Eddie

Today would have been my dad's 85th birthday, so I'm thinking of him.

I thought of him yesterday too at the Hall of Fame, which he would have loved. Dad, Eddie to his friends, was born in New York in 1923, the same year as Yankee Stadium, and he grew up rooting for the Yanks of Ruth and Gehrig and later, his favorite, Joe DiMaggio. He turned me on to baseball as a kid, playing catch in the backyard, taking me to my first baseball game, the Mays-McCovey-Marichal Giants at Candlestick Park in San Francisco. When the A's moved from Kansas City in 1968 to Oakland, much closer to our East Bay home, he and I went to many games there, watching Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue, Joe Rudi -- the beginning of the great A's teams that went on to win three consecutive World Series in the 1970s after we moved to Oregon.

We had a pretty typical father-son relationship, I think, meaning much love and respect buried under some layers of annoyance or misunderstanding. A lot of my least favorite qualities -- I can be quick-tempered, argumentative, shrill -- I think I got from him. Also, lately, my gut. But I also see him in my own ease in varied social situations, my ability to make a friend, an affinity for numbers, my deep love of family.

My Aunt Chickie back in New Jersey, who wasn't related to Dad by blood, knows of our sometimes strained relationship. She found several opportunities on this visit, as she always does, to say nice things about him, and she brought out some cool old family photos that I hadn't seen, including of Mom and Dad with Jersey clan. That was nice.

As I was reminded yesterday, this will be the last year at Yankee Stadium, meaning it lasted four seasons longer than Dad did. But also that they both had good, long, full lives.

Happy 85th, Eddie. We miss you.

Say Hey

By mutual agreement, this is the last time I can tell this story.

Seven years ago, on the first Pie in the Sky tour, Michelle and I were heading east from Niagara Falls across upstate New York toward Boston. I took a break from driving (this was back in the day when I was allowed behind the wheel) and put the chair back for a little nap while Michelle drove.

One thing, I requested: When we get to the Cooperstown exit wake me up and get off the freeway. I've always wanted to see the Baseball Hall of Fame. OK, she said. But when I woke up, half an hour later or so, I realized we were past Cooperstown already. Crazy bitch had blown off the Hall of Fame! She had some lame excuse about it being too late in the day, but we've been arguing about that ever since. Fact is, she drove by the exit.

Fast forward to Pie in the Sky II. Michelle's doing all the driving, but Cooperstown has become our jokey can't-miss destination. I vowed to snort lines of coke off the dashboard to stay awake if necessary.

Today, after six weeks of dawdling through 25 states and the District of Columbia, after losing countless poker chips to uncounted suckout artists across America, after downing clam chowdah on Cape Cod and steamer clams on the Jersey Shore, spending one terrific afternoon at the best hospital in Maine (just ask 'em) and another at the formerly peaceful Walden Pond, we set the Garmin for Cooperstown and waited to "acquire satellites."

The Garmin has its own sense-of-humor way of getting there, but that's another story. It was a pretty drive anyway.

Seventy-eight miles from our morning departure point of Albany, N.Y., but somehow three hours away, the Hall of Fame finally appeared. ("Arriving at destination!" chirped the Garmin.) After lunch at the Doubleday Cafe (Abner Doubleday is erroneously credited with inventing baseball, as I would learn later), I took my two-hour tour. Michelle waited outside.

It was full of cool stuff for a lifelong baseball fan like me. I especially liked seeing how the gloves, bats and other equipment have changed over the years, and looking at the uniforms, balls and other mementos from signature games, like Nolan Ryan's seven no-hitters. It was fun to see that pitcher Bob Gibson's glove, during his historic 1968 season, was a Spalding "Carl Yastrzemski Personal Model." And there were cool exhibits featuring my hero, Willie Mays, as well as many other greats. I thought of my brother-in-law Manuel when I got to the Tony Gwynn display, and of my friend Mike Stahlberg when I spied ol' Shoeless Joe Jackson.


No denying my nerdiness though. At one point I was bent over, reading some fine print in an exhibit featuring Ichiro Suzuki and the history of the Mariners, and I heard a camera flashing behind me. Doh! There I was, in my Ichiro replica jersey, craning to study the real Ichiro jersey. Somebody's showing that picture to relatives tonight and having a good laugh.

Still, I really enjoyed Cooperstown and felt lucky to be there on a quiet Tuesday afternoon before summer vacation. After school gets out, the Hall greeters told me, it'll be a zoo in there.

Baseball fans, it's worth a visit.

A Day at Walden

Yesterday we woke up, got ourselves some Starbucks, then headed on over to Walden Pond. We walked all around the pond, listened to the bullfrogs, observed the same ants that Thoreau wrote about so many years ago, collected a few mosquito bites and just generally marvelled at the beauty of Walden Pond -- when a lady also exploring the place informed us that, oh no, we weren't at Walden Pond. We were in Walden Wood (thank god it was Walden something, or else it would have been really ridiculous). Walden Pond was just down the way.

