Baseball Is Alive And Well

It was an epic matchup: the green-clad O’Reilly Electric little leaguers against the maroon-clad boys of Fairfield Rotary. The game would begin at the stroke of noon on a beautiful early-Spring Saturday at Highwood Park.

The young ballers, most of them 5 years old, had been practicing at home with their dads, and already had a 3-inning game under their belt. But this was serious stuff: word had it the boys of Fairfield Rotary were not to be taken lightly. Big hitters, those guys.

This is T-ball Little League, organized by the Rec Department of the City of Fairfield, Connecticut. Our grandson, Joey (Joey B to his teammates) plays in this league, and my wife and I have every one of Joey’s games on our schedule. We moved from Madison, Wisconsin to coastal Connecticut a year ago, at the height of the plague, to be closer to our daughter and her family. It was exactly this sort of thing – the prospect of watching two of our grandkids grow up – that led us to weigh anchor after more than 30 years in Madison and set sail for Long Island Sound.

We live in the Black Rock section of Bridgeport, Connecticut’s largest city. It’s a beautiful and very safe neighborhood, bordered by the vast expanse of Long Island Sound on the south, and the city of Fairfield on the north.

Make no mistake about it: Fairfield is a wealthy community. As my wife and I roll into a parking spot at Highwood Park in our late-model high-end Chevy SUV, there’s a Range Rover parked ahead of us. We’re surrounded by BMW’s, Audis, a few Benz sedans, big Volvo SUV’s, a Lexus or two, and the occasional Honda. Our big white Chevy would fit right in at Lambeau Field or Miller Park… er, American Family Field. Whatever.  I still call it County Stadium. But here, we’re outclassed up and down the parking lot.

However, everyone we meet is friendly, down-to-earth, and most cordial. Many of those we meet are grandparents, like us. We are all eager to engage in conversations about our darling children/grandchildren, and how they’ve taken to the Great American Pastime.

The young man with the bright blue glove and the perfect infield stance playing first base is our grandson, Joey. He’s got great form, we think. On the right side of the photo, the dad overseeing things is our son-in-law, John – Joey’s coach and mentor. John and Joey have been working on catching, throwing, batting, and running since February, when the snow disappeared.

Nearly all the dads are present, coaching their sons, being patient and encouraging. A couple of the dads are missing, but the grandparents’ grapevine informs us that those dads are “away on business.” The moms are just as supportive.

As the dads dispense advice and give tips on form and style, moms provide the loving nurture of assuring their kids that they’re doing a great job and dispense kid-friendly granola bars and hugs. Pictured above, our daughter Mallory assures Joey that his uniform looks awesome and that he’s really throwing the ball well.

Many, if not most of the moms, have solid sports credentials. You can overhear them talking about the team sports they played in high school and college. Sitting to our right is Brandon’s mom. The family lives in the same neighborhood as our daughter, but their son plays for Fairfield Rotary. Both he and Joey wear uniform number 8.

I comment that Joey’s dad is a Yankees fan, so Joey’s number 8 is the same number Yogi Berra wore. “My husband grew up in Maryland,” she says, “so Brandon’s 8 stands for Cal Ripken. You know, Ripken not only was a star with the Orioles, but he was also actually born in Maryland,” she adds.

These ladies know their baseball.

My Chicago-born wife and lifelong Cubs fan quietly assumes Joey B’s number 8 is for Andre Dawson.

The boy who’s a favorite with all the moms is a spirited lad nicknamed Chip. Chip’s family lives just a few houses from our daughter and son-in-law, and he and Joey are good buds. Chip is a bit small compared to the other 5-year-olds but possesses an indomitable spirit and plays with reckless enthusiasm. He has a huge head of light blonde hair that flows from under his baseball cap to his shoulders. When Chip runs, his hair flies wildly, and everyone cheers for him.

Not surprisingly, all the boys like to bat far more than they enjoy playing infield. Here’s Joey B swinging for the fences. He knocks the ball off the tee and follows through, something his dad has been coaching him. The first practice we went to, the concept of running to first base after you hit the ball off the tee was something that didn’t come naturally. The boys would whack the ball into the infield, then stand and admire their work – as the dads and moms yelled, “run to first! Run to first base!”

The boy at bat would then dutifully run toward first base, after the vocal cues from the parents and assembled fans. At the first practice, most of the boys carried their bat with them all the way down the first base line. By the second practice, the dads had managed to coach that out of them.

