On The Fly

My fondest baseball memories were not spring training or a visit to a major league ballpark; it was not meeting a famous ballplayer (although you could not pry my treasured official Mickey Mantle bat at that time, from my fingers). For me, it was learning to catch lighting ; and field line drives with my Dad. As a youngster, my attention was not on major league baseball (see, A Budding Cubs Fan ). The game, at that level, was always backgrounded noise from an old transistor radio tuned to 720  WGN Chicago. In Cuba, Illinois fans chewed on one another over the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals. For our family, baseball was always something we participated in, not something we paid to watch. My father (everyone calls him Doc) was an exceptional underhand fastpitch softball hurler for Cuba Merchants, a little-known team in Central Illinois. Back then, every small town had a team, and the local ball-field was where families gathered on the weekends. After he enlisted in ...

Zenith Radio “No man is rich enough to buy back the past.” – Oscar Wilde. That thought may be true however, vivid memories at unexpected times can flood the present. My childhood for the most part was very uneventful; growing up in the small Midwestern town of Cuba, Illinois was going to happen anyway with no particular thought or effort on my part. There were many experiences that mirrored the very fabric of life in the 1960s. Baseball reflected the sounds and smells of summer. The ole' timers congregated at Main Street Barber Shop in Cuba, its proprietor Bernard (Cocky) Lyons, a rabid Cubs fan. Monthly, my father would take my brothers and me for our haircuts.  The sweet smell of Vitalis filled the air, the jars of blue liquid with combs on the shelf, and of course conversations about the plight of the Chicago Cubs. This is my first memory of major league baseball. As a young boy my attention was not on the game, really....