Here we are at the NBA All-Star break, discussing the vicissitudes of homosexual behavior and #### rights.
Okay.
Some people are highly engaged by cheating in NASCAR, jet fuel in car engines.
All right.
Others are interested by the upcoming NFL draft, some people are enraptured by hockey. Oh, yeah, the NBA All-Star game.
Yeah.
I, for one, am digging college basketball. IU just lost to arch rival Purdue, but they are still on track for their goals. My BYU school is doing surprisingly well...
BUT HOLD THE PHONE!
I hear whispers, or vague ruminations, echoing recollections...
The ghosts are coming back...Pitchers are reporting, catchers are getting their knees in gear...if that is possible.
Kevin Costner's feel good mojo is on the march...And it is not even March. And many American men (and a few women) revisit their childhood in a different way than the fall, at the end of summer, when football arrives with a pounding fury...
This is late winter and the beginnings of baseball, the promise of the long season, evoking something magic in our hearts.
If you didn't grow up loving baseball, well, than perhaps you weren't quite part of America. Don't get me wrong; we are all Americans. But some of us understand the engines that drive us. This nation, under God.
Baseball. Mom. Apple pie. Hot dogs. Batters like Brett. Runners like Brock. Players like Ripken. Pitchers like Gossage. A man named Goose?
Darn tootin'.
For me, the hero came at age 10, not too long before my 11th birthday. I had seen and played enough of baseball to get things. Speed. Power. Grace. Tenacity. Scoring runs. Catching long flies. Winning. Losing. Play every day. Play the game, and live.
Play with vim and vigor. Pete Rose was the definition of heart. Brett, Ripken, Puckett and others showed us passion.
So a little guy named Timmy did it for me. He was short. Muscular. He was serious in between smiles. He batted from both sides of the plate. He led off, would bunt for hits, beat out grounders, turned singles into doubles, and of course take a walk faster than anyone, because: he struck terror on the base baths.
The game within the game was alive and well in Montreal in the 1980s. And my love grew over the years. By the time 1986 rolled around (freshman year of high school), I was taller than Rock, but he was still the giant in left field.
I saw him play live for the first time in September, 1985, in Saint Louis. He played like an All-Star. And he was.
Again I saw him play the farm team in Indianapolis, summer 1986.
He missed games in the spring of 1987 due to a thing called "arbitration". Lost stats, no matter. And then I saw him face his former best friend in the bigs, Andre Dawson, at Wrigley, Septemeber, 1987. He didn't disappoint.
Earlier that summer he was the All-Star MVP as he ended the 13 inning marathon in his last up with an RBI triple. It was about 2 o'clock EST, and I was the only one up silently exulting in my Boston aunt's kitchen, relegated to the black and white kitchen tube because the color set was by the pull out couch with regular people sleeping therein.
I wasn't regular.
I had an irregular hero.
Destiny.
I traveled to Cinncinnati in the heat of 1988, and he was injured. Missed him playing that day due to the DL. No All-Star vote that year. No matter.
We saw him play in Montreal Olympique Stadium in 1989. I called out "Rock!" to a subdued crowd: he hit it out.
Love confirmed.
I was bidding good-bye to the old American life for two years, my youth, serving a mission where my greatest temptation would be the paucity of newspapers, ESPN high lights, updates and box scores...
And I received the news from my Mom that Raines had been traded to the White Sox. I was on the other side of the world, and my hero had been rendered upside down.
My, how the nineties would be irrevocably different!
A war in the Persian Gulf, me now bilingual in Spanish and a grown up, and my boyhood hero in the dreaded AL.
Times were a-changing.(Allusions to Bob the "Balladeer" Dylan).
Spring of 1992 found me back in Indiana, leery of the White Sox. I grew up liking the National Leaguers, and I was biased.
But WGN showed the occasional Pale Hose game. And Raines could still play. And I realized that heroes go through changes but true heroes never fade. Change the uniform, change the league, the love remains.
And injuries may mar numbers and achievements, but the true hero will remain, that is, IF in fact, they were a hero to begin with, worthy of all the acclaim and adulation.
