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First Sentences

“Jean McConville was thirty-eight when she disappeared, and she had spent nearly half her life either pregnant or recovering from childbirth.” Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.

“I didn’t believe them. They had said that it was going to be easy and, like the fool I am, I believed them.” Craig Johnson, Kindness Goes Unpunished.

“Two Pennsylvania State Police troopers sat inside an unmarked car waiting for the go-ahead to do something they had never done before, arrest a Catholic priest for lying to a grand jury.” Matt Birkbeck, Quiet Don: The Untold Story of Mafia Kingpin Russell Bufalino.

“Name almost any job: dental hygienist, rodeo clown, dog walker, mall Santa, chicken-sexer—they all demand some kind of definable skill set. The one exception is a member of Congress.” Bill Maher, What This Comedian Said Will Shock You.

“In the basement of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, below the Arms and Armor wing and outside the guards’ Dispatch Office, there are stacks of empty art crates.” Patrick Bringley, All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me.

“In 1560, fifteen-year-old Lucrezia di Cosimo de’ Medici left Florence to begin her married life with Alfonso II d’Este, Duke of Ferrara.” Margaret O’Farrell, The Marriage Portrait.

“As dawn broke over New York City on Friday morning, April 6, 1917, newsboys hawked the city’s paper from street corners up and down Manhattan.” Christopher C. Gorham, The Confidante: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Helped Win WWII and Shape Modern America.

“I approached Texas Monthly’s cover story on ‘The Top 50 BBQ Joints in Texas’ this summer the way a regular of People might approach that magazine’s annual ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ feature—with the expectation of seeing some familiar names.” Calvin Trillin, Trillin on Texas.

“With the world’s sea level rising fast, the assumption that land is the only thing that can’t fly away, or the only thing that lasts, is for the first time now shown to be demonstrably false.” Simon Winchester, Land: How the Hunger for Ownership Shaped the Modern World.

“Her majesty disliked what she considered to be overheated homes.” Tim Mason, The Darwin Affair.

“In the spring of 1994, I first traveled though China’s Xinjiang Province, a region inhabited by 11 million Turkic Uighur Muslims who, as learned from interview after interview, were even then trapped in a grip of surveillance and brutal repression by the Chinese authorities.” Robert D. Kaplan, The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy from the Mediterranean to China.

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Snippets

A Methodist church near my Pennsylvania cottage is having one of its regular spaghetti dinners. I have never gone. I have assumed that in this tiny Poconos town, the meal will consist of overboiled pasta covered in Hunt’s tomato sauce with chopped-up cocktail franks and topped with “parmesan” from a reclosable bag. I don’t imagine that rural Methodists do anything like the Sunday gravy of my Italian friends. I could be wrong; the good ladies of the greater community often come up with some sumptuous spreads after local events that I have attended.

The New York Times anointed The Bee Sting by Paul Murray as one of the best novels of 2023. Perhaps that is why I pulled it from the library shelves despite its heft. I noted the blurb on the back from Gary Shteyngart, who said the book was a “hilarious whirlwind.” Shteyngart, a writer whom I admire, has written stuff that made me laugh out loud. The Bee Sting, on the other hand, is the saga of an Irish family that falls into economic distress from the recession of 2008. It may be a remarkable book, but hilarity is not one of the attributes I would ascribe to it. I read its almost 650 pages with but a slight smile on occasion and certainly without a laugh.

Perhaps I just don’t understand hilarity. After all, The Bear, the FX show that I watch streaming on Hulu, is frequently listed as a comedy. I don’t get that. On occasion I smile during it, but more often I feel tension as I watch. The Bear is marvelous, but it is not a comedy.

A friend referred to a couple who had “been married for forty fucking years.” I thought that they may have been husband and wife for four decades, but I doubted that they were married for forty fucking years.

JD Vance has said that if he had been Vice-President on January 6, 2020, he would not have certified the results of the electoral college. For your discussion group: Under what circumstances should Vice President Kamala Harris refuse to certify election results in January 2024?

An astute observer said: “A conservative is one who wants the rules enforced so no one can take his pile the way he got it.”

We learned this year that Presidents have absolute immunity for some official presidential acts and presumptive immunity for the rest. For your discussion group: If you were Biden, what acts would you be emboldened to take because of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision?

