8.18.2026 – still be remembered

still be remembered
in the end as man who sent
midget up to bat

Bill Veeck had a track record for designing some of the most elaborate marketing promotions during his four stints as a Major League Baseball owner, including an exploding scoreboard in 1960. But his most outlandish publicity stunt was sending 3ft 7in inch pinch-hitter Eddie Gaedel to the plate at a game 75 years ago Wednesday.

Sporting uniform number 1/8, Gaedel was greeted with a standing ovation at Sportsman’s Park in St Louis as he came to bat in the second game of a doubleheader on 19 August 1951 for the St Louis Browns. A famous AP photo shows Detroit Tigers catcher Bob Swift sitting on his knees with a ball in his glove, towering over Gaedel and his tiny strike zone. Not surprisingly, he walked on four pitches, and was immediately lifted for a pinch-runner.

From the article, ‘I felt like Babe Ruth’: baseball’s 3ft 7in pinch-hitter, 75 years on by Frederic J Frommer, in The Guardian, (8/19/2026).

Mr. Veeck (as in wreck) tells the story here.

At one point in time, the American League voided the contract and Eddie Gaudel was removed from the record books.

At another point, the contract was recognized as valid and Eddie’s stats are part of the official canon of Major league baseball.

Here the box score. See Gaedel with the “b” for pinch batter. (As a side note, growing up in West Michigan where everyone followed the Detroit Tigers, long time Tiger TV announcer George Kell played in this game … though not once do I ever remember that in the long long career of commentaries and rain delay stories, he ever mentioned it.)

Veeck writes:

Eddie crept back into the record books and remains there today. When he died, he got a front-page obituary in The New York Times, a recognition normally accorded only to statesmen, generals and Nobel Prize winners.

I did not recognize at the time that Gaedel’s moment was my moment too. I knew it was a good gag. I knew it would delight the fans and outrage the stuffed shirts. I knew, in other words, that it would be a lot of fun. It never entered my mind, however, that it would be the single act with which I would become permanently identified. Even today, I cannot talk to anybody from St. Louis without being told that they were there the day the midget came to bat. If everybody was there who says he was there, we would have had a tidy gathering of 280,000.

But no one has to tell me that if I returned to baseball tomorrow, won ten straight pennants and left all the old attendance records moldering in the dust, I would still be remembered, in the end, as the man who sent a midget up to bat. It is not the identification I would have chosen for myself when I came into baseball. My ambitions were grander than that. And yet I cannot deny that it is an accurate one. I have always found humor in the incongruous. I have always tried to entertain. And I have always found a stuffed-shirt the most irresistible of all targets.

I’m Bill Veeck, the guy who sent a midget up to bat?

Fair enough.

That was Veeck writing in his Autobiography, Veeck as in Wreck, which I read as kid at probably too young an age and I felt a real affinity for Mr. Veeck, maybe not the best hero, (but then my Dad didn’t like me reading biographies of Thomas Edison either as it was the story of a ne’er-do-well who made good) and I started following the Chicago White Sox.

This led me to talk my friend Doug, to drive down to Chicago from Grand Rapids, Michigan to see a Tigers play the White Sox on a Thursday, stay overnight, spend the next day in Chicago and then go the game on Friday night and drive home late.

It was announced that Thursday would be a double header to make up a rained out game so we would get to see three games.

Little did we know that on Thursday, Veeck had scheduled a promotion called Disco Demolition where fans could get in for 98 cents if they brought a disco record with them.

Wikipedia states … so blandly … Disco Demolition Night was a 1979 Major League Baseball promotion at Comiskey Park in Chicago that ended in a massive riot. Fans who brought a disco record got admission for 98 cents. Between a doubleheader, a crate of records was blown up, causing thousands to rush the field and force a game forfeit.

My friend Doug and I had box seats for the Chicago Riot Police in action and it was well worth the price of admission.

As Veeck would point out later, much like the midget batter, Disco Demolition it is still talked about today so how, from the point of view of media attention, could it have been a failure?

The Guardian article ends with ….

The Browns lasted just two more seasons in St Louis, before moving to Baltimore to become the Orioles in 1954.

By then, Veeck had sold the team, but he would return with two stints as owner of the White Sox, in the late 1950s/early ‘60s, and 1970s. After selling the team a second time, he would sit in the bleachers at Wrigley Field, to watch the Chicago Cubs, where his father had been team president early in the 20th century.

Veeck would wear an old pea coat and greek fisherman’s hat and sit in the bleachers behind the rails over a bleacher entrance so he would have an unobstructed view of the games.