In 1993, I found myself studying and doing my thing in Utah. I didn't watch a lot of TV. Raines collided with Ozzy Guillen, hustling for a pop up. This was his second major season negatively affected by bodily defect, unfortunate happenstance. The career numbers (all pervasive for us vicarious acolytes) were trailing down with age...
No All-Star status for my hero. No matter. They won their division, and Rock made the playoffs for the first time since his rookie year back in the opening of the promising 1980s, the strike shortened season, to lose to the Dodgers...More than a decade later to the Blue Jays. It will come.
He is older but still runs and bats and plays. He is a champion, surely.
1994. The White Sox (and Expos) were in first place, and Raines' stats were surely to rise to the fore as the teams' fortunes would, projecting as a WS contender...And greed got my hero stopped fast, along with those precious lost career stats in that terrible August of standstill...
1995. They couldn't do it. Cleveland had risen. The Sox let him go.
Heroes roll with the punches of change and age, growing older and wiser, hopefully, but perhaps more savvy and opportunistic.
And in 1996, the Yankees finally did it. And Raines, the cagey vet, had his ring. Injuries? There were a few. WS rings? A few of those, too.
1997 was better for his health, the post season didn't work out. I ended my stay in Utah, moving back to Indiana with two weeks of notice. I went to see him in Detroit with my dad; he didn't disappoint!
Chug along, as we grow older. The 1998 season was a great one for the Yanks, on of the best ever. Platooning Rock in the OF and at DH was good for both parties. More injuries, no matter. 118 wins is OK for most. 118 victories, is that possibly right? I went to the Bronx to see him, but he was on the pernicious DL...Such is life.
By this year I was feeling my age! Do you start feeling a bit old at 27, 28? I think I did. But my hero kept me young. Raines had become eternal.
1999 was California time for Rock and me. He was released by the Evil Empire (I believed that they had purposely left him out of the four game sweep of the Padres, for years after, but it probably was more the injuries...), so he was signed by the Oakland A's.
I was contracted with the San Bernardino Unified School District to teach Spanish. It helps being bilingual, it turns out. That and getting credentialed.And having a supporting family.
Family. Raines was a strong family man, I learned. An old rap on him was his cocaine use in the early 80s. He confessed the problem openly, survived it, and moved on. He had children and was a dedicated father.
But something crazy happened to Timmy that California summer that no one could have anticipated: he almost died of a mysterious disease, turning out to be Lupus.
There went my plans to drive up to Oakland in late August or September, catching him live... But at least he survived. He would not be the first player ever forced into early retirement due to physical constraints. Happens all the time. Even to our personal heroes.
And baseball came in the year 2000 with my hopes of baseball slightly dimmed, quite altered. I thought that Raines switching leagues was bad! I was turning 30 but I finally got hitched.
I watched the Expos play the Dodgers in Chavez Ravine; ironic for me: married, my former favorite team plying the team that thwarted my hero's post season hopes his rookie season so long ago...Chan #### Park hit a homer while shutting out the 'Spos...
But the thrill was gone. Baseball was still the game, but my hero was banished by an ailment that can kill.
But what was this? Raines tried out for the Olympic team? Did I hear that right? A 1959 born player, playing his first major league games in 1979, was the last cut from the US Olympic team after leaving the game the year previous with a surprise onset of Lupus, at age 39?
He didn't make the cut with Lasorda (see irony, again), but he proved his mettle.
Yet, alas, some personal heroes are epic, and mine did not fail me.
I looked to Frank Thomas as my favorite player since Timmy had left...I watched the White Sox play the Angels in Anaheim. The Big Hurt was hurt when I went. The Sox had become my de facto favorite team.
But somwhere, Raines was signed with...the..Montreal Expos!
Hello, 21st century! This is baseball!This is a great nation; only here, right?
In the winter of 2000-2001, Rock had done it. He returned to the French land of promise a mere twenty years later.
And yes, he got hurt and missed a lot of games. But he filled up that old stadium a few last times.
And then the family thing.
The last week of the season, when Montreal and Baltimore were virtually done, he got picked up as a teammate to: Tim Raines, Jr.
They played together. Father and son, as the Iron Man finished out his legendary career...
Only in America? Only in baseball? This is OUR country (allusion to a new American balladeer, Mellencamp, with whom I attended high school with his oldest daughter, Michelle...)
