Four days prior, Mr. Aaron had tied Babe Ruth’s career homer record of 714. And now, here it was — April 8, 1974 — and the Braves were appearing on Monday Night Baseball with a game against the Dodgers. Pitching for the Dodgers was their #44, Al Downing. Aaron, coincidentally, was the Braves’ #44.
This moment — this culmination of many moments — was something for which I had been waiting several years. I was 13, almost 14 at the time, and my adolescent hormones had me by throat. I was moody, picky, and obnoxiously arrogant. Oh, and stubborn. At least that’s how I remember myself. Actually, I guess I haven’t changed much. I was teased at school, sometimes a lot, about my devotion to Hank Aaron. I had moved from Tennessee to Iowa in 1972, and I guess Tennessee was closer enough to Atlanta that there were fewer Aaron devotees in Iowa.
Anyway, as stated in an earlier post, I had waited ALL WINTER for Aaron to have another at-bat. I remember, oddly, standing on the boardwalk of the second story of my dad’s lumber yard’s “wood shed,” where was stored the stacks of standard-sized lumber (2x4s, 2x6s, and 2x8s, lengths at 8, 12, 14, and 16 feet; we kept 2x10s and 2x12s in another shed). The winter had been cold, damp, and miserable.
But, as these things tend to go, just as the weather turned from bad to delightful, similarly MLB was turning from OFF to ON. The season opened for the Braves on April 4, 1974 in Cincinnati. Hank Aaron tied Ruth on his first swing of the season. The Braves were scheduled to play two more games in Cincy before returning to Atlanta. The manager decided that Hank should take two days off so that Hank could hit his next home run — the record breaker — at home. The Commissioner of Baseball, Bowie Kuhn, decided that that decision was not a good one. The people of Cincy shouldn’t be denied the opportunity to see the historic home run; the Braves aren’t putting forth their best effort to win; blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda. Wow, the commissioner gravely overstepped his bounds on that one. So he ordered Hank to play both games. Eventually (this whole event occurred over only two days, and it was a huge deal made over nothing), the Braves and the commissioner came to an agreement, and Hank played Saturday but rested Sunday. Actually, I might have that backwards. If anyone cares to look it up, be my guest.
So in Atlanta, there was a hopeful tension in the air, the electricity of knowing you’re in the presence of something great about to happen, in the midst of history being made.
In his first at-bat that night, he walked. Downing didn’t give him any pitches that were hittable. His first pitch to Hank, on Hank’s next at bat, was too, hitting (or almost hitting) the dirt. Downing’s second pitch, though, was a slow fastball down the middle. Hank launched the ball, and it landed in the Atlanta bullpen. Actually, one of the Braves’ pitchers, Tom House, caught the ball on the fly. (That’s why the Braves were able to get the ball to Hank so quickly.)
I had been watching the game with my grandmother, Grandma Berry. She wanted to watch it because she knew it was important to me. I had set up my little Craig cassette player so I could record the audio from the television. We had no generally available direct track recording device (not sold at Sears or Radio Shack or department stores back in the day), so we did it via just the air. That is, we listened to the TV, and the TVs sound was picked up by the cassette player. So I told Grandma that she could watch the game with me, but she had to keep quiet. I was serious about that. And she complied.
I still have the two cassette tapes, but I don’t have a good cassette player any more. Actually, I do have an old Craig cassette player … it might be fun to take the tapes and try to listen. They’ll (the tapes) will probably shred.
Incidentally, I remember watching several other events with Grandma. We watched the Kentucky Derby together, the year when Secratariat won it in record time. We watched a Nebraska-Oklahoma game together. We watched the Nebraska-Army game that previous fall. And we sometimes would sneak away and watch Monty Python, which she loved.
My Hank Aaron scrap book got filled as I put in news from all the articles cou ld find. Teachers at school would give me articles they saw in Boys Life, Time Magazine, and others. It was a great moment.
I felt victorious. I felt that all my effort in being a faithful fan — I even wrote Hank and asked for his autograph, and he sent me an autographed pictute that one of my kids now possesses — had resulted in this glorious moment.
It was a great evening of baseball.
hopped off of the school bus — I had to take the bus because junior high (middle school) was in Blencoe, a town of two hundred people about 8 miles south of Onawa — and began the several-block walk home in the cool spring air blanketed with warm sunshine.