So we get in the car and punch Walden Pond in the Garmin. She directs us around -- I swear -- in a circle, then lands us a few hundred yards from where we were, at the real Walden Pond, entrance $5. Here, at a much bigger, less woodsy spot, bunches of people hung out a the beach in bathing suits with their kids and ate sandwiches they brought from home, and generally acted like it's not a Thoreauy place at all, but rather just nearest available beach. Though the first pond wasn't the real Walden Pond, it sure felt like it.


Up the way from the Real yet Fake Walden Pond, we wandered into Ye Olde Walden Pond Gift Shop, where a guy who plays Thoreau in reenactments helped me remember the details that have slipped from my brain since I last read Walden and Civil Disobedience. He has a web site called http://www.meethenrydavidthoreau.com/. He knew everything.

All in all, a fun trip.

Next, we stopped by to see my younger brother Steve and his wife and child, Sandy and Matthew, at their digs in Southbridge, Mass. Matthew is just two but already is heaving balls around like a linebacker.


Next stop, Cooperstown, and the Baseball Hall of Fame.

'Any unexpected weight loss?'

Michelle actually laughed out loud when the admitting clerk asked me that question today at the Maine Medical Center. No, I said over the cackling, if anything I've got the opposite problem.

We weren't there for my weight -- loss or gain -- but because at the Brunswick, Maine, Starbucks Michelle noticed some swelling over my right eye and got worried. It's true, I had noticed the same swelling, and also had experienced some dizziness and nausea Saturday night beyond what I would normally expect at this stage of my chemo round. So, over my objections that it wasn't worth a hospital visit, we turned around, blew off the search for Maine's perfect lobster roll, and headed to Portland's big freeway-side hospital.

Because it was Sunday our only option was going to the Emergency Ward, which seemed extra goofy. After being screened and admitted, I was put on a stretcher in a hallway marked "triage," which I found doubly embarrassing as a parade of Mainians with actual emergencies -- a baseball player who missed a pop fly and took it in the eye, an older woman who apparently had heat stroke on the tennis court, some bleeding kids -- cooled their heels.

At one point some EMTs brought in a guy on an ambulance gurney who didn't look good -- a drugged, vacant look and a fresh wrap of some kind on his arm -- and there wasn't a stretcher available. I offered to give mine up, but they wouldn't hear of it. The poor guy had to wait, and the EMTs with him, while I was there with, essentially, a hangnail.

When I was rolled into Emergency Room 5, Dr. Good (no joke) came in to see me and we explained the symptoms, such as they were. She made a concerned face and went to fetch a consulting doc, who chatted us up about primo lobster rolls and hiking in the Northwest ("I always say Washington is like Maine on steroids").

A nurse came in to draw some blood, but she couldn't seem to do it right, and she lectured me about traveling without my complete medical records and about the need to avoid salt and wine. Yeah, thanks, I said, I'll try to remember to talk to my real doctor about that when I get home. I think my sarcasm was lost on her.

The eyelid swelling could be this, it could be that, my new medical team said. Maybe we should do a CAT scan. Ok, we waited some more, and then they wheeled me in to radiology. After the machine did its thing the tech lady said, "Looks like you've had some brain work done." Yes. I explained about the surgeries and, blah blah blah, the tumors.

"Oooh, benign, I hope," she said. No, I told her. Malignant. I let that hang in the air for a minute. Not a glioma, I hope, she said.

Anyway, six hours after we arrived, it turned out my brain isn't leaking into my eyeball or vice versa. I maybe, possibly, have cellulitis, which isn't something to be removed from your fat legs but a skin infection. They prescribed some antibiotics, which I may or may not take. I'm going to call my real doctor first.

Meantime, no lobster rolls today. We said poopy to Maine and skedaddled out of there, landing tonight at a Best Western near Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts.

Thoreau never visited Maine Medical Center, as far as I know. But he did write this: "I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude."

Tomorrow, for something totally different, we're planning on driving to Cooperstown and the Baseball Hall of Fame.

The Lurkers of M&M

Every once in a while, as I go about in this life, someone will mention "oh yeah, I saw that on your blog." And I think to myself you read my blog? Weird. I had no idea.

I have no idea because you don't comment! But maybe you don't comment because you don't know what to say?

So this week is coming out week for all the lurkers on this blog. You know who you are.

Here's the assignment. We're on here every day describing our days, what we see and do. On Monday or Tuesday of this week, you chime in. Tell us where you are, what you're doing, or some story of your day.

How 'bout it, lurkers??