When he spotted him, Harry Carey, the Cubs radio announcer would tell the fans at home that Bill Veeck was in the stands.

I went to a Cubs game one day and my Dad had the game on the radio back home and they heard Caray relay the information that Veeck was in attendance.

When I got home, my brother-in-law Bill asked if I had a chance to meet Veeck?

You bet I did, I answered.

And I pulled out his autograph to prove it.

6.30.2026 – loved true things but

loved true things but
knew it could be a very
dangerous mistress

It took Doc longer to go places than other people.

He didn’t drive fast and he stopped and ate hamburgers very often.

Driving up to Lighthouse Avenue he waved at a dog that looked around and smiled at him.

In Monterey before he even started, he felt hungry and stopped at Herman’s for a hamburger and beer.

While he ate his sandwich and sipped his beer, a bit of conversation came back to him.

Blaisdell, the poet, had said to him, “You love beer so much. I’ll bet some day you’ll go in and order a beer milk shake.”

It was a simple piece of foolery but it had bothered Doc ever since.

He wondered what a beer milk shake would taste like. The idea gagged him but he couldn’t let it alone. It cropped up every time he had a glass of beer.

Would it curdle the milk? Would you add sugar?

It was like a shrimp ice cream.

Once the thing got into your head you couldn’t forget it.

He finished his sandwich and paid Herman.

He purposely didn’t look at the milk shake machines lined up so shiny against the back wall.

If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he’d better do it in a town where he wasn’t known.

But then, a man with a beard, ordering a beer milk shake in a town where he wasn’t known—they might call the police. A man with a beard was always a little suspect anyway.

You couldn’t say you wore a beard because you liked a beard.

People didn’t like you for telling the truth.

You had to say you had a scar so you couldn’t shave.

Once when Doc was at the University of Chicago he had love trouble and he had worked too hard. He thought it would be nice to take a very long walk.

He put on a little knapsack and he walked through Indiana and Kentucky and North Carolina and Georgia clear to Florida.

He walked among farmers and mountain people, among the swamp people and fishermen. And everywhere people asked him why he was walking through the country.

Because he loved true things he tried to explain.

He said he was nervous and besides he wanted to see the country, smell the ground and look at grass and birds and trees, to savor the country, and there was no other way to do it save on foot.

And people didn’t like him for telling the truth.

They scowled, or shook and tapped their heads, they laughed as though they knew it was a lie and they appreciated a liar.

And some, afraid for their daughters or their pigs, told him to move on, to get going, just not to stop near their place if he knew what was good for him.

And so he stopped trying to tell the truth.

He said he was doing it on a bet—that he stood to win a hundred dollars.

Everyone liked him then and believed him.

They asked him in to dinner and gave him a bed and they put lunches up for him and wished him good luck and thought he was a hell of a fine fellow.

Doc still loved true things but he knew it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.

From Cannery Row by John Steinbeck (Viking Press: New York, 1945 – There is a note in the frontpiece that states: THIS EDITION IS PRODUCED IN FULL COMPLIANCE WITH ALL WAR PRODUCTION BOARD CONSERVATION ORDERS).

People didn’t like him for telling the truth.

And so he stopped trying to tell the truth.

Doc still loved true things but he knew it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.

If a man ordered a beer milk shake, he thought, he’d better do it in a town where he wasn’t known.

Way back when I lived through the summer of Mark Fydrich.

IYKYK.

It was the summer of 1976.

Also known as the bicentennial.

A local guy from Grand Rapids who had graduated from my Mom’s old high school, was President of the United States.

And it was the summer of Mark Fydrich.

He was this kid who pitched for the Detroit Tigers who would have ordered a beer milkshake regardless of where he was if that was what he wanted.

He pitched and just acted like he would have if he had been playing catch on a beach or in Tiger Stadium and because he won, the crowd fell in love with him.

He ran to mound and got down on his hands and knees and smoothed out the dirt.

He ran around and thanked everyone for everything.

He talked to himself constantly on the mound and since no one else was around to be talked too, it was reported in the papers that he must be talking to the ball.

He would say things that he didn’t like using a ball that had been hit.

He wanted that ball to go back in the ball bag and goof around with the other balls and loose the desire to be hit.

Back then, growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, my Dad subscribed to the Detroit Free Press.

Though the paper was written and printed in Detroit, 150 miles and 3 hours away by car, it was somehow written and printed and driven to Grand Rapids where our local paperboy had it on our front porch by 7 A.M.

I fail to see how the digital age has improved on this.

Dad’s routine was to get up, start the coffee then open the front door and take a deep breath of outside air, regardless of season.

