The Greatest Calls

Recently an old friend of mine posted the “Iron Bowl” call from this year’s Auburn-Alabama game on Facebook.  For those of you who don’t know the story Alabama and Auburn, both battling for a shot at the national championship, were tied with only one second left on the game clock as Alabama lined up to try an improbable 57 yard game-ending field goal.  Just in case, Auburn had positioned a player in the end zone to try and run the ball back and score a touchdown in the event the kick came up short.  But really – what are the chances of someone running back a kick from one end of the field to the other on the last play of the game?  A million to one, right?  (So – you’re saying there is a chance…)  Anyway – listen to the call as this play unfolds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GKmkD1pUG0

An instant classic – but only one of many great calls that go along with these sorts of things.  Here is a partial list of some of my favorites.

“The Giants Win the Pennant!, the Giants win the Pennant!”

No two teams had ever finished tied at the end of the National League baseball season until, in 1951, the New York Giants improbably raced back from 11 games out to catch the Brooklyn Dodgers and set up a three game playoff for the NL title.  For you non-American readers the winner of the league title is said to win the “pennant” – a mythical flag denoting you have conquered all the other teams for that year.  The Dodgers, who at that time had never won a World Series (the next stage of the competition) look poised to advance to the Fall Classic as they held a three run lead in the last inning as the Giants tried vainly to come back. Then a rally started – one run came across and two men were on base as Bobby Thompson came to the plate to face Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca.  Two runs still separated the teams – things still looked grim for the Giants – in New York a high school kid skipping school turned on a reel to reel tape recorder to capture Russ Hodges, the Giants announcer, calling the last outs of the season.  What he captured is the only known recording of what has become the most iconic baseball call of all time – “The Shot Heard Round the World”:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrI7dVj90zs

Here’s Your Ball Game Folks…

There is a great Brent Musburger call of the pass Doug Flutie threw to beat Miami on the day after Thanksgiving in 1984, but I prefer the local radio call, which captures perfectly the mood of those who had watched Flutie’s career at BC.  There was, even amongst those who knew just how good he was – who had seen him take a school that was lucky to get one win a year out of the likes of Holy Cross or William and Mary and transform it into a nationally ranked program, a reluctance to fully believe what we were seeing.  He’d beaten Penn State, Syracuse, Clemson, gone to bowl games, shot to the top of the Heisman trophy race – but – Miami?  I mean – those guys were like a pro team, coached by Jimmy Johnson, Bernie Kosar at QB, defending national champs – on national TV – a football program that even now commands national coverage via such films as ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary “The U”.  It’d be nice just to stick with them for a while – but he couldn’t actually lead BC to victory – could he?  Listen as the announcer's voice goes from a matter of fact, "he uncorks one towards the end zone" to the football equivalent of the "Hallelujah Chorus".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeExa2R2nf0

I Don’t Believe What I Just Saw

So we had a few people over to watch the first game of the World Series – it was supposed to be much more personal, but the Red Sox had been swept by the Oakland A’s so it was an all California Series pitting the heavily (really heavily) favoured A’s against the Dodgers.  The Dodgers were at even more of a disadvantage because their best player – MVP candidate Kirk Gibson, was injured and couldn’t play.  His legs were unable to hold him up in any meaningful way as his Achilles tendons were shredded.  Nonetheless, as the first game of the Series neared a climax Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda checked to see if Gibson could haul himself to the plate to make one appearance if the Dodgers had the tying or winning runs on base.  Gibson went underneath the stands where he practiced swinging the bat against a practice tee.  “Thwack!” would go the bat and Gibson would grunt with pain.  “THWACK!”  “AAAARGH!”.  Finally word came back – “He thinks he has one swing in him”.  So Lasorda put him in, with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, to face the best pitcher in the game, Dennis Eckersley.  He could hardly stand up.  So we’re sitting around, eating pizza, having a couple of beers, when someone says – “Hey – they put Gibson in – this might be interesting”.  So we watched the game – and this happens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U157X0jy5iw

That was the amazing Vin Scully on that call – and we’ll get to Vin.  But his wasn’t the best call that day – Vin knows that on TV the pictures often do the best talking.  On radio though there was this magic call by Jack Buck – who can’t believe…

http://www.hark.com/clips/bglrsvypyl-kirk-gibsons-1988-world-series-home-run-call-by-jack-buck

…what he just saw.