I could see, about three blocks in front of me, my brother was racing toward me at a rapid clip. He had a sheet of paper clenched tightly in his hand, and he was shouting something. I couldn’t hear him at first, but then the wind quieted down and Barry stopped in front of me, making an abrupt halt.
“He did it! He did it!” Barry exclaimed.
I knew exactly he was talking about, but I was surprised because usually it takes longer than the opening day of the baseball season for miracles to happen.
Hank Aaron, one of baseball’s most respected sluggers, on the first at-bat of the season — on his first SWING of the season — blasted a home run off of pitcher Jack Billingham of the Cincinnati Reds. Hank, of course, was a Brave.
That home run was the 714th of his career, thus tying him with Babe Ruth for the all-time HR record. He had ended the previous season locked in at 713 … and the whole winter took impossibly, unquestionably, aggravatingly way too long. I read magazine after magazine, book after book, all articles and chapters on Hank Aaron.
I believe he still has the record for total RBIs and maybe second on runs scored. Hank never hit more than 47 hrs in a season, and that being just twice (well, one at 47 and one at 45). But Hank was consistent at a high level. He hit more than twenty HRs a year for twenty straight years. He had a lifetime batting average of .305, leading the National League with a .355 average in 1959. Besides hitting, he was also fast — multiple seasons with at least 30 hrs and 30 stolen bases — and he was a good outfielder, getting several Golden Glove awards for his defensive work.
On top of all that, Hank was a nice guy. He was calm, reserved, and confident. Like Jackie Robinson, Hank had to stand up — and keep silent — when the crowd was hurling insults and threats in his direction, back in the late fifties (Hank started in the majors in 1954).
I went to a Braves game once (1972). Hank hit a homer in the bottom of the ninth. It wasn’t enough to beat the Cubs that day, but it was enough for me. I saw him hit a home run! What a thrill that was.
So back to April 4th, 1974. That was fifty years ago! Hank had tied the Babe.
Happy fiftieth anniversary on your 714th homer, Mr. Aaron.
When would be the next home run, the record-breaker?
I’ll give you the answer on April 8th, if not before. But that was a great day (well, evening) too.
Cheers, y’all
I’m always wary about declaring victory (being a Husker football fan, I’ve found that I can never that victory is certain until the end of the game!). But I think our clash with winter is over — here, but not around the country yet by any means.
Y’all out there in California had quite a week, especially near the Sierra Nevadas where ten feet (or more) of snow fell in a short amount of time.
Anchorage has had one of its snowiest winters ever. We were fortunate to be able to go up there in late February. No snow in the air, but lots on the ground, until our last two days, and then we got five inches on each of those two days. It was very, very pretty coming down. I like watching snow.
We don’t get enough snow in Carolina.
So I was again humbled in a game of chess with my granddaughter. I was trying a new approach and she wiped me out before I knew what was happening. It’s a delightful thing when that happens. I guess I kind of feel like I’m thinking that I’ve made the world a better place. That may be true or false. I do think this young generation is going to be a significant group of folks, something on the order of the Greatest Generation. Certainly not the Boomers.
” … the more it stays the same .” At least that’s how I remember the phrase. The rock group RATT used that phrase in a song from an album in around 1984. That was the year I graduated from UNL and found my way to Schenectady, NY, to work for GE and meet the woman who would go on to become my spouse, and for her I am extremely blessed.
In July, we will have been married thirty-seven years. I’m not going to stop here and give lots of praises. I’ll do that in a future book (already half-way written) so that way you’ll have to pay me money in order for you to find out any more stuff (okay, just kidding). I would love to tell you how my kids and grandkids are doing, but I’m not supposed to because of privacy issues. I don’t have any dogs, but I’d be happy to tell you about my neighbors’ dogs, provided I get their express written permission.
Or something like that. We are such a letigimous society. That’s not right for “Legitimous,” but my spell checker isn’t picking it up. I rarely use checkers but tried to on this one. Call it a Fail. OK, I looked it up. The spelling is LITIGIOUS.
With baseball season upon us (how was that for a segue) … but wait … we have conference basketball championships to play, and national championships to play … and my blessed Cornhuskers may be in the very thick of things. That’s NEVER happened to us in basketball. At the moment, we’re 21-9 and feeling better about things than any time in the past. So we’ll see how it goes. We may lose in Round One of either tournament. Who knows. We play hot and cold. When we’re hitting the 3s, we’re hot. When we’re not hitting the 3s, we’re not. I guess that makes sense. In football, where we lost bvy a field goal in several of the games, that makes a lot of sense. We hit the FG and we make the game. We miss the FG — or the opponent makes its FG — and we drop the game.
