Sometimes life is good

And sometimes it’s very good.

Last year, on a lazy Sunday afternoon, the phone rang. The caller asked if I was Allen Crenshaw. I started to hang-up because this is generally the opening pitch of a cold call, but something made me stick with it. The caller said, “I’m John Daniel and we played Little League baseball together 43 years ago.”

My brain sprung into high gear and started rummaging through the memory cells. Yes, I did play Little League baseball but the name John Daniels failed to register a blip. So I probed for more information - hopefully not letting-on that I remembered virtually nothing of my early baseball days.

John continued by announcing that he was planning a reunion of the old team. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was remembering nothing of those early days. This was getting embarrassing and my recall was at the critical stage.

John, I’m sure sensing my predicament, added that “he had a picture of the team that was printed in the Times Herald” (Dallas, at that time, had two newspapers: The Morning News and the Times Herald. Currently we only have one, but that’s a story for a later date). “Would I like for him to e-mail me a copy?”

Ah Ha, I remember that picture, so I said sure, how about right now. I gave him my e-mail address and within seconds it was dinging in my inbox. Now I had something concrete to prod my sagging memory.

As we talked, I rapidly scanned the picture and identifying caption line.

The brain cells were finally coming to my rescue. I inquired about John Coker and various other members of the team. One I asked about was Tommy Hicks our sometimes pitcher/second baseman. John said, “You don’t know?” I wanted to say, “Of course, I don’t. I barely remember who you are,” but I didn’t. So I innocently said, “No. What’s Tommy up to these days?”

“Tom Hicks, you know who he is don’t you!?”

I only know of one Tom Hicks, the owner of the Texas Rangers, Dallas Stars hockey team and previous owner of the Dallas Mavericks.

“You don’t mean the Texas Rangers’ Tom Hicks do you,” I answered with a voice dripping with incredulity. I could now see him grinning on the other end of the line when he said, “Yes!”

Not to take anything away from the other players, but this put the Reunion of the Myers & Rosser Pill Rollers (I know it’s a silly name, but heck we were just kids) into a new category of importance.

To make a long story shorter, the reunion was held in the owner’s box during a Ranger home game, complete with a news story in the Morning News, exclusive tour through the stadium and clubhouse, interviews on TV, our names on the scoreboard, a visit on the field with Ron Washington (Ranger manager), a gourmet buffet, a Ranger cap and T-shirts with our 43 year old team picture on it. As if it needs to said, watching a game from the owner’s box is definitely the way to go.

Besides spending five great hours with my teammates, the highlight, at least for me, was during our tour by the club’s VP, he knocked on a blank nondescript door deep in the bowels of the stadium. A middle-aged guy cracked open the door and the VP asked him to come out and meet some folks. He did and the first thing I noticed was that his hands were covered in some kind of very black glop. We learned that one of his tasks was that of “ball mudder.” It seems that when the team’s new baseballs arrive (they go through seven dozen a game) they are slick which makes it difficult to handle, so they get “mudded.” He smears on this special mud -that only comes from South Carolina- and this gives it a grip that’s especially important to the pitchers.

He told the story of Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan. Whenever he was pitching, he’d come down to the mud room and pick up each ball and carefully weigh it in his hands. If he didn’t like the heft of an individual ball, he’d separate it from the box and ask that it not be used. Then Ryan would randomly select a few balls and autograph them. “I like to give a little surprise to some fan who happens to catch a fly ball,” said Ryan.

Life can truly be wonderful.

Trivia question of the day

(Try it without Google)

The answer will be in tomorrow’s blog.

Yesterday’s Question: What was Ozzie Nelson’s profession in the TV series Ozzie and Harriet? Sportswriter for a newspaper

Today’s Trivia: Name the previous owner of the Rangers prior to Tom Hicks? George W. Bush

Stereotype flip flops

Tonda and I have been married almost 30 years and I wouldn’t trade those years for anything. She’d probably be the first to admit that she’s not exactly Jane Wyatt and I’m not anything like Robert Young. In fact, many times Tonda is more like Robert and I’m more like Jane.

Early in our marriage Tonda discovered that I was very unhandy when it came to doing things around the house. It could be because the wallpaper I hung is still sticking to the picture window.

I have over 200 hours of college credits and not one taught me how to fix a door knob. But like most people, I took door knobs for granted. Through a lifetime of broken lawn mowers, clanging refrigerators and walking washing machines, the door knobs have always worked. After all, their task is rather limited.

