I love to read, and this page will feature the books that I read in 2020. I will give recaps of what I read and maybe some comments and insights as well. During December 2019 I started reading Basketball Junkie by Chris Herren. At the end of 2019 I finished 9 chapters. Check here for what I report on in connection with Chapter 10 to the Epilogue. This page is going to talk about the books I have read in 2020. It will be in the form of book reports, for a sense of nostalgia for grade school and high school years. I read the first 9 chapters of Basketball Junkie by Chris Herren and Bill Reynolds in 2019, so I will start 2020 with chapter 10. Now, Chris is in Bologna, Italy to play for that city’s basketball team. But thanks to his addiction and the fact that the team’s training facility is in the mountains near no major town, he realized that he cannot procure his drugs for his habit and goes home. When he arrived in Massachusetts, he learned that he was released by the Celtics. So he and his dad go to Istanbul where Chris is in rehab but also signs for a major team - Galatasaray S.K. Chris described what type of city Istanbul is – glamorous city center but poor districts elsewhere. But while on the Galatasaray S.K. team, he tries to procure heroin from the ball boy. In Chapter 11 Chris is now playing in China with the Beijing Ducks. He is one of two Americans on the team. Unfortunately, he is now hooked on heroin, and is supplied by a Nigerian dealer. He described Beijing as a city of extremes – upscale in one area and third world in another, with lots of traffic and smog. He told us about a road trip to play a team in a town near the Pakistan border, with no ethnic Chinese living there, and being told to not leave the hotel because it is too dangerous for Americans. In the next season he is playing in Nanjing. To him, it is not a pretty place – in the middle of nowhere with all of the buildings made of concrete. One night he was at a club and got into a fight and ended up spending several hours in jail. After his tenure in Nanjing, he played for three weeks in Warsaw before returning to New England. His wife Heather and the two kids are living in Portsmouth RI. Chris managed to play in the Continental Basketball Association for a team in Bismarck ND. To get drugs he would shuttle between Bismarck and Providence. By chapter 12 he is really struggling with addiction. He spent his NBA pension and emptied out the Paine Webber account. But his kids are doing well in Portsmouth that’s to Heather and the Portsmouth schools. Then his grandfather died and then his mother (in the summer of 2005). In the fall of 2006 he got to play in Tehran, and over there his taxi driver got him his fixes. But he did have nice things to say about Tehran – the people are friendly, and the city is not as isolated as we think here. The middle class residents yearn for a return of the royal family. The team he plays for is named Paykan, after the sponsor, a car company. After the season he returns to the USA and was invited to stay at the home of a former teacher that he had (Mary Parker) while at Fresno State. Her family lives in a town called Oakhurst near Yosemite National Park. While staying with the Parkers he became a fitness instructor at a fitness resort but soon is on crystal meth, which is worse than heroin. Soon Heather and the two kids arrive and he rented a Cadillac Escalade to drive to Oakland to pick them up. But since he was stoned, he drove the wrong way and ended up in Modesto – broke but still able to get drunk and then arrested. Soon Heather and the kids return to New England and lived in Middletown RI. She soon took him back, as she wanted him to again be the man she married. But Chris was still addicted, with his life revolving around drug dealers. When we get to chapter 13 it’s 2007 and hie is hooked on heroin and vodka. Chris was able to get a job as a fitness instructor at the University of Rhode of Rhode Island but that did not last. Then it was a series odd jobs and then soon the utilities would be turned on and then off. When he rode into Fall River to score, people would recognize him but he barely acknowledged them. Then one day he was dead for 30 seconds with a needle in his arm. In chapter 14 he arrives in rehab at Daytop in Rhinebeck NY, something that Chris Mullins arranged for him. Chris described life there – spartan and disciplined. Then one day he was able to go on leave to be with Heather for the birth of his third child. While in Rhode Island he bought vodka and was soon in trouble back at Daytop. One inmate suggested that he leave his family for their sake. That thought made him want to change. He then lost all of his privileges and was in the kitchen cleaning dishes, pots & pans for 18 days straight. But soon he was sober and learned to be a dad again. Once he realized that he had to change, he started to advance at Daytop. He wanted to be the person that he wanted his kids to look up to. Then and Heather and the family came to visit him and he had to admit the truth to get better. Chris also began to understand how addiction works on you. He would stay at Daytop for four months and was clean by then. Then after Daytop he went to a halfway house in Falmouth MA. His friend Kevin, who had joined him in Fresno, had been there and had been over his addiction for four years. The rest of chapter 14 has Chris going back and forth from the Miller House and meetings where he runs into people form Fall River and Portsmouth who know him and whom he knows. But he is making progress and goes home to visit his family on Halloween. Soon he gets a job with Kevin’s future wife repossessing cars. He does not always enjoy doing that but it’s a source of income. Chapter 15 mentions an article that appeared in the Boston Globe on May 31, 2009 that describes Chris life, including the years in the NBA and that he is now clean. Since the drug buss and traffic violations left him with legal issues, his dad helps him find a lawyer to help get him out of serious trouble. And his wife stood by him. Not long afterwards he started a basketball in Portsmouth at a Catholic school and also at the Bank Street Armory in Fall River. He was so respected that a couple of tweens asked him to be there on Heroes’ Day. Later he admitted that has he still played professional basketball he might have died. While running his school he has rules telling the students how to treat their colleagues – with respect. He also wants everyone to enjoy playing and have a positive experience. Making your school’s team is not everything. His son even plays for an AAU team and went to play a game in Boston. Chris told him to have fun and not worry about how many points he scored. He also does not force his son to play if he does not want to. In chapter 15 Chris condemned his parents’ obsessed with their kids’ performances and that they would get scholarships. Chris feels that the only way a youngster is a success at a sports is if he smiles while playing. Then in the fall of 2009 he is hired by Gosnold (the organization that helped get him sober) as a community relations consultant. Chris went on to cite warning signs to addictions – signs that he ignored. He was invited to speak at a detox facility named Star in Fall River, where he was a patient in 2008. Chris also stresses that meetings are important as you can share stories and know that you are not alone. He advises us to live for the present since the past is over and the future can bring fear. Before the 2009 playoffs Chris Sr. and Jr. go to the Celtics practice in Waltham and meet several NBA players, including former teammate Paul Pierce, who gives Junior his autographed sneakers. Chris said that he is no longer haunted by his past and what might have been. He lives with the choices he made and that there is no point in dwelling on past choices. He is grateful to have his life and family back. He has a new career now and that involves helping others. Chris Jr. and Sr. also got tickets to the 2009 NBA playoffs from Celtic Austin Ainge. Chris appreciate the fact that he got to play for the Boston Celtics – his dream came true. He also went with his kids to a basketball camp at Durfee High School and was awed to see the banners with his name on them and appreciated what he accomplished. In the epilogue there is a story about the Durfee Hall of Fame dinner that took place in 2010. Coach Jim O’Brien (fellow Prepster) said that all of Chris life is in Fall River Dreams. Chris remembered the negative things like pressure to excel and win. Later he realized that it was Coach Karam’s family who helped Heather and him. A Durfee classmate named Jeff Caron wrote to him while he was at Daytop – the only non-family member to do so. Jeff and Chris were the two best players in Durfee when there. They were friends since childhood since they played ball in each other’s yards. When it came time to introduce the guests to the attendees, Jeff was the one who introduced Chris. When Chris addressed the audience, all of the family members started to cry except his 3 kids. Chris said that the still regrets getting addicted but is happy that his kids respect and admire him.
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On January 6th, 2020 I started to read The City Game by Matthew Goodman. So far, I learned a bit of the history of City College of New York (CCNY). The current campus near Harlem only opened up in 1907, and most of its buildings were made from the solid rock excavated from the Manhattan schist. Most of the students were immigrants or the children of immigrants (Jewish and Italian, mainly). As for its basketball program, its 15-man roster had 11 Jewish Americans and 4 blacks – all West Indian. They generally did not win very often. In chapter 2 we meet Nat Holman, the CCNY coach from 1919 to the 1950's. He is a product of the Lower East Side but always conveyed an image of upper class upbringing – being well dressed and minus the New York accent. In the early 1920’s he turned down an offer from Converse Shoe Company to endorse a line of sneakers, but Chuck Taylor did, and Chuck’s name is on that iconic shoe to his day. Nat’s assistant was Harold “Bobby” Sand, a short scholarly man from Brooklyn. Bobby got married in 1940 and soon his wife Sylvie was very ill, and then in 1943 his daughter Wendie was born. She survived a bout of tuberculosis but Bobby and Sylvie always worried when she caught a cold. Bobby recruited what would be the best team in CCNY history for the 1948/1949 season. Invitations to the NIT and NCAA tournaments loom for the CCNY Beavers. In addition, the Kentucky Wildcats under Adolph Rupp may also go to both tournaments. CCNY had its New York City rivals – St. John’s University and Long Island University. All 4 teams had its ace player - Kentucky with Bill Spivey, St. John’s with Bob Zavoluk, Long Island with Sherman White, and CCNY with Ed Roman. Chapter 3 talks about Ed Roman (the family name originally was Romatsky) whose was the middle son of Polish Jewish immigrants. Ed was tall and lanky and people often made fun of him because of that. But he was also very honest and would not join his friends when they stole items from the candy stores. He also practiced at all hours wherever he could find a court or a backboard. When he was a freshman at William H. Taft High School, he was asked to join the basketball team by coach Marty Force. After he finished high school he was offered and accepted a scholarship to the University of Cincinnati, and his older brother Mel also accepted into the master’s program. But both brothers got homesick after a week. CCNY offered Eddie a part time job, admission to grad school for Mel, and a full time job for their dad. But the job never materialized for Mr. Roman, and Eddie was limited as to the number of hours that he could put into his part time job. But in his freshman year, he did set the point scoring record for a CCNY freshman. In chapter 4 we read about the life on the CCNY campus – political clubs, rallies and paranoia after the USSR exploded an atom bomb. There was also political paranoia thanks to the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington. We see what a taskmaster Coach Nat Holman is – despite the public persona of a refined gentleman, in the gym he is as gentle as a drill sergeant. The 1949 season opens with a game on the City College campus against Queens College and the Beavers win 91-45. The next game is at Madison Square Garden with the opponent being Lafayette College (the Beavers won 76-44). They chose the Garden because it holds over 18,000 people versus only 5,000 at CCNY. And college basketball teams outdraw the professional teams like the Knicks. College basketball had a promoter in Ned Irish who worked to promote NCAA basketball and have college basketball games at the Garden. Chapter 5 introduces Al “Fats” Roth and Floyd Layne (a son of immigrants from Barbados). Floyd loves jazz and often visited jazz clubs in Manhattan and the Bronx. He and Eddie played on a traveling team called the Wildcats and became good friends, despite the fact that one went to Taft (Eddie) and the other went to Benjamin Franklin (Floyd). Floyd also met another future Beaver while playing in a Fresh Air Fund benefit game with Eddie Roman at Madison Square Garden – Ed Warner. Chapter 5 also describes how the idea of a winning team has to also cover a point spread for a bettor to win. So it’s now possible to bet on an underdog since there is a chance that the favored team will not cover the spread. Norm Mager is on the CCNY Beavers by chapter 6. He disliked Coach Holman and told Eddie Roman about the point shaving scheme. In the third game of the 1949-1950 season, $4,500 would be divided among 5 Beavers: $1,000 each to Norm Mager, Irwin Dumbrot, Eddie Roman and AL Roth. $500 would go to Herb Cohen, a sub player. Chapter 7 introduces Ed Warner, who is the son of immigrants from Antigua in the West Indies. His dad worked in a laundry and was also a numbers runner. The chapter also describes the poor state of medical care in Harlem and that private hospitals would not admit black patients. The lack of proper medical care probably killed Ed’s mother. Then there are the high rents in Harlem, due to limited supply and high demand because blacks could not buy or rent elsewhere. Decent jobs are scarce for them. Ed soon learned the numbers racket and was in a gang for a while before he made it to the CCNY Beavers. He was the only player with a police record, and the only orphan. The other black players all had their fathers in their lives. Ed’s teammates included Ed Roman, Floyd Layne and they soon faced Southern Methodist University in game #3. The Beavers covered the spread so those who bet against CCNY lost the bet. As a result, Norm, Ed, Herb, Irwin and Al did not share the $4,500. But Norm told his teammates that they owed a game to the bookies next time. Chapter 7 is devoted to Mayor William O’Dwyer, and how he got to the office. He was first elected in 1945 and won because LaGuardia decided not to run again. O’Dwyer’s right hand man is Jim Moran, who became his deputy commissioner. No building permit would be issued until a fee was paid, and part of the money went to Moran. O’Dwyer was widowed in 1946 and in 1948 took up with a model named Sloan Simpson who was 27 years younger than he was. On November 29, 1949 O’Dwyer was taken to Bellevue suffering from exhaustion. After he was released, he left for Florida and married Simpson on December 27. And in New York the Beavers agreed to shave points against UCLA. Chapter 8 tells us that the Beavers lost to UCLA on that day by a score of 60-53. The players no longer owe the bookies a game. CCNY is now 6-2. But fans still feel that they will never win it all, just like the Brooklyn Dodgers. They are next up against two schools with NIT championships: Long Island University and St. John’s University. The chapter details how schools like LIU, Kentucky and Oklahoma giver their basketball players nice perks to play for them. Then on January 3, 1950 CCNY played SJU and they win, 54-52. We also learn how the SJU Redmen got their team name – from the red uniforms that the players wore. But the fans extended it to Native Americans and even carried a wooden Indian statue with them to games (the statue was stolen from a cigar store in the 1920’s). In chapter 9 Ed Reid of the Brooklyn Eagle is starting to investigate bookies and has the help of district attorney Miles McDonald. Miles learns that New York Police Department members are on the take from the bookies to look the other way. He devised a plan to send rookie police officers to 4 campuses in Brooklyn: LIU, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn Law School, and Pratt Institute as undercover officers to find out who is breaking the law. Assistant district attorney Julius Helfand met with the rookies at the Hotel St. George on January 2, 1950 and briefed them about the project and what could happen to them with respect to the other members of the force. In Chapter 10 the Beavers are on campus during winter break, practicing. Bobby Sand was asked to write articles for the newspapers but Nat Holman would not let him. Bobby had also been getting offers for head coaching jobs elsewhere but declined all of them because his wife did not want to leave New York. The Beavers soon had their first road trip on 1950, to Muhlenberg College in Allentown PA and won 95 to 76. They soon beat Boston College, Princeton and St. Francis College but the trip ended with a loss to Canisius College by a score of 53 to 49. Chapter 10 also goes into detail about how registration for the spring semester goes about. It ends with telling us that he Beavers beat Manhattan College. And that DA McDonald summoned the first three arrests in the sports investigations. The 29 rookies will be going to the 4 campuses in chapter 11. Rookie Police Officer Anthony Russo had lunch at Jiggs Cigar Store and soon saw how the bettor, counter man and owner handled bets. And the rookies were harassed mercifully by the other police officers, especially when it was time to pick up their pay checks. But they uncovered a ring at Brooklyn College. During chapter 12 the Beavers made the 1950 NIT Tournament with a 17-5 record even though they lost to UCLA and Niagara. They first faced the University of San Francisco and won 65-46. Next would be Kentucky – a whites only team in a whites only school. The Kentucky Wildcats were coached by Adolph Rupp, a great coach but a virulent racist. The chapter talks about how segregated Lexington KY was during the mid-20th century. UK would not allow integrated teams on its home court, and Rupp disparaged the Beavers because they were coached by two Jews and had all Jews and blacks in its lineup. Chapter 13 talked about the aggressive approach of playing by Rupp, who also wrote a book on how to play. He also declined a spot in the NCAA Tournament because he refused a playoff game against North Carolina State, who was seeded 9th as opposed to UK’s 3rd seed. And when UK faced CCNY in the 1950 NIT, three of the Beavers’ starters were black and three of the UK starters would not shake hands with the CCNY players before tip-off. That really got the crowd at Madison Square Garden angry. When CCNY played UK the Beavers and used speed and aggressiveness to mess up UK’s timing and, in the end, CCNY won, 89-50. Rupp was pissed, CCNY kind of gloated, and there was mourning in Kentucky. In chapter 14 CCNY beats Duquesne University 62-52 and Bradley University beat SJU 82 to 72 and that meant that CCNY would face Bradley for the NIT championship. The Beavers also got a bid to the NCAA Tournament. Before the big game the players stayed at a hotel on West 46th Street, a few blocks from the Garden. Bobby Sand wanted to stay with the players but his wife was ill so he stayed with her in Brooklyn. Nat Holman was at his apartment in Madison Avenue, ill with the flu. CCNY and Bradley were opposites image wise – one in a major metropolis, the other in a smaller city which is a symbol of rubes and hicks. Bradley also had all the proper types of clubs and fraternities/sororities - the opposite of CCNY. But in the end, the Beavers beat the Braves 69-61 and Ed Warner would be named the most valuable player. Chapter 15 describes the stress Mayor O’Dwyer was going through. Despite Time’s extolling New York City in 1948 as the superlative city in the world, there were problems, such as labor unrest, a fare hike in 1948, and a tugboat strike in 1946 that caused goods to stop entering the city. Luckily, it was settled quickly. O’Dwyer also faced budget issues, a 100,000 plus roster of municipal employees and corruption at all levels. The police officers were on the take to look the other way, including away from book making operations. Deputy Commissioner Moran made millions from bribes (and he was a St. Francis Prep graduate) After the 1950 St. Patrick’s Day Parade, O'Dwyer met with the CCNY Beavers at City Hall on March 20th. Floyd Layne has dreams of playing in the NBA (Chapter 16) but in the middle of the 20th century it is still all white. He could play on a barn storming team like the Harlem Globetrotters, but after hearing horror stories of former barnstorming players about travel conditions for blacks in the early part of the century, he decided not to. Floyd idolized Jackie Robinson, who had broken the baseball color line a couple of years earlier, in 1947. And despite being from the Bronx, he hopped the subway to Brooklyn to see the Dodgers. The NCAA tournament was coming up, and the Beavers had to play the Ohio State Buckeyes, and they won 56-55. The next team that they would face was the North Carolina State Wolf Pack. North Carolina State had built the largest arena on any mid-century college campus, and since they were in the South, the team was all white and did not allow integrated teams on its court. In the South it was undefeated, but they faced the Beavers at Madison Square Garden and were mostly likely not thrilled to face an integrated team. The Wolf Pack lost to the Beavers 78-73, who were on their way to the NCAA tournament. In chapter 17 the Beavers reach the NCAA championship game, played at Madison Square Garden on March 28, 1950. The opponent was Bradley University. Before the game, Jackie Robinson dropped by the locker room to give the Beavers a pep talk. In the end, CCNY won, 71-68, and Bradley insisted that they were robbed. Chapter 18 tells us about the celebrations that occurred on campus. There was extreme pride among the City College students for their team. They were proud of the fact that to enroll in City College, they had to pass an exam. While it was not as prestigious a school as NYU or Columbia, you still got a good education, and the basketball players were real students. Before 1950 there was very little of that college feel on the campus, with the frills and fun. But the Beavers were all New York natives, from the streets and sidewalks of New York. The chapter also tells us about the heroes’ welcome that Bradley players received when they returned to Peoria. After the tournament, two Beavers were selected for the NBA draft. When the Class of 1950 graduated on June 15, Magistrate John Murtagh administrated the Ephebic Oath to the grads. Chapter 19 takes us to Part II, called “The Bridge of Sighs”. In this chapter the author talks about the development of the Borscht Belt in the Catskills, which started at the beginning of the 20th century. By the 1940’s there were basketball games as part of the entertainment, and the players were members of college teams. CCNY’s Ed Roman played at the Brinkman Hotel where he was also employed as a waiter. The games were played on Friday evenings and Sunday afternoons. On Sundays, a hat was passed around among the guests, asking for money and then the guests were give a slip of paper with a random number. That is the number in which the total points scored in that day’s game must total to win. The gamblers would ask the players to shave points so that the numbers that they had would be the winning total. One gambler was a jeweler named Sal Sollazzo. Sal would use his trophy wife to attract the basketball players, such as Eddie Gard of Long Island University. Eddie was involved in a point shaving scheme during the 1949-1950 season and dreamed of running a city wide point shaving racket. He was an easy choice for Sal to include in his point shaving scheme. Miles McDonald’s undercover men raided a Bay Ridge restaurant (chapter 20) but found nothing. Yet precinct captain John Flynn committed suicide after being dragged through the mud and accused. At City Hall, O’Dwyer was losing his appeal, and the bookmaking operations were over shadowing all of his planned programs. Later in fall 1950 Bronx Democratic Party Boss Ed Flynn visited him to inform him that the bookmaking operations were being exposed. And the Democratic Party wanted to put a Democrat in Albany after the 1950 election, and with a special mayoral election, it would be easier. Flynn persuaded O’Dwyer to resign, and President Truman appointed him ambassador to Mexico. In chapter 21 we learned more about Harry Gross. He had become a big time bookmaking entrepreneur, since he was scheming and conniving since junior high school. He was staying at the Hotel St. George and the NYPD had an undercover detective disguised as a chambermaid check his room (she found several bits of evidence). Harry later paid off a cop named Jim Reardon, who was well connected in the Department Reardon soon left the NYPD and worked with Gross full time. The chapter then describes how the police officers were paid off to protect the bookmakers. However, Harry Gross was a bad gambler himself, losing thousands. He was finally arrested and sent to prison in September 1950. Ed Gard met up with Al Roth (chapter 22) to talk about shaving points and wanted to get Ed Warner and Floyd Layne in on it too. In the beginning of the 1950-1951 season CCNY won its first three games (against St. Francis, Queens, and Brigham Young). After these games were played, Ed Gard takes Eddie Roman to Sal Sollazzo’s apartment on Central Park west to plan a point shaving scheme, and what the players would get for it ($1,500 each). They wanted to get Ed Warner and Floyd Layne to join them, and Ed Gard met up with them after a Knicks game to persuade them. After the Beavers lost to Missouri, Gard gave Ed and Floyd $1,500 each. In chapter 23 Bob Sand heard talk on a subway train about fixes. Eddie Roman met with Sal Sollazzo on Central Park West to assure him that the fixes were still on. CCNY’s nest game was against Washington State and the Beavers won 59-43. A few days later Al Roth met Sollazzo and received $4,000 for his services. Nat Holman had Bob Sand ghost write a book on his behalf, titled Nat Holman on Basketball. Later Floyd Layne used some of his pay off money to buy his mom a washing machine. Shortly afterwards, the Beavers would play Brooklyn College and Sollazzo asked the Beavers to shave some points off the score but they refused since it was on Christmas Day (1950). In the end, CCNY won, 64-40. Soon two players had leg problems – Eddie Roman with a toe, Ed Warner with his knee. With them sidelined, the Beavers lost to Arizona, 41-38. The next opponent was St. John’s. Chapter 24 introduces police Commissioner William O’Brien, an O’Dwyer appointee. In September 1950 an investigation begins, conducted by Judge Leibowitz, who called O’Brien and Inspector August Flath into his chambers and shows them their link to Harry Gross. O’Brien soon resigned as commissioner after addressing the 1950 Academy graduating class. Acting Mayor Vincent Impelleteri nominates Thomas Murphy to replace O’Brien. But O’Brien was a big fan of the Redmen. Its coach (Frank McGuire) and its star (Bob Zawoluk) were sons on NYPD officers. McGuire aroused some suspicions because he seemed to live quite high on a coach’s salary. In chapter 26 Floyd Layne and Ed Warner agreed not to fix any more games and then CCNY won all 4 games of a January/February 1951 road trip. The final game of the road trip was against Temple in Philadelphia. On the train ride home the Beavers were tailed by two detectives who rode on the train and when it arrived at Penn Station the detectives arrested Eddie Roman, Ed Warner, Al Roth and Art Nadell. And Nat Holman did not have their backs. The 4 were taken to the Criminal Courts building for interrogations. Eddie realized that he was now a marked man. Also in the building were Bob Zawoluk, Eddie Gard, and NYU’s Connie Schaff. Bob had an attorney with him – Henry Ughetta, who was a friend of O’Dwyer and also Walter O’Malley. Bob Zawoluk was exonerated The DA wrote a report on the point shaving. Soon the players and Sal Sollazzo were taken in for booking. They faced Judge John Murtagh who was not going to be lenient with them, ad sent Schaff, Roman, Roth and Earner to the City Prison. Understandably, Eddie’s family is devastated (chapter 27). The 3 CCNY players were suspended indefinitely by President Harry Wright until further notice. CCNY students cannot believe that Eddie took bribes, and the students hold a rally to support the three players. Later Floyd Layne was interviewed and said he was shocked at what happened. And besides the CCNY student body, almost everyone else supported the three players. It looked like the entire New York City government was corrupt (chapter 28). CCNY allowed players to enroll, even though their admission test scores were low and also their academic grades from high school. In the next game, Floyd starts as a center against Lafayette College. He had not played that position since high school. But he did well enough to let CCNY win 67-48. But then Floyd admitted to the DA abut the bribe taking. In chapter 29, stories about the bribes and the police cover-ups are published but the police department suppressed the stories . The NYPD launched an investigation. Floyd was arrested, along with 3 other CCNY players, 2 Manhattan College players, 6 from LIU and one from NYU. The Brooklyn Eagle published the New Year's Eve party picture taken at Sal Sollazzo’s apartment. The investigation continued. Bob Zawoluk had been invited to the New Year’s Eve party at the Latin Quarter and then there were rumors of an affair between Bob and Sollazzo’s wife Jeanne. But despite all of these stories, Bob was never charged. Ex-police commissioner O’Brien and SJU coach Frank McGuire were good friends and O’Brien had warned McGuire. Eddie Roman and Bob Zawoluk had become friends from working and playing basketball in the Borscht Belt. Decades later a former CCNY player named Herb Cohen said that 2 SJU players were thieves, but SJU emerged unscathed, unlike LIE, NYU, CCNY, and Manhattan. Cardinal Spellman may have helped, as he dealt behind the scenes with Tammany Hall, and the Catholic Church had a huge influence on the largely Irish Catholic NYPD & FDNY. Therefore the Cardinal and the NYPD worked together. District Attorney Frank Hogan may have looked the other way with point shaving and also gave Bob Zawoluk a pass, especially if Cardinal Spellman influenced him. Hogan also wanted to run in 1954 for governor or District Attorney and Cardinal Spellman told him not to touch SJU if he wants Catholic donors. As a result, SJU contuse to this day to be a basketball powerhouse. And Bob Zawoluk set a 3 year point scoring record (1826) before playing for the NBA that was not broken until 1984 by Chris Mullin. In chapter 30, Floyd got arrested and Nat Holman banned CCNY players from playing in the Catskills during the summer. Then Bradley University’s Gene Melchiorre came under suspicion. Later a group of CCNY alumni hired a lawyer, Jacob Grunet) to defend the 3 arrested players. Later CCNY executive Sam Winograd and his wife visited Eddie Roman at his home to ask what made him participate in the point shaving. Eddie never did tell him. But it may have been the make work job that CCNY gave him. Sam had taken money to play semi-pro basketball while at CCNY in the 1930’s and made shady deals with a friend who ran a sporting goods store. Later Estes Kefauver came to New York to investigate organized crime in the New York City government, and 3 CCNY players were being investigated and were now fallen idols. In March 1951 Herb Cohen, Irwin Dambrot and Norm Mager were arrested, and now all of the CCNY started 5 had been arrested. When chapter 31 opens, Harry Gross is before Judge Leibowitz to testify about the payoffs, and in May 1951, 77 NYPD officers got indicted. Then Gross goes AWOL, and fled to Atlantic City. Meyer Lansky offered him $120,000 to refuse to testify, but soon the police nailed Gross and he appeared before Judge Leibowitz, and as promised, refused to answer. The judge is forced to move for dismissal. Floyd is working is the Garment District (chapter 32) and vows to clear his name. Eddie and Floyd still hung out together but Floyd’s mom felt uneasy with Eddie in her house. Floyd in a tournament at Immaculate Conception parish (in Melrose?) to a small cheering crowd. Then in July 1951 eight Bradley University players admitted to taking bribes. And several West Point cadets were expelled for violating the honor system and Cardinal Spellman asked three Catholic colleges to admit them if they applied. When Eddie and Floyd applied for re-admission to CCNY, they were denied. Floyd started to work with kids at the Forest House. On November 14, 1951 Judge Streit tried the players. It turned out that 4 players, Sherman White, Al Roth, Art Cohen and Ed Warner, did not have good high school grades and normally could not enroll in CCNY. Judge Streit sentenced Sal Follazzo, and Eddie Gard to jail, and gave suspended sentences to the World War II veterans. He sentenced Ed Warner, Sherman White, Con Schaff and Al Roth to prison. He said that they were mature men who tried to corrupt others, who were consenting criminals who profited from their actions. They were not true college students due to their poor grades, and Ed Warner had issues with white authority figures, and Al Roth’s moral scruples had deteriorated. Judge Streit also said that colleges don’t apply the same academic standards when pursuing athletes. He sentenced the 4 men mainly because they poor students and he disapproved of their conduct. But Al Roth joined the Army and avoided jail time (and his mom was very ill); Connie Schaff had personal matters at home to tend to. In the end, only Sherman White and Ed Warner did any real time. Ed Warner’s aunt tried in vain to get an appeal for him. In 1952 CCNY got a new president (Buell Gallagher), and Nat Holman went on a sabbatical (chapter 33). But Bobby Sand was fired as coach and instructor in economics. He had also wanted to de-commercialize basketball because of potential corruption. The Board of Higher Education charged him with unbecoming conduct and dereliction of duty. These charges came from his offer to donate part of his stipend to the players who went with him on a soon cancelled barnstorming trip to South America. Bobby also wanted Ed Warner to join them on the tour. By now Bobby is working in the Garment District, and in 1953 Nat Holman was exonerated of wrongdoing but Bobby was not. And the BHE did find Holman also not guilty of a 1945 bribe attempt. Nat was also reinstated as head coach in 1954. Bobby was demoted to the Record Department and other dispiriting positions. In 1953 District Attorney Hogan announced and end to the investigations. In the end, 7 colleges were involved: CCNY, LIU, NYU, Manhattan, Bradley, Kentucky, and Toledo. And the NBA tried to promote itself as being cleaner than college ball, and banned 3 former Kentucky players for life. In the same year Floyd joined the Army for two years and in 1955 he re-entered CCNY, as did Eddie. While at a USO dance in Washington Sate, he met his future wife. When he returned home in 1954 he re-enrolls in CCNY as well. Floyd could still not get a chance to play in the NBA. But he did get a chance to play in the Easter League’s Hazleton Hawks. Also playing in the league were Eddie Roman, Ed Warner and Sherman White. Floyd and Eddie both still worked with kids in the Bronx. Chapter 34: Ed Warner, Bobby Sand and other Williamsport Billies were driving back to Williamsport in February 1960 when the car went out of control and went down an embankment. All of the men survived the crash, even if banged up a bit. Soon Eddie was teaching physical education at the Bronx Youth House, but soon decided to become a psychologist and enrolled at Columbia. By now Ed Warner was working for GM in Tarrytown but also was involved in the numbers racket. He also played in the Rucker League in Upper Manhattan but by 1963 was dealing and using drugs. He was soon arrested and sent to Green Haven Prison, where Floyd and Eddie visited him regularly. After being paroled, Floyd would go to see Ed play in the Rucker League games. Floyd still worked with kids but also saw his neighborhoods becomes slums. One of the kids he worked with and counseled was Nate Archbald, who made it in the NBA. Floyd also played in the Rucker Tournaments and later on got a Master degree from Columbia. He became the basketball coach on an interim basis at Queensboro Community College in 1970 but had to step down in 1972 when the original coach returned. Then in 1974 Floyd was chosen to be the head basketball coach at CCNY, and asked Nat Holman to come to the press conference to say a few words. The Epilogue is basically a what-if chapter. Harry Gross took his own life in 1986, but his 1953 testimony helped get 23 NYPD officers dismissed. Bobby San wrote articles, scouted for the Rochester Royals and ran basketball clinics. In 1962 the BHE had CCNY re-instate him, and in 1971 became the coach of the Baruch College basketball team. Eddie Roman eventually had 3 kids, taught in “600” schools but went to NYU for a doctorate. He would go to CCNY games to cheer Floyd and his team. He got Ed Warner a job in the Bronx, but Ed got into a bad accident on the Harlem River Drive in 1984 and spent the rest of his life in a wheel chair. Eddie Roman finished his dissertation in 1985 but soon was with leukemia, had chemotherapy, and passed away on March 1, 1988. He was waked at Sinai Chapels in Flushing where Floyd gave a eulogy. Then by the 1990’s Eddie Roman, Floyd Layne, Irwin Dambot, Norm Mager, Al Roth, Ed Warner, and Joe Galiber were enshrined in the CCNY Hall of Fame.
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I started to read The Greatest Ballpark Ever: Ebbets Field and the Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers on February 2nd. Bob McGee talked about the last Dodger game played at the park, on September 24th, 1957, mentioning the players’ names and positions. Then Walter O’Malley saw that there is a new market in Los Angeles and the team moves there for the 1958 season. The team arranged to play its first seasons in the Los Angeles Coliseum instead of minor league Wrigley Field. There were soccer matches played in 1958 and 1959 at Ebbets Field, and an Italian team from Naples managed to get their fans quite agitated, so much so that the fans stormed the field on several occasions. The first chapter also describes the transfer of the property, on January 1st, 1960, to a developer named Kratter, who will be building apartment houses there. On February 23rd, when demolition began, Bob McGee described the placing of the demolition equipment on the field and who was there. Carl Erskine was there and made a home movie. Roy Campanella was also present, receiving an urn of dirt from the field. Then there was an auction in which items found around the ballpark as well in the cornerstone, were sold. I got to chapter 2 and we read about Charles Ebbets’ family life from birth to the late 19th century. The Brooklyn Eckfords were the city’s first professional team but did not last. Then Brooklyn got a franchise in the Interstate League, and then played at Washington Park, located in what is now Carroll Gardens. After the park burned down, a new park was built in East New York, a fairly long way from Brooklyn’s populated areas. Finally, Brooklyn got a franchise in the American Association, which was the National League’s competitor in the 1880’s. Charles Ebbets was an owner, but the team managed to have losing records each year. Finally, in 1890, the franchise joined the National League. They were called the Superbas and also the Bridegrooms (since so many players were married) before the name Dodgers (originally Trolley Dodgers) was given. I read the rest of chapter 2, and Brooklyn is now part of New York City. A new Washington Park was built, but Charlie Ebbets needs a new concrete park and the location of Washington Park is not that practical, so he heads over to a neighborhood east of Prospect Park and eventually would buy the property that he was checking out. In the 1900’s the Dodgers/Superbas are not doing well, and the rivalry with the Giants is heating up. Also at this time Charles Ebbets’ personal life is in a mess, as the marriage is falling apart. On January 2, 1912 he was able to tell the press of his plans for a new ballpark and unveiled the blueprints. All of the dimensions of the park were told to the press. He had a rotunda included but no press box at first. The groundbreaking was on March 4, 1912, and in the meantime other new parks opened in Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit and Cincinnati. The cornerstone was laid on July 6,1912 and it was hoped that the park would open in September, but that did not happen. The Brooklyn baseball organization got a financial boost from Edward and Stephen McKeever, who bought into the group. In chapter 4 we get a vivid description of the rotunda at the home plate end, and also the dimensions of the park and a description of the exterior. The public got its first view of the interior on March 16, 1913. The rotunda was large but the round shape made it difficult to sell tickets when everyone was in line and fights often broke out. The first game was played on April 5, 1913, an exhibit game against the Yankees. The Superbas won, 3-2. The first Brooklyn player to bat was Casey Stengel. The regular season opened, against the Phillies was on April 9th and the Superbas lost 1-0. The four Brooklyn newspapers described the games and the virtues of Ebbets Field. The new scoreboard tells what is happening on the Ebbets Field grass, but also the scores of other Major League Baseball games. Charley and the McKeever Brothers even had their own box seats behind home plate and would often mingle with the fans. But after the 1913 season Charley had manager Bill Dahlen dismissed and hired Wilbert Robinson, a New York Giants coach. Soon the team had a new nickname, the Robins. They also acquired some new pitchers to help build a contender. But in 1914 the Robins faced new competition from the upstart Federal League, who fielded a team called the Tip Tops (after the bread company) at Washington Park. By 1914 the rivalry and feud between the Brooklyn club and the Giants was made worse by the rancor between Robinson and the Giants’ John McGraw. In 1914 the Robins finished 75-79 and the Tip Tops cut into attendance figures. At the end of the 1914 season, the Federal League sued for recognition as a third major league and on January 5, 1915 Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis presided over the case and just sat on it for 11 months with no decision. In the meantime, Charley Ebbets looked for ways to use the park to make extra money, and boxing was the best way. During the 1915 season the Robins acquired Rube Marquand and Larry Cheney, making the team even better. Later in 1915 the Tip Tops planned to add lighting at Washington Park but it fell through. Then Judge Landis asked the Federal League and Major League Baseball to settle their differences, and Harry Sinclair planned to add a Federal League team in Manhattan. By Christmas 1915 the agreement folded the Federal League, and the players returned to Major League Baseball. Then by 1916 housing is going up by Ebbets Field and the Robins become contenders and won the 1916 pennant and would face the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. In chapter 5 we see that the Robins lost the World Series. With the collapse of the Federal League, Ebbets had that league’s contracts lapse and was able to lower the payroll. In 1917 the US entered World War I and the Brooklyn Navy Yard was humming. The Robins played a benefit game on Sunday July 1st and the managers were arrested thanks to the blue laws, but were quickly released. During the 1917 season the draft took a large number of players from all of the lineups (Casey Stengel ended up in the Navy), the season was cut to 126 games, performance on the field for the Robins was mediocre, and attendance plummeted. The 1918 season was pretty much the same, and on November 1st there was a terrible accident in the subway at Malbone Street where 97 people were killed. The street was renamed Empire Boulevard and the station, Prospect Park (the nearest one to Ebbets Field). Charlie Jr. thought that his dad was on the train but was at a dinner instead. In 1919 the blue laws were repealed and attendance rose. Also in that year Casey Stengel pulled his famous stunt with the sparrow under his cap. The following year spitballs were outlawed but grandfathered for the pitchers, like Burleigh Grimes, to continue to use them. Prohibition came into being and that hurt the concessions. But the Robins were starting to win (notwithstanding losing some 20+ inning games). The Negros National League was formed in 1920 by Rube Foster and the Eastern Colored League in 1923, and one of the Brooklyn teams started to use Ebbets Field. Before that the black players’ teams mostly barnstormed. The Robins also faced competition from the Brooklyn Bushwicks, a semi pro team who played at Dexter Park, and the Eastern League’s Brooklyn Royal Giants. Both the Royal Giants and the Bushwicks’ play was as good as many of the major league teams. The Robins did make it to the World Series and faced the Cleveland Indians. Only to lose 5 games to 2. After that season Charlie began to pinch pennies but was also altruistic by donating to charities. Ebbets Field hosted the 1923 Army-Notre Dame game because the Yankees and the Giants were in the World Series. In the summer of that year Charlie Ebbets Jr. and Steve McKeever had an altercation that would have dire consequences in later years when ownership issues came up, since they never reconciled. The following season the Robins ended the season 1½ games behind the Giants, who went on to the World Series (and lose to Washington). On April 18, 1925 Charlie Ebbets died and about 2 weeks later, Ed McKeever also died. Now Wilbert Robinson became the president of the organization, and he was not effective. Zack Wheat became the assistant field manager and he was also not effective. To get more revenue, in 1925 a series of operas were staged at Ebbets Field. Chapter 6: In the late 1920’s the Robins are generally finishing 6th place, but people are still coming to the park. They soon earned the nickname of the Daffiness Boys, and in one game three players ended up on 3rd base. The filed also hosted boxing matches and for a couple of seasons football. Around this time the neighborhood around Ebbets Field started to get built up. Around this time businesses had promotions, like Abe Stark’s haberdasher shop with the sign “Hit Sign, Win Suit”. But by this time the park was considered obsolete. The club cannot scout for better players the way other teams could. By 1929 the park was in shambles and the ownership in a deadlock. The seating capacity was low and there were plans to increase it to 50,000 but that did not pan out. In late 1930 Wilbert Robinson is replaced as manager by Max Carey. And the team is back to being called to Dodgers for 1932, but still trying to shed the Daffiness Boys label. Soon Frank York walked out from the company presidency and was replaced by Steve McKeever, and then there was dissension between McKeever and the Ebbets heirs. With the Dodgers mired in 6th place by 1934 and then player/manager Bill Terry of the Giants asked a newspaper writer if Brooklyn was still in the league. The Dodgers’ new manager, Casey Stengel rebutted Terry by saying that pitcher Van Lingle Mungo would get them later. Casey and Terry almost came to blows at the Polo Grounds club house that year. Then in mid-1934 both John McGraw and Wilbert Robinson died. The Giants were way ahead of the Dodgers in the standings but lost the pennant to the Cardinals. In 1934 Frenchy Bordagaray was an on field character rivaling Casey. Then in 1936 the Brooklyn organization was in financial trouble but did finally install a loudspeaker system. Casey was fired despite a vote of confidence, pissing off the sports writers. The Depression was hurting the club and the Ebbets heirs. The team got green trimmed uniforms in 1937 and they still stunk. There was even