Blessings exist all around us. There are few joys greater than having your four – year – old grandson reach up to hold your hand when crossing an icy road because he’s worried about ME falling… Or when your just – turned – eight grand daughter asks me if I’d like to play chess with her. And she wins.
I relish my time as a grandpa.
Excerpt from Joel Schnoor’s new book, “Saving Arapahoe.”
According to the Michael J. Fox foundation, RBD (REM Sleep Behavior Disorder) can be an early warning sign of PD. RBD may include things like violent body movement, nightmares / disturbing dreams, and/or not even reaching the deep sleep level.
I’m in my 25th year since being diagnosed at the age of 38. I honestly don’t know, or don’t remember, whether I had any sleep problems before the diagnosis, but I do know that probably 90% of the time I’m not even aware that anything happened.
My wife has gotten pretty good at identifying early signals of an upcoming event and she quiets me before I do whatever it was I was going to do.
I have dived off the bed several times, chasing (or trying to escape from) an enemy. I have screamed many, many times, often to the frightening of any visitors in the house. I’ve gotten bruised and/or sliced up when diving onto nearby furniture.
I knocked down my floor-to-ceiling lamp one night when it must have occurred to me that it would make a perfect spear to throw across the room. My spouse wasn’t too pleased with that.
She also says I pummel her at times, something that makes neither of us proud.
Finally (this is the last bad story for now), about a year ago I had a week of hallucinations (in January of 2023). It’s apparently the case that the longer you have PD, the more critical it is that your body gets exactly the amount it needs.
I’ve been wearing a dopamine (well, carbodopa / levodopa) pump for about four years as part of a clinical trial for ABBVie-951. (that’s going very well and you can read about it in this blog journal). The pump has three flow settings for me; a flow rate of 0.53, a rate of 0.49, and a rate of 0.47. (sorry, I’m drawing a blank on the units …. it’s a measure of milliliters per some period of time). For the past four years, I’ve spent daytime at 0.53 and then cut down to 0.47 at night, since I won’t need quite as much dopamine at night when I’m inactive. My neuro suggested I try a slightly higher flow setting at night just to see if it helps with RBD (the hypothesis being that maybe I wasn’t getting enough dopamine at night). I bumped it up to 0.53 at night and that turned out to be too much. It was an awful week that ended up in one big hallucination.
I’ll write more about the hallucinations in a separate post. I’m hesitant to let my brain go back there to dwell on it. It was scary stuff. It still shocks me to think that something so bizarre, something that goes against totally what I think is true and real, can be thought of as logical and “well that’s just the way it is.”
Anyway, four years ago I spent a full week at a research lab in Raleigh where they determined the exact amount of dopamine my body needs (or could process). That number was 0.53. And today, that’s the number that still works for me. I don’t know if that means the number has stabilized or if it’s always been 0.53. I don’t know. But I”m happy I haven’t had to increase it yet. My understanding is that more carbo/levodopa (which converts to dopamine) can cause more dyskinesia (jerkiness, twitching, unusual body movements) and, apparently, possibly, things like hallucinations.
I was going to add something else … oh yes, sleep studies.
I’ve been two sleep studies in the past four years. In both studies, I was told that I got between one and one-and-one-half hours of actual sleep during the night and there was almost no deep sleep. Maybe that’s why I feel so tired so often. 🙂
Cheers, y’all
I am listening this morning to some of Beethoven’s Sonatas as performed by Artur Schnabel. He’s really quite good. He started off with Moonlight Sonata. Beethoven named this “sonata quasi una fantasia,” and it was his 14th piano sonata, Op. 27, No. 2, written in C# Minor. What a beautiful piece of music to wake up to!
I used to play Moonlight — maybe twenty years ago — but I got out of the piano practice habit for a while. Now I’m back to it, trying to relearn it. It’s hard! My fingers don’t move to muscle memory as much as I thought they would. But there is a little muscle memory rfemaining. If I close my eyes and just let it flow, sometimes those twenty years come back as though I were transported in time. I’m also planning on picking up Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique, which I had begun working on way back then too.