And then...the Florida Marlins of 2002. By now I could follow his occasional at bats on line...Learned by the 2001 season, through ESPN trackers via the Internet...How sports evolve.
I was old, officially. A small child and in graduate school.
My wife and I had been living in West Los Angeles, and I noted that near the end of the season that the Marlins were in town, and it was probably my last chance to ever see Raines play in person...
She convinced me to purchase two tickets...We would get a baby sitter for our infant. She was carrying a second.
But within a few more days, our newly growing child precociously developing in the womb had ceased its tiny life.
The actual procedure in Santa Monica to remove the fetus was to take place the morning before the game. I was willing to forego the event, to be there for my wife physically or mentally, emotionally...
But she said, "I'll be fine--invite a friend and go..."
So I did. Leaving her drugged and resting at our apartment, needing to sleep off the after affects and have some alone time, while a good friend watched our 1 year old with her own kids, I went to see my hero with a mixed feeling of unease and peace in my heart.
My hero.
Here I was, a 31 year old kid, leaving my own family to see a silly game. Accompanied by a church friend who liked baseball, who started his love of the game later in life watching the Long Beach St. college club. Another father. His son played baseball, we picked up his trophy at the local recreation department one time.
We sat and baked in the southern California son that afternoon, talking baseball from rows up above homeplate on the third base side.
Raines finally came up for his single pinch hit appearance, as was customary that year. No injuries, just a lot of pine time. The Marlins had talent, as evidenced by the following championship season (2003).
His numbers were low; it was his first and only pinch hit season. I think he started maybe 5 games out of 89 played that year.
I cheered, "All RIGHT, Rock!"
A young kid saw his less than impressive season stats on the score board above the outfield. His loud observation cut out, "He's no good..."
There are some things you cannot teach in a few moments, some things you cannot grasp in mere years.
And I knew that my hero, or perhaps all baseball heroes, cannot fully be explained in mere words. It is a lot like family, or love of country, or religion...It's something deep and sweet, and highly personal.
And it's a private love affair, even to those we love so much. An unrequited adoration, exquisite and peaceful. Perhaps sublime, if I may say so.
I once had a dream that I was talking with Tim Raines. Me, Clinch, talking to him, a simple guy, no Greek god. But he was really in my dream, and it filled that waking day with wonder. It seemed so real.
He took a few pitches, a few swings. He got contact, as he is want to (he tallied more career RBIs than SOs in his entire career; who else has done that?). He tapped the ball out to the right infield, and I suppose the Dodger second baseman was the one to throw my old hero out at first.
It was over. I guess the Dodgers won, as usual.
Fitting. It begins and ends with Dodger blue.
Later, years later, I would see Raines was managing a sinlge A club somewhere in the south, and his son, Junior, was trying to recapture the Raines mystique, the heroic greatness.
I hoped for an impossible repeat of the love. For the son, it wasn't meant to be. Baltimore released him, Minnesota apparently never kept his contract intact or whatever.
I saw good ole Rock back with Guillen in Chitown. First base coach. Good fit.
I was down in South America the fall when the Pale Hose broke the curse. I followed many of their exploits online---I was a civilian, not a missionary: no prohibition of following the media.
A friend invited me to his house where he had access to the series on TV (the avatar pictures the town, Angol). We watched game four together. Sox over the 'Stros. Raines was a champ again.
My friend Raul had young twins, a boy and a girl. My wife and I had two girls, with another on the way.
He, the one in the womb then, is a boy now, just learning to scoot.
I think I will watch baseball with him someday. My girls, too. We will go see some heroes together.
He made a huge splash in MLB in 1981, leading the Montreal Expos to their first Pennant Championship series. The rest of the 80s were replete with close finishes and solid teams.
A seven time All-Star, he still achieved greatness in the next 14 years of duty, most importantly contributing to his own family and his organizations, most recently as the first base coach for the World Champion Chicago White Sox.
He played his last active year (2002) with the Florida Marlins, who won it all the folloing year. Coincidence? I would suggest his winning attitude and ethic contributed to the team makeup in '03.
He helped the Yankees finally get off the schnide in 1996. The Yanks were not champs until they tapped into his talent and winning attitude, and his character.