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Snippets

Isn’t this the best time of the year? I mean, after all, it is Fat Bear Week.

I have sometimes asked them for directions, most often to the restroom. And I have wondered about how wearying it must be for a museum guard to stand for hour after hour. But now, after reading All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me by Patrick Bringley, who was a guard at the Met for ten years, I will see them differently. The book is an outstanding meditation on grief and art and life.

Rob Bresnahan, a candidate for Congress running in northeast Pennsylvania, has ads indicating that he will make the border secure. I wondered how a first-time Representative would do that and went to his website. Under “Issues,” he has a border section, which states in its entirety: “We must secure the border, build the wall, and reverse the Biden/Harris failed policies to stop the flow of illegal drugs and criminals into our communities.” Under “Economy,” however, Rob plans “to stop reckless spending . . . and cut taxes.” I guess in his view a border wall is not “reckless spending,” but he does not explain how he would pay for the construction. Estimates vary widely, but ones I have seen say the wall would cost from $20 billion to $70 billion to construct with hundreds of millions annually to maintain it. But, according to the politician, we can have the wall and lower taxes.

Some people mistake having an opinion for having a sensible idea.

New York City government is awash in scandals. The mayor has been indicted. Many high-level officials have been served with subpoenas, had their homes and offices searched, and their electronic devices seized. Several officials have resigned. I have not followed this closely, but one factoid caught my eye. The twin brother of the police commissioner (who has now left office) has been described as a “nightlife consultant.” I’m pretty sure he doesn’t get paid for advising clubs to ditch the red banquettes and lower the lighting, but I am not sure what such a consultant actually does.

I would like some simple but significant changes to political ads. The identification of whoever is paying for the ad should be prominent enough so that I can learn the organization’s name and research it if I wish. In addition, all claims should give me a source for any of the ad’s assertions, and it should be large enough and long enough that I can write it down and check it out if I wish. Or perhaps, the sponsoring organization should prominently display a website that contains the source material or links to it.

Many of us after Hurricane Helene are giving money to relief agencies to assist those in distress. Surprisingly, however, I haven’t heard that Trump, who we are told is bigly rich, has donated such money. I guess he must do it anonymously.

“No man can be wise on an empty stomach.” George Eliot.

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The Assimilation of the Scum of Southern Europe (concluded from Sept. 26)

When considering our present immigration policies, it is useful to examine the history of Italian immigration in this country.  

Immigration from Italy to the United States soared at the beginning of the twentieth century. From 1900 to 1905, the numbers increased from 171,735 to 479,349. Between 1880 and 1921, 4.2 million Italians, most from southern Italy, entered the country. Many Americans thought this flood of immigrants was harmful. The 1911 Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica entry on immigration, seemingly referring to all those Neapolitans, Calabrians, and Sicilians, put it delicately: “The influx of millions of persons of different nationalities, often of a foreign language and generally of the lower classes, would seem to be a danger to the homogeneity of a community. The United States, for instance, has felt some inconvenience from constant addition of foreigners to its electorate and population.” Though citing no reference, the essay goes on, “The foreign-born are more numerously represented among the criminal, defective and dependent classes than their numerical strength would justify. They also tend to segregate more or less, especially in large cities.”

Almost none of the Italian immigrants — largely illiterate rural peasants who professed a religion that was still not considered acceptable by many Americans — spoke English. Many made little effort to learn it. These Italian immigrants, 75% of whom were male, did not plan to become Americans. As the Britannica put it: “It is notorious that the Italians who emigrate to the United States largely return.” Aristide Zolberg reports that while roughly 35% of all immigrants to the United States from1908-1923 returned to their homelands, more than 50% of Italians did. Other estimates of returnees are as high as 78%. (These “birds of passage”—young Italian men who migrated alone, earned money, and returned to Italy—have regularly popped up in histories, novels, and memoirs. For example, a character in Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express is a man born in Italy who had been a cabdriver in Chicago and, after saving money, moved back to Italy. Daphne Phelps in her charming A House in Sicily refers to “a diminutive Sicilian barber who had spent nine years in New York before returning with his savings.”)

Thus, the arriving Italians did not appear to contribute much to the American economy. After all, they were destitute upon entry. A 1902 report said arrivals at Ellis Island from southern Italy came with the least amount of savings of any immigrant group, $8.67. They worked and saved, but not to invest or spend it in America. They sent or took their savings back to Italy.