And I’m also relearning Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C# Minor, a dramatic and really fun piece to play. While I’m at it, I’m also brushing up my rendition of Gershwin’s three preludes, fine-tuning the second prelude, re-learning the third, and then learning for the first time the first prelude. Oh, there was a Chopin Pollinaise I used to play, and I’d like to relearn that. Actually, I think I just had the first three lines down, haha. Guess I’ll need to work harder on that one.
But there’s just not enough time! I’ve shunned my tuba for the past 6 months. They say you lose it if you don’t use it. Right now I’m having a heck of a time getting into the lower registers. I can’t get my lips loosened or pliable enough. They need to relax, just let it go, and buzz down low. I need to make it a habit to daily, for a while at least, getting some tuba time in .
And of course there’s so much I want to read that I haven’t read yet. You know, I’ve never read Moby Dick. I’ve fallen in love with the writings of Mari Sandoz, who grew up in the Niobrara River region of Nebraska not far from the haunts of my great-great grandfather and his family. Her descriptions of life on the Great Plains — especially the harsh winters — is breath-taking. I’ve read her Cheyenne Autumn and her work on Crazy Horse, and I’m in the middle of Old Jules (a work about her father). She also wrote Cattlemen (haven’t read yet) and another called Beavermen (hunters after beaver pelts). She won pulitzer(s) for some of her work.
One book that I read this past year is Black Elk Speaks by John G. Neihardt, former Nebraska poet laureate. It’s wonderful.
Writing? I’m doing that too. Just released Saving Arapahoe, the third book in the Johnny Stevens Adventures Series. I’m working on a big fictional piece that I want to finish before I die (no, I’m not announcing any revelation, just a comment that I want to get the book written. I’m still in the early stages — a full outline has yet to be completed. It’ll be called — no, I’m not going to release the name just yet — but it’ll be something appropriate.
I’ve got a Grandpa kind of book where he has discussions with his grandkids about various things. That’s still being formed — notes and a couple of chapters — but I’m not sure where that’s going.
I’ve got a couple other manuscripts well underway: Jimmy and the Facinorous Wizard is one that I wrote twenty years ago and need to revamp/rewrite portions of it. I also wrote a sequel to Off Balance maybe ten-twelve years ago and I need to update … I’ve gone from having PD for 15 years to 25 years. That’s amazing to me …. I’m still kicking around, way longer than my first neuro said I would.
What’s slowing me down?
If I stand back and look at things objectively, it seems that my back pain gets in the way of everything else. It’s hard to put on socks and underwear and pants in the morning because it’s hard to reach my feet. I just can’t bend my legs easily, because of my back. Now, I think the back pain is related to PD. When I walk, I tend to shuffle, and that surely doesn’t help matters. It’s a strain on my lower back, not to mention the beating that my toes and toe-nails take.
Two summers ago I had an orthopedist (sp) look at it. He did an MRI or CT Scan (I don ‘t remember) and determined that I have arthritis in my spinal column. Several of the disks have arthritic tissue hitting the sides (or walls) of the disks. I don’t know if I have that right, but it’s something like that. Anyway, He tried to remove the pain sensory nerve (that’s not what it’s called but I’m drawing a blank right now), and I thought at first it helped, but I think that was just wishful thinking. By the end of the week, my pain was back to square one.
But … do not lose hope! I am looking into a back brace that leverages the thighs to help lift up the upper body, taking some of the weight off my hips, which should alleviate much of the back pain. I tried the device for 10 minutes at a PD walk-a-thon a month or two ago, and it was delicious. The device forced me to stand up straight, shoulders back, chest up and out, and head back. I was pain free for those ten minutes and it was wonderful. There was even a bit of a residual effect afterwards. This brace fixes my posture problems. I will keep y’all updated on how it goes. I’m the tenth person who will be wearing this brace (so far) so it’s relatively new. I’ll keep the PD community updated.
Praise God that there are new things coming along all the time! I just need to hang in there on a daily basis, focus on him, and let him take care of worrying about things. He’s the one in charge. He takes care of the birds in the air or the flowers in the field, and he’ll take care of me. I just need to submit to him and obey when I hear him calling me.
I’ve written way too much this morning, but it’s been fun.
See ya.
You know, I’ve got a lot of respect for Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills. One could tell right away, very early on in his career, that Josh Allen was going to be something special — and he is indeed. And honestly, even after last night’s game, I can say that I believe that the Bills may have a (very) slightly more talented team than the Chiefs. However, the Chiefs have the edge of knowing how to win the game when it really, really matters. It indeed was a good game. And oh boy, Mahomes is one fun guy to watch play!