 Vin the Poet

Scully was doing TV work on the night Gibson hit his home run.  That was 1988 and it was amazing that Scully was the Dodgers play-by-play announcer that year – after all, he had started with the Dodgers when they were in Brooklyn back in 1950.  In the many years since 1988 no one has ever been better than Scully as the Dodgers regular announcer.  Of course, no one has been worse.  That’s because Scully is still at it – in 2013, - sixty-four years after he first called a game at Ebbets Field.  Scully has many great moments behind the microphone, but only one that I know was published, more or less, as a piece of poetry.  His call of the last half-inning of Sandy Koufax’s perfect game in 1965 was transcribed and published, on its own, as a poem.  His descriptions of the crowd, the batters, the players in the dugout and on the field painted a word picture so vivid that there really was no reason not to view the extemporaneous call as exactly that – poetry.  Here is the actual broadcast of that half-inning, as it happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJdli-ONL-8

Who Stole the Ball?

Of course while there is a place for the classic restraint and poise of Scully (and that place is Los Angeles, where basketball announcer Chick Hearn did the same for the Lakers) there is also a need for the unrestrained belt it out joy of the event epitomized by no one more than Johnny Most, the chain smoking, coffee swilling, acid gargling announcer for basketball’s Boston Celtics.  Johnny is who I grew up listening to – and this is his most famous of many great moments.  The final play of the 1965 NBA semi-finals – the Celtics only up by one point as Philadelphia looks to inbound the ball under their own basket.  Can anything be done to stop Wilt Chamberlain from scoring to destroy the Celt’s drive for a seventh straight championship – can any person step up?  Well, there is one guy – but before that let’s just put Johnny Most in perspective – Johnny was what’s called a “homer” – he was a fan of the team he announced for, and he let you know it.  So before leading in to the famous call from 1965 listen to classic Johnny telling the Detroit Pistons how much he “appreciates” their efforts on the court against the Celts – that goes right in to the call that now resides in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu8Da3pe9h0&list=PLA8CCC946F4536EF4

I Don’t Speak Argentinian, But

I think this guy is pretty happy…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wVho3I0NtU

I’ll Tell Ya – I Gotta Lump In Me Throat From That…

Dublin, 2007.  With Ireland’s usual rugby home ground under re-construction at Landsdowne Road the Gaelic Athletic Association had offered its 80,000 seat stadium Croke Park to the Irish Rugby team to host its “Six Nation’s” matches.  The only difficulty – one of those games is against England, and Croke Park is the site of the brutal massacre of Irish civilians by a British armoured vehicle – holy ground, typically not open to “foreign” sports.  Before each Six Nation’s match the anthems of the countries are played – what would happen when the English anthem “God Save The Queen” is played at Croke Park – will it be booed?  Shouted down?  Will a riot break out?  Irish fans respectfully wait through the song, leading the English announcer to ask “What was the fuss about”.  Then the Irish anthem is played – listen, and watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQ6-bYixpYE

Oh, by the way, Ireland 43, England 13.

The Band is On the Field

California and Stanford play “The Big Game” every year – and in 1982 it really was something big.  Stanford’s all-everything quarterback John Elway led his team to a touchdown to give them a lead with only four seconds left to play.  All Stanford had to do was tackle the ball carrier on the kickoff and the game was theirs.  But there is a rule in American football that harkens back to its rugby roots – you can only throw the ball forward once per play – but you can throw it backwards as long as you aren’t tackled – and Cal did exactly that.  The Stanford band forgot the rule and wandered on to the field thinking the game was over – and paid the price - (watch the trombone player get crushed at the end of the play). But the play continued and, after conferring, the referees made their ruling - listen to the emotion in the voice of the announcer as he realizes that the California Bears have pulled off what is forever to become known as “The Play”.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nC55Kv2sKM

Yes, Yes I Do.

And then there is this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYscemhnf88

Letters From My Library III - My Shlabotnik

The World Series is over, the Red Sox have won, my sleep pattern is beginning to return to normal (sort of) and I can get back to going through my books to add to the “Letters From My Library” series.  So this will no doubt leave the multitude of readers out there who have been waiting for this moment greatly relieved. 