an idea to sign Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige from the Negro Leagues, but that did not pan out. The park was in deplorable shape by 1937. The Dodgers did sign Cookie Lavagetto, Heinie Manush and Woody English that year. Woody would win 3 suits from Abe Stark that year. Also in 1937, Willard Mullin of the World Telegram created the famous Brooklyn Bum caricature. And then came the Dodgers Sym-Phony Band. There was also the free ticket scheme if a home run ball was returned. Kids would also sneak into the park when deliveries were made and hide until game time and sit with a fatherly figure to avoid suspicion. The boxing matches soon relocated to Manhattan. In 1933 the Negro National League was formed, and the Brown Eagles landed in Brooklyn. Other teams played in Dexter Park and its owner, Nat Strong, did not like competition. The Eagles were owned by Abe ad Effa Manley, who soon moved them to Newark in 1936. Professional football returned in 1930 when the Dayton Triangles relocated to Brooklyn to become the Brooklyn Dodgers. College (Manhattan and SJU) football and high school football games were also played at Ebbets Field in the 1930’s. In chapter 7 we see a lot of changes coming during 1938. First, the Brooklyn Trust Company dispute with the Ebbets heirs was dismissed. The club hired Leo Durocher as a shortstop (with plans to maybe make him a manager later on). Then they hired Leland “Larry” MacPhail as an executive vice president. MacPhail brings night baseball to the park (the Dodgers lost their first night game to Cincinnati’s Johnny Van Der Meer who pitched his second no-hitter against them), and also has it renovated. There are new uniforms introduced, as is Ladies Day on a regular basis. MacPhail also hired Red Barber as an announcer, who spiced up the broadcasts with some Southernisms. In 1938 the team also hired Babe Ruth as a first base coach, with the thought that he would become the manager. But Base and Leo feuded and Babe resigned after one season. On August 26, 1939, the first televised Dodger game was broadcast, and in October they televised football Dodgers’ game. Walter O’Malley came on board after a posthumous birthday party to Charley Ebbets held at the Brooklyn Club on October 29, 1939. During 1940 the Dodgers lost out to the Reds for the National League pennant, but in 1941 with the help of Pete Reiser and others, they win the pennant after beating the Braves in Boston. A crowd was waiting for their train in Grand Central Terminal, and MacPhail went to the 125th Station to get on and greet the players. But manager Durocher told the engineer to skip the station and go straight to Grand Central. MacPhail is left at 125th Street and when he does meet up with Leo Durocher at a hotel by the Terminal, he fired him. As for the series, the Dodgers’ first since 1920, they lost to the Yankees in 5 games. The heart breaker was Game #4 when Mickey Owen loses the ball on the third strike and Yankee Tommy Henrich goes to first after striking out, and the Yankees rally to win the game end eventually the series. Soon after the series, the country would be at war. Chapter 8 talks about what happened after the 1941 baseball season. MacPhail has the field re-sodded and football Dodgers have Ebbets Field as their home turf. These Dodgers started mediocre but soon started to win games and almost won the NFL East title. They payed the New York Football Giants on December 7th for pride and during the game military and civilian leaders were paged and told to report somewhere. Soldiers were told to report to their duty stations. Also in late 1941, on November 1st, Robert Moses’ new project, the Gowanus Expressway, opened up along 3rd Avenue in Sunset Park. I was wider than an elevated train right of way, and completely blocked off light on 3rd Avenue. It split the Sunset Park in two and helped start the decline of the neighborhood. In 1941 the local kids cold got to the movies for 11ȼ but the bleachers at Ebbets Field cost 55ȼ. So for most teens and tweens that meant listening to Red Barber broadcasting the games on the radio. During the war years service men were admitted to games free, and that helped to spread the popularity of the ballpark nationwide. Women who brought in enough cooking fats and grease also got in free on Kitchen Fat Day. In 1942 Hilda Chester started to come to games regularly with her cowbell and leather lungs, and even got to be friends with Leo Durocher. Gladys Goodding became the organist for the Park in 1942 and would be until 1957. She also played organ at the Garden for the Rangers and the Knicks. In the 1942 season, the Dodgers were favored to win the pennant but soon started to lag behind the Cardinals, who would up going to the World Series. This season was the start of 4F’s on the field and in the stands, since almost all able bodies men were in the armed forces. In late 1942 after the lost the pennant race to the Cardinals, MacPhail joined the Army and the club hired Branch Rickey from the Cardinals. Rickey was from an Ohio Methodist family. In 1943 he had an issue with Babe Dahlgren over a contract and sent Dahlgren packing to the Phillies. While World War II was raging, Rickey made plans to really build the team when the war ended, by first hiring a black player. Owners had denied that a color barrier existed. Some people said that integration would kill the Negro Leagues. Commissioner Landis opposed integration. When Bill Veeck offered to buy the Phillies and stock the team with black players, Landis vetoed the sale and had William Cox buy the team for half of what Veeck offered. Cox only lasted one year as owner. In 1944 the Allies are winning in Europe and D-Day took place. Then Charles Ebbets Jr. died. The football counterpart, the Brooklyn Football Dodgers, sucked. They changed their name to the Tigers and finished the 1944 season at 0-10. A new Dodgers football team joined the new All American Football Conference, and the Tigers merged with the Boston Yanks in 1945. In October 1944 Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Ebbets Field while campaigning for president and also visited all of the other boroughs except Staten Island. Also in late 1944 the club was sold by the Ebbets and McKeever heirs to Branch Rickey, Walter O’Malley and Andrew Schmitz. We learned that Walter O’Malley was half German, and graduated from Penn and went to Fordham Law School during the 1930’s. He got to know George McLaughlin of the Brooklyn Trust Company and was able to buy into the club. Then when Landis died on November 25, 1944 the way was cleared to integrate baseball. Branch Rickey could go ahead with his plan to hire a black player and in March 1945 he met with Red Barber at Joe’s Restaurant on Fulton Street to tell him of his plan. Barber was a bit shocked and though about quitting, but of course, did not. Rickey announced that he had created the Brooklyn Brown Dodgers, who would play at Ebbets Field when the other team was on the road. This team was a front. At this time the New York State Legislature passed the Ives-Quinn Act which forbade discrimination on the basis of race, creed, color or national origin. On April 6, 1945 Joe Bostic of the People’s Voice went to the Dodgers training camp with two Negro Leagues players and demanded that they be given a tryout. The two men were given a tryout the next day but both Rickey and Durocher were not impressed. The Brown Dodgers played in the United States League for one season (1945). Around this time Rickey had criticized the Negro Leagues as being fronts for booking operations. The 1945 Opening Day game at Fenway was picketed and Major League Baseball selected two men to study the integration issue and the Negro Leagues – Branch Rickey and Leland MacPhail. In April 1945 Albert Happy Chandler was selected as the new Commissioner and he was for integration. There were other moves in New York to end discrimination. And the major leagues 1945 had 4F’s, and the too old or too young on its rosters. On August 28, 1945 Jackie Robinson met with Branch Rickey at the Dodgers’ offices in Brooklyn and was told that he was to be joining the Brooklyn Dodgers, and not the Brown Dodgers. On October 23, 1945 he signed a contract with the Montreal Royals, the Dodgers’ top farm club. Chapter 9: In 1946 the Dodgers had a good season but lost the pennant in the end to the Cardinals, thanks to losing a best of 3 playoff series. In 1947 they were getting ready for the arrival of Jackie Robinson. But in November 1946 columnist Westbrook Pegler wrote a column saying that Leo Durocher was a moral delinquent, even though Leo fought for his players, but was into gambling. We also had the John Christian beating from a few years before. But Branch Rickey defended Leo and soon Commissioner Chandler met with Leo on a California golf course to tell him to stop associating with certain gambling types. Then Larry MacPhail, who had defected to the Yankees, said that Charlie Dressen was a new Yankees coach and Pegler kept attacking Leo in print. Leo did have a girlfriend named Edna Ryan who was a Copacabana showgirl and was also interested in the married actress Laraine Day, who was a Mormon. Laraine got a divorce in Juarez and then married Leo in El Paso. Now the Catholic Church under Vincent Powell threatened to pull the CYO kids out of the Knothole Gang (and did just that on March 1, 1947). And since O’Malley did not like either Rickey or Leo, he did nothing to intervene, and even Harold Parrott could not understand why O’Malley did not try to help. Later on when spring training started, Rickey chose Havana instead of the Southeastern US because it would be more tolerant of an integrated squad. Harold Parrot write an article in the Brooklyn Eagle for Leo to bait MacPhail over stealing Dodger coaches. Then in an exhibition game between the Yankees and the Dodgers, MacPhail had two gamblers in his box while Leo was barred from baseball for the season. That pissed Leo off. Then several Southern born Dodgers started to object to the idea of playing alongside a black teammate. Leo did call a late night tam meeting and aid that Rickey would be glad to shop them off to another team. He flew to Panama where the Dodgers were training and spoke with the players, like Bobby Bragan. He got Bragan to stay and years later he said that Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson were the two most important people in his life. April 15, 1947 was Opening Day and Jackie was part of the starting infield against the Boston Braves. The Dodgers won the opener, under the management of Bert Shotton. Later the Phillies came to Ebbets Field and Ben Chapman, a Tennessean, kept taunting Jackie mercilessly. Ed Stanky went over to the Phillies bench and told them to taunt someone who will fight back. And Brooklyn won the series against the Phils. Later when the Dodgers went to Philadelphia to play the Phillies, Jackie was not allowed to stay with his teammates at the Ben Franklin Hotel. But the next time the Dodgers were in Philly they stayed at the Warwick, where all the players were welcome. In the 1947 season, Commissioner Chandler suspended Leo for the season, fined Charlie Dressen for jumping to the Yankees, and fined Harold Parrott for ghost writing for Leo. Once the season started the idea of a warning track came up, since outfielders were crashing into the outfield wall and getting hurt, but it was shelved until 1948. During the 1947 season Jackie Robinson was helping the Dodgers win, and Ebbets Field was always packed. Jackie ended the season with the Rookie of the Year Award from The Sporting News. Jackie and the Dodgers helped bring America’s Jim Crow racism to light in Latin American America. The attendance at Ebbets Field for 1947 was the second highest n baseball, second to the Yankees. TV sets were becoming available in the late 1940’s but were quite expensive, so in Brooklyn people used to got to the sidewalk outside of an appliance store and watch the Dodger games on the TV sets in the window. The Dodgers won the 1947 pennant. They lost the first two games of the World Series at Yankee Stadium, won three games at Ebbets Field, but lost the next two and the Yankees were the 1947 World Champions. In chapter 10 we see that during the 1948 season the outfield fence is covered in rubber to help outfielders avoid injury when chasing fly balls. Several new players come up from the minors to join the team: Carl Erskine, Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella, and Duke Snider. Leo is reinstated as manager. But soon he is on the outs with Branch Rickey and is lured away to the Giants by Horace Stoneham to be their manager. Branch Rickey also invests in the Football Brooklyn Dodgers of AAFC, and they had a horrible season (2-12) and that puts even more hatred between O’Malley and Rickey. Soon O’Malley is planning to oust Rickey when he conspires with the minority owner. As for the 1948 season, the Dodgers finished in third place, with the pennant going to Boston. They would win the pennant in 1949 but lose the Series to the Yankees again. During the Series there was Old Timers Day and the 1916 team, including Yankees manager Casey Stengel, were honored at a game. During the year, the Ebbets estate was settled and was worth a lot less than in 1925 when Charlie passed away. Also in football Dodgers were merged away and eventually became part of the Baltimore Colts in 1953. In 1950 the Dodgers lost the pennant to the Phillies on the last day of the season, and Branch Rickey sold ¼ of the holdings to Bill Zeckendorf of Webb & Knapp. This helped Rickey in his eventual move to Pittsburgh. Then the other owner, John Smith died and O’Malley managed to obtain Smith’s share from the widow. And Rickey and O’Malley differed on a lot of things: the football Dodgers, Vero Beach, Schaefer Beer as a sponsor. And O’Malley never forgave Rickey for selling the ¼ to Zeckendorf. By 1951 O’Malley is in full control and meantime the Giants are off to a bad start. But soon Willie Mays was brought up from Minneapolis and proved to be an asset. During the summer of 1951 General MacArthur visited Ebbets a few times. And with the Sym-Phony Band doing well, there was a protest and threat of picketing by the Musicians Union Local 802. So the Dodgers had a Musicians Appreciation Night and told fans that they would get in free to that certain game if they brought an instrument to the park is support of the Band. Later in the season the Dodgers lost a game n Boston to what was a bad/wrong call and the bench cleared. So at the end of the season the Giants had been winning and were tied in the standings on the last day. That meant a best of 3 series and the Giants won the pennant on October 3, 1951 thanks to Bobby Thomson. Brooklyn was devastated since the Dodgers were the pride of the Borough in their rivalry with Manhattan. Chapter 11 takes us to 1952. Pitcher Joe Black, a veteran of the Negro Leagues, is brought up. And in a display of internationalism. Scotsman Alistair “Butch” Forbes, a fan in Scotland thanks to Armed Forces Radio, is brought over to the US (thanks to promoter Irving Rudd) to visit Ebbets Field. King Faisal II of Iraq was also a guest at the park and also was a guest star on Red Barber’s radio show. By the end of the 1952 season the Dodgers won the pennant but lost the World Series to the Yankees again (in 7 games). Reverend McKinney of the Unitarian Church in Brooklyn Heights how the Dodgers loss in the 1952 Series devastated some people. During the 1953 season the Dodgers’ attendance figures were second only to the Milwaukee Braves, who had just relocated from Boston. For the Dodgers, the batters were hitting and the pitchers were winning. And again, they faced the Yankees in the World Series and lost, again. Then O’Malley did not renew Charlie Dressen’s contract and hired Walter Alston for the 1954 season. Then Red Barber had a dispute with the Gillette Company and defected to the Yankees. He was also a Rickey holder and O’Malley was glad to get rid of him. And while the Braves relocated to Milwaukee, other multi-team cities realized that they could not support tow teams. The Browns considered the West Coast as their new home. The baseball leaders also considered making the Pacific Coast League a third major league. O’Malley had considered the possibility of a new park to replace Ebbets Field as early as 1952. In 1954 Don Newcombe and Willie Mays returned to their respective teams after military service. Willard Mullin created his beloved caricature, the “Brooklyn Bum”. In 1954 neither the Dodgers nor the Yankees were in the World Series. It was the Indians versus the New York Giants, and the Giants wept the Tribe and Willie Mays made his Catch. The following year the Dodgers had a great start. During the summer, for Pee Wee Reese’s 37th birthday, he won a new car. O’Malley still wanted a new stadium, and Mayor Robert Wagner, who was not an avid baseball fan, recalled a game as a youngster at Yankee Stadium with his dad and visiting Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert at his brewery in Yorkville. All that Jake asked him was how many people were there, no questions on who won or what was the score. So to Wagner, the only thing that mattered was the number of people in the stands. In the 1950’s the population of Crown Heights was changing for white to Caribbean – Puerto Ricans and the other islands. At the same time, the manufacturing and shipping industries were declining so there was not as many work opportunities for the new residents. And despite a great team on the field, O’Malley was trying to discourage people from coming to Ebbets Field. And now Robert Moses did not O’Malley and would not help him with his new stadium. In 1955 O’Malley wanted the land at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues and would use Title I eminent domain to get it for his new stadium. Robert Moses said no to him. Moses and Wagner were not baseball fans and Wagner was indifferent to the relationship between the Dodgers and the residents of Brooklyn. O’Malley was telling them that attendance was hurting because of the ballpark’s location. The Board of Estimate had proposed a study on the feasibility of the Atlantic & Flatbush location. At this time, the Los Angeles city council invited Stoneham and O’Malley to Los Angeles to look at the possibility of relocating there. In the meantime the Dodgers’ pitchers started to really win, including Sandy Koufax in his rookie year. The Dodgers clenched the 1955 pennant early and soon faced the Yankees in the World Series again. During the 7 game series Buckminster Fuller came up with a design for a domed stadium for the Dodgers at the Atlantic Yards location. The Dodgers did win the World Series on October 4, 1955, the only one in Brooklyn. Chapter 12 covers the 1956 and 1957 seasons. Phil Pepe (the sportswriter) and his brother Paul reminisced about their going to games in the 1940’s and 1950’s. All of the other Brooklyn fans also felt that base was primary at the park, all else was ancillary. People used to disrupt their business practices to check on scores and innings. It was mainly a blue collar worker’s team. On February 5,m 1956 Mayor Wagner created the Brooklyn Sports Center Authority to try and obtain a location for a new ballpark. On April 17th, the World Champions flag was hoisted. Two days later they played their first home game at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City. Governor Averill Harriman came down on the 21st to sign the bill to authorize the Authority. The Manhattan Borough President proposed a huge stadium over the New York Central’s 60th Street yard by the Hudson River, for the Giants. The Dodgers’ new stadium would be at Atlantic & Flatbush Avenues, over the Long Island Railroad’s Brooklyn terminal. There would be parking garages as well. But the giants did not really do much about a new stadium. Attendance fell after 1954 and the football went across the Harlem River after 1955. The Dodgers’ 1956 season went well and clinched the pennant on the last day of the regular season. Dodgers had obtained two new pitchers: Don Drysdale as a rookie, and Sal Maglie from a trade. Then they faced the Yankees again and were the victims of a perfect game and lost the series in 7 games. Towards the end of the 1956 season President Eisenhower visited Ebbets Field as part of his campaigning and got to throw out the first ball in a game. Despite O’Malley’s saying the ballpark was a dump, the Dodgers led in attendance. After the 1956 World Series the Dodges flew to Japan for a tour, but first they stopped in Los Angeles. O’Malley met with the Los Angeles County supervisor Kenneth Hahn regarding the possibility of relocating there. On October 31, 1956, the last Brooklyn trolleys ran and O’Malley sold the park to Marvin Kratter who planned to build housing there. Later the plans for a new Brooklyn stadium had been approved, and the Sports Authority would ask for more funds. The Clarke-Rapuano Consulting Firm said that the plans were forwarded to the borough president. It would obliterate several blocks of housing though. That was a problem replacing housing with a ballpark. At the end of 1956 Jackie Robinson was traded to the Giants (O’Malley did not care for him and vice versa, due to the Branch Rickey connection). Jackie retired instead. The Board of Estimate did not give the Sports Authority much money for the engineering and economic surveys. In early 1957 O’Malley was in LA looking at the site in Chavez Ravine. On January 31, 1957, a consultant named Madigan sent the Sports Authority a memo saying that it would be quite expensive to amortize the $15 million bond issue at 4%. At a baseball writes dinner three weeks later, O’Malley and Phil Wrigley agreed to swap minor league franchises – the Fort Worth Cats for the Los Angeles Angels. O’Malley was still not offered anything concrete by New York City. He offered to spend his own money to build the park, but then he ran into politicians. During spring training the Los Angeles mayor Norris Poulson flew to Vero Beach to try and entice the Dodgers to head west. Poulson and O’Malley met several times during 1957 assuring that the site in Chavez Ravine was available. Robert Moses offered O’Malley the site in Queens where Citfield is now located. Svein Arber said that O’Malley led the fans and the city into thinking that the Dodgers were staying he was actually planning to leave after the 1957 season, despite the fact that the Dodgers outdrew the Yankees. In mid-1957 the NCAA baseball championships were played at Ebbets Field – St. John’s beat Lafayette but lost to Penn State. On May 28th, the National League owners game the Dodgers and Giants permission to move to California. Wagner said that he was doing everything to keep the teams in New York. On July 17th Stoneham and O’Malley met with the San Francisco mayor George Christopher to discuss the Giants’ new home there and voted on August 19th to move west to San Francisco after the season. The last Brooklyn Dodgers-New York Giants game was played at the Polo Grounds on September 8th. At the same time O’Malley encouraged Nelson Rockefeller to try and finance the new stadium by buying the property by the LIRR terminal and leas e it to the Dodgers. But land condemnation would cost $8,000,000. O’Malley backed out. Efforts by others to buy the team did not pan out. On September 24, 1957, the last game was played at Ebbets Field – a 2-0 Dodger victory over the Pirates. They played their last game as Brooklyn Dodgers on September 29th in Philadelphia. On October 7th, the Los Angeles city council approved the ordinance giving O’Malley the property at Chavez Ravine. In Chapter 13 we learn how O’Malley slowly bought control of the team and by the early 1950’s was planning for a new ballpark. Costs figures were not on his side. He soon started to schedule home games in New Jersey. On April 12, 1956, a bill was drafted in Albany that created the Sports authority. In March 1957 O’Malley visited Los Angeles and the move crystallized. In New York, the politicians wanted no part of the issue since it was a mayoral election year. Reporter Dick Young said that by May 28th,O’Malley still did not give a definite answer to whether he was moving as Stoneham had done. O’Malley had accepted 300 acres in Chavez Ravine to have Dodger Stadium built. After the Dodgers left Ebbets Field in 1958 and 1959 hosted demolition derbies, college baseball and soccer. After 1957 and through the 1960’s the area around the ballpark site changed demographically. In 1963 the City Planning Commission announced redevelopment of the neighborhood with an elementary school and housing. Crown Heights had become mostly black by the 1960’s except for the Hasidic communities. The area in Fort Greene that O’Malley originally wanted resisted development until the 21st century, despite an earmark from the state legislature proposed by state senator Tom Bartosiewicz of Greenpoint (and a Prep alumnus) to maybe have a domed stadium there. In 2003 a man named Bruce Ratner arranged to have the New Jersey Nets move to Brooklyn and then have an arena built there, as well as housing at all income levels. In 1997 Peter and Terri O’Malley sold the franchise. The siblings in 2003 also worked to get their father elected to Cooperstown. Dick Young said that today many of the old Brooklyn Dodger fans still have their memories of the ballpark. Pete Hamill, another sportswriter, said that he made a vow, “Never forgive, never forget”. Even in the 21st century people are obsessed with the ballpark – the New York Mets’ Citifield is modeled after Ebbets Field. In other cities like Hartford CT businesses with Ebbets Filed in the name were created. Artists made and continue to make paintings of the park. In the Spring Creek area of Brooklyn a shopping center and housing were built, and a street from the Belt Parkway to the complex was named “Erskine Street” after pitcher Carl Erskine. Artifacts from the ballpark have been preserved in museums and private collections. Chapter 13 also asks what made Ebbets Field so special and great. He said it was organizations like the Brooklyn Cadets, people going to the park and coming home with a filled autograph book, having the people in the outfield reverse their suit jackets so the Dodger batters would have the pitched ball stand out against non-white backgrounds in the stands, people walking from East New York to a game, people from PS 161 checking the flagpole to see if the flag was flying (meant that the game was on). Other Brooklyn Dodger fans described going into the rotunda or the dark passageway halls and stepping into the stands and seeing the green field. Then in 2001 professional baseball returned to Brooklyn in the form of the Brooklyn Cyclones, the Mets’ Short Season A team. Their ballpark is on the site of Steeplechase Park in Coney Island – between Surf Avenue and the Boardwalk. At the Cyclones’ Opening Day on June 21st, several old Dodger veterans were there, as was Gil Hodges’ widow and surviving members of the Sym-Phony Band. The ‘Clones faced the Mahoning Valley Scrappers and won in the 9th inning. The O’Malley’s were gone and baseball was back in Brooklyn.