Almost immediately after our wedding ceremony, my step-daughter Courtney came to me to pass the word from her Mom that the bathroom door knob was broken. I asked, “Which one?” and she smirked, “The red haired woman you married last week.” I knew then she was smart beyond her years.

“Which bathroom?” I replied.

“The one by my bedroom. It’s broken real bad. “

“Define real bad,” I asked.

“It’s sitting on the carpet outside the bathroom.”

Puzzled I asked, “So why didn’t your Mom just tell me herself?”

She knew she had me, so she answered, “Because she’s sitting on the floor INSIDE the bathroom...” The unspoken, “So there!” was left hanging in the air.

“Tell her I’ll be there in a minute,” I procrastinated.

“Mom said to tell you to take your time. This was the first time she’d been alone for more than 10 minutes since her stretch marks appeared,” said Courtney after returning from talking to her mom through the door. “What does that mean?”

I ignored her question and headed down the hall as Tonda emerged from the bathroom. I asked why the door knob fell off and did she think Andy had yanked it off. Andy, my son, was pretty rough on things.

Tonda laughed and said, from her limited perspective, he had never shut a door in his entire life.

“What did Kelly (my other daughter) say?”

“She’s blaming it on Courtney,” Tonda said with frustrated hands on her hips. “She says we should check the knob for cat paw prints.”

I suggested that maybe “we’re jumping to conclusion and the door knob died of natural causes. Maybe it’s supposed to fall off at this time of year and if we wait until Spring it’ll grow a new one.”

Tonda frowned and said she didn’t think so and “You’ll have to fix it.”

Well the moment of truth had come. I hadn’t divulged to her that I was a mechanical clutz. She just assumed I could fix things. Guys fix things, right?

After 45 minutes of fumbling, Tonda finally came to the rescue.

Backtracking a bit: Before our marriage and after checking her teeth and family background I discovered how handy she was at fixing things.

There’s a lot of reasons I love that woman. Being beautiful and smart are in the top three.

Trivia question of the day

(Try it without Google)

The answer will be in tomorrow’s blog.

Yesterday’s Question: What laundry detergent got lots of mileage out of the ad tag line, “Ring around the collar?” Whisk

Today’s Trivia: What was the profession of Ozzie Nelson in the television series Ozzie and Harriet.

Doesn’t anything work anymore?

NASA who once put men on the moon, can’t seem to get the shuttle off the ground on time anymore. The Hubble Space Telescope needed refurbishing and our banks now beg and borrow.

It would be natural for us to scream and yell, “Doesn’t anything work around here anymore!” True, some things that should work, but don’t are around, but there are a gazillion things that do work, and do so reliably year-after-year, without muss nor fuss. Consider the paper clip. A terrifically simple object that never breaks down. How about tea bags, the safety match, iPods, those wonderful Lego blocks, and the Swiss Army Knife. What could one possibly do to the safety pin, the Norman Tabernacle Choir or the Bible that could possibly make them better.

What about those super Rowland stackable chairs that we see in churches, convention centers and meeting rooms everywhere. They’re great!

To the list, let’s add the Foveon Camera Chip and cable TV, Tupperwear, hammers, YouTube, chisels, screwdrivers, erasers. plasma screen TVs, thumbtacks and the lead pencil. In it’s own humble way, the lead pencil is as impressive an engineering feat as the space shuttle. Try to make one if you don’t believe me. The pencil is perfect. It’s simple, it works and you can buy it for less than 50¢.

Several other of my favorites are: Post It Notes which were originally invented to mark the music pages for a choir, and I love the ingenuity of the little plastic gizmo called the Pez Dispenser.

Last on my list are things that work and work well: Levi Jeans, toothpicks, clothes pins, men’s wedding bands, penny loafers, the ‘57 Chevrolet, Zippo lighters, Oshkosh overalls and GPS. At the tail-end of my list but Number One in my heart are laptop computers and The Internet.

See, things aren’t as bad as we thought. We just have top think about them every once and a while. Excuse me while I logon to Facebook.

Trivia question of the day

(Try it without Google)

The answer will be in tomorrow’s blog.

Yesterday’s Question: What Texan ended up with one delegate after spending $12 million of his own money running for president in 1980? John Connally

Today’s Trivia: What laundry detergent got lots of mileage out of the ad tag line, “Ring around the collar?”