My love of baseball started early, and I have a tremendous coach to thank for that. When I first played organized baseball, the late Russ Tiedemann was our summer rec league coach in Hortonville, WI, where he was also the high school varsity baseball coach. He drilled us on fundamentals in every practice session and taught us the beauty of in-game strategy. His love of the game was contagious.

After several years at Hortonville, Coach Tiedemann was hired by UW-Oshkosh to be varsity baseball coach, where he established a true baseball dynasty, winning 15 conference championships and a national championship in 1985. Coach Tiedemann has sent more young men to careers in Major League Baseball – 28 – than any other baseball coach in Wisconsin history.

It was my great fortune to have been coached by an icon like Russ Tiedemann.

But, before Coach Tiedeman, my coach was my dad – just as Joey’s coach right now is his dad, just as all the young t-ballers on the field, as shown above, are being coached by their fathers. In the photo above, Joey is standing on first, looking right at me, saying, “Papa – I got a hit!” And, considering the formidable infield Joey faced at bat, that single was quite the accomplishment. There’s not much need for an outfield in t-ball for 5-year-olds, so everybody plays infield.

Perhaps Joey will grow up to be a singles machine, just like Papa (me). Thanks to Coach Tiedemann, I could always make good contact with a pitched ball. It was the running part that did me in. What would have been an extra-base hit in the many bar leagues I played in over the years was usually a single for me.

But there was that one night, years ago, when our radio station team was playing a team of county sheriff's deputies, that I blasted a ball over the fence and out of the ball park. I had to run/trot/walk all the bases on that sweet summer night. It was the game-winning hit, so the guys made me a little trophy engraved with the date and the legend "Game-winning homer - boy, am I good!" I still have the trophy.

So many great memories - from the sandlots of my youth in Hortonville, to the bar-league games of my adulthood, to the t-ball games of my grandson.

As long as there are dads who volunteer their time as coaches, and young men like Joey who love to get together and have fun playing t-ball, baseball will remain alive and well.

And there’ll always be grey-haired grandpas like me to cheer them on from the sidelines.

How I Met G. Gordon Liddy

 

It was 1994, and the radio station I programmed was carrying Liddy’s immensely popular talk show. Liddy had started out in 1993 as a talk show host on a Washington, DC station, and within a year his fast-paced and controversial show was nationally syndicated.

I deeply disagreed with his politics, but the guy knew how to grab and hold a radio audience.

My soon-to-be wife Toni and I were attending the huge annual NAB/RTNDA convention in San Antonio. For those not familiar with the acronyms, NAB is National Association of Broadcasters, and RTNDA is Radio-TV News Directors Association, which is now known as RTDNA, Radio-TV Digital News Association. Toni represented her employer, WISC-TV, and I represented mine, the Midwest Family Broadcast Group.

We had both chosen to attend the break-out session G. Gordon Liddy was presenting, the topic of which was something like “How To Get And Hold A Talk Radio Audience.” It was held early in the afternoon of the second day of the convention, in one of the many break-out session meeting rooms at the San Antonio Convention Center.

Toni and I wanted to get to the session a little early, to be sure of getting a good seat to hear “The G-Man,” as he called himself. As it turned out, we were the first to arrive at the room, and there, ten feet away from us, seated alone at the table in the front of the room, was the man himself.

The first thing we both noticed was Liddy’s eyes. Toni called them “dead eyes.” He had a piercing gaze that immediately intimidated you. They were the eyes of a man who’s seen a lot – and probably a lot of things you wouldn’t want to know about.

He was quite affable. “Hi, welcome, c’mon in” he said to us, holding us with that deadly gaze. “You’re the first to arrive,” he added. He extended a hand and we both approached, shook hands, and he invited us to sit in the front now, not more than six feet from him. I told him my station carried his show and his face lit up. “Great! Thank you! Hope you’re happy with me!”

He’s the kind of man you want to say “yes, sir” to. So I did. I mean, this guy has seen and done everything. He was an undercover White House operative and one of the chief dirty tricksters of the Nixon era.

I don’t remember much of his presentation, only because the years have dulled my recollection.

But I’ll never forget those eyes.

Those dead eyes.

Features and Benefits

 

While watching the Badgers in an NCAA Basketball Tournament game Sunday, an ad came on for a Kia vehicle. The announcer excitedly said the Kia SUV featured “torque vectoring – and, a center-locking differential!!!”