Cue laughter.

Actually this submission is all about that topic – laughter.  It’s also about the phenomenon that I call the “Shlabotnik Effect” after the fictional baseball player “Joe Shlabotnik” who was Charlie Brown’s favorite player in the “Peanuts” strip.  No one knows why Charlie Brown chose Shlabotnik as his idol, he only played in the minors, was as far from famous as you can get and would never be noticed even in a roomful of baseball fanatics, but – and this is the key part – he did choose him and Shlabotnik thereafter belonged to Charlie Brown even if no one else could appreciate why he would have him as a favorite.

We all have Shlabotniks.  If you’re a music lover you have bands or singers who no one else seems to appreciate, but which you are convinced are separated from the Beatles only by virtue of the fact that the rest of the world hasn’t yet caught on to the brilliance that you, you who have had the vision to discern this unique talent, have been witness to for years.  For art lovers it could be a painter, for film lovers a given actor – and for book lovers it is an author who you discovered and think is really good – but seemingly hasn’t become recognised for the genius that he is.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my personal Joe Shlabotnik of writers, Mr. Jay Cronley.

I first discovered Cronley when I was about 13 years old.  The library in my hometown of Blandford, Massachusetts (population about 1000 people back then) would receive a regular delivery of books from the regional library consortium.  Now, before getting in to the genius of Cronley I think I need to mention the venerable Porter Memorial Library.  Here’s a picture of the building taken back shortly after it opened:

And here it is today:

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About the same, except the open space with the rocking chairs has been enclosed.  I show the pictures only because I could, if I had lived in any number of other small towns throughout the United States, have posted almost exactly the same picture, of a very similar building, and the library would often have the same name.  There is a “Porter Memorial” in Machias, Maine, another one in Georgia, and scores of others that go by different names all through the country.  I think they are the most important buildings in these towns.  The fire department is up there, but only because if you didn’t have one the library might burn down.

Anyway – on the shelf this one week is a book with a picture of a dumb looking football player and the title of “Fall Guy”.  I decided to take a flyer and give it a read.

Good decision.

“Fall Guy” is essentially about a hotshot football recruit who gets in to a major institute of higher learning, where, in addition to his duties as a halfback, he is expected to take a full load of challenging courses – like “Theory of Golf 15” which has the following exam:  “When your golf ball is in a trap you may (a) move it (b) replace it with a clean golf ball (c) hit it (d) pour chocolate sauce on it and eat it with graham crackers.”  Before settling on this academic goldmine the player had been recruited by a load of schools back east “like Notre Dame, and Pitt, and Ohio State and Holy Cross, wherever that is.  It must be a school for monks and nuns.  They must be a dog of a team”.  Through the entire sordid college football factory process the book follows our hero’s progress – or, lack of the same.  Fall Guy was the first Cronley book I ever read and it retains a soft spot in my heart.  I didn’t know it at the time but Jay Cronley had a day job – he was (is) one of those sportswriters who exist in one of the “mid-major” markets.  In his case it’s Oklahoma.  He must like it there, because he’s managed to make himself a local legend and also into one of the country’s great writers on the lost sport of kings, horseracing.  There is a great history of these writers, guys who kind of like writing in Tulsa, or Springfield or Dubuque.  They have a nice life for themselves, are the first thing everyone in town looks for when they grab their paper in the morning, and they don’t feel like they need the validation of a massive national following to know they’re good.  If you know of Bill Bryson, writer of travel books, and lately books on nearly everything (literally) – his dad was probably the greatest baseball writer of his time – and he never left Iowa.  That’s what Cronley is when he’s not cranking out side-splitting novels – the local guy everyone can’t wait to read. There are worse things to be.

Next up I spotted the book “Screwballs” which is what they based the movie “Major League” on, even though I don’t think Cronley was ever credited.  No matter – it is a screamingly funny take on a bunch of misfits who manage to confound everyone and turn in to a winning team.  I now counted Cronley as batting two for two. 