In addition, many Americans believed about southern Italy what the Encyclopedia Brittanica said: “Countries sometimes aid or assist immigration, including the assisted emigration of paupers, criminals or persons in the effort to get rid of undesirable members of the community.” (That Eleventh Edition also contains this rather discomfiting statement: “Finally, we have the expulsion of Jews from Russia as an example of the effort of a community to get rid of an element which has made itself obnoxious to the local sentiment.”)

Certainly, the Italian arrivals seemed dangerous. Michael Dash reports in The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Murder, and the Birth of the American Mafia, “Nineteen Italians in every twenty of those passing through Ellis Island were found to be carrying weapons, either knives or revolvers, and there was nothing in American law to stop them from taking this arsenal into the city. The Sicilian police were said to be issuing passports to known murderers to get them out of the country.”

Even if the issuing of such passports was untrue (Dash does make clear that the many of the founders of the American mafia fled Sicily after convictions or charges for murder and other crimes), the American populace was led to believe that Italian criminality was rampant in the U.S. The sensational American press of the time played up murders and other crimes committed by Italians in New York and New Orleans and focused on the killing in Sicily of New York police lieutenant Joseph Petrosino, who was seeking Italian criminal records of Italians living in the United States. Not surprisingly, the 1903 New York Herald gave this warning: “The boot [of Italy] unloads its criminals upon the United States. Statistics prove that the scum of southern Europe is dumped at the nation’s door in rapacious, conscienceless, lawbreaking hordes.”

Many American citizens believed that Italian immigrants should never be naturalized. This led to the question, “Are Italians white?”, an issue discussed in many places including by Isabel Wilkerson in Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent (2020), and by Paul Morland in The Human Tide: How Population Shaped the Modern World (2019). One of my favorite meditations on the topic is in the must-see movie Sorry to Bother You. The film’s characters are discussing how blacks make pasta differently from whites and how it should be made. In an attempt to end the discussion, the protagonist states that spaghetti is Italian. Another character incredulously asks, “Italians are white?” “Yes.” “For how long?” The protagonist replies, “For about sixty years.”

The whiteness of Italians was an issue because of our naturalization law, which in 1790 allowed only free white persons to become citizens. This was slightly modified in 1870 to allow the naturalization of former enslaved people, but otherwise a person in the early twentieth had to be white to become a naturalized citizen. (“White” was not defined, and this restriction led to some bizarre court cases. In 1923 the Supreme Court ruled that a high caste Sikh, who pointed out that his ethnicity was Aryan and who had fought for the United States in World War I, was neither white nor black and could not be naturalized. A Court of Appeals case in 1915, however, ruled that a Syrian could become an American citizen.)

Instead of grappling with the issue of Italian whiteness, Congress, concerned about the Italian influx and the immigration from eastern Europe, changed the law to make it harder to immigrate to the U.S. from “undesirable” places. After this 1924 act, Italian immigration dropped from 283,000 in 1914 to 15,000.

And the moral? The Italian immigrants, seen by many as lawless, destitute, illiterate thugs who could not speak English and did not try to learn it, who were a danger to the American fabric and a drain on the economy, and who smelled bad because they ate — God help us! — garlic, are now as American as an American can be. When we discuss immigration today, we should remember this history. As the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannic said about the difficulties for the host country from immigration, “Nevertheless, the process of assimilation goes on with great rapidity.”

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The Assimilation of the Scum of Southern Europe

Stump speeches, social media, and ads by politicians announce without supporting evidence that countries including Venezuela and some in Africa are emptying their prisons and mental hospitals and sending the inmates over our southern border into the United States. Of course, rapists and other criminals, the same sources maintain, have been coming over that border for years. On the other hand, these migrants must not be full-time criminals because they take jobs away from Americans, especially “Black jobs.” And these border crashers fuel our fentanyl crisis.

This makes little sense. People don’t cross deserts and evade armed U.S. agents and circumvent walls to commit random rapes and murders, and I have not seen evidence that illegal aliens have come to rob banks or pursue the kinds of crimes done at the likes of Goldman Sachs. They have come as laborers expecting to do hard menial work. They hope to send money back to their families. They want to stay out of trouble so as not to be jailed or deported. Not surprisingly, study after study has concluded that the undocumented commit serious crimes at a lesser rate than American citizens and that documented aliens commit those crimes at a much lesser rate than our citizenry.