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Since The Greatest Ballpark Ever is my own book, I will put reading and reporting it on the back burner after February 23rd. I will return to it later after I finish reading Falling Upward. I was also listening to Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward starting on February 7th. He has spoken about Homer’s Odyssey and what Odysseus endured on the journey, and what he had to do when he first returned home to Ithaca. Father Rohr also talked about having our lives divided into two halves, and when we reach the second half, we should be more mature and wiser. Father also says that offense and defense retaliation is not good. I took out the hard cover book on February 22nd and started to read it the next day. The introduction basically tells us that life is in two parts and has falling and failure. Climbing the ladder of success and reaching the top may have us facing the wrong wall. Suffering and failure will hit all of us. We can grow spiritually more doing it wrong than by doing it right, but the ego hates failure. It takes a foundational trust to fall or fail and not fall apart. Myths are losing favor in Western civilizations and have been replaced by isms like communism, fascism, terrorism, and materialism. He also mentions a trans-rational mind which can do better than a rational one. Father also cites The Odyssey and the prophesy that Odysseus received. An outer authority often brings us into our inner authority. Odysseus also had to turn his oar into a winnowing shovel. The first world of production must now find its purpose. Odysseus now had to sacrifice three manly things to Neptune. We cannot use first journey tools for a second journey trip. When Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca for good it is almost like our connection to the Kingdom of God. The recap is that the whole story is in a matrix of finding home and returning there and refine and define what home really is. Home is the beginning and the ends and not sentimental but an inner concept. Chapter 1 says that the ask of part 1 of our lives is to create a container and answering, “what makes me significant, “how do I support myself?” and who will go out with me?”. The container is not an end in itself. By part 2 we should have new wine skins and ways to hold our lives together, and we need something better than Part 1 when we are in Part 2. The 3 big three concerns of Part 1 are security, sexuality, and identity. History has been made up of making structure of security and loyalty. In the early years we are overly offensive and defensive with no time left for friendship, simply living, and the like. We do need boundaries, identity, safety and order to get started personally and culturally. We need some narcissism. If you are properly mirrored early in life you won’t need to beg for the attention of others. In Part 1 we are generally only concerned with success, security , and containment – Maslow’s needs. In the USA we are pre-occupied with security. We have to be careful that certitudes don’t become all controlling needs. We have to move beyond the early motivations of security, reproduction and survival or we will never develop, A problem with preoccupation with safety and certitude is that we never get to the contents of our lives. Excessive offensive and defensive behavior keeps us away from the substantial question – what drives you forward. Taking offense causes more offense than giving offense. Two halves of life. We have to chart and encourage movement and directions. True leaders are the elders in a mature society as they have experienced life. Those that are not true leaders will affirm people of their own level – like gangs or terror cells. If you grow in wisdom and grace you can be patient and understanding of the previous stages. Chapter 2 is about heroes. What makes a hero? Live in a given world; Courage to leave home and beyond the comfort zone (check out St. Francis, St. Joan of Arc, Buddha); On the journey, the heroes and heroines find their real problems, and there is always a wounding that changes them; The first task is only a warm-up; The hero or heroine returns to where (s)he they started and relearning it for the first time The real hero(ine) is not a rock, film, or a sports star. Potential heroes leave the family and the familiar surroundings and go out and about and into real issues (Abraham & Sarah come to mind). We can look at Abraham’s possessing, St. Francis’ partying, Odysseus’ conquering before they went on to their journeys’ next stage. We also must heed Jesus’ warning that you have to leave family to be His disciple. Chapter 3: describes the first half of life. The first half of life container is made up through impulse controls, traditions, group symbols, family loyalty, respect for authority, civil and church laws, and a sense of goodness. There are mistakes that we have to make and learn from. We have to learn how to fall and learn from that fall, as you learn how to recover from falling by falling. We need to limit our egocentricity with laws and traditions and to make marriage and community possible. We need lase like the Ten Commandments so that we can believe someone, not envy others, feel safe. Laws prevent anarchy and chaos. We need to be tutored in a limit situation in our first half so we can properly parent children. The best person to hire to get a job done well is one who has faced limit situations as they have not been coddled and do have discipline and persistence. We need both unconditional and conditional love. The isms that have governed us in the 20th century have produced a negative foundation. Juniors have ruled us and they only want to protect their temporary privilege after acting and overreacting. The conditional and unconditional love has produced some great people in history. For me, I am not so certain that I had both when I was growing up. In organizations we need a good boss and a bad boss. If you whine about parents and authority for too long you will often become a narcissist. They use their victim-hood as identity, a ticket to sympathy, and an excuse for not serving, instead of using it to redeem the world. A mature people thanks the harder parent, tough coach, demanding teacher – later in life, though. Our Western dualistic minds do not process paradoxes well, unlike non-Christian religions who seem to do it (live with both law and freedom at the same time) better. We rush to judgment and demand a complete resolution and do not stop to see how a situation can teach us. It seems that indigenous and “primitive” societies seem less neurotic and anxious and have healthier psyches and ego structures. In the Western world we cannot build prisons fast enough and have enough recovery groups. Entitlement seems to be the rule. Elders are not serving as elders. Over the last 500 years tradition and limits have not been popular. The ego has taken control and has not prepared us properly for the outside world. The misuse of law and authority has had dire consequences Reliance on structure and authority has produced anger and blindness because the necessary self-questioning and self-confidence is not there. Unquestioning followers have waged wars and genocides and other tragedies. They take comfort in the fact that they can elude responsibility and the burden of thinking. We now love the habitual and familiar and do not want to leave home and family as Jesus wants us to. Father Rohr says that we need to use both-and as opposed to either-or. You need to eat the fruit of the garden to know what it tastes like. We can both know the rules and critique them at the same time. There seems to be a desire to return to the good old days (MAGA?) when we were on top. A new tribalism is taking hold in the world’s religions – traditions, ethnicity, symbols, roots – identity politics. With globalism, we have to defeat the other side to be on top and get a level of truth. We tend to redo a task that we were not able do in our first half and actually overdo it, with a mix of militarism, technology, consumerism and individualism. True conservatives tend to be like the Amish, Shakers, Mennonites, Quakers and Poor Clares. A lot of seminarians had no father figure when they were growing up. It is also true in prisons, and the military. An all-male club is a tribe that is secure and superior. They become risk adverse. We have to discharge our personal “Loyal soldier” with closure at the end of transitions, including this one. We have to become thinkers and not blindly loyal citizens. The loyal soldier gets us through the first half of like by avoiding impulse and addictions, being careful when crossing a street, and learning the sacred no to himself so we can get boundaries and identity. But the security of the loyal soldier can be confused with that of God. And he cannot get you through the second half of life. He has to let go and have a new guide (think of Dante and Beatrice). Virgil is the first half for Dante; Beatrice for the second. The loyal soldier helps us fight the devil in half 1. It is like the super ego feels like God because we have nothing else to go by. In the second half we have to actually hear the voice of God. It’s now voices of trust, surrender, common sense, love, and destiny. Wholeness and holiness will always stretch us beyond our comfort zone. God, life and destiny have to loosen the loyal soldier’s grasp. Letting go will be a big break from your base. To break out you will need a guide or friend like Dante had with Virgil and Beatrice and Odysseus had with Tiresias, or perhaps a soul mate (maybe that for me is Ellen). When the loyal soldier is not able to help us with serious issues of life like death, suffering and sin. Maybe going through hell or Hades is the path to heaven? We will need soul friends and other than Ellen, and I am not certain about Charlie, I cannot think of anyone else for me. Maybe God has to work in secret and in darkness in the soul. If we knew what was going to happen, we would probably stop the process. Chapter 4 is about the tragic natural world. We should learn from exceptions, and hose on the edge because they have much to teach us. They make us look and re-calibrate what is normal. Today’s world is full of diversity and variations of everything. There are lots of exceptions and Jesus had no trouble mingling with them. But we have had a sad history of abusing people we don’t think are right. When God forgives us, He is saying that his rules don’t matter. Absolute forgiveness should make us want to trust God. Jesus parables are often about losing something and going to great lengths to find it and then celebrate. Humans have a hard time with the specific and play pretend. There is rational and irrational, conscious and unconscious and forces of good and evil play out the tragedies and triumphs and lead to failure, hate, catastrophes, errors. These are supposed to lead us forward (didn’t the LISB disaster help me move forward?). Hubris makes us reluctant to apologize and admit a mistake. Our salvation is based on a tragedy (Crucifixion) and then a triumph (Resurrection). Jesus does not like people who don’t think that they are sinners (and He does not dislike sinners). He was able to find a higher order in the chaos. We need to find a unified field that Jesus had found and without it there are no healings to life ‘s contradictions and inconsistencies. Father Rohr also says that organized religion is not too comfortable with diversity and people being different. Passions that lead us away from Go d can turn us back to Him. God wants us to turn our loves around and toward the Great Love. Clergy have considered laic imperfect because they are doing something wrong. They blame the victim and do not pity them but yet worship the victim image of God. Our mistakes are to be pitied and healed as opposed to being hated , denied or avoided. Father also says that we should not get rid of our sins until you learned what it has to teach us and then not return. Goat stories of racism, slavery, world wars, and sexism were tolerated by Christian Europe and show our disillusionment and disgust with ourselves. We do not love the imperfection within ourselves so therefore we cannot love those that are not like us: non-Christians, non-whites, women and others that don’t fit into our order. We have been promised utopias with no room for error by philosophers but Jewish Scriptures say the opposite. Despite 5 sources in the Old Testament and 4 sources of Jesus’ life, the books of the Bible all seem to say that God is with us and we are not alone. In the big picture of life the tragic sense of life is not really tragic. Living in deep time and being connected to the past and the future prepares us for necessary suffering and keeps us from despair over our failure and loss. The tragic sense of life is not unbelief or cynicism , but it is just the ultimate and humiliating realism which demands a lot of forgiveness of almost everything. Faith is actually trusting the real and to trust God is found within it. The major stumbling stone and the price we must pay to keep the human heart for closing down is the faith to trust. Chapters 5 and 6 talk about stumbling and getting up. He reminds us that there will be things that we can never change, and we cannot achieve no matter what (for me, maybe it’s not being super successful and having lots of friends). We will always be losing something and then have to try and find it (lost sheep, prodigal son, lost coin per Jesus’ parables). We will have to deal with suffering. “the truth shall set you free, but it will make you miserable. The natural world believes in suffering, life & death and predator & prey. Humans don’t always follow this. Incarnational mysticism combines earthly embodiment and divinization. Reality, creation and nature have no choice in the matter of necessary suffering. Father Rohr also says that Jesus is the ultimate spiritual authority, as He is always spot on. Father also says that to get to the second half of life we have to follow Jesus’ warning to hate your family. Anyway, by part 2 we are often at odds with family and the familiar. Many of us have been kept from a mature Part 2 thanks to immature or pious Part 1 family expectations. Crowds and the collective can also stop us from going into Part 2 (Father cites a bucket of crabs as an example of being held back). We are still stuck with what everyone else thinks. Jesus uses strong words to push us out of the mainly nest and name a necessary suffering at the most personal level. It takes a lot to push beyond the destiny Mom & Dad decided for us. The break is hard and it’s not easy to establish new boundaries. Father noted that the great religious leaders and figures like Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Francis, Clare, and Abraham did a major turnabout and left home, endured downward mobility and went on pilgrimages. It was “leave home to find it”. Not necessarily the brick & mortar house, but the security, illusions, validities of home & family. Jesus told us that losing your life may also mean losing your self - a role you had created. It must die for you to be real. True self is what you are objectively from the beginning in the mind of God. Substantial self and absolute identity – It cannot be gained or lost by technique, affiliation, or mortality. It is necessary to surrender a false self, and necessary suffering to find the pearl of great price. In chapter 7 we see that the goal of a sacred story is to let the hero return home, after first letting leave in the beginning. The typical home points in two directions - there is the foundation seed that points forward towards an ideal paradise – a human device. We yearn for home even if as shitty. Could be spiritual or nostalgia. It calls us backward and forward – foundations and future. We are sent and driven by the same Force. We are called forward and driven by a sense of homesickness. In The Odyssey the Greeks did not want to return home after they conquered Troy. Odysseus was the only one who did – he had to get home. It’s a stand in for us. The Holy Spirit works secretly within us, He keeps us connected and we discover the inner abiding when we draw on our deep inner life. We can think of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz or Steppenwolf. Homesickness guides us. Home is the Spirit that we are, our true self in God. Per St. Teresa of Avila, home is when we find God in ourselves and ourselves in God. We are homesick until then. Soul is the place of longing. The Holy Spirit is the advocate who guides us to and from home. The Holy Spirit speaks to us and for us. We don’t seem to have the inner voices that the ancient heroes followed to leave home. The postmodern peoples’ universe is not really enchanted. But sciences do explain and confirm the deep intuitions of religion. God has created things that continue to recreate themselves. His form of creation is evolution. Think of Odysseus when his oar is converted into a winnowing shovel. He can separate – and know the difference between the essentials and the non-essentials. For Odysseus it is the end of his journey and he is now home. No more sailing and oaring. He is now his true self. Father Rohr says that we Have an inner drive liking for our true self; There are risks and promises that led us to the second half and we are called to them; Dare to fill out mine with additions and distractions; If we go to the depths, we will fall upon something real and substantial; Something real is what religions have called heaven, nirvana, or bliss; These events become the hint of an eternal something – the real has to be forever. Chapter 8 says that religion is to guide us to our true self. We draw upon a larger source. Mature religion tried to get us out of the false self. Spirituality is about unlearning more than learning. The growing boy usually becomes a major illusion to free the person and bring him back to beginnings in God. Our divine union is heaven and the loss is hell. They refer to present experiences. Only the True Self knows it is now. If you learn your true self you live in the big picture. We must let go of our little kingdoms. Choose union now, as exclusion brings hell. Life is about practicing for heaven and heaven is the state of union here and later. Being alone in heaven is not really heaven so there should be no exclusions. We get what we want and ask for. God excludes no one from union so how can He be unloving(?). Classic spiritual journeys start as elitist and end egalitarian. We are the “one” according to us and elitist instead of egalitarian. Pope John Paul II told us that heaven and hell are states of consciousness as opposed to geographical places. We are our own worst enemies and deny what is too good to be true. The ego prefers economy and merit – winners and losers as opposed to economy of grace, where merit loses meaning. Healing of amnesia and entry into heaven is rediscovering the world of a happy child. It also includes love, unique life journeys, and failures, to keep us honest and grounded.Chapter 9 says that Adam and Eve were not literal historical people, and we have to be universal as Jesus is. It’s all or nothing. The transformation is both-and, which equals include and broaden. We now have the big picture for ongoing growth. God has to be for everybody or He is not much of a god. We are driven to all , including those who are “other”. God does not torture and exclude forever those that don’t agree with Him. We are created in God’s image and anything good we say about humanity can be multiplied exponentially for God. The universe cannot be evil or grounded in chaos. Most people want a magician type of God instead of one who works secretly and humbly. So evolution is not a problem. Basic religious belief is a vote for coherence, purpose and direction. Faith is saying God is good and one, and all reality is simple and beautiful too. We have to be able to carry anxiety and doubt. To hold the full mystery of life is always to endure its other half – the equal mystery of death and doubt. To know something fully is to hold a part of it which is mysterious and unknowable. The first half of life naivete includes a kind of excitement and happiness that is hard to let go of, unless you know there is a deeper happiness ahead of you. Elders who are in the second half of life have to tell us . First naivete is what we admire in young zealots but we wisely should not follow them or make them our leaders. Wisdom lives with mystery, doubt, and unknowing. It takes a lot of learning to know ignorance. In the 2nd half of life simple meaning now suffices and it becomes a deeper happiness. Souls have to have meaning. (it can stop people from killing themselves). Meaning is the shape of human happiness. A 2nd half person has this new coherence – a unified field inclusive of paradoxes. It is a return to simplicity after complexity. Once you can include people who are different into your field. Bring in the painful parts and once excluded parts into the unified field. Once you forgive yourself for your failings you can forgive others, If you have not, then you will pass your judgement, sadness, and futility on to others. Don’t miss out on the joy of the first simplicity and lose out on the magnanimity of the second simplicity. Hold together all of the stages of life. Chapter 10 tells us that in the second half it is bright sadness and sober happiness. And now there is less need in elimination the negative o fearful, as well as rash judgments, or holding on to past hurts or need to punish others (let go of the past). All of these are ego based and counterproductive (I learned that the hard way, especially with St. Francis and St. John’s). Ignore these urges. You now go fight only hen called