I didn’t get any more Cronley’s from the Blandford library (I’d moved away to college) but I kept him in mind when browsing bookstores.  I was patient, and over the coming years, as people awaited the latest Vonnegut, Updike and Irving release (myself included) I added to the mix waiting for the next Cronley.  And I was richly rewarded.  Here are the other Cronley’s I have in my collection:

Good Vibes – Here’s the scenario – a guy who never had a bit of luck in his life, but loved a good day out at the track, gets on the hottest of hot streaks – for every race on the card he seems to get the winner.  So he lets the bet ride through the day – bankrolling a small initial bet through each successive stage – letting the whole thing carry over – and watching it grow – and grow – and grow.  Can he keep it going , and will the lucky streak carry over into real life?  Cronley, as stated above, is one of the country’s top writers on horse racing.  In the 1920’s this would also have made him one of the most important people in the country.  Today, however, the atmosphere that attaches to the track is almost entirely lost, appearing only briefly at the Kentucky Derby and the other triple crown races so long as the chance of a horse actually winning the elusive three legs remains alive.  You can still get a sniff of the old glory days if you go to Saratoga in August, or to the Breeders Cup – but there was a time when horse racing was, at the very least, the third most popular sport in the United States, right up with baseball and boxing.  Cronley obviously yearns for those days and he expertly conveys the allure of the sport of kings in this book.  But it remains hilarious throughout.  Even the dedication is funny:  “Funding for most of the research involved here was provided by a modest Daily Double grant one fine spring afternoon in 1978 at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas.  A horse named Rambunctious Road made this novel possible by winning the first race.”  There is also this perfect description of the type of food you typically get at your average, run down racetrack – “the hamburger was tough because it had a thin slab of frozen ice in the middle, plus it was little, plus it was lousy”.

I’ve had that burger.

Walking Papers:  John Grape has been served with divorce papers and finds he is looking at losing everything in the proceedings.  But he hatches a plan to totally remake himself, new nose, hair, chin – lose about 50 pounds, - look like a completely new man.  He would change his voice, his name, his address, create a past history for himself. Then – to get everything back – he would remarry his ex-wife, who wouldn’t even know it was him.  He manages to pull off the identity change, manages to meet up with the ex-wife, manages to dodge or pay off the people looking to track him down for alimony, explains the makeover to his daughter – and puts the plan into operation…

Quick Change – This is Cronley’s Gatsby in my opinion.  It has all the elements of his work that I like – the outrageous scheme that could never – okay, just might – hmmm, really could if things broke perfectly – work.  It has the tortured sidekick, the baffled authority figures, the witty repartee – everything.

And, in one of the two movie versions, it has Bill Murray. 

The plot is this – dressed as a clown Grimm walks in to and proceeds to rob a bank by holding all the people inside hostage.  Using a trick he manages to exit the bank with the money and his accomplices.  Then things get tough – he has to get to the airport in New York. As anyone who has tried to do this can attest – this ain’t always as easy as it seems to be.  Braving private cars, taxi’s, public transport and the peaceful neighborhoods of 1980’s New York (har har) Grimm races to get away to a tropical paradise before the law closes in. 

Funny Farm – OK – so, in the movie version, Chevy Chase is a big comedown from Bill Murray – but the premise of this one is nearly as funny as Quick Change’s.  In order to “get back to paradise” a couple from the city decide to buy a farm in the sticks.  Imagine “Green Acres” on drugs.  In this one you get to read about unhelpful telephone operators, rigged bingo games, runaway dogs, alcoholic postmen, unlicensed sheriffs – you know, the usual.

Cheap Shot This is my second favorite Cronley.  If you want to steal something without having to worry about the cops – why not first steal the cops?  That’s the premise of this book – a group of burglars kidnap the night shift of the local police station and pack them in to a van before breaking in to the nearby museum and loading a second van with the loot.  Only problem is – they’ve got two identical vans and can’t remember which is which – open the one with the paintings – they’re millionaires.  The one with the cops – they’re dead.  How do you figure out the one to open?

In the course of this misadventure the gang manages to pick up a couple of “common” criminals to put in the van with the cops, an unwilling driver, some seriously dysfunctional security guards and, being a police story, a doughnut salesman. 

Shoot – Couple number one is having marital difficulties but, when faced with a crisis, just might be able to see their way through to a reconciliation.  Couple number two has a difficulty with commitment but, because of a shared career interest, might just have found that special someone.  Except that couple number one has each hired a contract killer to rub out the other.  Couple number two?