If the undocumented come to work, then it seems to follow that they must be taking jobs from Americans. On the other hand, the undocumented are not in a position to negotiate for higher pay or better working conditions, and it is often said that these immigrants do the jobs that Americans won’t take. Of course, if you believe in the law of supply and demand and free enterprise, Americans should take the jobs if pay and working conditions are improved sufficiently. At some price point–$25 per hour or perhaps $40 per hour–American citizens should be willing to pick lettuce, and perhaps even kale, slaughter chickens, plant bushes, and hang drywall. If all the undocumented are deported, as one presidential candidate vows, we will have to change our immigration laws to let workers back in legally or the costs of many goods and services will increase.

And “securing” the border is unlikely to significantly affect the flow of fentanyl into this country. Many people may successfully cross our southern border illegally, but many get stopped. If those apprehended had been carrying significant amounts of fentanyl, this information would have been trumpeted so loudly on Fox News and the New York Post that it would not have escaped our attention. And yet, the apprehension of those drug couriers has not made much news. Perhaps, just perhaps, that is because not much fentanyl enters the country that way. Imagine that you were importing fentanyl into this country. Would you have it come in via backpacks carried by those crossing the border illegally? The apprehension rate for the undocumented has gone from 50% ten years ago to 70% in 2021. In other words, the odds are strong that even if the carrier makes it to the border, the drugs will not make it into the country. And then, of course, you have to find a good way to offload those drugs from the mule, which can be an iffy business.

Meanwhile, many, many vehicles cross the southern border legally. Fentanyl does not take up much space. There are many ways to hide the drug in vehicles. And it is easy to arrange for delivery once the drug-laden car or truck or plane makes it into the U.S.

Border patrol officials maintain that 90% of the fentanyl that enters from Mexico comes in at legal crossings. Furthermore, most apprehended couriers are American citizens, which, of course, makes sense. If you were running the drug smuggling operation, wouldn’t you think that a Mexican or Honduran would be more likely stopped and searched at the border than an American citizen? “Securing” the border, if that means stopping illegal crossings, will do little to change our fentanyl crisis. And, of course, as long as there is a demand for the product, those laws of supply and demand mean someone will find a way to bring the opioid into the country.

If you continue to maintain that the “Biden/Harris border policies” are a major cause of the overdoses, consider this fact: The fentanyl deaths doubled during the Trump years, and the rate of increase since then has lessened. If Biden is to be blamed, then more blame should be heaped on his predecessor.

The widespread hysteria over undocumented immigrants, however, does not seem to be about all of the undocumented. We mostly fear those brown people who cross the southern border. There are many others, often of the lighter persuasions, who are living in this country without proper authorization. They have often come legally, as students or tourists, for example, and stayed in the United States instead of returning to their homeland at the proper time. I have met such people from Ukraine, Germany, Belgium, Poland, and, of course, Ireland. Aristide R. Zolberg, in his book, A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America (2008), states that while the notion of “illegal immigrants” may evoke images of Mexicans and Central Americans, many Irish working in construction and child care—perhaps as many as 100,000—are here illegally. When we were looking for nannies to help with our newly-arrived child, we were advised to advertise in the Irish Echo, and to do so in such a way as to indicate we would not be asking to see a green card. Years later, I asked our contractor, who had assimilated so well as to lose almost all his brogue, when he came to the country. He gave a date. I smiled and jokingly asked, but when did you come legally? The spouse shouted that I couldn’t ask such a thing. Sean only smiled and gave a time several years later. (No matter how well you can sing “Come Out Ye Black and Tans” or know the music of The Pogues or praise Jimmy Ferguson, don’t go into a Bronx bar filled with ruddy faces and start talking about immigration or citizenship.)

However, whatever we do to secure our southern border and whatever we do to remove the undocumented from the country, we will continue to have “foreigners” among us. The classic Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Brittanica of 1911 stated what is still a truism: “Migration in general may be described as a natural function of social development. It has taken place at all times and in the greatest variety of circumstances. It has been tribal, national, class and individual. Its causes have been political, economic, religious, or mere love of adventure.” As long as conditions are harsh in other lands and America beacons as a better place to live, some will find a way to enter this country. (For the history of our copy of the EB, see the posts of August 1 and 3, 2022, Rule Encyclopedia Brittanica—Eleventh Edition.)