to and are equipped. By the second half most frontal attaches produce evil in you. Remember the Grand Inquisitor or the Florida Koran burners who considered themselves holier than thou but never got holier than anyone. Maybe the court houses should post the 8 Beatitudes on the walls instead of the 10 Commandments. In the second half we should try to influence events, work for change, persuade, pray, change your attitude and to forgive. We now have hereness with its own authority and influence. True elders do not need a lot of words – they keep it short and simple. You differentiate yourself when you are young (maybe like my days at Marist College?)In the second half we look for things we share in common – happiness in alikeness. No need to dwell on differences in people. In the second half we should be part of the dance and there is no need to stand out. It is participator and not assertive. I don’t have to prove that my group or I am the best (maybe Engine 2 versus Engine 1?)or anything else of mine is the best. There is no more amassing stuff, paying back, or giving back. Live simply. Generate life for the benefit on future generations. Love what you have right now. In the second half we don’t feel the need to impress others (unlike some of the blowhards from the other engine company). Inner brightness is its own reward. All of life’s problems can be solved by falling into a larger brightness. “Dearest freshness deep down things” per Hopkins. It is what we have been waiting for – the actual falling upward. Best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better. St Francis did not attack evil or others but spent his life falling into the good, true and beautiful. This inner brightness ends up being a better and longer lasting alternative to war, anger and violence. One shining person is the goal of humanity and the delight of God. “words have become flesh”. Chapter 11: by the second half of life you contacted your shadow self. You get detached from your persona (stage mask) which is not true since it’s made up by your mind. Your shadow self is what you refuse to see about yourself and what you do not want others to see. The more you created a persona, the more shadow work you need to do. The more you are attached to the self-image , the more shadow self you have. The more you live out of our shadow self the less capable you are of recognizing the persona you project and protect. Your purpose is what most people want from you and what you choose to identify with. Try to make friends with the people who have a challenging message for you (see Matthew 5: 25 & 26). We learn in chapter 12 that your world should grow larger but circle of friends/confidants should shrink (I kind of agree with this) but get more intimate (I am not so sure). In the second half of life you are no longer ticked off when people and institutions do first half of life tasks. Institutions must be concerned with memberships, policies. We have to honor needs of the first half while creating space and time for the second half. Groups have to be concerned with practical things but this leads to getting impatient with them rules, and protocols among other things. They worry about lawsuits. These are ego needs The Gospels; bottom line says that we have to hit bottom before we can go on a spiritual journey. It is hard to absorb the Gospel in the first half of life so we settle for answers and organizations and build on non-answer answers. Often a few friends help do better helping than organizations do. Big organizations provide skeleton and local level provides muscle, meat and miracles. Ego demands a tit for tat universe. Soulful people can calm temper tantrums and lessen urgency when all others are bickering. Soulful people are the ingredients to grow groups up. Jesus wants us to be the undertow to make it happen. The second half people are needed in groups to stop self-interest. Groups are concerned with identities and boundaries. Don’t demand what is not possible. In part 2 you can join organizations you can’t join in the first half again. Let them do what they want to do. Look for people who are multipliers (like the sower who planted in fertile receptive soil per Jesus’ parable) who are often outside the church. The 3 monotheistic religions defines themselves by against-ness and also did a lot of binding and not enough looseness. In part 2 you must be prepared to have old friends, groups and churches no longer speak to you like they used to. But you will have a new ability to be alone and maybe enjoy it. The cure for loneliness is now actually solitude. The first half of life is writing the text and the second half is commentary on that text. Introversion is now the thing. We don’t crave loud music, crowds, and needless diversions. Life has stimulated us enough so we are partial to under stimulation – silence and poetry seem more natural. You may think that you no longer have a place to lay your head but a whole set of new heads are starting to make sense. If you politics are not now compassionate and inclusive, then you are probably not in part 2 yet. Are the new friends and groups passed over to the Big Picture? The 2 or 3 gathered can create a new group with a new level of affiliation and friendship. But keep politics out of it. There is also a double belonging of people at part 2. No one group meets their needs, desires, and visions. Think of colonized and occupied people, and minorities. They have to be in several levels of belonging to survive and get through the day. We now have a capacity for non-dualistic or both-and thinking. It’s almost the benchmark into entry into part 2. Calm and contemplative thinking comes into play. After years of conflict, confusion, broadening, and forgiving reality. We learn to incorporate the negative. And forgive our enemies. There is no longer a need to divide the field, It just is. This calm allows us to confront what must be confronted with even greater clarity and incisiveness. It’s not passivity but is the link between true contemplations and skillful action. The small and petty you is out of the way, and God’s chances to have him use you improve. Dualistic thinking is the pattern of knowing things by comparison. But comparing is like judging and usually leads to concluding that one thing is good and another is not. Then there is a pattern of up & down (us vs them, good vs. bad, etc.). Dualistic minds compare, condemn, conflict, conspire, conspires, cancels out and crucifies. This is part of most of the 1st half – like my ethnic group or my team is the best. But it’s not good for the 2nd half. Many religions now have non-dualistic thinking, or both-and. It can be the benchmark of the 2nd half. You no longer halve to divide the field into all right or all wrong. The petty self is out of the way and God’s chances are better now. Dualistic thinking is a lot of comparison and judging. Non-dualistic wisdom is contemplation and is necessary to get you into the right filed if you are already in the right ballpark. But we do need elements of both dualistic and non-dualistic thinking. Chapter 13: Falling upward can lead us into a deeper and broader world where the soul finds its fullness. And is connected to the whole and the Big Picture. This is a gain and not a loss. These people have come to their human fullness often after suffering personally or vicariously They are the models and goals for humanity. Father Rohr talked about Helen Keller and how she used her handicaps to perform service to others. She was actually happy. She was a transformed person. Anne Sullivan was able to mirror Helen. Father d said that a lot of people loved him for what he was not or rejected him for the same reason. But others loved him for what he was despite the shortcomings, and that is what really redeemed him. Good people will mirror goodness in us, and not-so-mature people will not and are harder to love. Only those people who respond to the real you, good or bad, who help you in the long run. Midlife includes learning to tell the difference between people who are still dealing with their issues through us and those who are dealing with us as we really are. By the 2nd half you should learn to tell the difference between who you really are and how others can mirror that or not, so you won’t take their praises or insults too seriously. In the 2nd half, you step out of the hall of revolving mirrors and you can only do this if you have one true mirror yourself., at least one true and honest friend to ground you (maybe Ellen for me). You need one true mirror that reveals your inner, deepest, and divine image. Mature spirituality insists on soul friends or mentors for individuals and prophets and truth speakers for groups. We do mirror ourselves though one another’s eyes and when that is done truthfully can we mirror others with freedom and truth. In the 2nd half people have less power to infatuate you (maybe why I am not impressed with some of the firehouse blowhards?) and less power to control you. I kind of agree, since I don’t let people do my thinking for me as a form of friendship. Like Father Rohr, I have also fallen many times relationally, professionally, emotionally and physically during my life, but finally bounced back and maybe fell upward (a decent career from 1989 to retirement, a lovely wife, a few friends, and so far, no serious ailments). After a catastrophe, God see it as an opportunity for us to work with him. Failure and suffering are great equalizers among humans, bur success is just the opposite. The Gospel provided the problem inside the solution – falling became the standing, stumbling became the finding, dying became the rising, and the raft became the shore. The small self cannot see that easily, and maybe that is why so many youngsters kill themselves. This is why we need elders and those who can mirror life truthfully. The true gaze of God receives us as we are. And transforms us. It’s what we wait for all of our lives. The gaze of God is what makes us really free to accept and include and forgive. It’s the accepting gaze. No need to ask if (s)he deserves it. Nobody can keep us from our 2nd half of life besides ourselves. Nothing can inhibit the journey except our own lack of courage, patience and imagination. It’s ours to walk or avoid. Maybe some falling apart in the 1st journey is necessary so we should waste time lamenting poor parenting, poverty, gender identity failed jobs or relationships or abuse. Pain is part of the deal. If you don’t walk into the 2nd half of your life then it is you who does not want it. God will give you what you truly want and desire. So desire deeply – yourself, God and everything true & good and beautiful. God abhors vacuums and will rush to fill them.
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On March 12th I started to read Little League Family by Leonard Wibberley. This book is about a family who lives in White’s Beach CA, a suburb of Los Angeles. The family consists of Peter the father, the mom, three sons: Kevin, Rory and Cormac (or Coco), and Arabella the daughter. Peter is a salesman for the Safehold Container Corporation. In chapter 1 an order that a New England foundry placed with Safehold was accidentally shipped to an orchid growing organization in Hawaii. At the same time, Peter and the wife were conned by the kids into going to a meeting at the White’s Beach Recreation Department. At the meeting, Peter is nominated and elected to the board of the department. The next day Peter is told by his boss to fly to Hawaii and fix the mis-shipment of the concrete containers sent there. He arrived and contacted the Orchid Growers Association director, Mr. Li, who told him to go to the site and arrange to retrieve the containers and arrange for their shipment to the foundry. But they were already picked up and the person at the warehouse (Boysies) did not know who it was. Peter then called Mr. Li and later they meet at a hotel and Mr. Li tells him that the containers were sent to the New England foundry as originally intended. He then was asked to stay in Hawaii to play some golf, and surf, at Mr.; Li’s request. Meanwhile, in California, Rory and Coco are enrolling in the local Little League and got their uniforms and their assigned teams: Indians for Rory and Yankees for Coco. Rory is assigned to the outfield while Coco becomes a pitcher. A transplant from Iowa named Dale “Spider” Edwards also joins the league as a starting pitcher and is assigned to Coco ‘s team. Peter came home from Hawaii in time for the league's opening day and got to watch the Yankees play the Orioles. The Yankees took the lead until the middle innings when Spider ran out of steam and gave up several runs. Coco came in from the outfield to relieve Spider. Coco did a little better but the Yankees ended up losing 8-7. Mr. Hurley soon got selected as the chairman of the pancake breakfast fundraiser and has to figure out how to cook up enough pancakes for about 3,000 guests. Since he was not at the committee meeting, Peter got elected chairman of the Pancake Breakfast fundraiser. Now he has to figure out the logistics for a possible 3,000 guests. Then he had to go on a trip to Portland to make a deal with the Oregonian Cheddar Association for then to buy containers from Safehold, and later was able to make a deal with the Hawaiian Coffee Producers Association for Styrofoam containers. Meanwhile, back in California Kevin Is helping Coco with his pitching and they manage to damage the garage door which is being used as a backstop. Pretty soon Coco’s team, the Yankees, faces Rory’s team the Indians in a league game. In the later innings Rory came to bat and faced Coco, who was on the mound. Since the bases were loaded but the Yankees still let (5-1) rather than risk a grand slam, Coco walked his brother and only walked in one run. Eventually the other Indians were retired (2 K’s and a fly ball to right field) so the score stayed at 5-2, and that would be the final score. In chapter Peter attended the committee meeting to plan the Pancake Breakfast. They have to decide how to get the tickets printed, getting cooking equipment, and maybe having a prominent person appear as a guest to attract more people. They decided on a congressman named Soderstrom. Peter was against the ideas since he opposed mixing politics and baseball. But Mr. Heinz the baker, who was donating most of the ingredients, told him into inviting the politician. After all, they accepted he ingredients from Mr. Heinz. But two days before the Breakfast is to take place, Peter’s boss, Mr. Pestinock, told him to fly to Hawaii and meet with the officers of the coffee grower because they managed to place an order with Safehold’s competitor – Catchall Container Corporation. Peter was told to talk the Association out of the deal with Catchall. So he hastily flies to Hawaii, reluctantly, but managed to sell tickets to the plane’s crew. Once he arrived, he tried to contact the officers of the Kona Coffee Growers Organization but had no luck. But he was able to contact Mr. Li at the hotel. Mr. Li told him that Friday is a bad day to try and conduct business. Peter declines a game of golf with Mr. Li and flies back to California. Peter rushed back to California in chapter 10 and arrived in Los Angeles at 3 am Saturday to a nightmare. There wee o pancake ingredients at the bakery, the grocery store owner was away fishing and there were no trash cans. Soon the help arrived and were able to cook pancakes and serve 4,000 people over the course of the morning. Joe Soderstrom showed up and even helped in the kitchen. In the end, the breakfast netted around $2,900.00. On the field, Coco is still pitching, usually as a relief pitcher. He is still throwing wild on occasion but his brothers are still there to coach him. Rory is now catcher sometimes. There is the team called the Pirates who were stuck in last place in the early part of the season. But in a game played in June they scored a double play against their opponent and suddenly morale and playing improved. They got a winning streak and were soon challenging the Yankees for 2nd place. In a Pirates – Indians game, Rory is catching for the Indians. In an inning with runners on 1st and 3rd the Pirates’ batter hits a foul ball that was caught by the 1st baseman, who then threw to Rory at home after the Pirates runner headed home from 3rd base. There was a collision at the plate but the runner was called out. But the Pirates coaches said that the ball was dead since it was caught in foul territory. But the decision stood and the runner was still out. But in the end, the Pirates won that game anyway. Meanwhile, Peter is back in Hawaii trying to talk the Kona coffee growers out of their ideal with Catchall Containers. When he went back to the hotel, he had messages to call Mr. Pestinock and Mr. Li. He called his boss first, who told him to return to LA. When he called Mr. Li, Mr. Li spoke with him about the issues with the containers – none lost this time, but the competition has a two year deal with the coffee growers. He also asked Peter how the baseball league was doing. Peter told him that he had to fly back to Los Angeles and once there at his meeting with Mr. Pestinock it was pretty bad for Peter. His boss criticized his attitude and performance and had him reassigned to the Arizona and New Mexico district. When Peter got back to California, he announced the transfer to his wife and children, who told him that family comes first, and they have root in white’s Beach. But Mr. Pestinock says the opposite. Later Peter goes to his boss to tell him that he is thinking of quitting. Chapter 14 is all about baseball. The Yankees are in 1st place with the Pirates and Indians tied for 2nd place. When these 2 teams faced each other, the Indians fell apart thanks to errors. Rory made 2 of them. Coco’s pitching on the Yankees was pretty poor, too. Soon it was the All Star Break and neither Coco nor Rory made the team. Peter did lose his job with Safehold and some blamed the Pancake Breakfast for it. During the All Star Break the boys headed to the beach to surf. An outsider wave comes in from nowhere and their friend Ron got banged up when he was wiped out. Another friend, Ray, had his thumb banged up. In Chapter 15 the brothers are sitting out the break and the White’s Beach team never got past the team from El Redondo on the road to Williamsport. Even though they did not make the team they still went to practices to help the team out. But the starting center fielder went with his dad on a fishing trip to Mexico, and now Rory is called in to replace him. Coco started to pitch batting practice and was eventually selected as an alternate pitcher. Peter went to the piers to try and catch fish and runs into Al Flint. Al left and headed past Heinz’ Bakery and told the owner that Peter was out of work. White’s Beach’s all-star team Westham 6-4 and next up was Toddstown West. Toddstown had 2 teams. The East team got beaten by El Redondo 8-1 to get eliminated. Soon White’s Beach trailed Toddstown West 2-0, but White’s Beach tied the score and then went ahead for an inning. It got tied again and went into extra innings. Spider Edwards came out of the game and Coco relieved him. Rory caught for his brother. White’s Beach won the game and soon would face El Redondo. There are now only 3 teams left after round 2. White’s Beach got a bye in round 3 while el Redondo soon eliminated Warren. In that game El Redondo went ahead on a triple and won 7-4. Two days later they faced White’s Beach for the district championship. Meanwhile Peter interviewed with Western Pipe and Appliance at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles’ Pershing Square. During the interview Peter said that he would not move from territory to territory, so he did not get the job. In El Redondo, the White’s Beach and el Redondo teams faced each other. For the Beach team, Spider Edwards and Ron Fields were the pitchers. Rory is in center field and Al Harter is the catcher. White’s Beach is up first as the visiting team but El Redondo goes up 2-0 in the 3rd inning. Then in the next inning the Beach men go ahead before the home teams is leading 5-4. It’s now 2 out with the bases loaded for the home team. In the 5th inning, the coach made a battery change – Coco is pitching and Rory is his catcher. In chapter 18 Peter arrived in the stands after his interview in Los Angeles. The El Redondo batter flied out to center field and the side was retired. But the score was still 5-4 in favor of the home team. When White’s Beach came up on the 7th inning, they ended their half with 2 out and a runner on first. Then another player reached base. When Rory come to bat, he hit a 3-run homer to put the Beach men ahead by 2. The final score was 7-5 White’s Beach. In chapter 18 the White’s Beach team won 3 more games but eventually lost to Mill Valley to get eliminated. But nobody was depressed. The team had reached the state’s semifinals. After the season there were banquets with trophies and plaques. Then the brothers went surfing. And Mr. Hurley still did not have a job. But soon Mr. Li called him to offer him a job with the Orchid Growers Association at their new West Coast office. The people from the pancake breakfast recommended him because Peter showed how much he cared about the people when he flew to California from Hawaii to help at the breakfast. They recommended home because of his concern for people. Peter did fly to Honolulu to sign up for the job. And later in the year after basketball season was over the Riley brothers asked him to come to a meeting. He was asked to chair a pancake breakfast committee and this time he accepted.