He said it cleansed his lungs and got him ready for his day.

That was the extent of his exercise regime.

Then he would step out on the porch and pick up the paper.

He would get his coffee and go through the paper and who ever else was up would wait for him to finish and it wasn’t until he announced, “here you go”, did we have a shot at the sports section.

This one summer morning it was my brother Pete who got the paper first.

Most likely Dad had already announced that Fidrych won again last night but we needed details.

I was 16 and drinking coffee by that time so I would have poured a cup and maybe I grabbed the front section of the Free Press while I waited for the Sports Section.

I always suspected Pete of reading extra slow with me sitting there, including going over ever line of the box scores so I made a big deal of being interested in the front page and the editorials.

We were sitting next to each other on high stools along the kitchen counter.

Pete finally sat back and folder the sports section back together and slid it over to me.

“It say’s,” said Pete slowly, looking at me, “that after a game, Fidrych can’t wait for his favorite post game meal.”

I looked at him and waited, a little perturbed that he was telling me something I would soon read for myself, but still listening and looking at him.

Dad, looking over back sections of the paper with his coffee, paused and looked over from where he sat at the table.

“It say’s, said Pete slowly, looking at me, “that his favorite post game meal is a bottle of ice cold beer and a glass of ice cold milk.”

For some reason that statement hit me, Pete and Dad just the right way that morning and we all burst out laughing.

Milk and Beer!

Only that Fidrych.

It was one of those summer mornings where nothing was wrong and everything was funny both between ourselves and the whole world.

Miss mornings like that.

It was just normal, the way it was the day before and the next day.

They don’t seem to happen anymore.

Is it me?

Is it this crummy news cycle?

Maybe I need to order a beer and some ice cold milk.

If a man ordered a beer milk shake, I thought, he’d better do it in a town where he wasn’t known.

Doc still loved true things but he knew it was not a general love and it could be a very dangerous mistress.

And so he stopped trying to tell the truth.

People didn’t like him for telling the truth.

6.26.2026 – all the summer world

all the summer world
was bright fresh – brimming with life
music at the lips

Saturday morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The locust-trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air.

From The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (Hartford, Conn: American Publishing Co., 1884).

I am keeper of the calendar where I work and we keep the next three months of those big desk calendar pages pinned to the wall with significant dates marked up.

I took down June today (as the last week of June is also on the July page) and put up September.

I outlined the important dates of Labor Day, 1st day of NCAA football and 1st day of NFL season and marked the ‘end’ of the summer season here on the Island where I work.

I thought about and thought that something was missing and I noticed I had not included the back to school dates for the area.

This is important for us as it marks the end of the family vacation cycle for the summer.

I looked up the dates for the South Carolina county where we are and the neighboring Georgia County.

Beaufort County, South Carolina starts school … on August 7th.

On a Friday!

Chatham County, Georgia starts school on Monday, August 3rd.

I do not want to get into the school year and extended fall breaks discussion or how if you want to have weeks of High School Football playoffs and still end your football season on Thanksgiving weekend you need to start school earlier and end earlier.

I want to talk about my summer as a kid at Crestview Elementary school in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I grew up.

We would get out early in June.

Looking at a calendar for June, 1967, when I was in 2nd grade, most likely we got on around June 15th or 16th.

I do remember that Memorial Day was, 1) a day off from school and, 2) a day off anywhere in the week as it was May 30th and if it happened to fall on a Saturday or Sunday, that was too bad.

After Memorial day, there would be another 2 weeks of school in hot rooms with no one able to concentrate on any type of school work.

It was during these two weeks that at some point I would put on my most saddest, mournful face and walk up to the teacher’s desk and ask about final report cards.

I would say, “Guess I’ll be seeing you next year,” and shuffle away.

Somehow I was always passed to the next grade.

The only thing that happened in that last two weeks was field day.

To us kids, field day was the Super Bowl, World Series and Olympics all rolled into one and I thought it was the only one held anywhere in the world.

It wasn’t until years later that I was reading a book about WW2 POW camps in Germany where British soldiers would organize a yearly field day in the spring.

About the same time I also came across lots of references of any number of books and short stories that took place at boarding schools and colleges where field day was a fixture in the schedule.

It had all the great events like standing broad jump, vertical high jump, soft ball throw and running.

And here’s the thing.

Everyone was in it.

No one was left out.

And …

AND … at the end of the day, little medals would be handed out to the winners.

THERE WERE NO PARTICPATION AWARDS!

It was do or die on your own except for the last event which was a relay race between mixed gender teams selected from each grade, 1st thru 6th.