And just as assuredly, a portion of our populace will see danger from this migration. If you have an Italian ancestor, or a friend or relative does, or perhaps if you just like pizza, pasta, or a latte (Italian, meaning you paid too much for the coffee)–that is, just about everyone–and you are concerned about immigration now, you should reflect on some of our history.

(concluded October 1)

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Snippets

For almost four years, conservative news sources told me about the deficiencies of the Biden administration. Apparently, however, the government has changed because now they tell me about the failure of the Biden-Harris administration. Meanwhile, they tell me about the supposed glories of the Trump administration. Poor Mike Pence.

The news last week reported on a space walk by the first civilian. It is always gratifying to learn about the new experiences afforded billionaires.

Most summers we hang an American flag between the upper windows of our summer place. It is the burial flag of the spouse’s uncle and namesake. He was an Army pilot who crashed and was killed in the waning months of World War II. This year the spouse thought we should not display the flag because people might think that we were Trump supporters. I insisted we put it out. I said that I did not want to cede this symbol of American liberties and equality to those who claim patriotism but too often seek to obstruct the freedoms and aspirations that the flag stands for.

I was outstanding at trivia. No longer, for several reasons. Many of the questions are rooted in the last twenty or thirty years, and much of this knowledge I never learned. This makes me feel old. Furthermore, many of trivial things I once learned, I have now forgotten. This makes me feel old. And often I have an answer on the tip of my tongue that I can no longer get out in time. This makes me feel old. Even so, recently I have frequently watched Jeopardy!, and I test myself in a new way. I will watch it on Channel 6 at 7 PM. Then the very same episode is on Channel 8 at 7:30. I watch it again and am proud whenever I can remember an answer from a half hour earlier.

All U.S. presidents since Andrew Johnson have had a pet. Except for Donald Trump. Rumor has it that he has eaten all his cats and dogs.

“The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.” Thomas Carlyle.

I feel privileged to have seen James Earl Jones on the stage, including in Othello and Fences. He was amazing. Rest in peace.

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A King is Up a Tree

Proverbs 17:12: “Let a man meet a she-bear robbed of her cubs, rather than a fool in his folly.”

I spend much of the summer in a place of 300 homes, often pretentiously called “cottages,” with a golf course, tennis courts, a swimming pool and other sports facilities. The community is surrounded by thousands of acres of woodlands, and as a result residents often see wildlife. Seeing a deer as a kid in rural Wisconsin was a thrill because it was still a rare sight. Nowadays, of course, Bambis and their mothers are common in many communities, including mine.

Twenty years ago, deer were still skittish. A human sound, a voice, a door closing, a car on gravel, usually had the deer bolting into wood cover. Now the deer just raise their heads with brazen looks and seemingly say, “You don’t want me to eat your plants? What are you going to do about it?” I see deer frequently and seldom pay much attention to them, except when I think they might run across the road that I am driving or when fawns are playing near the porch where I am reading or when they run after being startled. A deer in flight leaping over a fallen log is still a beautiful sight. The deer I see, however, are almost always does and fawns. The infrequent sighting of an antlered buck still gets my attention.

I see woodchucks often, usually on the golf course. They bring a smile with their distinctive chubby bodies and waddle. They move slowly but then quickly disappear into a hole.

Wild turkeys also draw attention. Often there are just two or three of them, but on occasion, a flock of a dozen or more are going someplace, but I have no idea where. They never seem in a hurry. Can they fly?

Foxes seem to have increased. I believe I saw only one in my first decade in the community, but now, while sightings are not an everyday occurrence, they are more common.

I don’t pay much attention to birds, except for hawks and eagles, who I will watch soar for as long as possible. Always magnificent.

There is a hierarchy of noteworthiness among this wildlife. Almost never does one mention a deer to a companion except as a warning. And the same is almost always true for woodchucks. Wild turkeys occasionally get a comment. Foxes generally do, but they often disappear before they are spotted by a friend. Hawks and eagles circling in the sky generally draw remarks that often spread beyond the immediate circle. If a person sees a bald eagle while sitting on a restaurant patio, he will often tell not only his tablemates but also those seated at other tables. A hooting barrred owl also gets some attention. But none of these animals triggers a neighborhood network. Only a bear does that.

