, I didn’t own a pitching machine.

Two days later, tryout day arrived. My son and I got there a half hour early to warm up. I threw him batting practice for roughly 20-minutes to ease his nerves … and mine. I had no idea what to expect, but it wasn’t much longer before car after car began pulling up and dropping off 10-year-old kids in all shapes and sizes toting gloves and bats.

Within 15 minutes, more than 40 kids had descended upon the park, all looking for a spot on the team. For the first hour I had the kids run the bases, field grounders and shag fly balls. Then it was time to see what they could do with the bat. To be fair, I told every kid I would give him 7-10 pitches figuring that would be enough to see if they could actually hit.

My son, who’d already done plenty of hitting, volunteered to put on his catcher’s gear and sidle in behind home plate to help out his old man on the mound.

“Better give me a few warm ups so I don’t drill anybody.” I joked to the waiting batters.

They laughed nervously.

I reached down and grabbed a brand-new Rawlings baseball out of a 5-gallon bucket sitting near the mound. The ball felt good in my hand. Its seams fit perfectly under the fingertips of my middle and index fingers; slightly raised from the otherwise smooth surface of the ball, they gave me just the right amount of friction for a perfect grip – not too loose, not too tight. It’s hard to describe the perfect feeling of perfect-sized object, like a baseball, and how it relates to the human hand. I just knew that it felt, well … perfect.

As I stared in at my pint-sized son crouched behind the plate, I realized the last time I pitched worth a darn was against kids this age. Only now I was twice their size, so I had to remind myself I was here to see how well these kids could hit, not how many I could strike out. But just for fun, I poured one in at full speed (still only 65 mph) on my last warm-up pitch leaving a nice, loud SMACK into the pocket of my son’s catcher’s mitt. 

The batter’s eyes widened at the sight and sound of my last offering.

“Okay, I’m ready." I announced. 

Then I shouted, "BATTER UP!” 

The first batter nervously approached the batter's box and stepped in ... sort of.

“Son, you might want to scooch a little closer to the plate.” I said. 

Slowly, he inched his feet to the outside edge of the box.

“Don’t worry," I said reassuringly,  "I’m not going to hit you ... I promise.” 

After he actually got in the box, I peered in at the plate, 46-feet away, and started my windup. My motion was as fluid as ever. Nothing had changed in my 33-years away from the mound except my size. My mechanics had remained the same. The first pitch slid effortlessly off my fingertips and soared across the middle of the plate. It was only a 45 mph fastball, but it was a beauty. The poor kid never swung the bat.

“STEEE-RIKE ONE!” I yelled. “Remember, you only get three and your out.”

Three more beauties followed, but soon the kid in the batter’s box, as well as the hordes of kids on deck, slowly began to realize that not only would the full-grown man on the mound not kill them, he was, in fact, giving them nothing but flat, right-across-the-middle-of-the-plate, 45mph fastballs.

By my fifth pitch the kid foul-tipped one to the backstop. By the sixth, he fouled one down the first base line. On my seventh pitch, he cracked a single right back up the box.

“All right, that’s more like it.” I said.

With that one single, the confidence of every batter waiting on deck grew by leaps and bounds.

“Next!” I yelled.

Batter number two came out swinging. A big kid and a good hitter, he jumped on my first pitch and drilled it deep to left field. The sight of the ball sailing over the left fielder's head sparked a bad memory of my last year in Little League when kids were spanking my pitches all over the park. A little perturbed at the thought, I dug my foot a little deeper into the loose dirt on the mound and reached for the next ball.

“Okay kid,” I said under my breath, “let’s see you hit this.”

Inside my glove I gripped the ball with nothing but my fingernails, then I proceeded to float a beauty of a knuckleball toward the plate. It was like watching a butterfly as it flittered and darted this way and that on its 35 mph journey to my son’s glove.

I couldn't help but watch in admiration as my pitch approached its destination. The ball hadn’t spun at all - not even once. It was so without rotation, you could read the Rawlings on the ball’s cover as it floated through space between the mound and the plate.

Suddenly, my admiration was shattered by the sharp, stinging sound of a metal bat crushing a cowhide baseball into the stratosphere. The kid hit the ball so high and so far I think it burned up on reentry. 

“Throw that pitch again coach,” the kid yelled back at me, pounding his bat on the plate, “I liked that one.”

“Damn!" I said to myself. "This little bastard is making me look like a fool." 

Three more 45 mph fastballs were followed by three more blasts to left field.

“Next!” I yelled, as sweat began dripping from my brow.

Now the kids were licking their chops to get into the box and take their cuts. There was no doubt I still had my uncanny control, but I wasn’t any better than a pitching machine at this point. The kids were far from afraid - they were eager.

For a second, I thought about using my uncanny control to dust off a kid or two. The problem was most of the parents had stayed to watch the tryout and throwing a little “chin music” to their sons probably wouldn't sit too well. I thought about speeding up the pitches, but that didn’t seem like such a good idea either. I was, after all, trying to throw at roughly the same speed they would see from the average 10-year-old.

Instead, I decided to start working the ball in and out a little, then up and down - all the while throwing strikes. Then I started to mix up the speeds while still tossing the occasional knuckleball. It was a good plan and I soon realized that even though the kids could hit me, they still had problems when I moved my pitches around the strike zone. I was getting what I wanted – a good sense of who had good bat control, but not so good that I looked like a fool.

I had become a Little League Greg Maddux.

For an hour this went on. Batter after batter strolled to the plate getting 7-10 of my best pitches. Thinking we were near the end, I asked the kids who hadn’t hit yet to raise their hands - at least ten kids thrust their hands skyward.

“Holy crap, ten more.” I thought to myself.

The sun was getting low in the sky and we already were a half hour past the time I told parents we’d be done. But it wouldn’t be fair to cut it short and deprive a kid a chance to bat. Luckily, the parents seemed to understand this, so on we went.

For the next 20-minutes, it was more of the same.

Throw - hit.

Throw – miss.

Throw – hit.

Throw - miss.

Finally, as darkness began to fall, the last batter took his last cut and the tryout officially ended.

There was plenty of data to pore over after the three-hour tryout. Who could catch, who could throw, who could hit. But all that could wait. I was starving; and so was my son who’d spent the better part of the last hour crouched behind home plate being his old man’s battery mate.

“You okay buddy?” I asked as we gathered up our gear. “You did a lot of catching back there.”

“I’m fine dad.” He said. “How are you?”

“I’m fine.” I said surprised. “Why?”

“Well, you threw a lot of pitches dad, how’s your arm?” He asked.

“I didn't throw that many,” I said, “only 7-10 per batter.”

“Yeah, but dad, there were 40 batters.” He replied.

“Forty batters, hmmm, you’re right, so that’s like what?” 

 "That's like 350 pitches dad.” My son chimed in.

 “Holy crap! You’re right." I said. "I threw over 300 pitches!”

I checked the condition of my arm by swinging it back and forth and stretching it up over my head. It didn’t seem to hurt at all. In fact, it felt pretty good. Granted, most of my pitches were barely over 40 mph and I was only throwing from 46-feet away, but still, 350 pitches!

“Hmmm, my arm doesn’t hurt at all.” I told my son. "Not even the least bit sore."

“Good,” he said, “wanna play catch?”