Tampa and Detroit
I’m happy for the Lions and the city of Detroit. It’s been a LONG time since they’ve had a team of this caliber … or maybe this is the first time. They were almost halfway decent in the Ndamukong Suh and early Matthew Stafford days, but they couldn’t quite get there. I like Tampa and Baker Mayfield too … I don’t understand though why Mayfield doesn’t throw more often to Trey Palmer, probably the fastest man on the football field.
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Just got back last night from a trip to Portland, OR for a visit regarding “my” clinical trial … which really belongs to a few dozen of us who remain on this exciting Abbvie-951 clinical trial.
The product — which I think is now called “pro duodopa”– is available in England as of last week.. Everything has been working well for me, and I’m forever grateful to have been allowed to continue on this study. The difference between how my body responds to this new method of liquid injection — versus the pills that you never were sure of whether you were too early or too late (or both) — is remarkable.
I’m not graceful, by any means, and I still fall. (As an aside, my grandkids think it’s funny (well, five of the six of them are boys under the age of four).) But I don’t fall very often. When I can remain in the moment I do pretty well. I think it means focusing on what I”m doing and avoiding random thoughts. But then again, I can overthink or overfocus on something …. and that makes it worse.
So it’s a horse a piece. 🙂
What’s on your reading list? (Welcome to today’s Random Thoughts episode, ha ha).
I read Bradbury’s “Something Wicked This Way Comes” for the first time. Don’t know why I hadn’t read it before — I love Bradbury — but it was excellent as expected. I hadn’t read him for a couple of years and I had forgotten — well, not forgotten, but I hadn’t spent time enjoying — how descriptive, how sensual (in the literal appealing to the senses (that is, you can hear, smell, taste, or feel something that he wants to set as a backdrop)).
I’m in the middle of Mari Sandoz’s “Old Jules,” basically a portrayal of Jules Sandoz, Mari’s father. The book isn’t really a biography inasmuch as it’s a thorough, almost Ken-Burns-like documentary about life on the Plains in the 1860s – 1890s. Life was rough back then! Even the climate was (or seems, anyway) rougher than we have it today.
Actually, her description of the weather is similar to the weather I experienced growing up in Iowa and Nebraska … every winter we’d get days where the highs are zero degrees (fahrenheit) down to minus 20 or minus 30. I remember a two-week span in the mid 1980s — December, 1983, in fact — where the HIGHEST temp recorded during the two week span was minus 8 degrees. Yikes. Brutal.
But I’m straying from the topic. What is the topic? Oh, books. Yes, I’m in the middle of Old Jules and am thoroughly enjoying it. The depiction of her father growing up in the Midwest (which, for the most part, was really the west at the time) is illustrative of her talents as a writer . I’ve got this image of a grizzled not-quite-old man who was rude, boisterous, and a rebel to most government authority, but who loved his neighbors and those whom he knew needed someone to watch after them.
He was vocal in his charges against political figures, especially those who didn’t necessarily work hard for what they got but instead were given positions through nepotism. He even ran for a state position. He was the local postmaster for a number of years and lived in a 3-foot high dugout (cave, more or less) for a number of years before marrying and “moving up.” I haven’t finished the book, but it seems that he was married at least four times. Turns out that he needed a woman who was at least as tough as he was, someone to keep him honest and accountable. He was very smart and therefore was a community leader, though he was reluctant to be leading any individual. Anyway, more on that later.
What’s on your listening list? Recently … I’ve got:
- Beethoven’s 9th symphony, second movement
- “Hocus Pocus” by Focus
- Chick Corea’s “Spanish Heart” album
- Maynard Ferguson (MF Horn), back before he went commercial … I made the mistake of playing Maynard’s “Primal Scream” right after “MF Horn,” and I had forgotten how his earlier stuff is so much better (IMO) than his later work. But maybe that’s just me. I love the Conquistador album but maybe that’s because the first time I saw him was on his Conquistador tour (I was a high schnool junior). Fun memories.
- Oh, and I can’t leave out Blue Oyster Cult’s “Godzilla.”
Enough rambling for now. Between the start and end of this post I have also eaten two bowls of cereal, made a cup of really good coffee, and did some tidying up in preparation for my parents’ arrival this afternoon. See ya.