Raines deserves HOF election for his playing and number alone. I think he will be a great coach for the next 30 years... How many more rings will he win?
1981-2002. I wish there were another leadoff hitter I could love as much.
Journa@! Na@! HI MOM! I wrote this a while ago and didn't have a ton of time to embellish, er, elaborate. That first little thing says "Journay! Nay!" But at the time, two keyboards ago, the "y"wasn't working and for speed I would put the "@"symbol there and sometimes go back and edit it.
Legendary Tim "Rock" Raines was my favorite player from 1981, his rookie season. I was ten years old.
In the fall of 1985, I finally saw him play in person. My mother drove us to Saint Louis from Bloomington, Indiana.
HOW I FIRST SAW MY FAVORITE PLAYER IN PERSON...
As I had stated, Rock had become my favorite baseball player at the end of his rookie year in 1981 when he became visible with his division winning Expos. I thought the Expos had cool uniforms, too, which was important to a 10 year-old. (I also thought the Astros were cool, but I later realized those unis were an aberration). And they had nobody who became my lifetime icon.
I had not pursued playing baseball as much as a lot of people thought I should. It boiled down to a combination of stage fright, lack of dedication and friends who didn't make the cut, and perhaps my childish fantasies of reading books and watching TV and playing with Star Wars figures rather than really devoting myself to a discipline. Sports require a lot of grown up attributes that I shied away from. Play through pain, concentrate when your brain isn't really engaged, stick to something without feeling the immediate results are worth it, conquering self fears and doubts, things along those lines. That can be hard medicine for anybody to take, do you think? I just wasn't in it enough. Perhaps it is simply a part of me.
I had a church member who coached little league encourage me to go out for his team; he coached a lot of members of my church. Most of them were older and bigger than me and they intimidated me. They knew things about baseball of which I was clueless, plus they threw the ball with more confidence and know how. I think I was concerned with my batting a bit, too. Fear of failure and disappointment were real factors, but I always had my own fantasy projects going on, creating stories and books and characters as well, and I would watch the Cubs on TV a lot but sports di not really start to grab me until I was 12-13 years old.
But Raines immediately grabbed me because he was fast as anything and was a switch hitter. My dad taught me to bat left along with my natural batting right, so I felt like if I played, he was me: short, fast, switch hitting Raines. Stealing bases became my number one attraction to the game. Not the homers. And Rock was the master of the NL.
I only watched National League Games because of geography and television. WGN (one of our 9-10 channels, with cable) showed almost all the Cubs games, and almost never showed the White Sox. Plus Wrigley Field did not have lights and most of the games were showed in the day when I was around in the summer. The same kind of thing happened to my step-nephew in Bedford, Indiana, with the Sosa phenomenon in recent years.
WTBS showed the Braves pretty well, and the local channnel four affiliate (Indianapolis/Bloomington) broadcast the Reds a bit. All NL, all the time. The AL was the "other", and I usually rooted against them.
So by 1982 I was catching Timmy on the tube when he played Chicago, Atlanta, and sometimes the Reds. If I saw him three or four times in a week it was special. This exposure to the team solifified my like for him. He was who I wasn't: fast and fearless. Maybe that first year I didn't pay particular attention but he continued his excellence. Little did I know he was fighting his own demons with cocaine. I learned that later, but it never diminished my admiration for him.
During the winter of my 6th grade year (1982-83) things were good personally but then my family started to unravel when my parents decided to break up. The following summer was hard because my mom stayed at an apartment away from home, and in retrospect it wasn't very far from my house but she might as well have been in another country. Like Raines in Montreal. I had a hard time dealing with things, mostly trying to pretend that things were either the same or trying harder to not deal with it at all. Trying to forget, deny, shutdown, turn off...Or pretend it would get better, and hope it could, and believe that it was a serious mistake that would be corrected.
I did jobs during the summer; by then I had stopped taking swimming lessons across the street at the local public pool. I mowed lawns and earned decent money to buy comic books and save; mostly save. Some times some desperate parents from my church ward would come by and have me babysit their kids for the night. I considered the money chump change in comparison to lawn mowing money, but it was still money.