I waited for the overenthusiastic announcer to explain what torque vectoring is, and what a center-locking differential does, so that the 95% of the viewers who are not gearheads like me would understand what he was talking about. Suffice it to say he never explained it. I wondered who approved using such arcane language in a commercial supposedly targeted to a mass audience.

The ad violated one of what used to be the cardinal rules of writing ad copy: if you’re going to cite a feature, be sure to explain the benefit. But given my failure to understand the purpose of so many ads I see on TV today, it’s possible the old rule was tossed out decades ago. Now it all has to do with "branding" or some such, which goes over the heads of dinosaurs like me.

My first introduction to the features/benefits concept was in the early ‘60’s, when I heard a recording of Dr. Murray Banks, a then-famous psychiatrist, describing how vacuum cleaners were being mis-marketed by Madison Avenue. Dr. Banks said the sales pitches involved facts like how much power the electric motor in the vacuum cleaner has, how it rolls on fancy new wheels, how engineers used new research to modify the design.

“Forget all that stuff,” Banks said (or words to that effect). “They should just say to the housewife this vacuum cleaner works so efficiently it will add five years to your life expectancy,” Dr. Banks said, which got a big laugh from the audience he was speaking to.

Remember, this was recorded in the early 60’s, hence the outdated “housewife” reference. But Dr. Banks had hit upon one of the core flaws in the advertising business: a feature without a benefit doesn’t mean much to the consumer.

As a fledgling broadcaster, my concept of features and benefits was sharpened at a sales seminar I attended. The presenter said, “when your sales presentation says your station has fifty thousand watts of power, what does that feature mean to the average businessperson?” He answered his own question by saying, “Nothing. Not a thing, unless you hook that feature to a benefit, and explain it by saying the station has fifty thousand watts of power, which means your advertising message will come through loud and clear over the entire marketing area.”

He went on to give several other examples of oft-advertised product features, meaningless without being hooked to a benefit.

A lot of businesses understand this basic advertising concept, but sometimes the failures, when as obvious as the Kia ad I saw, are mind-blowing. I’m sure Kia paid some ad agency a lot of money to tout torque vectoring and a center-locking differential.

What a waste.

How I Almost Got Sent To Facebook Jail

 

As a former radio and TV news anchor, I have a lot of Facebook friends who have either retired from the biz, been thrown under the bus by the biz, or are still actively employed in the broadcasting biz. A lot of us enjoy posting and sharing screen caps of bloopers like the one below.

Yesterday, a former colleague who still hosts a daily call-in talk show in the Midwest (and is a recovering radio news anchor) posted a question: what are some of your favorite headlines or teases? There were quite a few interesting responses, including this one posted by a friend who works for Fox Radio News.

The New York Post is a rich source for stuff like this, including one of my favorites. Years ago, when I was still an on-air radio news anchor during the hunt for Saddam Hussein, I’d write and deliver colorful stories about the effort to find him and bring him to justice.

One morning, the station’s consultant was monitoring my broadcast online from his east-coast home, and he sent me an e-mail saying, “saw this in the Post this morning and it reminded me of you.”

So, I posted this on the string of comments, saying it had always been one of my favorites – particularly the “warm up the virgins” line.

It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes after I posted it when I got a notification that someone else had posted something on the string. When I went to look at the post, Facebook instead popped up a screen telling me they had put a warning over the image I posted, saying it contained an explicit image that might be offensive.

I wish I’d had the presence of mind to grab a screen-shot of the warning, but I was too astounded by this to have my wits about me. What on earth was offensive about a picture of Saddam Hussein – originally published by a New York City newspaper?

After reading the warning, I clicked around on some other stuff on Facebook for a couple minutes. All of a sudden, I got another notification from Facebook that I was being officially warned that my post violated Facebook’s community standards (again, I wish I’d grabbed a screen cap of it) and I was prompted to scroll down to read more about these community standards. I was warned that if I did not agree to uphold these standards, my account would be temporarily suspended.

So, I clicked on the thingy that said, “I agree,” to avoid being sent to Facebook jail.

With all the absolutely bogus crap that makes in onto Facebook – the political, divisive, demonstrably false memes, the hateful screeds, the racist stuff – my post of a newspaper page from 2006 gets me a stern warning.

Wonderful.