It wasn’t a 100 yard dash or even a 60 yard dash but a dash for as long as lanes could be laid out in the big field behind the school.

As I remember it, someone from the City parks and recs would show up and a race track was laid out with white chalk lines.

The only competition in this relay race was if the 5th grade might pull off the upset and win over the 6th but otherwise those big 6th graders always won.

I always approached field day with enthusiasm and and a level excitement.

I could imagine winning a ribbon or two or, maybe … all of them.

There is an episode of The Andy Griffith Show were little Opie day dreams about winning so many ribbons at field day, they have to turn him around to pin more on his back.

Boy! Howdy! but could I relate to Opie.

Then Field Day would come and it always seemed to be a hot day.

Our playground field was grass but a grass of a kind that didn’t grow anywhere else in my world.

It was sparse and wide blades and prickly and when you ran on it, more dirt and dust came up out of the ground in a way that didn’t happen on any other grass anywhere else that I knew of.

The dirt had a sweet sickly smell to it.

On a hot day with hundreds of kids running around, a cloud of gray hovered about six inches off the ground and your shoes and socks turned an odd dirty gray.

I also remember that in that day and age, no shorts were allowed so we were all wearing long, hot slacks as blue jeans weren’t allowed yet either.

It was hot and stuffy and smelly.

From enthusiastic anticipation I became more and more anxious.

Thinking first what am I doing here to thinking HOW DO I GET OUT OF HERE.

The events would start and I would take my turn and though I might jump kind of high or through my softball kind of far there was always a Don Gagnon or Ross Dornon who jumped higher or throw farther.

It wasn’t humiliation because so many other kids where at my level but every once in a while someone like Donny Gray would go nuts and unleash some super jump or record softball throw and take home a medal.

It didn’t take long for the magic and excitement of field day to wear off and all I wanted was for it to be over.

The relay race would be run and we would all be herded into the gym for the Awards Ceremony but we all had a chance to line up at the drinking fountain from the sink in our classrooms.

The lower EL classrooms also had a small restroom and after looking at the long line at the sink, I went into the restroom and cupped my hands under the sink in there to get a drink.

Which I thought was pretty smart and biblical (thinking of Gideon and his 400 men who drank water from the stream with a cupped hand) and I did this for years until someone caught me and yelled “Mike’s drinking bathroom water!”

Off to the gym to here the names yelled out for kids to come up and get their ribbons.

I could have listed them before we started.

They all would have been those big kids in school.

When you were a little kid, you knew who the big kids were and you knew the law of the jungle.

This was their day.

At least my name wasn’t Opie.

But my day was coming, that last day and when that last day came, it was usually a half day.

Our desks would be empty.

The blackboards were clean.

Because it was spring the windows would be open and the rooms smelled better then they did the rest of the year.

Our gym shoes that hung from our desk seats would have been brought home which also might have contributed to the cleaner smell.

There was nothing we had to do, that final bell would ring and summer would start.

We knew we had the rest of the month of June.

And we had the entire month of July.

And we had the entire month of August.

And somewhere in the far far future, away in September, after some holiday called Labor Day, we would have to be back in school.

But until then, there was NOTHING we had to do.

It was summer break and it seemed like we were off the entire summer and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and brimming with life.

There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music issued at the lips.

There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step.

The locust-trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air.

Freedom.

A freedom you don’t get to experience too often.

I looked at those school schedules today and I thought August 3rd? August 7th?

Those poor kids.

A modern view of our playing field. The playground and basketball courts are new and we didn’t have soccer nets in those days.

The run down ball diamond is gone.

But that grass and the dirt is still there and I can smell and feel the heat and drama of field day.

6.8.2026 – not a transaction …

not a transaction …
a values test – what would you
pay that money for …

Based on the article, The insanity of ticket prices is matched only by our own by Mitch Albom where Mr. Albom writes:

Even the nosebleed seats at the Garden are selling for thousands of dollars. The lower-level good seats are reportedly asking in the $40,000-$100,000 range. Some premium seats have been listed at above $200,000.

All of which makes ticket buying today not a transaction, but a values test. What would you pay that kind of money for?

I can safely say I have never paid anywhere near $1,000 a ticket for any event, of any kind, and I can only think of one thing that would tempt me to go that high, and that would be if all four Beatles reunited (mostly because, at this point, I’d want to ask George and John how they did it).

I live in a resort community.

The type of community where folks own million dollar homes that they use for a week or two out of the year.

The owners fly in on their private jets and are met by their valet driven rental cars.

I see them in their cars and I say, couldn’t afford the car insurance.