I was an active Boy Scout and was loyal but not terribly "into" it; I was mostly in it because my church expected all good priesthood holders and righteous young men to be involved; I considered myself among that group. Camping in southern Indiana during the summer was tortuous. Winter camps were no picnic, either. It always rained! At least it did too much.
So that summer of 1983 I was looking for distractions, something a little more real than "Return of the Jedi" or Indiana Jones, and I think I latched on to something all baseball fanatics really comprehend: the Newspaper. Particularly: Box scores. Have you read "The Old Man and the Sea" by Hemingway? If you don't understand what I am referring to, read it agian. You cannot err with the masters of literature. But I digress.
So with the absence of a daily injection of a televised schedule, Sportscenter, or the modern Internet, I live to check the hitting lines, and stats became a byproduct of my love. If you hit one for four one day, and 2 for four on the next, you are batting a nifty.375, and THAT two day result is much more impressive in May or June than in August or September. These are good thing for a twelve year-old to learn. Unfortunately, once hooked you may never decide to give up that facination. Unless he retires. But of course, he may have a son..._
My parents did get back together by the fall of 1983 ever so briefly, but it was over again for good by the winter of 1984-1985. By 1985 I had perfected the Tim Raines calendar: I would painstakenly copy all 162 games onto 3 or 4 regugular line pieces of paper, and then day by day track Raines' stats and the the Expos' win/loss record and scores. By the end of the summer I would have a good piece of work made, which represented a lot of hope and perseverance. I grew to really loathe the Mets in that time because this was Montreal's main competition. Gooden was the rage and they had hitters, too, always more feted and recognized than those guys up north.
And now it had been a sizable time since Montreal had played in the pennant championship of 1981. My voice had dropped a few octaves, and I was finished with middle school and looked forward to the big time: High School. And then my mother, only a month removed form her official (legal) divorce from my father, suggested the best idea imaginable:
"Let's watch Tim Raines play."
We could do that? Yeah, that is why they play the game, right? A spectator sport? Of course!
And the Expos still had an outside shot at the race, they were a mere 5 or 6 games out in September! (Late September, but what did I know?) Raines is unconquerable!
How far is St. Louis? I had never been there. 9 (We had driven by on our way to Texas when I was 11). Only 4 or 5 hours? That is like Chicago, only less Indiana time...
Stay the night? Catch a weekend Saturday evening game?
Or was it day? Did we stay over Friday? I cannot recall exactly, but I'll tell you what I do remember...
It was day light, maybe it was a 1:00 day game, it had to be Saturday. We parked somewhere close and walked into a big Busch Stadium. We were high up and far away but I could see perfectly.
This was my first Major League game since once as a wee child, watching the Red Machine of Cinncinnati versus the Pirates sometime in the 70s. They had Pete Rose, George Foster, and afew other great players. But none of those guys held a candle to Tim Raines.
Raines was surrounded by great talent: Andre Dawson, Tim Wallach, Hubie Brooks, Andres Galarraga. But he was The Man.
That day, he did everything. He hit, he stole, he scored. It was everything I had dreamed of him doing. Dawson hit a grandslam and the Expos (a handful of games behind the Cardinals) were winning 6-2 and then the Cards rallied. They were a great team that year. Jack Clark, Tommy Herr, Ozzie Smith, Terry Pendleton, Willie McGee, Vince Coleman, Andy Van Slyke, Pedro Guerrero, who was their catcher?
Regardless, they went to the World Series that year.
And in that game, Clark hit a game winning blast to win in the bottom of the ninth...
But Raines did his part, as did his teammates...
So my Mom stood up and became my hero, enabling me to break through and realize I can go to see my favorite player in person! And I did!
I like (am obsessed with) the big US sports of football, basketball and baseball. And I love how they expand globally. I am fascinated by World Cup soccer, Olympics and certain tennis matches.
Oh, yeah, and I will talk your ear off when it comes to religion, politics, right, wrong, demography, history and truth.
Blog on and blog it.
Uh, also I have a Foxsports blog called papaclinch'si t and that was the original, and this was created as a mistake and then a parallel world for more spiritual topics on occasion. More BYU here, more IU over there...
Make sense? I love both schools with an odd type of crazed loyalty... Hard to explain. Thus the blogging.
Keeps me out of trouble, maybe?