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I started to read Asphalt Gods - An Oral History of the Rucker Tournament by Vincent Mallozzi on April 24th. The introduction introduces the author and how he grew up in East Harlem in the 500 block of East 119th Street and playing basketball with white and black kids in the playgrounds and gyms. He mentioned how the Rucker Tournament was started by Holcombe Rucker in the early 1950’sat a playground at 8th Avenue and West 155th Street by the Polo Grounds Houses. The introduction also mentions that quite a number of future NBA stars are alumni of the Tournament. Among them are Julius Erving, Ron Artest and Stephon Marbury. Chapter 1 talks about Holcombe Rucker. He was born in 1926 to a pool family and attended Benjamin Franklin High School before dropping out to serve in the Army during World War II. After the war when he came home, he got a GED and graduated from CCNY. He then became a director with he Parks Department and eventually a teacher as well. He also worked at St. Phillips Parish Center in Central Harlem, and it was here that he first created a basketball program and tournament, after first creating an outdoor tournament on West 138th Street in 1946. Holcombe soon had his teams playing other teams in the city. He managed to get the games played despite a lock of cooperation from his own Department of Parks. In 1947 he met his future wife when he substituted for his friend who was not able to take his date, Mary, to a Billie Holiday performance at Small’s Paradise. They hit it off and were married at the end of 1947. In 1949 the program moved to the playground in the St. Nicholas Houses at 7th & 128th. This was his new headquarters. The program soon churned out alumni who played for New York’s 1950’s basketball powerhouses – SJU, NYU, LIU and CCNY. Holcombe soon approached Ed Warner, who had been jailed because of the CCNY point shaving scandal in the early 1950’s) and gave a chance to play in his tournaments. Soon Ed was playing in the college level of the Rucker Tournament with his former CCNY teammates Ed Roman and Floyd Layne. The trio also played in the minor league lever Eastern League. Chapter 2. Games in 1953 were being held at a park located at 7th Avenue & 128th Street. In 1954 Holcombe started a pro division, which meant finding a new park. That would be 2 blocks away. The pro division attracted players and lots of spectators. Ed Warner brought his Big 5 team to the park. The team included Isaac Wilthous (he would play for the NBA’s Bucks), Cliff Williams and Herman Taylor. The team’s coach was John Isaacs who played for the Harlem Renaissance, who won the 19369-1940 world basketball championship. The Big 5 reached the finals and faced a team sponsored by Snooky’s Sugar Bowl. John “Snooky” Walker was the coach and the team had players like Jack Defares and Carl Green. There were a large number of spectators who saw the Big 5 win by 3 points. And the Big 5 would win again in 1955. John Walker started a team called the Young Rens, after leading the name from the Harlem Renaissance. The Sugar Bowl was only one of John Walker’s restaurant. After service in World War II as a chef, he opened up several other eateries after he was discharged. His Sugar Bowl was near the Abyssinian Baptist Church and the Mother AME Zion Church, and the churches gave him a lot of business. The Young Rens and other teams faced Jim Crow discrimination in the South. During World War II Red Auerbach would head up to Washington DC from the Norfolk Navy Base to watch the DC Bears play. Snooky’s team soon recruited a man named Ronald “Knowledge” Evans. Both Snooky and Holcombe mentored him and he was able to play at Commerce High School in 1952 and 1953 and then at Fayetteville University in the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. Ron never made it to the NBA but did become the person that Holcombe wanted him to be, since Ron soon was a teacher and then promoted to a principal. In 1956 the Young Rens started to barnstorm and attention shifted to the high school and college level teams. The teams would feature NYU greats like Cal Ramsey and Satch Sanders who played on a team called the United Players Basketball Association (UPBA). This team won championships from 1957 to 1959. Cal Ramsey also made it the NBA (New York Knicks) and by 2003 he was the NYU basketball coach and the Knicks’ director of special events. In 1952 Holcombe got Stanley Hill to come uptown from the Lower East Side to play for him. Stan had also played at Commerce High with Cal Ramsey and between 1951 and 1959 he played at Commerce and also Iona College, as well as at Rucker Park. Outside of New York the black players faced a great deal of racism. On January 2, 1957 Stan and the rest of the Iona Gaels were to play the Mississippi Rebels in an NCAA Tournament in Owensboro KY. Before the game, the public address announced said that the governor of Mississippi had declared that the Rebels would not play against an integrated team and forfeited. But that was not the wishes of the coach and the players, who went to Stan and apologized to him. In 2001 Iona faced Ole Miss again and this time Stan posed with the Ole Miss team and received an autographed ball. After basketball Stan walked in public service as a caseworker, and in 1986 was elected head of the District Council 37 Union. As a caseworker, Stan made certain that the kids under his care did well in school and had the same commitment that Holcombe instilled in him. Soon Holcombe arranged for his players to face teams from Philadelphia. Soon three players from Temple University - Hal Lear, Guy Rodgers, and Jay Norman – visited New York. Hal and Guy played in the NBA and in 1957 brought Wilt Chamberlain to Rucker Park. When the game was on, Hal and Guy were no pushovers to Wilt. Wilt and Cal made for a great game. High School student Billy Baxter played at Rucker Park but did not play at his high School (Commerce) since worked after school. After he graduated, he did play at St. Augustine College in Raleigh NC, and after that worked for the Parks Department. Eventually there were a semi-pro team of Bronx All Stars who won in 1958 & 1959. The Bronx team was led by CCNY alumnus Floyd Layne (from The City Game fame) who got a second chance from Holcombe Rucker like Ed Warner did. Some of the players were Ralph Bacate (later the Bronx High School of Science coach), and Ray Felix. Their big rival was Brooklyn who had Jackie Jackson, Eddie Simmons, and Bruce Sproggins. All three attended Virginia Union University in Richmond VA. Virginia Union once played Johnson Smith University at Madison Square Garden and one of the Johnson players was a man named Curl Neal, who would gain fame with the Harlem Globetrotters. One of the Rucker Park players, Richard Reed, played for Benedict College in South Carolina from 1953 to 1957. Thanks to Jim Crow, the Benedict College players were not permitted to play University of South Carolina players except unofficially and in a remote place. In another Jim Crow incident, the Benedict players tried to play a team from a Bible college but the police told them to leave the gym. When he returned to New York, Richard brought a white team from the Lower East Side to Rucker Park. Neil Goldstein also brought the Lower East Side Laborers team uptown as well. In 1960 Neil enrolled at Mississippi Southern University and had to face anti-Semitic and anti-northerner discrimination and harassment. The locals hanged and burned an effigy of Coach Lewis because he wanted to recruit black players. Son Coach Lewis left Mississippi and went to Syracuse University where he flourished as a coach. Neil also left Mississippi and came home to start up his own business. Around this time in Virginia Jackie Jackson, Ed Simmons, and Bruce Spraggins headed to William & Mary College to visit their friend Jeff Cohen (Jeff would play for the Harlem Globetrotters a few years later – one of the few white guys who got the chance). While in the Tribe’s gym the campus police chased Jeff and his friends out, thanks to Jim Crow. When Jeff got back to New York he was persuaded to play for Brooklyn USA. Mel Feldman coached a Rucker Park team called the Redmen that had Nevil Shed and Gene Feaster. Gene’s cousin from Georgia named Johnny Mathis also joined the Redmen. Johnny would later play in the American Basketball Association. Ray Felix copied Holcombe and set a tournament In Elmhurst named after himself. At this tournament one game Mel had to get some substitute players and they soon faced Snooky’s Sugar Bowl. Two Redmen fouled out of the game so it was 3 on 5. But the Redmen won the game. In the 1960’s two Rucker Park alumni would play for the Texas Western University team that won the NCAA Finals against all white Kentucky by a score of 72-65. This may have helped to push integration forward in the South. A man named Fred “Spook” Stegman coached several teams in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Spook piped talent to Al McGuire at Belmont Abbey in North Carolina. Belmont had Danny Doyle and John von Bargen and soon Belmont attracted North Carolina’s Division I schools to play them. Spook’s teams were called Spook’s All Stars but the name caused some uneasiness. Spook was very eccentric. Spook had a good roster and one of his players was Tom Kearns, who played a few games for the Syracuse Nationals before being cut to make room for Hal Lear. Tom later became a financial advisor and one of his clients was Wilt Chamberlain. Before Syracuse, Tom was a Bronx kid who went to St. Anne’s Academy (Archbishop Molloy) and played under Lou Carnesecca. Spook did admit that he was a bit intimidated playing before all black crowds, but his All Stars were accepted. Spook would later recruit Danny Doyle of Astoria for Belmont Abbey. While playing at Rucker Park Danny was a bit of a showoff on the court and often ran to 125th Street to catch his bus to Astoria. Spook got his nickname at Al McGuire’s Bar on Beach 108th Street in Rockaway. One night one of the McGuire brothers saw Spook take someone’s money and buy himself a drink. Johnny McGuire said that he was like a ghost or spook. The bar had 3 man teams who would take on anybody. Black players from Rucker Park went there to play. While Spook was able to get Danny Doyle to play for Belmont, he admitted that he was not able to recruit Connie Hawkins, Roger Brown or Lew Alcindor. Chapter 3 is also kind of long. Here we meet Connie Hawkins and Roger Brown. Both men got raw deals for being associated with a gambler and lost their scholarships. Roger stayed in Dayton after dropping out of the University of Dayton and worked for GM but would later play for the Indiana Pacers of the American Basketball Association; Connie also returned to basketball with the ABA’s Pittsburgh Pipers and later the NBA’s Phoenix Suns. Wilt Chamberlain had a Rucker Park team called Wilt the Stilt’s Small’s Paradise team that played the Brooklyn All Stars, which included Jackie Jackson and Walt Bellamy. We also meet Joe Hammond, an almost homeless Harlem dropout who loved basketball and shooting dice. In 1965 Holcombe Rucker finally got a better park, along the Harlem River Drive. But in March of 1965 he died of lung cancer at the Kingsbridge VA Hospital and was buried in LI National Cemetery. After Holcombe’s untimely death in March 1965, several of the players he helped (including Ed Warner) worked to continue his legacy. The park on West 155th Street that bears his name was dedicated by john lindsay in 1969. The chapter also talks about the Philadelphia players and the Baker League that plays there. We also meet Tony Greer, St. Francis Prep 1960, who played for St. Anselm’s College. Earl “The Pearl” Monroe came up to Rucker Park from Philadelphia. The source of that nickname came from newspaper headlines after he scored high amounts of points for his college in North Carolina. In Philly he was called “Black Jesus” for his miracles on the asphalt and the hardwood. In 1966 he brought his team to Rucker Park to face the New York counterpart. One of the players on the New York team was SFP Terrier Tony Greer, and then they “drafted” UCLA student Lew Alcindor to play. We also learned that Tony later became a parole officer and a social worker and after his retirement from these positions, he became a girls’ basketball coach at a Wings Academy in the Bronx. The Philadelphia players also faced a New York team that was comprised of several New York Knicks – Walt Frazier (but only for one game in the Rucker Park), Willis Reed, and Bill Bradley. So it looks like Walt Frazier was a bit embarrassed to be kicked off of the Rucker Pros team after one game. But he did shine with the Knicks, though. The chapter also talks about Earl “Goat” Manigault and Harthorne Wingo. Both men had drugs almost destroy their lives. In the 1960’s the Philadelphia All Colonials faced the Rucker Pros in a championship. Philly had Herman “Copter” Knowings, who dominated. Herman came to Harlem from South Carolina and played in the Wagner Center on East 120th Street. Earl “Goat” Manigault played at Rucker Park with a childhood friend named Lew Alcindor. Lew aid the “Goat” was the best player he ever saw. He was flying high until drugs did him in, including getting expelled from Benjamin Franklin High School in his senior year. Earl visited bars, social clubs, barbershops, and pool halls, and hanging around with thugs but thanks to basketball did not participate in gang activities. He was able to dunk over several NBA greats. Goat had a rough upbringing, being raised by a single mom, but Holcombe was a good mentor to him. Goat brought Benjamin Franklin High players to Rucker Park to forma team called Young Life. In 1967 this team beat Brooklyn USA and its star player named Eldridge “Steel Springs” Webb. After getting a high school diploma at an academy in North Carolina, he stayed in the state and attended Johnson C. Smith University for one year before dropping out due to problems in the classroom and with his coach. When he returned to New York in 1969 he was arrested for drugs and jailed for a year. When he got out in 1970 the Utah Stars gave him a tryout but he was soon cut. He came home and started the Goat Tournament on the Upper West Side (Happy Warrior Park on West 99th Street). He was arrested again and after being released he and two of his sons moved to Charleston to get away from the big city. But he missed his tournament and returned home (he passed away in 1998). Another Carolina transplant is Harthorne Wingo, who arrived from Tryon, North Carolina in 1968. Soon he was playing with the Eastern League’s Allentown Jets, and the Harlem Wizards. He played for the New York Knicks from 1972 to 1976 and then overseas in Italy, Switzerland and Argentina. But he squandered his money and was soon destitute. The author found him at a friend’s place in Jersey City. Harthorne soon went into rehab, but somehow, he never made the contacts that his teammates had made so he could get a decent position after basketball. The author soon called his teammates and they helped. As of 2003 Harthorne was drug free, working and living in West Harlem. Chapter 4 is another long chapter and here we meet Julius Erving – Dr. J. He got his nickname of Doctor at Roosevelt High School when a classmate whom he called “Professor” called him “Doctor”. His coach recommended that he play at Rucker Park and by 1969 was playing there. Chapter 4 also talks about Willie Hall (who had played for Archbishop Molloy and St. John’s) and Tom Hoover. These men played for Sweet & Sour, a team named for a bar at 138th Street & 7th Avenue. Sweet & Sour played against the Daily News All Stars who had Billy Paultz (from St. John’s), Tom Riordan, Ollie Taylor, and Dr. J. While at Rucker Park Dr. J perfect his technique. Also in 1969 Joe Hammond returned to Rucker Park. He was still making money shooting craps and now was also selling drugs. With this money we was able to get new sneakers for the Rucker Park players who could not afford them. That same year Joe Hammond awed people at Fordham University when he rode rings around other players in one-on-one contests. Among his opponents were Nate Archibald and Dean Meminger. Soon Joe was approached by Rucker Park’s New York Pros’ coach Teddy Jones and was asked to plan in a game against Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell team. Joe helped the New York team trounce the Liberty Bell team. Joe Hammond and Richard “Pee Wee” Kirkland were the playground aces. Pee Wee soon was playing at Norfolk State University and was drafted by the Chicago Bills in 1968 but never played a game for them. He returned to Harlem and became a gangster. But while doing the gangster activities he still loved the game and between 1968 and 1971 he played for Millbank Community Center at Rucker Park, and was the Park’s scoring champion. In 1971 he was sentenced to 10 years at Lewisburg Correction Center in Pennsylvania. While there he helped form the Anthracite League, his team being the Lewisburg Hilltoppers. While with Lewisburg his team played the Lithuania National team and won 225-47. When he was released, he turned his life around and ran a school ate the Central Baptist Church on Amsterdam Avenue and 92nd Street, He also did commercials and had a role in a movie as a basketball scout. His playing skills also got him a position at Long Island University teaching basketball. In 1971 Dr. J and Joe Hammond faced each other with their teams (the Westsiders for Dr. J; Millbank for Joe). The Westsiders, coached by Pete Vecsey, also had Billy Paultz, Mike Riordan, Brian Scott, and Charlie Taylor. But at tip off Joe was not there. He showed up after half time because he was busy shooting dice. Once Joe showed up, it was a one-on-one between Joe and Dr. J, and the Westsiders won in triple overtime. Both Joe and Dr. J each scored around 40 points. Joe claimed over 50 but that is still disputed. In 1999 Dr. J met with the author in an Orlando hotel room . Dr. J mentioned his playing days in the ABA with the Virginia Squires and the New York Nets after he left the University of Massachusetts in 1971 after sophomore year. He told the author that he was a good player in high school but definitely not the best. Dr. J credited his days at Rucker Park for his success in the pros (both the ABA and the NBA) which led to his success later in business, He played on three world championship teams between the two leagues. He also said that the game 1 in 1971 was not just a game between hi and Joe Hammond. It was more Joe vs. Dr. J’s teammates. Much of what else happened at that game is legend, and the Westsiders won. Dr. J said that Joe and he were good operators. The game also helped put Rucker Park on the map. Then later in 1971 the Los Angeles Lakers approached Joe Hammond to try and recruit him as they were very much impressed with his playing the game. But Joe never played high school or NCAA basketball and never had a bona fide job. Los Angeles offered him a contract for one year at $50,000. But he was make many times that shooting dice and selling drugs. He also declined a position with their summer league team. Later Lou Carnesecca took him to dinner at a restaurant (Dante’s) near St. John’s and tried to get him to play for the New York Nets. Former New York Knick Dean Meminger also praised Joe as a great player. But it is hard to market a player with only playground experience but none at the high school or NCAA level. Joe could have had that experience if he allowed himself to be coached. Lou said that if Joe had signed for him, the Nets would have been a real ABA contender. Chapter 5 starts in the summer of 1972 with the Harlem Professional Basketball League playing at Rucker Park on the weekends, and now also on Friday nights under the lights. More fans showed up and even started to go onto school roofs until the NYPD chased them away. Soon injuries to players made it necessary to move indoors to City College’s gym for two years, despite having insurance. Copycat leagues sprang up in other cities. Soon former Allentown Jet Ronnie Nunn was shining indoors. He was so good that the Denver Nuggets were interested, but he did not make the cut. Ronnie continued to play in Mexico. While there he got sick with hepatitis but Red Holtzman called him to come and try out with the Knicks. He did not make the team, so he played in the Rucker Tournament for the pro division’s Courtsmen. It was one of the top tiered teams along with Dr. J’s Daily News All Stars, Milbank, mall’s Paradise, the Rucker Pros, and the Bronx All Stars (coached by Floyd Layne). During the 1970’s white fans did go to Rucker Park and often sat near Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown. But it was basketball and not politics. Ronnie Nunn did play Dr. J while in college, in a U Mass – George Washington match up. Later Ronnie joined the Pro-Am League, whose main referee was Cecil Watkins, who had been a friend of Holcombe. While playing a game, Cecil asked if he would like to become a referee instead of playing. He took Cecil up on the offer. After a few years at City College, the Rucker tournament was moved to Louis Brandeis High School at Columbus Avenue and 84th Street in 1975. By 1977 the Harlem Professionals had raised enough money to resurface the blacktop and make some changes to the surroundings at Rucker Park, and the playing returned there. But the NBA professionals were reluctant to play there because an injury could end their careers. One who did stay at Rucker Park was James “Fly” Williams, who played with the ABA Spirits of St. Louis and the NBA Seattle Super Sonics. After his playing days at Stephan Peay College he played at Rucker before going to the ABA. After the ABA he played in France and Israel. At Rucker Park he played with a team called FEZ. Some of his teammates were Mel Davis and Ed Searcy (St. John’s veterans). FEZ never won a championship but Fly did enhance his reputation. After his playing days were over, Fly’s life went downhill – selling drugs and ending up in jail twice, and also getting shot once. But he did turn his life around and by 2003 was a VP at Reality Check Foundation, an organization that uses basketball to keep Brooklyn kids off the streets – something similar to what Holcombe did years before. World (formerly Lloyd) Free visited his friend Fly at his Realty Check and they spoke about Frank "Shake & Bake” Streety and his playing them at Rucker Park in 1977. Frank later played for the Harlem Globetrotters and was also approached by the Detroit Pistons. Frank played World at Rucker and outscored him 25-16, but never 40 points. Frank worked for 12 years at Covenant and left with his wife for Florida after 9-11. Joe Hammond returned to Rucker in 1977 and set scoring records, including 73 points in one game. Joe was so good that even NBA players could not shoot him down. In 1978 Billy Rieser – White Jesus – came to Rucker Park. In his first 2 years of high school he played at St. Agnes on East 43rd Street. To get more exposure, he left and went to Benjamin Franklin near his East Harlem home – one of a handful of white guys in the school. After he high school he went to Centenary College in Louisiana (and got a new Cutlass and some money from an oil baron) but after a sophomore year injury he left for Eastern Kentucky for two years. Then he returned to Rucker Park, which he said was the pinnacle of making it in basketball. He did receive offers to play overseas but his knees were giving out. He eventually moved to Kentucky and started a telecommunications company and also got active in his church. By 1980 the pros stopped coming to Rucker Park because of the risk of injuries to their careers. During the 1980’s Joe Hammond served time at Riker’s Island a couple of times but did play for a team sponsored by Coca Cola. Richard “Pee Wee” Kirkland was also imprisoned, for tax evasion and other charges. Sadly, Herman Knowings was killed in a car crash on April 12, 1980. Phil Rucker held a benefit for Herman’s family. In chapter 6 we learned that by 1980 hard times came to Rucker Park. But Earl Goat Manigault had returned with his Goat Tournament. He had a few failures in life, and his return helped him relate to some of the local Harlem residents who had experienced failure and saw that they could rebound. Goat had kicked his drug habit. But the pros were no longer coming to Rucker Park like before. Now only a few of the Westsiders squad remained, like Sam Worthen. Sam spoke with the author and said that playing at Rucker Park made him handle crowds and later play well in the NCAA and the NBA. Sam did regret that the pros were not coming to the park any longer. By 1982 it looked like the Rucker Tournament was gone. But in that year rapper Greg Marius started EBC – Entertainers Basketball Clinic and soon players like Walter Berry and Pearl Washington showed up. Greg also asked his entertainment and basketball contacts/friends to help the EBC. Soon the emcees were entertainers and they gave interesting nicknames to the players. But the quality of play was not as good as in prior decades and there were no sponsors. But soon the combination of music and basketball drew a new and larger set of fans. The chapter also talked about Joe Hammond and his time at Dannemora Prison in Clinton County during the 1980’s. He was able to form a league while there to keep himself busy and keep the other inmates out of trouble. He also did one on one tournaments and never lost (usually bet cans of tuna fish). He also found ways to get favors for the other inmates and was released in 1988. But he still went back to his old ways. In October 1990, the author ran into him in east Harlem when Joe interfered with a touch football game being played in the street. The author was the one who recognized Joe and learned that Joe was living in an East Harlem housing project with a girlfriend and one of his four children. Richie “The Animal” Adams also went from Rucker Park to prison. He had starred at Rucker Park, Benjamin Franklin HS, and then at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (from 1981 to 1985, with one red shirt year). He started to use drugs but still excelled on the court. He was drafted by the Washington Bullets in 1985 but defying authority got him cut, and he returned to the Bronx, after first playing in Argentina. In 1991 he was sent to the Bare Hill Correctional Facility in Malone NY for armed robbery and grand larceny. The author went to visit him in 1991 and Richie could not believe what happened to him. Over the next 3 years he called the author collect each night until he was paroled in 1994, and returned to Manhattan and Rucker Park, playing on a team called the X-Men. This team won championships in the mid 1990’s. Richie was almost as good as he was before he went to UNLV. But Richie returned to prison in 1996 on a manslaughter charge. People who knew him could not believe it. By 1989 talented players returned to the Park. One was a team called the Future Pros, led by Malloy “The Future” Nesmith. Other Pros included future SJU stars Malik Sealy and Lamont Middleton, as well as NBA and overseas stars Steve Burtt and Troy Truesdale. The Future Pros stunned players on Jay’s All Stars who were years older than they were. One of the spectators, nicknamed Alpo, was not happy with the