They’re the killers. 

Can things work out for our star crossed lovers?  Well, in Cronley novels things don’t always work out completely smoothly but they tend to, shall we say, “partially resolve”.  There are a lot of novels like the ones Cronley writes, a surprising number of them written by sportswriters like Rick Reilly (Missing Links) or Dan Jenkins (Semi-Tough).  But Cronley is the writer I find most consistently funny – even though I am admittedly biased as he is, after all, my Shlabotnik. 

As a matter of fact I think everyone should have a Shlabotnik.  They belong to you more exclusively than the more widely popular writers, or bands or artists would.  A Shlabotnik (or, probably more appropriately the lower case “shlabotnik” if I want to turn this in to a non proper noun) is like a favorite sweat shirt – maybe not much to look at for others but something that is comfortable to you, appearances be damned.

Thanks Jay Cronley.

Letters From My Library (II)

The Only Yankee I Have Ever Rooted For

I got another book when I was pretty young – It was given to me as a present from my grandfather at or around my seventh birthday.  It was a good sized paperback and the printing on the pages was small.  There were no pictures in the book and the words, even those in the title on the cover – were big.  Bigger than any I had attempted previously.  I didn’t know if I’d be able to handle something that seemed so adult – and I said so.

“You’ll be OK” my grandfather assured me – “you can read this one”.

He’d never steered me wrong before but I was still wary – “What’s it about?” I asked.

“It’s about a man who gets hit on the head and wakes up in the time of King Arthur”. 

King Arthur I knew about – at least I thought I did.  He had a round table, a bunch of knights with funny names like “Sir Loin of Beef” and "Sir Osis of the Liver” – of course, this was only the Bugs Bunny version of the tale.  What I knew about the Arthurian legend was just what I had picked up from Loony Tunes cartoons.  But it was enough to make me think that I could probably handle a book about someone getting hit on the head and landing back in time – it seemed to line up pretty well with what I’d seen on Saturday morning television.

And so I was introduced to the world of Mark Twain not through Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn but via A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.  I ended up reading both of the former books soon after finishing Yankee, but I’m glad I took what would have to be considered the non-traditional route to Twain.  A Connecticut Yankee is not an easy book even for an adult to read and catch all of the things that are going on at once.  I’m pretty sure (having read it a number of times) that I still haven’t caught all of the little jokes and satirical barbs that Twain includes throughout.  But it is interesting enough in plot to keep anyone involved, funny enough to keep anyone entertained and, most tellingly, intelligent enough to keep any reader, no matter what age, aware that there is lots more going on with this story than just what you read on the surface.  I copped on to this fast enough when reading through the book – here, for example, is Twain’s Yankee on how easy it becomes for good people to begin to accept things which should, by all logic, be completely unacceptable – this scene takes place just after a group of religious pilgrims has come upon the sight of a slave master beating a young girl with a whip for the crime of getting tired during a long forced march:

Our pilgrims looked on and commented – on the expert way that the whip was handled. They were too much hardened by the lifelong everyday familiarity with slavery to notice that there was anything else in the exhibition that invited comment.  This was what slavery could do, in the way of ossifying what might be called the superior lobe of human feeling; for these pilgrims were kindhearted people, and they would not have allowed that man to treat a horse like that.

Even a seven year old couldn’t miss what was going on there – that if people got so used to something in the day to day run of things they can miss just how wrong those very things were.  I later figured out that Twain was trying to explain how so many people in the United States – in his own time – had deluded themselves into accepting slavery as normal.  Even later I figured out that Twain was trying to explain how he, himself, had managed to hold that position for much of his younger life.

But it wasn’t all heavy political thinking – Mark Twain’s sense of humor is justifiably famous.  It comes out in sneaky little spots – such as when an noble applicant for a royal honor is being interviewed as to his background:

"By what illustrious achievement for the honor of the Throne and the State did the founder of your great line lift himself to the sacred dignity of the British nobility?"

"He built a brewery" 

And in broader strokes such as when he bestows upon the Yankee the title of neither Knight, Duke, Earl or Prince, but instead that of “Boss”.  A Connecticut Yankee is a book about politics, technology, capitalism, religion and a thousand other heavy topics but, because it hides so well behind its tale those things never get in the way of a seven year old being able to work through the book and enjoy it thoroughly.  I now own just about every word Mark Twain ever published and read at least one of his books every year.  He’s been called a gift to American literature but to me he is primarily a gift from my grandfather, who never did steer me wrong.

