A Walk in the Park

By Larry Teren

baberuthIt was the last baseball game of the Babe’s career. Now about 50 pounds overweight, his swung gulped hard like a whirling dervish and missed on the first pitch at his first appearance at the plate that day. He ended awkward lying flat on the ground, spitting blood down his cheek, needing help to get back up to his feet. The pitcher was that fellow who three years earlier in the World Series the Babe had mocked by first pointing to the right center-field bleachers and then stroking a mammoth home run to that exact location. Now this same hurler was mocking and taunting him with sadistic pleasure as Ruth stood helplessly at the plate waiting to continue his at-bat.

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A Moment in History or Was it?

With the news that Derek Jeter recently became the 28th player to achieve 3000 hits in a career, it brought back to mind the day I saw pete rose Pete Rose tie or possibly break Ty Cobb’s record. ty cobb It all depends on whether you accept Cobb had 4191 hits or 4189 as has been re-adjusted in the past several years.
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The Forty Year Summit

It finally happened. I got an email from a childhood friend that it was time to get together one evening and reminisce. Our families had shared a two flat in Austin on Chicago’s far west side He also said that he would invite another friend over whom I also had not seen in more than forty years. Can you imagine that- freezing the clock and then being able to roll back time as if several decades had not passed?
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Driving Me Crazy

Ma never learned to drive which is why I inherited the job of going to the pharmacy to get the latest scheduled pick-up of any of her eight medicines. It also meant that I got the honor of taking her shopping on designated days.

Dad drove until his eightieth birthday on which as he got out of the car and walked up the stairs into the house, managed to fall down and break both ankles. He came back to the scene of the crime maybe three times in the course of the next six years and nine months as he spent the rest of it in a twenty-four hour care facility.
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Religious Atheists

The world is one big pyramid scheme. There has to have been one go-to guy who started this mess and delegated others to continue its supervision. That’s where we all get into fighting each other- trying to convince others that our go-to guy is THE guy. Or gal, excuse me. Religion is the set of rules by which we let others know that our god is better than some others.

Then again, it can be that we all actually believe in the same go-to guy, it’s just that we all look at him (or her) from different angles. Remember that game we played as a kid, “telephone”? The one where a bunch of us sat in a circle and one after another whispered into the next person’s ear a secret. By the time it got down to the last person, somehow the secret message was totally changed from its original. So, it is possible that the original message has become garbled through time and we are all chasing the same Biblical tale.
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