referees’ calls and threatened to sic his pit bulls on them. Players finally persuaded him to get his dogs out of the Park, and play resumed. The Future Pros won in an upset, 86-83. This was the team’s only season at Rucker Park, but several of the players went on to the NBA (Malik Sealy & John Morton). Other players starred in Europe and Australia, but one player (Carlton Hines) was murdered in 1994. The Future later formed another team for the Pro-Am Tournament in 2001, called the Dyckman, which included NBA players. The tournament was played at Hunter College gym but did not seem to be as good as the play at Rucker Park since the play was more structured than at the Park. Dyckman did win the Tournament. The Future did shine in college but never did make it to the NBA. He did interview with the author for Vibe magazine and told him that the team started to lose more often. The Future also did some ads for Nike and was featured on a TNT documentary. He became friends with Shaq O’Neal who got him a tryout with the International Basketball League’s Las Vegas Bandits. But it did not pan out. He still played in the Entertainers League at the Park. Maybe hoping that an NBA coach will notice him. Chapter 7 brings us to 1990 and Greg Marius and his EBC were drawing crowds, and getting good sponsors like AT&T, Reebok, and recording companies. Fans from both the hip hop and basketball worlds were coming to the Park. He was soon partnering with Gus Wells, who owned a club nearby. Greg was able to renovate the Park and had Gus provide security. Later the two men met with the Parks and Police Departments to have police presence and have the Park maintained. Being fairly wealthy, Greg had to prove that he was not a drug dealer. Greg insisted on no admission charge. In 1992 we would meet 15 year old Kareem Reid, nicknamed Best Kept Secret, who played on the Mousey Dream Team with future NBA star Stephon Marbury. Besides at the Park, Kareem would also play at St. Nicholas Tolentine and St. Raymond’s High Schools, and then at the University of Arkansas (from 1995 to 1999). He almost got to play for the NBA Pacers but lost out to Jalen Rose. But he did make a name for himself on the Harlem Globetrotters. In 1995 at the Park Kareem’s team, called Sugar Hill, beat a team managed by Puff Daddy Coombs. Puff Daddy was not too happy. Sugar Hill eliminated the X-Men in 1996 thanks to Kareem Reid, but the actual finals game between Sugar Hill and Flower Unit never took place due to overcrowding at the Park. In 2001 Kareem was playing for Sean Puffy’s Bad Boys and by 2003 he was still hoping to make it to the NBA. Joe Hammond ran into Larry Atling in 1993 at Riker’s Island and got the author to try and interview him there. But Larry was transferred to Coxsakie Prison and that is where the interview took place. The author later wrote about him in Slam magazine. Larry was released in 1995 and went to college and later on was working for IBM and playing for a team called Cash Money Millionaires. At the Park. Shaq O’Neal also visited the Park in 2001 and was impressed. Soon games were broadcast on TV and his family & friends in Poughkeepsie got to see him play. In May 1998 Earl “Goat” Manigault died at the age of 53. The author wrote his obituary for the New York Times. Joe Hammond also eulogized Goat. Ian O’Connor had also praised him in a 1989 article in the Times as well, even if his skills at 44 had faded. Later on the New York Post’s Pete Vecsey wrote an article praising Earl. In the 1990’s a player named Rafer Alston of South Jamaica showed up at the Park, He is considered one of the best to have ever played there. In 1995 Jerry Tarkanian of Fresno State (formerly of UNLV) was there and soon recruited Rafer. Rafer first played for Fresno City Junior College before transferring to Fresno State and eventually he made it to the NBA, playing for the Milwaukee Bucks, Golden State Warriors, and the Toronto Raptors. In 1996 Coach Mousey spots a man nicknamed “Wolverine” and got him to play for his Mousey Dream Team against Conrad McRae’s Sports Entourage. The Dream Team won the game but Wolverine was never seen at Rucker Park again. In the summer of 1996 Allen Iverson and Stephon Marbury played on Puff Daddy’s Bad Boys and faced Sugar Hill. Despite a combined 60 points between the 2 NBA greats, Sugar Hill won. But the game had to be cut short thanks to a fight in the stands. Actually, Puff Daddy had been going to games at the Park since he was young, and now was able to get great players for his team. The Bad Boys have won 2 EBC championships. He said that the individual match ups (the players themselves) are what make the games so special. Puff Daddy said that anyone who has played at the Park has heart. He also said that music and basketball complement each other but you cannot mix them. James “Speedy” Williams said that in the mid 1990’s that he was getting $600 or $700 per game. The money is furnished by drug dealer, rappers, and those with respectable careers, and well as the money placed on bets. Speedy later played in the US Basketball League and the Harlem Wizards, another touring team similar to the Globetrotters. NBA professionals have always played against Rucker Park stars. Washington Wizard Jerry Stackhouse played on Flavor Unit against Ed Lover’s All Stars. One of the All Stars was Junie “General Electric” Sanders. Jerry and GE also met at an indoor game in the Pro Am league and GE scored 84 points. In August 1999 Vince “Air Canada” Carter came to the Park. Before the game could start rain forced them to head to Gaucho Gym in the Bronx to play. It was Vacant Lot Pros against Blackhand Entertainment. Vince arrived late, near the end of the 1st quarter, to play for Blackhawk. However, he stunned the crowd with his point scoring and overall performance. Chapter 8 starts at the turn of the 21st century. Beavon Robin, a Fordham Rams alumnus, shines at the Park for the Net Posse, who beat rival Vacant Lot 76-60. The Net Posse won the Rucker Park/EBC championship for the 2nd time. Also in the new century (2001) Danny “Sunshine” Doyle returned to watch his son Tim (Baby Sunshine) play at the Park. They were the first white father son pair to have played at the Park. Tim would play on the New York squad against a team from Philadelphia. Tim started to get a bit arrogant and got his dad worried until an official told him to watch his behavior. Despite the great performance by Tim and his teammates, the Philly team won 78-77. Tim’s great performance made the fans come over to congratulate him. Tim would soon play for St. John’s. Greg Marius’ EBC was talking off in the 21st century with big sponsors giving money. Greg also wrote an open letter to the Park faithful to keep the tournaments going. Now there were lines forming for tickets, and there was also a tournament store nearby. Famous people like Bill Clinton and David Stern came to watch the games, as did coaches to spot potential recruits. In 2002 Kobe Bryant met with Greg and played in a game against a squad from Washington DC. Thanks to rain, the game was called after the first half. Kobe also came to the Park to try and get Greg to help him market his line of sneakers. Later on Greg was asked what the net worth of the EBC was and he never gave the exact amount. But for an article in the New York Times he told Corey Killgallon and the author that it had great profit potential. But Rucker Park loyalists like Joe Hammond complained that it got too commercial and was not what Holcombe had envisioned. Joe also said that commercialism was killing the sport and now it’s more hip hop and what sneakers you wore. But Greg said that the play has never been better and that his EBC was helping keep Holcombe’s legacy alive. In the summer of 2002, a young lady named Shannon “Something Special” Bobbitt came to the Park to play for the Lady Mustangs. Her team beat the Milbank’s ladies’ team and soon Division I schools were calling on her. For the men’s 2002 championship it was Fat Joe and Mousey’s team, which had 2 NBA players (Ron Artest and Stephon Marbury) and several NBA and Park alumni against the Ruff Ryders. In the end, Fat Joe’s team won its first Rucker Park championship, 80-69. In the epilogue, we saw that Kobe and other NBA stars would be going to the Park for visibility and to push their products that they endorsed, especially sneakers. For Kobe and other players, playing at the Park increased their visibility and help them push their wares. These days NBA stars, after their initial playing days, rarely came back to the Park. But since it is more commercial now, even local New York City players are thinking about money when playing. The great rivalries from the 1950’s and 1960’s are gone. The EBC will not be the competitive wonder that the Rucker League was in its prime. But entrepreneurs like Fat Joe and Puff Daddy get publicity at the Park and that helps their products to get sold, and big sponsors help make the EBC earn millions. But this type of commercialism at the Park is no different than what we had on TV with the commercials. Joe Hammond complained that the League has been stripped of its early days purity when they came to play basketball and not do commercials. And NBA stars don’t have to prove themselves on the asphalt. But when the NBA stars do come to the Park, they bring fans and TV cameras and also some good NCAA and ex-NCAA players to the court. The author believes that EBC's future is bright with the possibility of teams barnstorming and also foreign teams coming to the Park. He also believes that more sponsors will come and the EBC will thrive on its excellence and the fact that it is in a class by itself. The Park’s tales will continue to unfold for generations to come.
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On May 23rd I started to read Helen of Pasadena by Lian Dolan. Helen Castor Fairchild is a rich widow whose husband was killed in an accident at the Rose Bowl Parade. Chapter 1 starts at her late husband Merritt’s funeral and the chapter talks about the couple’s friends and family and mentioned that their son’s schoolmates from the Millington School came to the funeral and that the parents were all dressed in clothes with the proper labels. She has two good friends (Candy McKenna and Tina Chau). Candy is a former Rose Queen who went to Brown University for a couple of years and posed in Playboy for a Girls of the Ivy League album. That did not go well in 1980’s Pasadena and she was no longer a Rose Queen. Tina is from Hong Kong and married a wealthy Anglo American. So far, I get the impression that in some circles in Pasadena CA is a city where keep up is a big game. In chapter 2 she learned that her late husband Merritt was having an affair with a news anchor named Roshelle Simms when he was killed in the accident at the 112th Rose Parade. We also meet her mother in law Mitsy Fairchild, a society type bitch who is ultra-status conscious. Residents of status conscious Pasadena are concerned over which pre-school elementary school and prep school their kids get accepted to. Helen and Merritt were hoping that their son Aiden would get into Ignatius Prep School. The schools send out acceptance letters in April and a divorce would kill Aiden’s chances of acceptance so Helen and Merritt planned to stay married until then, even though the affair was going on since December. In chapter 3 she visits the law offices of Billy Owens, a friend of her late husband since childhood, going from elementary school to the University of Southern California together and were also frat brothers. She also has a meeting with their accountant Bruno Purcelli who breaks the news to her that thanks to bad investments and the market tanking, she is broke. She also learned that Merritt was going to divorce her and Marry Rochelle (aka Shelly Slusky) who was quite wealthy thanks to her company Slusky’s Wash & Dry. She soon learned that she was broke thanks to Merritt’s bad investments and the stock market tanking. Billy and Bruno tell her that Merritt had her sign everything over to him so he could manage the finances by himself. After the meeting at Billy’s office she heads home to her “forever house’, a Monterrey Colonial in the Oak Knoll neighborhood that she must now vacate. She felt betrayed, bereaved and now bereft. She picked up the term at Mommy and Me Aerobics from Cissy Montague, a rich 30 year old lady with Standard Oil money – wealthy enough to afford to have an in-ground pool moved to a different part of the yard. Helen envied Cissy especially when she flaunted her wealth. Maybe the thought of having to move from a forever house was a reason that her parents eschewed traditional housing and lifestyles – they lived in a yurt. Helen had a flashback to school days – home schooled and living in a counterculture household and then later going to a regular school in Sisters OR and loving the conventional school life. Eventually she was accepted to Willamette College in Salem and loved the dorm life and her classics courses. At grad school in Berkeley she met Merritt. We then fast forward to today (2008) and she is wondering what to do now. Should she copy what the divorcees do and move to a condo on the right street and get a job in real estate or with a charity? But first things first and she texted Candy to tell her that she needs a real estate agent. Chapter 4 introduces us to Rita Beghosian, an Armenian American who is part of the Armenians’ taking over of the commercial life in Pasadena. Tina Chau would use her Yale law degree to help Helen because it looks like Merritt set her up for the next life (he duped her). Rita gave Helen a to do list for her place to get it ready for an open house event. Melanie Martin, a Neutron Mom then came by to visit. A Neutron Mom is one had had power and prestige while working and then is demoted to a stay at home mom and is impossible to deal with. She is a type A personality. Melanie became the head of the Five Schools Benefit, named after the 5 Pasadena private schools (Millington, Raleigh, Redwood, Martindale and Cloverfield) that annually raise funds for the city’s public schools. For 2008 the Benefit’s theme is “The Best and the Brightest”. Melanie came by to tell Helen that another lady took over her spot as the head of the Sponsorship Committee and Helen will be the honorary head. After Melanie left, Jan Gamble brought Aiden home, with another casserole. Helen told us about Jan marrying into the family of a Proctor & Gamble co-founder, and that the Gamble family came to Pasadena in the 19th century for the citrus farms and the sun along with other industrialists. Pasadena soon became a city of 150,000 people of all races and classes, thanks to Hollywood, Cal Tech, scientists, and movie people. Jan is genuinely concerned about Helen’s well-being, unlike Melanie. Helen then explained how she was the glue that held the Millington School together. It was because she only had Aiden, as opposed to the other moms who had 2 to 4 kids. That made her more available for numerous school activities. Candy McKenna’s first husband was a closeted gay and after the divorce she lost a lot of business contacts. Helen told Candy and Tina that she needs to get a paying job and Tina recommends Elizabeth Maxwell. Mitsy Fairchild invited Helen to her lavish condo (filled with art and antiques and decorated by an interior decorator. She had lunch with Mitsy and it was a typical old money meal. Billy had told Mitsy about the financial situation and that the house is going onto the market. Misty asked Helen about her new plans and she did not like Helen’s “new age” answer. But Mitsy could not or would not help with Aiden’s schooling costs. A fund was never set up for him. They agreed that the financial situation would not be advertised and the Fairchild name would stay intact. Now with Merritt gone the situation at home is different. When he was alive there was very little talking between Helen and him during the day. Until around 7 pm when he got home. It’s different now. Aiden watches TV – The Simpsons and also commercials with Rochelle Simms, on Fox TV. Naturally, Helen is not happy with this. But she really wants Aiden to get into Ignatius Prep and plans to have tutoring for him so he will do well on the admissions test, but he had bad experience with tutors before. Aiden was a C+ student in elementary school so he will need the preparation for the tests. With the family background he should still get into a decent school and a good career provided that he does not do something stupid. But his mom still wants him to get into Ignatius Prep. His dad even did what he could to get him interested – football games and a school t-shirt. In chapter 5 Helen visits Elizabeth Maxwell of Maxwell and Mather Executive Search. However, most of her adult life was as a stay at home mom and volunteer work, neither of which make her very employable for a high level position. Tina had done some enhancing of the resume but that still did not help Helen’s prospects. Elizabeth suggested that she try for a paying job at the Huntington Library since Helen did spend a lot of time volunteering there in the prior years. Helen though about all of the talks that she gave at the Millington School since she had the time and later also thought back to when her marriage to Merritt started to sour. It was a vacation to Mexico’s Puerto Vallarta in 2003 that turned out to be a disaster. She and Merritt also were trying for baby #2, but with no luck. Helen goes for a job interview at the Huntington Library in chapter 6. She describes the décor and the layout and then meets with Sarah White, a California version of an Upper East Side Manhattanite. The two ladies walk through the library garden where Sarah tells Helen about a DS (Distinguished Scholar) who is there and offered her a position as his assistant. The man was a classical archaeologist researching about the ancient city of Troy and the Trojan War. Meanwhile Helen thought about the story told in The Iliad about the Trojan War and the kidnapping of Helen of Troy (maybe that is a play on words for the novel’s title?). Then she runs into the scholar and talks about the Houdin statue of The Goddess of the Hunt (Diana). The scholar is Dr. Patrick O’Neill and he soon asked her where he can get some great tacos in Pasadena. She tells him to go to La Estrella. After the interview Helen returns home in triumph and had Candy and Tina come over for some moral support. Helen uses Google to learn more about Dr. O’Neill and see that he has written numerous articles and has several positions like Chair of Classical Archaeology at the American School in Athens. He had also collaborated at the excavations at Troy. And his dad was an expatriate executive in Europe at Questrum Pharmaceuticals. In chapter 7 she started worrying about financial issues, the care of her son, and if he would turn to drugs. Now she has an 8 hour orientation for her new job at the Huntington Library. She will be working on the Rudolph Schliemann notebooks (Rudolph was the nephew of archaeologist Heinrich). During the orientation she was introduced to document scanning protocol (DSP) from Karen the Librarian, who tells her to wear cloth gloves when handling the notebooks, or risk being fired. Doctor O’Neill was assigned Cottage #7 on the Library’s grounds, and it was quite fancy. Helen wondered how to address Doctor O’Neill (who soon told her to call him Patrick). She is a nervous wreck when first working with Patrick, who told her that Rudolph’s notebooks are not that essential in the history of Troy. They are important because of their age and not for much else. Rudolph was not much of an archaeologist and later became an engineer. Patrick was in California for a chance to raise funds for more digging at the site in Turkey. It turns out that Sarah White is hung up on Patrick and went out to a nice steak restaurant the night before. And now they are going out for lunch (tacos) at La Estrella. When her shift is over Helen returns home and calls Candy to tell her about her first day, and about Sarah and Patrick. The chapter ends with a recap of Candy’s failed second marriage, to surgeon Sam Kennedy, Sam was a womanizer and Candy could not stand the days home alone while Sam was on call at the hospitals. This marriage did produce her two children, Mariah and Ian. In chapter 8 she tells us about the history of her son’s school. I was originally a sanitorium that was founded in the late 19th century but closed in the 1920’s when the air around Pasadena got as bad as everywhere else. In the 1930’s Eustice Millington founded the K-8 school. Now in February 2008 she is describing a fundraiser called the Read Write Fest that featured theater, speakers’ competitions, book signings and sales and lectures, and was asked by the parents association to chair it this year. It was to be held in the Fairchild Performing Arts Center (a gift made in Merritt’s parents’ names). Adele Arnett, Millington’s head mistress, asked if she could speak with Helen later (maybe a seat on the Board for her?) Helen had to meet with the Word-Write Committee and describes how half of the ladies are in suits and half in yoga pants. She then got a call from Natasha Natarova informing her that the guest speaker, (called the Mystery Speaker) had cancelled and they needed a replacement. Natasha had called the Huntington Library and they recommended Dr. O’Neill. On the way to Adele’s office Helen describes Aiden’s social status. He is in the middle tier of popularity – not the most popular but not a social outcast either. He has a few friends who are more interested in computer games than girls or drugs. When she got to Adele’s office Adele tells her that Aiden has been getting “incomplete” for grades and has “checked out”. And then there is the admission interview for the Ignatius School in a few days. This is mainly to check out the parents and family situations. Adele told her that progress reports had been e-mailed to her but Helen said that she never got them – because they were sent to her old address that Merritt and she opened up. She has a new one that the school never learned about. She tells Helen that Aiden has to pass his classes if he wants to graduate, because Millington has a reputation to maintain and cannot make any exceptions. But Aiden was grieving his late dad so perhaps the school could cut him some slack. Then Adele tells Helen that Yuri Natarov has been selected to fill Merritt’s seat on the Board, and Helen is not happy. But Adele said that the new financial situation for Helen would not look good for the Board, and that she could not financially support the School now. Helen was quite angry and told Adele that Aiden will graduate. She said that she will tell her friends Candy and Natasha and also her mother in law Mitsy. After she picks up Aiden and two of his friends from school, they stop at a panini restaurant for a snack. When they get home Rita Beghosian helps Helen with getting the house ready for showing at an open house event. Aiden also manages to skip water polo practice. Helen started crying when she reflected on what happened to her since New Year’s Day – Merritt’s affair, loss of assets and the financial crisis, Aiden’s grades, and her new job. She then met her two sisters in law, Mary Claire (Mimi) ad Madeleine Grace (Mikki) at the Petit Petals Patisserie. Merritt had been their hero and father figure after their father died early. The sisters agreed to help Helen with clearing out the house of Merritt’s things, and to keep Rochelle from getting any of Merritt’s things. In chapter 9 she arrived at her new job at around 8:55. Dr. Patrick offers her some Turkish coffee (much stronger than what she was used to) and some flattery. Patrick then tells her about Troy Number 10, another city on the site in addition to the ones that Heinrich Schliemann discovered in the 19th century. Troy #10 was supposed to have been around until around 850 AD. He tried to show her the vestiges of #10 and also tries to come on to her. Later they go to lunch at In Vino Veritas, which is owned by Jan Gamble’s husband Ted. Patrick and Ted hit it off and soon all 3 of them are talking about Ancient Greece and soon Patrick is talking about his family – a wife and at least one daughter (named Cassandra) who are not with him in California. Then the men change the subject and start to talk about the English Premier League, Bruce Springsteen, restaurants and politics. Then we learn that Patrick is going to Santa