Insurance?

I couldn’t afford their gas.

I see the ladies with their styled hair and I say, I couldn’t afford their hair cut.

$200,000 for a ticket to a basketball game?

What would I spend $200,000 on if I had an extra $200,000 laying around?

What would I spend $100,000 on if I had an extra $100,000 laying around?

What would I spend $10,000 on if I had an extra $10,000 laying around?

What would I spend $1,000 on if I had an extra $1,000 laying around?

What would I spend $100 on if I had an extra $100 laying around?

What would I spend $10 on if I had an extra $10 laying around?

I think I have $20 in my wallet but I am afraid to look as I like thinking I got $20 in my wallet and I would feel bad if I found out I didn’t.

Sure sure sure all easy to say.

Truth be told, those who got it, got it and can do with it what they want.

I am reminded of the great Orson Welles on a talk show being asked, “If some gave him an ungodly amount of money … what would he do with it?”

“Give it all away,” Mr. Welles shot back without needing a moment to think of response.

He was quiet for a moment.

Then he said in a very quiet voice, “Of course my answer would most likely be different should someone ever give me an ungodly amount of money.”

But still, oh come on.

Sure it’s exclusive and sure it’s not about seeing the game but a values test.

What do you value?

I am also reminded of something I said to my wife this weekend.

We were at the beach in our beach chairs looking out at the Atlantic Ocean, bright sunshine, fresh breeze and surf and for that moment no one walking in front of us.

It was just us and the ocean.

I said to my wife, doesn’t matter who you are or where you are but if this is your view right now, it’s just like mine.

And it might be good to remember WDJS or What Did Jesus Say?

He said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

If your treasure is in Madison Square Garden … well, so be it, but be warned .. there your heart is also.

5.18.2026 – meek for the moment

meek for the moment
no excuse, effort wasn’t there
that game sucked, well, yeah

Let it hurt. Let it sting like hairspray in their eyes. Let it haunt their sleep for weeks to come. Then maybe next time the Detroit Pistons get a Game 7 at home to advance to the Eastern Conference finals, they won’t play as if they’re chasing a bus that left without them.

In their worst defensive effort of the 2026 NBA playoffs, at the biggest moment of the entire season, the Pistons let the Cleveland Cavaliers whip them in the scoring game, the passing game, the rebounding game, the assists game and the coaching game. Cleveland did everything but pull the Pistons’ pants down.

Possession after possession, the Cavs fed their big men, who ate up the Pistons. Layups. Soft bankers. Lob passes. Endless free throws. Detroit was late to 3-pointers; the Cavs swished them. Detroit was late to 50-50 balls; the Cavs swiped them.

Everyone knows the Pistons are better than what they displayed in this 125-94 beatdown. But you are what you do in sports, and this Game 7 magnified the known weaknesses of this Detroit roster, like the lack of scoring options besides Cunningham, and the serious problem with Jalen Duren’s consistency.

It also revealed something we hadn’t seen before. The defense, which the Pistons and their coaches talk about incessantly as their calling card, is apparently not automatic when the stakes are high; it still must be cranked up from the heart.

On Sunday night, it was too meek for the moment. There is no excuse for that. Defense isn’t a 3-pointer that rims in and out. It’s effort. And the effort was not there.

“That game,” Cunningham said afterwards, “sucked.”

Well, yeah.

Mitch Albom: Sting of Pistons Game 7 loss is only way they’ll learn

Famously the story is told how back when the University of Michigan Basketball Team was known as the Fab Five, I told my wife I wanted people over to watch their 2nd chance at winning a championship.

She was concerned that I wouldn’t be good company if Michigan lost but I assured her I was happy they made to the championship game.

Later that night, Chris Webber called a time out when Michigan had no time outs and there were technical foul shots and a turnover and the game was over and I smashed the TV remote against the wall.

My wife said “You said it wouldn’t matter if they lost.”

“But,” I said, “I didn’t know they would lose like that!”

Last night the Detroit Pistons played a game seven – win or go home game.

I was kinda miffed as it wasn’t on TV, you had to pay to watch it stream online.

So I spent the evening reading and checking the score.

The Pistons were down by 10 early but I knew they would come around.

The Pistons were down by 15 at the half but I knew they would come around.

The Pistons were down by 30 late and I was glad I didn’t get to watch.

Mr. Albom wrote that , ” … hate to point this out, but if the Cavs had made their free throws, they would have won by 47 points.“\

I wasn’t mad but I didn’t think they would lose like that.

As Cade Cunningham said, “That game sucked.”

As Mr. Albom wrote:

Well … Yeah!.