Subject:  In my "spare" time, McGwire Madness..... (fwd)
Date:     Fri, 4 Sep 1998 114405 -0500 (CDT)
From:     "Roy L. Beavers" <rbeavers@mail.llion.org>
To:       emfguru@hotmail.com
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A short editorial for TGIF......


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1998 11:27:58 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Roy L. Beavers" 
To: nleditor@mail.orion.org
Cc: emfguru 
Subject: McGwire Madness.....




I've got it too....  McGwire madness.  It is not a complaint.  Nor
a "malady" of any kind.  It is more of a joy, a kind of singing within
the soul, an inspiration.

It causes one to reflect upon such unimportant matters as the meaning
of life and to set aside the miniscule importance of other everyday
mundane events, like the "Monica Lewinsky" affair or the current state of
the stock market.

It also recalls memories ... of a an eight year old boy who watched his
first professional baseball game ... while clutching in his hand a
"knot-hole gang" membership card as he sat in the bleachers at White City
Park in Springfield, Missouri.  That was about 1938.  After the game, as
he was walking home with some other boys, he lost his knot-hole gang
card.  The walk home was about a mile, from Booneville over to National
and north across Kearney....

Stan Musial was playing for Springfield then, but the star of the team
was a pitcher named "Blix" Donnelly.  I may not now have the spelling
right, but no matter ... everybody said, then, that he was certain to
make it to the big leagues.  Eventually he did, though his career record
was not to be in the same league with that of "Stan the man."

There were not enough 8-10 year old kids in my neighborhood, then, to make
up any kind of a "real" baseball game.  We played with a tennis ball and
somebody had about a 12 ounce bat.  None of us had gloves.  Five or six of
us could still somehow manage a game of "rounders."  I used to practice by
throwing the tennis ball up in the air and hitting it -- always dreaming
that I was Stan Musial.  It was many years later before I fully realized
that I could never be like Stan Musial, for many reasons of inadequacy,
but mainly because I was not left handed!

Stan "the man" Musial became the baseball idol of a generation of Missouri
boys (and men) who enjoyed a decade and a half of seeing their beloved St.
Louis Cardinals dominate the National League.  Yes, there were other great
names in that era of St. Louis baseball history as well -- Mort and Walker
Cooper, Marty Marion, Enos Slaughter.  Particularly, I remember the year
that a couple of relatively unknown Cardinal pitchers, Howie Pollet and
Murray Dickson, helped to tame the mighty Yankees in the World Series.

That is what McGwire Madness is doing again....  Restoring a faith, a
confidence, a belief that anything is possible.  Even the Yankees.....

But most of all, the feeling is of a sense that "most things" in America
must still be all right.  If, 50 years apart, America can produce two great
men of such skill and good character, both called "the man" -- which seems
right! -- and place them with the St. Louis Cardinals in the heart of
America, where another generation of Missouri boys and men can dream of
baseball greatness, then that suggests to this writer that overall things
are still "O.K." in the land of the free....  A dishonest President 
and a venal and greedy, money grabbing Congress -- that kow-tows to the
special interests rather than the public good -- are not what America is
about, anyway.  It is still about baseball!  

And one can still believe that somewhere in Springfield there is an eight
year old boy, swinging at a tennis ball, who dreams of growing up to be
like Mark McGwire....  He probably won't achieve that aspiration, but I'll
bet that he turns out to be a pretty good man, partly because of that
dream......


Roy Beavers
26555 Gene Drive
Lebanon, Missouri, 65536, USA.....


Roy Beavers (EMFguru)
rbeavers@llion.org..............http://www.feb.se/EMF-L/EMF-L.html
................................It is better to light a single candle ...
than to curse the darkness...............................................









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