Books by/about Mark Twain in my library: (Note: the “Unabridged” collections gather together the great mass of Twain’s work, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Roughing It, and so on.  They’re a great way to get a lot of Twain without having to hunt down each book.  Also – to get an idea of the darker, more cynical side of Twain I’d track down “Letters From the Earth” – basically this is a work where Twain, writing as a demon reporting back to Satan, skewers all of humanity.  Twain could be incredibly critical of what he saw as mankind’s unbearable hypocrisy and here he lets loose with both barrels.  His publisher withheld it from the public for more than a half century after Twain’s death, thinking it just too bitter to release.)

The Unabridged Mark Twain – Volume One	Mark Twain	Collection/Anthology
The Unabridged Mark Twain – Volume Two	Mark Twain	Collection/Anthology
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer	Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn	Mark Twain
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court	Mark Twain
A Pen Warmed Up in Hell – Mark Twain in Protest	Mark Twain	Collection/Anthology
Tales, Speeches Essays and Sketches	Mark Twain	Collection/Anthology
The Innocents Abroad	Mark Twain
The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain	Mark Twain	Collection/Anthology
The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calveras County and Other Stories	Mark Twain	Collection/Anthology
Letters From the Earth	Mark Twain	Collection/Anthology
Mark Twain Himself	Milton Meltzer	Twain, Bio
Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain	Justin Kaplan	Twain, Bio

Letters From My Library

Starting a new series here today in honor of two milestones recently met, one being my fiftieth birthday, which, while not inevitable, is rather necessary for me to have achieved if I was going to be writing this sentence, and the other being the recent addition of the 2000^th book to my personal library.  Two thousand is much less than Thomas Jefferson was said to have had in Monticello (6,487 books donated to the Library of Congress), is certainly less than I have ever owned (there was the incident where lots of my favorite books were tossed out when I was off at college), and is less than what I’ve actually read since there are lots of trips to the library that aren’t factored in – but it’s still a hell of a lot of books.  So I’m going to try to pick out a representative sample and explain why I happen to like that particular one, whether and for what purpose I would recommend it and maybe just ramble on in whatever direction the words lead me.  In fact going on such rambles is what I see as one of the main functions of books.

First – no I haven’t read all of the books in the house – but I’ve read most of them, lots of them more than once – and I fully intend to get to each one.  If turning 50 is a milestone then its main purpose must be to allow you the experience and perspective to set a few goals and make a few resolutions.  One of mine is to get down to reading some of the books I’ve been holding in reserve (like Dom DeLillo’s “End Zone”).  But reading has never been a chore for me, so keeping that promise to myself shouldn’t be difficult.  In fact, 50 means that there is another milestone to be marked – 44 years of reading.  I really started picking up books from my entry into Miss Murphy’s first grade class when I was six years old.  I seriously doubt, from when I was halfway through that year, if there has ever been a time when I haven’t been reading at least one book.  Usually I’ll have a few going at once.  True – when I started I didn’t much care what I was reading (textbooks, joke books, baseball previews (one of which I still have – the 1974 pre-season review – Hank Aaron was going in to the year on 713 homeruns).  I’d just read anything for the sheer magic of seeing the words make sense.  Then I’d read it again.  And again.  And again.

That may be one of the things I miss the most about reading when I was a kid – I read all kinds of books more than once.  I’ll talk about some of them (like the Narnia series) in these essays, but there are others, like Tony Conigliaro’s autobiography “Seeing It Through”, that I’ve read about six times and can still quote from memory.  Re-reading books is tough to do now – I’ve got others waiting to be read in the on-deck circle, time is at a premium, and it is harder to justify picking up something you already read once.  But those books that I read multiple times (and some I’ve read so many times I’ve lost count) are like old friends revisited.  I think I might start to pick up the practice again.

In the meantime I’ll try, through these essays, to introduce a few of those friends around.  You might enjoy meeting up with some of them – you can never have enough friends.

