With apologies to John Elway, the most famous number seven in sports for me is still Mickey Mantle. I never had the benefit of watching him play but he was a favorite of my dad who loved the Yankees pre-Steinbrenner. I have read more than a few books on Mantle and honestly, he was a mess. And he was honestly one of the best to ever play the game of baseball.
Most of the men in his family died young. His own father passed at 41 years of age. He used that as an excuse to live hard. If he had come along in the 70's with the prevalence of powder cocaine or the 90's with crack cocaine, my personal opinion is that he would have destroyed himself with them. But he was a creature of his time and so he drank himself silly. You have to wonder how much better his hall of fame career could have been if had just laid off the booze. What if he had worked out? Cynically, I have to ask, what if he had taken steroids?
He also slept with women like he was James Bond or a single man - and he wasn't. I wonder sometimes what life was like for his children. They reached adulthood and knew that their dad had cheated on their mom with casual disregard for their vows. The idea that men are men and they just can't be faithful is an insult to real men everywhere, but I hear it a lot when people reference Mantle.
Most of the time I take a harsh, judgmental tone when dealing with folks who have a train wreck of a life. That slapping noise you hear is all the people who know anything about my life slapping their foreheads at the hypocrisy. I try to cut people more slack these days. But I also understand that people won't change until they hit their personal rock bottom. I also know that enabling hurts more than harshness if the person is not there yet. I say this as a person whose rock bottom was pretty low.
But I have always cut Mantle some slack. I have no idea why. I just always had the feeling that Mantle's life was just bigger than anything he was prepared to deal with. I think he hid in a bottle and he hid in the arms of beautiful women. And yes, I understand that is exactly the mindset of an enabler, but there it is.
Two of my favorite Mantle stories follow. During the 1961 season in which Roger Maris hit 61 home runs, Mickey was also chasing the record. People would get up in the morning to see where each of them stood in relation to the Major League record. But most of the Yankees fans wanted Mantle to be the one who broke Ruth's MLB record of 60 home runs in a season. During the season Mantle had all kinds of injuries (that steroids could have helped with by the way) and at one point was hitting basically one handed.
During one of these at bats he hit a towering home run and as he came to home plate Maris stuck out his hand and said, "Put her there," and Mantle replied, "Can't do it," since he could not raise his hand to meet the hand of his fellow player. The papers were full of stories of a rift between the two even though they shared an apartment during the season. But the man hit a home run one handed off of major league pitching and he could not raise his arm high enough to shake hands. Wow.
My other favorite story is of a time after Mantle retired when he and Billy Martin ( a fellow Yankee) went out to hunt in Mantle's home state. Mantle explained to Martin that he had to go to the owner of the land and get permission to hunt on the land. While Martin waited in the car, Mantle went to talk to the land owner and the owner asked a favor of Mantle in exchange for hunting his land.
The farmer had an old mule that had been in the family for years and due to bad health had to be put down. If Mantle would put down the beloved animal, then he and his friend could hunt the land. Now Mantle, being a practical joker, saw an opportunity for a grand prank.
He came back to the truck and told Martin that even after knowing his family for years, the old coot was not going to let them hunt the land. Mantle saidf that to get even, he was going to kill the old man's mule and with that, threw his rifle up to his shoulder and fired, "BLAM!!":
Before Mantle could turn around, he heard, "BLAM!! BLAM!!" He saw Martin running back to the truck shouting, "C'mon, Mick! I got two of the old bastard's cows too"
I have no idea if that story is true and I do not want to know. It is too funny as is.
Fun Things with Poker
Monday night I went to play poker and got put out early. One guy at the end of the table went all in on the first hand of the night and got one guy to call him. The first guy had pocket aces and doubled up on the first hand. He then went all in on the 2nd hand and this time nobody called him so all he got was an average pot. On the third hand, I got pocket 8's and bet the blind. Old Faithful went all in again. I had to call on general principal. He had pocket 9's and caught another 9 on the table before it was said and done.
I was the third person off the table and had barely left the house an hour ago. You might think that I would be royally ticked off, and while I was not happy, I was content with how I had played my hand. The idea that old boy could have had a great hand for 3 consecutive times around the table was slim to say the least. And I was right. He did not have a great hand. He just had one better than mine. But the odds were on my side and I was bold in my response.
The previous time at this same poker tourney we were late in the game and I was dealt a Queen and a King off suit. I bet and it went around the table and the dealer went all in. The guy next to me followed him in. I was there with a Queen and a King and we had not flopped yet and I could not talk myself out of believing that one of them had pocket Kings or better. So, I folded. That's when the dealer flipped his to reveal Queen / Nine and the other guy flipped Queen / Three. The only thing they paired was their Queens. I would have won that hand.