That is what happened the other night at dinnertime. My cell phone rang. A few moments later the spouse’s rang. And a few moments later, the still-existing landline rang. Picking up, our neighbors told us that a bear was up a tree across the street. Of course, we went to look. There, joined by other neighbors, we see her (we assumed) indistinctly silhouetted against the night sky about twenty-five feet above the ground. She barely moved for minutes but then stretched upwards on the tree trunk looking more than six feet tall. I saw that my garbage can, placed by the road for the next day’s pickup, was on its side. It had not been ripped apart but opened with the kitchen garbage bag gone. We looked, we chatted, we laughed, we told stories, and the bear stayed in the tree. We finally decided that we should all leave so that the bear might come down and go about its business.

A bear sighting is the most exciting one among us cottagers, and when it happens, stories circulate in the community. For me, all my infrequent bear sightings—the one in the distant field, the one on the back porch, the one peering in the front window, the one with two cubs–are memorable, and I can give you details of every time I have seen one. There are many animals around here, but the bear is king.

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Snippets

A well-known fact: Inflation was low while Trump was president. A lesser-known fact: Inflation was lower while Obama was president.

A wise person said: “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses a lamppost—for support rather than illumination.”

We are selling the house we have lived in for forty-seven years. We will pay a capital gains tax because the house has appreciated considerably in monetary value. That has me thinking about yet another tax advantage for those who have always had money. Imagine two people buying the same house for the same price. They improve the house in exactly the same way. They sell the house for the same price. They will both have to pay a capital gains tax on the amount they sold the house for minus the house’s base. That base will primarily consist of the price they paid for the property plus the capital they have put into the house. But one of them only had barely enough money to carry the house while he owned it so he did the work himself for every improvement. The other owner was always well-to-do and hired other people to make the improvements. The first owner’s sweat equity does not count as a capital expenditure for the capital gains tax. The other owner’s payment to construction companies and the like is a capital expenditure. Thus, when selling, the rich guy has a higher base for his house and pays a lower capital gains tax than the other person.

Political ads and stories predominantly on conservative outlets highlight murders and assaults committed by “illegal aliens.” Of course, such crimes happen and can be horrific. However, numerous studies have shown that illegal immigrants commit murder at a lower rate than native-born Americans and that legal immigrants are convicted of murder at much lower rates than the native born or illegals. You want a safer country? Deport those who were born here.

I wrote a few posts ago that I face-planted myself on a golf course and how I responded facetiously when I was asked about the noticeable face discolorations. I said that I needed more replies. Some more possibilities: “I forgot how strong the spouse is.” “Do you want my version or the truth?” “In today’s world, it is never too early to get ready for Halloween.” “I did not know that golf was a blood sport.”

Among the unwanted consequences of the face-planting is that people tell me about their falls. I only say something about my mishap if I am asked what happened. Otherwise I keep it to myself. Many, however, who have, like me, literally fallen on their faces, figuratively fall on their faces when they hit the five-minute self-involved narration point, having felt, for reasons not apparent to me, compelled to share their face-plant experience with me and anyone else who is listening. 

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If It’s Close, It’s an Out

The baseball season is closing in on its home stretch. (Mixed sports metaphors.) The baseball season is always long with much boredom and some excitement. (Shohei is oh-mazing; Judge is airing them out; and Skenes may be a new pitching phenom.) Perhaps this should get me to reminisce about my baseball career, but that was mediocre (a generous assessment) and ended with high school. (However, I did hit a walk-off home run in my first organized game. I was twelve. I never matched that highlight. Cue Springsteen and “Glory Days.”) Instead, for some reason I am thinking about my professional baseball career, for during summers of my high school years, I umpired games for which I got paid.

My town did not have the official Little League youth baseball, but it had its own version run by the Recreation Department. It had divisions by age—nine and ten, eleven and twelve, up to eighteen.

