You can observe a lot by just watching.
Yogi Berra
I had reached the 681-word mark at 3 p.m. when I was struck by full-blown panic.
This column is complete trash, I realized. No one wants to read about any of it.
But I didn’t have time to do much about it. I was already too deep into the column.
The same thing had happened two weeks ago.
I had given up and decided that my streak of writing columns, which started in January, would just have to end.
Send up a pinch hitter, Mr. Editor. Something is wrong with my swing right now.
I couldn’t hit a ball with a boat oar.
But maybe things would change if I could get the game to extra innings.
Maybe I could bunt my way on. Nobody would be expecting that. Not in the bottom of the ninth with nobody on and two outs.
Perhaps it was all that baseball I had been writing about. My mind seemed stuck in baseball mode, as I churned out reverent paragraphs about the grand old game, trying to sound like Roger Angell, a lot of “People will come, Ray” kind of stuff winding up on the page.
Hogwash.
But perhaps, I just needed to “clear the mechanism” like Billy Chapel did at the beginning of every inning in the film “For Love of the Game.”
So, I went about clearing the baffles.
Near the beginning of my magazine story, I had included some sentences about former Braves second baseman Glenn Hubbard driving in former Braves shortstop Rafael Ramirez twice during a game back in 1987, and I wanted to relate something personal about that: “T. Michael Stone’s cousin Susan’s husband once showed up at a family function driving a red BMW that belonged to Rafael Ramirez.”
Magazine editor Lynn Hobbs, doing what editors do, took out the bit about the BMW. But it wanted to be on a page somewhere.
That’s how you clear the mechanism. Just tell the stories.
At every turn while I was writing the magazine piece, I found I had more stories to tell.
Like meeting HOF’er Eddie Mathews at Nalley Chevrolet as a child, it must have been in 1966, because the Braves traded Mathews to the Astros in 1967.
My father told me my Uncle Gene and Eddie once went out partying the night before a game. The next day, Eddie told Gene, “Today, I’m either hitting a home run or striking out, because I’m not running the bases.”
Can’t verify that one because my dad didn’t let facts get in the way of a good story.
My dad also told me he was the source of this old joke: A Truck driver goes into a bar full of bikers who beat him up and throw him out the door.
One biker says to the bartender: “He wasn’t much of a man, was he?”
Bartender says to biker: “He wasn’t much of a truck driver, either. He ran over 50 motorcycles getting out of the parking lot.”
I’m fairly sure my dad was pulling my leg with that one.
I crawled out onto the roof of the Braves' dugout once during a rain delay at old Atlanta Stadium. I looked into the dugout and saw Mike Lum smoking a cigarette.
Former Mets manager Bobby Valentine played in Japan and once said there were two kinds of Japanese baseball players: “Those who smoke and those who smoke a lot.” Valentine even said that in Japan, the fifth inning is a smoke break inning. Braves announcer Skip Caray used to joke that “We’ve reached the bottom of another fifth.”
Once I got a chance to meet Bucky Dent, sometimes referred to as Bucky “Effing” Dent by Red Sox fans, at a baseball camp held at Lake Oconee Academy. We discussed the value of choking up on the bat and why modern hitters strike out so frequently. I thought his insights were right on the money.
But chicks dig the long ball, right, Greg and Tom?
My colleague, Billy Hobbs, was thoughtful enough to take a picture of me talking with Dent, so I can at least prove I spoke with him.
Well, that’s enough. I’ve to take care of my problems.
No more baseball unless the Braves win the Series. I promise.
Selah.