That killed me. To have let the game slip away from me because I did not have the courage of my cards just galled me. It did not put me out of the game but it kept me from tripling my chips and being in a much better situation as the game went farther. Of the two hands described above, folding the Queen/King bothers me so much more.
There is a lesson in life there somewhere.
Vietnam Vet
My cousin Tony is much older than me. His children are roughly my age. My mother and Tony grew up more like sister and brother than cousins. My mom would tell us stories about Tony and the Vietnam war. She had managed to keep one of his letters sent from the jungles for years and years before it finally disintegrated.
It was so vulnerable to time since the letter was written on toilet paper - the only paper he available at that time. My mom smiled a rueful smile as she recalled the first line of the letter, "That's right, Dinky, shit paper." My mom would go on to tell us about all the boys in the neighborhood that would wind up going over there. She talked about some of them that came back. She talked about others of them who never did.
Tony served a couple of tours over there. On one occasion my mom got to meet one of his friends who was getting trained to take Tony's place when Tony rotated home. Mom only told me he was a nice guy and young. And within a week of taking Tony's place he was killed in action. My mom felt sorry for him and his family and she felt bad that part of her was relieved that it was him and not the young man who might as well have been her brother.
Tony just got back from Afghanistan. It was not his first trip. He was a civilian contractor working with the local police forces on methods of maintaining the chain of evidence and such. At least that is what he told us. His kids and I are only half convinced he was not some sort of geriatric James Bond over there.
He told me upon his return (they processed him out just outside Indianapolis, where I live) he told me that this would be his final time going overseas. I told him that I had not talked to his wife but I was pretty sure it was his last time going overseas as a married man. He laughed at that and pointed out that when you are old enough to be the grandfather of the majority of the people over there, it is time to call it a day.
The funny thing to me was that even among the service people over there, the Vietnam war seemed like ancient history. He and a couple of other Vietnam vets would sit and tell stories of the bad old days and the young men and women there would sit in rapt attention.
Turns out the Vietnam war was not a movie with Martin Sheen. Turns out brave men and women died and those who didn't were scared as everyone who goes to war can't help but be. And then they came back to find a country that had people literally spitting on them as they walked through the airport on their way home.
Thanks Tony. And thanks to all the rest who have served. Thank you.
We Never Learn
In 2008 the economy went in the crapper. We have only recently gotten back to the point that the national unemployment rate dropped below nine percent. People who should never have been approved for a home loan in the first place wound up not being able to pay for their homes and lost them.
One of the silver linings to this whole gruesome situation was that we as Americans were cutting back on our debt. We were no where near where the country was in 1950 when only about 5% of the homes in this country had a mortgage, but folks seemed to finally understand that borrowing to supply your wants in life was actually dangerous to your financial health.
Or so it seemed. October marked the first month this year that personal debt for Americans went back up. Here we go again.
Budgets and Diets
I have written before about how my wife and I got out of debt. One of the biggest things that helped was that we started having a written budget at the beginning of each month that set limits on all of our expenditures. Once we started doing this, it was like getting a raise. It really made the whole financial thing much simpler and less stressful.
Now my wife and I are working on losing weight and have come across a very similar method. We pick out recipes from a cooking light magazine, buy the ingredients, and then cook for the whole week. The food is then packaged in single serving containers that can be taken to work or turned out on a plate.
Fun thing about how this works. It is crazy easy to eat right now since our house is always full of healthy meals. And a happy side effect is that since we go to the store only looking to buy items for a specific set of meals, our grocery bill has gone WAY down. Cut almost in half each month.
Apparently living intentionally instead of haphazardly has its own rewards.
My 2nd Home
I grew up in south Georgia. I have noticed that when people ask where I am from, I don't actually say Georgia, but always south Georgia. If you are from south Georgia, you get the difference. If you are not, I am not a good enough writer to ever explain it to you.
But my wife was talking to someone the other day and told them that I probably considered Texas my second home. My wife and I had never talked about it as such, but when she told me about this I understood she was exactly right. Nice when someone else comes to a truth about you before you do.
I really loved my time in Texas. I would go to Astros games in the summer time several times a week after a work. I would go to biker bars with biker friends and people watch some truly outlandish people. I would go to saloons and watch ten gallon hats dance with ten gallon big hair doing the two step. And the BBQ. You couldn't find decent pulled pork to save your life, but they do things with brisket out there that would make a Jewish deli jealous.
And the Mexican food. Oh, man. Priscilla and I have found a place or two in our travels that could put out a decent Mexican spread, but they have been few and far between. In Texas, you would have a pot luck at work and somebody would bring grandma's tamales to the shindig. Yeah. Texas is my second home.
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