I got the job by passing a test but not one that measured the ability to call a baseball game with any accuracy. Instead, it was like a school exam, except this one was on the rules of baseball. I went off to Joe Hauser’s, the local sporting goods store. (Hauser, known as Unser Joe, had his own amazing baseball career. You can check it out.) I bought a baseball rules book and read it a few times. I was good at tests and was confident, especially because I had been tipped off to the trick question that appeared every year. It asked what the proper call was if a line drive hit the pitching rubber and bounced back into foul territory between third and home without touching anyone. Of course, the correct answer is “Foul ball!” (Every semi-literate baseball fan knows that the distance from the pitching rubber to home plate is sixty feet six inches, but most do not know whether that is to the front or back of home plate. Even fewer know where the measurement is to the front or back or center of the pitching rubber.) Not everyone who took the exam on a spring evening (all boys, of course; I don’t know what would have happened if a girl had showed up to be an umpire) was a diligent student, but I was, and I easily got one of the open umpire slots.

In every job I have had, I have learned things. With that first job, I may have learned something about discipline and responsibility, and so on. But I certainly learned in detail about baseball rules. I also learned a few tips about umpiring, but I can’t imagine how. We had no mentoring about calling balls and strikes or about baserunners. Maybe I read it somewhere; maybe somebody who had umpired for a while told me that it was easy to determine when a pitched ball was too high: Crouch down until your eyes are level with the top of the strike zone. Of course, any pitch above that was a ball. Balls thrown near knee height were much harder to call.

In those days there were separate crews of umpires for the National and American Leagues. In the days before the American League adopted the designated hitter, the game in both leagues was supposed to be the same. Even so, the umpires did some things differently. They wore different protective gear and also positioned themselves differently. The American Leaguers stood squarely behind the catcher and looked over his head. The National Leaguers looked over the catcher’s shoulder. My favorite team was in the National League so I adopted the shoulder position.

I thought that I knew how to call balls and strikes, but I quickly learned that calling the bases was not as simple as I may have assumed. I was the only umpire in games with nine- and ten-year olds or for eleven- and twelve-year olds. I had to make all the calls at home plate and at other bases as well. When there was going to be a play at first base, I would jog out to a place between the pitcher and the base. Most often the call was obvious, but soon I learned the limits of human eyesight. If the call was close, I could watch when the feet were on the bag or I could watch when the first baseman caught the ball. I could not do both. Then, somehow, I learned that umpiring was not just seeing but also listening. Major league umpires at first base watched the feet but listened to hear the ball being caught. If the sound preceded the sight of the runner’s foot on the bag, he quickly looked up to see whether the ball was secure or being bobbled.

Tag plays presented their own problems. Sometimes it was hard to be in the correct position to make the call. (In the majors, if there is a runner on first, the second base umpire moves from the outfield to the infield to best observe a likely tag play. That infield position leads to the possibility of umpire interference, which seldom happens, but is almost never understood by the fans when it does.) Even if I was in the correct position, it was sometimes difficult to tell whether the fielder swiped the runner with the ball. Even if that was clear, a similar problem could occur at first base. The tag was often on the rump or back or shoulder of the runner, and it could be difficult sometimes to tell whether the foot got to the base before or after the tag. I didn’t need to make a hard call often. For the under twelves, runners could not leave the base until the ball was pitched. There were few attempted steals unless the ball got away from the catcher, and then the call was usually obvious. Outfield throws were often wild or looping leading to an easy call, but the few close plays could be important to the game. I never learned how to deal effectively with making a bad call. Once when I umpired an all-star game, I stuck out my right hand for a strike on a pitch that was way too high. I knew my mistake instantly, but I had no guidance on what I should do and let the call stand. To this day I feel sort of bad about it.

There was another situation that I felt unsure about: when, if ever, to throw a kid out of the game. Thankfully, this seldom occurred. The ten-and-unders were mostly unformed in the personality department and almost never presented a problem. The eleven- and twelve-year-olds, however, were on their way to being human beings. Many were quick-witted or wiseasses, filled with jokes to throw at me, curious about the world (mostly that meant trying to find out what high school was like and whether it was true you might get attracted to girls). So there came a time when one young player swore at me. I asked him what he had said to give him a chance to back away or apologize for the expletive. He repeated it (whatever it was), and I tossed him from the game. That made me uncomfortable. Was I wrong?

On the other hand, I don’t remember ever getting the indicator wrong. This is a little plastic thingamabob placed in the left hand. Mine had three holes and three wheels. Turning the wheels made different numbers appear in the holes to indicate balls, strikes, and outs. (Fancier ones also had an innings opening.) With my indicator, I at least always had the count right.