First Up – William F. Gaines Sends a Present

I don’t know what the oldest book in my collection is – I have a few of my father’s old books and I’ve picked up some older books at used bookstores and the like.  I’ve got an old edition of Huckleberry Finn and a small edition of some of Chekhov’s plays – but I never have been a book collector in the sense of going after first editions or old leather bound volumes.  I get books to read them.  Towards that end I know exactly which of the books I have is the oldest in my collection in the sense of it being the oldest book I ever actually got for myself.  Not the oldest I book I ever bought mind you – I bartered for it – and therein lies a story. 

In first grade there were two primary mediums of exchange – neither of which was U.S currency.  One was desserts.  You could trade your dessert at lunch for many things – toys, other types of food, baseball cards – one chocolate pudding could get you quite a few cards.  The other item of barter was a “Whizzer” – and they were like gold.

A Whizzer was a top that seemed to be nuclear powered.  You would zip the vulcanized rubber tip along the floor and then the top would (probably aided by a gyroscope) spin on its end for about two and a half years (OK – hours).

(OK – minutes – but it seemed longer).

The entire time the Whizzer would – well – it would whizz, making a high pitched squealing sound.  Teachers must have loved the things because, at any given time, their desks would be loaded with an assortment of confiscated Whizzers, in all different colors.  Whizzers were the bomb.

You could trade a Whizzer for almost anything and I, in my first official book acquisition, traded an orange one that I had for not just one but three books.  One was so forgettable I have since forgotten it.  Another was one I would dearly love to find a copy of.  It was called “Bill Stern’s Favorite Baseball Stories” or something like that, and it was a collection of the stories that Stern, a radio personaility from the forties, would tell on air.  Woody Allen parodies the sorts of tales that would be told in Radio Days, wherein a pitcher comes back after three or four hunting accidents that gradually deprive him of his legs and arms.  Then there were the stories like the one about a catching prospect named "Bill" who had his heart broken when he didn't get signed to a pro contract  - "but don't feel too sorry for old Bill - because his full name was William Howard Taft and he went on to become President of the United States".  I still felt sorry for Bill - I'd have rather been a catcher.  I loved that book – I think it eventually disintegrated.  But it was still in second place out of the three – for the real treasure out of the trade was a book that remains in my possession, something called “Greasy Mad Stuff”.

I could tell you the history of Mad magazine, but others have already done a better job.  Check this out http://h2g2.com/approved_entry/A2116540 or just accept this even shorter version – a guy called William Gaines had published a series of comic books in the fifties along the lines of “Tales from the Crypt”.  The comics were brilliantly written, scarily illustrated and actually could frighten the crap out of you.  So, naturally, someone, in this case Congress, had to shut it down on the supposition that it was “corrupting the nation’s youth”.  The “comic code” outlawed such brilliance in favor of hard hitting works like “Little LuLu” – but Gaines refused to give up – he modified a comic called “Tales Calculated to Drive You Mad” just enough to make it a full fledged magazine rather than a comic and, in doing so, avoided the code.  Thus set free he proceeded to load the magazine with exactly the sorts of outrageous drawings and parodies that never would have been allowed in a straightforward comic.  Naturally, again, kids flocked to the opportunity to be corrupted and I was one of them.  But I never liked comics that much – books, even paperbacks, were more solid.  Because of this prejudice I attempted, whenever possible, to take my Mad magazine in book form – this meant I missed out on the fold in picture that the true magazine included on the back cover – but it was worth it.

“Greasy Mad Stuff” is not the greatest Mad book I ever had – just the oldest one - but it was still good enough – and a lot of it still stands up.  It makes fun of the advertising industry (“Mad Men” indeed), includes some great Don Martin cartoons, a parody of “The Price is Right” (they are asking the purchase price for the Queen Mary), and has a great section on “Women in Whiskey Ads”.  These are all pretty standard for Mad, and, I suppose, are actually fairly tame – but when you are reading this stuff in the first grade it is a revelation –  and even if you didn’t understand half the references (who the hell is “Fabian”) it felt like you were being written to as a grown-up.  Well, maybe not a grown up, grown up – but at least like a teenager – someone who was being allowed in to a world beyond “See Spot run.  Run Spot, run”.  Mad pushed the envelope – but it pushed you too – and books should do that more often.