I also learned that it paid to get to work early. There were four fields where I umpired, and gear—masks and chest protectors–for four umpires. I needed a mask that could accommodate my glasses, but the other guys, who could see unaided, were good about letting me have the one that worked for me. The chest protectors also were not all the same, and sometimes this mattered. The spectrum of physical development of twelve-year-old boys is broad. Some of them are close to adulthood, and these big guys often were the pitchers. These kids played on a softball diamond, and the ball hurled from forty-six feet arrived at the plate with remarkable rapidity. This was not just the batter’s problem; remember, I umpired standing behind home plate. Often the pitcher’s skill far outshone the catcher’s, and I could not be sure that the pitches would not hit me. If I knew it was going to be one of those days, I got to the park extra early to snatch up the only blowup chest protector, which best absorbed the thump of a thrown ball. Even so, I still could leave with a bruise or two.

I quickly learned that I hated umpiring nine- and ten-year-olds. This was in the old days, so this was not T-ball or a game in which an adult tossed underhanded to a batter. No. There was a pitcher and a batter, and the pitcher invariably could not pitch and the batter invariably could not hit. And if a ball miraculously got into play, the fielders could neither catch nor throw. These young ones could not play the game. Period. This was also the time before the mercy rule, which allowed a game to be called if one team got really far ahead. Thus, the games could be interminable. Every time I umpired one of these games, I felt as though the hourglass sand was endlessly replenished. On these days, I woke up hoping to hear a downpour that meant the game would be cancelled. You can gauge how much I hated this by the fact that I did not get paid if the game was not played. The loss of money was worth not having to umpire these endless games. When I did umpire the ten and unders, though, I did not cheat in my calls. Nevertheless, if the pitched ball could be a ball or strike, it was a strike. If the runner could have been safe or out, he was out. It seemed important to move this endless game towards a conclusion.

At the time I felt that there was a bigger life lesson here: If it’s close, it’s a strike. If it’s close, it’s an out. But now, almost seven decades later, I still don’t know what that lesson is.

Posted on by rjonakait

The Planted Face

“Everything is funny as long as it is happening to someone else.” Will Rogers.

My ball was thirty yards from the cup, but it had a steep uphill, sidehill lie. I hit my pitch—not surprisingly for me, not very well. I turned to return to the golf cart five yards away, but my foot caught the uphill grass. I knew instantly that I was about to plant my face on the downhill turf without being able to break the fall.

Tony, my playing partner, came over to assist me, but I got up more easily than I expected. I took stock. My nose was not broken. Blood was not gushing from the nostrils, as I had expected. I apparently had landed on the bottom of my forehead, not the middle of my face. My glasses had slightly gouged the space between my eyebrows and pushed hard into my cheeks right below my eyes. No blood poured off me but seeped from the gouged place and from a cut on my lip, but overall, I did not feel terrible. No major aches and pains. We continued on with our nine holes with me dabbing at the oozing blood with a golf towel that by happenstance had been freshly laundered.

I bailed on my usual lunch with Tony after golf and headed home. The spouse looked up from her reading as I stepped on the porch, and after explanations, she swung into nursing mode. Band-Aids, gauze, and adhesive tape were applied. She went to CVS to get more supplies, and I got additional medical attention. I looked in the mirror and so much had been applied to my face, I looked like Hannibal Lecter. Eventually, the seeping blood stopped.

The next day I carefully removed the dressings and decided not all had to be reapplied. I went to the mirror to assess. No pretty boy looks were in attendance. I had that gouge between the eyebrows. My nose was discolored and even more bulbous than usual, as if I had lifted it from W.C. Fields. I had a cut lip and a black and blue mark bruise on my chin. Most noticeable, however, were two black eyes with a significant mouse below the left one as if I had been hit with a heavyweight hook in the second round. There was no way to hide my racoon face except with a ski mask, which was not seasonally appropriate.

People were going to ask what happened. When that first happened, I said, “Don’t ask, but you should see her.” Then I tried, “The Pennsylvania barmaids are really fierce.” And then, “Next time I will give Tony the three-and-a-half-foot putt.” (I am convinced that three-and-a-half is funnier than three-foot or four-foot, but I don’t know why.) However, I am on blood thinners, and I will have the discolorations for a long time. I will be needing some more snappy come-backs.