Barbara for the weekend and he learns that he is supposed to give a presentation on Ancient Troy at the Millington School. He showed her the power point slides and asked her to give him a gut check opinion. She tells him that the way he was going to give it may be too academic for tweens. The basic premise of the slides was the history of the Trojan War and Heinrich Schliemann and his work at the site. She told Patrick that Schliemann was a con artist and pariah and basically a kind of loser who happened to luck out and discover the site of ancient Troy. He should liven it up a bit for the tweens. Patrick will mail the presentation to Helen and Aiden for them to look over. Helen also had to use DSP on the notebooks over the weekend. Soon Patrick will be driving to Santa Barbara to visit a female colleague. At the start of chapter 10 Helen and Candy are walking around the Rose Bowl stadium and talking. Candy soon tells her that she may need therapy after she vetted her feelings to Candy, like that Merritt had died and left her a slew of problems. After the walk she went to the office to do some work. But after Merritt she started to act more quickly and rashly. Maybe she would grieve later. And now she was not really concentrating on her work and avoided the DSP procedures. While using the copier a page of a Rudy Schliemann notebook got torn badly. She hoped that Karen the Librarian would not come in and check on her or the notebooks. She hid the torn notebook in the couch cushions and decided to play dumb. Then Sarah White came into the office to see Patrick but then asked Helen what she was doing. She had to convince Sarah that Patrick is away on business in Santa Barbara. Sarah wanted to know what Patrick had said to her when she went with him to In Vino Veritas. But Helen’s relationship with Patrick was professional, about Ancient Troy. Then Sarah elaborates about Patrick’s ex-wife, a fabric designer named Susanna Ashford, and that they have a daughter named Cassandra. Sarah talked about an article in The Guardian where Susanna was interviewed about her family and she mentioned that Patrick was an archaeologist but did not give his name. Sarah then left the office but asked Helen to tell Patrick that she had stopped by. Helen still was trying to minimize the damage to the notebook. Later when she went home, she started to transcribe the notebook by typing. She thought that its contents were boring, except for the part that mentioned what his wife Sophie might be wearing. In chapter 11 she took Aiden to the Ignatius school for his interview with the admissions officer and also describes the history of the school (a former Jesuit seminary) and that before endowments, poorer boys were sponsored by wealthy alumni for their 4 year tenure there. It is a prep school but not like the ones in New England. Once at the school Aiden met with Mr. Hank Pfister who asked him several questions and Aiden did not do very well. He blew the interview and made a bad impression. She was not happy with the interview and concluded that Aiden was not Ignatius material. There was dead silence on the way home – the kind when she learned about Rochelle and when she learned about the fact that she was now broke. When they arrived home her friends were getting the house ready for show. But she was not mad at Aiden. Then they started to work on Patrick’s Power Point to make it more palatable for adolescents. She also would talk to Billy Owens, Esq. an Ignatius alumnus on Aiden’s behalf. She then went to Mission Viejo to watch Millington play Mission Viejo in a water polo match. Millington was the underdog but they won in the end, 3-1. While in the stands Helen tried to avoid the other Millington moms after the situation with Ignatius School. She was texting her friends at the house on the progress of the possible sale. She texted them that she did not want to sell it to Melanie Martin, even though she offer almost $70,000 more than a gay couple, who she preferred, and would buy it. At the beginning of chapter 12 Patrick is at the Word Write lecture and gave his presentation on Ancient Troy to the middle school kids, and also had the mothers interested as well. When the talk was over, he thanked Aiden and Helen for their help. The headmistress Adele Arnett also congratulated Helen for her work. Patrick then walked over to Helen, Candy and Tina and was introduced to Helen’s two friends. Melanie Martin also walked by and Helen introduced her to Patrick. Now Melanie wanted to know about his foundation. The Five Schools Benefit is 8 weeks away and Mr. Rex Thurman, a chemistry teacher and track coach who is retiring after 45 years, is supposed to be the honoree. But now some people want to change the honoree to Patrick, even though the benefit is only 8 weeks away. But was learned that some of the track team members were using steroids so that is an excuse to change the honoree from Rex to Patrick. And Melanie insists that they name Patrick and make the theme Ancient Troy. Then Patrick asks Helen to be his date. When it is lunch time the two go out to a restaurant in Laguna Beach called the Casa de Sol. She describes Patrick’s at-home type of attitude wherever he went. She told him about the origin of her name (Mount St. Helen) and that of her brother (the Deschutes River). She then talked about the relationship of Rudy Schliemann with his aunt Sophia. After the dinner and walking around to sober up, they arrive back at the Huntington Library a 9 PM after being away for 5 hours. Patrick does make a stab for Helen but she says no. She admitted to us that she had not thought about sex since Merritt died. She also felt that men like Patrick would prefer younger richer women. It did not cross her mind until now. When Merritt was alive, they had a normal marriage and sex life. She concluded that he liked Rochelle because she was younger, shinier, and thinner. But she still felt that some men would find her attractive. Helen reports to work at the start of chapter 13 at the Huntington Library and is surprised to find fellow Willamette University alumna Annabeth Sturges in the office. She is a worldly traveler, the daughter of missionaries. While her parents spread the Word, Annabeth immersed herself in the culture and languages of the places she lived in. While at the university she also had the male students eating out of her hand. Helen considered Annabeth her nemesis, but it was one way. Helen was envious of her and several other successful alumni while in college. Probably why she had lost contact with her classmates. She also never finished her thesis that she had started while at Berkeley. Meanwhile Annabeth worked with Patrick at Troy and studied at Oxford University; Helen dropped out of school and got married while Helen became a professor at University of California – Santa Barbara. After Annabeth leaves to go back to Santa Barbara Patrick was pissed off that Helen did not tell him about her fellowship at Corinth or grad school at Berkeley. She told him that she chose marriage & family over school and a professorship. She also reminded him that school is 15 years in the past. Patrick wanted to free Helen from domestic shackles by teaching her about Ancient Troy. And she is now a lonely widow. When he learned about Corinth and Berkeley, he realized why she know so much about Troy. But he felt that she had wasted his time. But she felt that she wasted 15 years of her life. Soon Sarah White walks int the cottage and told them about anew TV show called The Dirty Archaeologist, and the producers were interested in Patrick research. But the producers found out about the Schliemann journals covering Rudy’s affair with his step-aunt, but nobody knew from whom. Helen then tells Sarah about Rudy’s affair and Sarah was impressed – a real dirty archaeologist. But the shooting for the show is in 6 weeks and Helen has to scan the journals while Patrick has to make Heinrich Schliemann look like a cuckold husband. But there will no longer be wine lunches at Laguna Beach for them. And it looks like Annabeth told the producers about Rudy’s affair. At the start of chapter 14 Tina, Candy and Helen are talking about weight loss and evening wear. Helen then narrates about the time Aiden got accepted to Millington 9 years earlier. Possibly Merritt’s family influence may have helped. With “Decision Day” coming up in a few days, she is now concerned about Aiden’s getting accepted into Ignatius. In addition, Tina is concerned about her daughter Lilly’s getting accepted into Martindale because the school possibly shows preference to siblings of current students and also those with certain family backgrounds. But Lilly has been active in many worthwhile activities and that should count for something. Candy is concerned about her daughter Mariah and admission into Raleigh. The chapter ends with telling her friends that her mother is coming down for a visit. Nell Castor arrived in Pasadena from Sisters OR at the start of chapter 15. While at the house she brewed some Kombucha mushroom tea which smelled and tasted awful. Then she and Helen started to talk about Aiden’s possible admission to Ignatius Prep. She told Helen that even if he did not get in, there are good public schools in Pasadena. Nell felt that all of the class structure was bullshit – the opposite of Mitsy who was class conscious. Nell then suggested that they all move back to Oregon. Helen did not like the idea. They would be going from a metropolitan area to a hick town and the fun would be over in 5 minutes. Aiden could now have a dog, though, which is something he did not have in Pasadena because of Merritt’s allergies. Soon Tran, the letter carrier, arrived with the admission package from Ignatius. It turned out that Aiden did get accepted. And Tran’s son Bernie got into Raleigh on a scholarship. So Aiden is now Ignatius Prep, Class of 2013 (so we are now in 2009 and not 2008). However Candy’s daughter Mariah only made the waiting list for Raleigh. She thinks that it is because of her posing in Playboy 20 years earlier, and that affected Mariah’s chances of being accepted. Helen mentioned a second choice – Sacred Sisters. Then Tina texted her to say that Lilly got into Martindale. Candy had ranted about all o f the other Pasadena tweens and the schools that they got into. Helen advised Candy not to publish that in her column, ‘candysdish’ because that could ruin Mariah’s chances. After Candy left Helen went into Aiden’s room and he told her about some of his classmates and where they got accepted. But Aiden is still interested in Oregon and the dog. Then Helen gives Aiden a bag with Merritt’s varsity jacket from Ignatius Prep. It is now Aiden’s. When chapter 16 opens up Helen is back at work and discussing family, including the Schliemann’s and the relationship of Helen of Troy & Paris. Later on she had to contact the producers of The Dirty Archaeologist about the Schliemann journals and Priam’s Treasure. It is possible that Priam’s Treasure is a hoax planted by Heinrich Schliemann to win back Sophia. Patrick even compared the Helen of Troy and the Sophia Schliemann affairs as being similar in many ways. These affairs could have changed history. She also thinks that Patrick knew about Merritt and Shelly Sleazy’s affair. Helen also felt that he is belittling her while he was rehearsing for the TV interviews. It had reminded her of the differences between Merritt and her – counter-culture versus preppy. She then left the Library for the Millington School’s 8th Grade Mothers Luncheon – a thank you for 9 years of support. She had not been at the school for several months. Candy and Tina were there along with the other moms. Adele Arnett congratulated her on Aiden’s acceptance into Ignatius. Tina had to borrow a dress and later went to the Korean Day Spa in LA’s Koreatown for a message and other treatments and Helen described the place. Helen then went back to the office and Patrick apologized to her and she to him as she had a lot on her mind. Patrick said that his ex-wife accused him of being too deep into his work. Helen then went to research the connection between Helen of Troy & Sophia Schliemann Patrick then came and put his hands on her shoulders and that surprised here. He wanted to take her out to a dinner that evening but she had to go to Aiden’s water polo practice. Melanie Martin wand to talk about a live auction item with Pat and if he could donate something to the Five Schools Fete. Later on Patrick left for Santa Barbara. Chapter 17 starts with Helen and Rita the Armenian looking at houses – downsizing because it will be cheaper and she does not need all that space. But she does not seem to like what she has been shown so far. This is for when the dream house is sold. She later met with Billy the attorney and Bruno the accountant to learn that her financial situation is grim but not hopeless. Once the house and furnishings are sold, she can pay off Merritt’s debts Nell suggested that she and Aiden move to Oregon – lots of land at a much lower price. A couple of days later it was Merritt’s birthday celebration. They went to a Mass at St. Perpetua’s Church with Billy & Lacey Owens and their kids, Merritt’s sisters and their husbands, and Mitsy. Monsignor Flaherty gave a nice speech about Merritt and Helen realized that it was BS. Then they went to the Pasadena Town Club for a dinner and a roast. Billy was the MC. Helen realized that Merritt’s friends and family members had better memories of him than she had. Helen and Mitsy stepped outside and spoke about her financial and employment situations. Helen told her that Patrick would give her a good reference. Later Helen and Aiden took Nell to the Bob Hope Airport so she could head back to Oregon.At the start of chapter 18 Helen explained to Sarah White about what the set up for The Dirty Archaeologist would entail. She does impress Sarah with her ability to organize and get things done (came from all of the parent student events of the last several years). Sarah was also impressed with Helen’s ability to help Pat with his work and her ability to get the project done. Sarah then asked her if she knew Olympia Sutton - Majors, a British actress and Bond girl. Sarah then told her that she would be coming to the Five Schools Benefit with Patrick. Helen was shocked and Sarah was disappointed. Helen was a bit upset that Pat would be taking Olympia. Later on Helen tells us about the two roads to take – the go road or the slow one (instead of high versus low). The slow road is passive and you wait for someone to rescue you. The go road says to gather information and to make an informed decision. Helen is certain that Pat will pick Olympia over her after weighing the situation. Then she learned that Annabeth and Olympia are lesbian lovers when she walked in on them. They tell her that they would be each other’s date for the Benefit but so far, they have not come out. Annabeth was a research person for Patrick. She then tells Helen how she and Olympia met (on Crete) and how their two continent romance flourished. Later the 3 ladies headed over to Mujeres Mexican Cantina for drinks and lunch. While there Helen texted Candy to join them. And Candy can talk with Annabeth and Olympia for a story to put into her column, and maybe Candy’s life story would be shown on Aphrodite Productions as a series. Candy then drove the somewhat drunk Annabeth and Olympia to their hotel and got invited to The Dirty Archaeologist show. Helen is still wondering if there is something between Pat and with her. Chapter 19: Helen and Pat are getting for the interview on The Dirty Archaeologist. Then she narrates about the Huntington Library grounds being used for movie sets on numerous occasions. Sometimes it was an inconvenience for the residents of Pasadena. Meanwhile Sarah was trying for Pat’s attention and also for kudos from the Library Board of Directors Melanie Martin was hanging around as well. Helen was with the inner circle and had to explain what they did the day before and gave out copies of it to Pat and others. Annabeth was great on camera but Pat was not – came across as too stiff and lacking energy. Olympia asked Helen to talk with him and she did that. She old Pat to be less fact laden and tell Annabeth the story of Troy and the Schliemann’s like he told her. Pat did that and was good on the camera. He then announced on camera that he had received permission to visit the Pushkin Museum in Moscow to find out more about Priam’s Treasure. Helen was not happy, as he was leaving in 5 days. Was he leaving Pasadena for good? After Moscow it was Troy but maybe no return to Pasadena. Later at the craft services table Helen was stressed out over Pat’s leaving. But she did congratulate him on his upcoming trip to Moscow and she would be available until the contract for her job expired. He asked Helen if she was going to return to grad school and she told him that she was not interested – she has her son to take care of and a somewhat precarious financial position. Later at the Team Room in the Huntington Library there was a post shooting celebration. Sarah White was tipsy and Helen was too tired to join in. Candy then tells her that Olympia and Annabeth want to announce their relationship in an exclusive with Candy in her candysdish.com column and that would put it on the map. Helen told her that she was perfect for the announcement. When the part is over Helen and Pat talk in the parking lot and Helen was taking home goodies from the food table. Patrick thanked her for all that she did for him. Then she headed home. On the morning before the Benefit in chapter 20, Helen headed to Stephen Stephens, a very upscale beauty salon in Pasadena. Her appointment was with Sammi, but this will be her last time there. With the poor shape of her finances, she can no longer afford a $300 appointment, and this visit was only possible because Olympia and Annabeth gave her a gift card in appreciation for her work on the show. Helen told us about some of the other moms there with her, like Sonia Michelson who is in charge of the music for the Benefit; Nancy and Neici, a pair of twins from a food industry family who were in charge of the food. The Olympia - Annabeth story broke thanks to Candy’s interview with the two lovers and now she is on the talk show circuit. Her interview with the two ladies also brought a lot of traffic to candysdish.com. Once Helen sat in the chair at Sammi’s station she started to think about the events of the past few days. She also has to find a way to tell Sammi that this is her last time there. Helen also had her hair dyed and Rinda, Sammi’s assistant, helped out. A couple of days ago there was the Scholar’s Lecture and Pat was the guest, presenting his research to a very enthusiastic crowd, from the material used on The Dirty Archaeologist. Helen provided moral support to him. Then she thought about her meeting up with Cissy Montague (the pool moving lady) who had manned the refreshments table tuning the Lecture. They talked about going back to graduate school, but Helen cannot do it now. Mitsy also was at the Lecture and spoke with Pat since she really wanted to meet him. When the hair work was done, she left the salon and ran into Jennifer Barnham, who replaced her on the Benefit Committee. Jennifer was able to get some great people to come and fill the tables. She tells Helen that the big auction item was a two week stay with Pat at Troy and Mycenae. Melanie must have been the one to persuade Pat to offer it as a prize. When Helen gets home Tran the letter carrier had a large envelope for Aiden from the Los Angeles County High School for the Performing Arts. Tran told Helen that his son Bernard applied to that school and despite being a violinist, was not accepted. But he did get into Raleigh. Aiden had done a skit from Romeo & Juliet with Lydia as his audition piece. Aiden had worked with Nell who signed the paperwork instead of Helen so as to keep this from her. When she found out she was not pleased. But Aiden got accepted on his own so she is very pleased with that. They still have five days to decide. But how will he commute? They do plan to visit the Performing Arts High School. Later on in the evening Mrs. Gamble came by to pick up Aiden so he could stay at her house while Helen is at the Benefit. Then Tina arrived with the dress for Helen and it turns out that she looks quite good in it. Tina also asked Helen if she had ever scored with Patrick (she hadn’t). Helen was still in mourning after Merritt’s death and she had been out of circulation for almost 25 years. Chapter 21 is the night of the Five Schools Benefit. She first stops at the wine bar – In Vino Veritas for some wine and getting together with the Gambles, Pat, and some other friends. Here is when Pat called her “Helen of Pasadena” as a play on words and reference to Helen of Troy. He gave her a nice jeweled cuff, like the one in Priam’s Treasure. It was to show her his gratitude for all of her work that she did for him. It turns out that Ted Gamble and Pat formed a friendship and a business alliance - Ted is on the Board of Directors of Pat’s foundation and will finance his research. Helen tells Pat about the people in Pasadena, as they are not what they seem to be at first glance. Then everyone leaves for the Huntington Library where the Benefit is taking place. The grounds were made to look like Ancient Troy, including a Trojan Horse lent to them by a movie studio. Several media outlets were on hand, including the L.A. Times and Entertainment Tonight. Sarah White tells Pat to mention the Huntington when he speaks later since all of the media outlets are there. Helen got a chance to talk with Candy who was there since she would be writing in candysdish.com. Candy complimented her on the rental dress. Helen had tried to avoid gossip about Pat and her. Soon Sarah tells her how and when to present Patrick – at 9:08 for a certain number of minutes on stage. Helen told us that it was torture to be around the people form her married life – Merritt’s family, the Millington moms, water polo dads, Billy Owens, and Mikki & Mimi. These people collided with the people in her widowhood life – Patrick, Team Aphrodite, and the Huntington Director. So she is stuck in between two crowds. But the people from her married life kept grilling her. Luckily, Jennifer Barnham appeared and prodded her to talk Pat backstage, where Melanie was sniping at the auctioneer and the stage manager. The weatherman who was supposed to be the MC did not make it so Rochelle was chosen to take his place. Helen gave Pat a card with he names of the people whose names he was supposed to read off. Melanie then introduced Rochelle to pat and also to Helen but Helen told her that she and Rochelle had met before. Helen did regain her composure after the introduction and after Pat’s speech. Helen will survive Rochelle like she did the other crises after Merritt’s death. Now the auction has started. But Melanie was told to halt the bidding after a short while, because an anonymous bidder put up $250,000 for the Treasures of Troy and the Glories of Greece (the two weeks with Patrick on his research). Naturally, everyone jumped for joy. Finally Mitsy Fairchild stood up to say that she was the one who made the bid. Then she and her daughters Mikki & Mimi went up onto the stage and it turns out that it was all scripted. Mitsy won the two weeks with Pat thanks to her bid. Pat and Helen leave the Benefit at the start of chapter 22 and go to his suite at the Langham Hotel, where they order room service. Helen was angry that Mitsy could spend $250,000 on a bid to help people she does not know but wouldn’t help fund Aiden’s education. Now she wants to get out of that dress and Pat helped her at first and then she was able to finish it herself and change into sweatpants and a nubby sweater. She talked with Pat about her life since Merritt was killed, and worried to herself that she would become a woman with no man, no house and no job. But meeting Pat changed her as he was impressed by her unexpected story. He then invited her to spend the night with him and soon he started some foreplay. And it looks like they really wanted each other. So it looks like he scored with Helen. Later in the morning he went off on a run. Helen realized that Patrick was leaving Pasadena on Tuesday but both of their lives would go on. When Pat returned from his run Helen was sitting on the balcony, and she had checked text messages from Rita, Candy and Tina. There would be a brunch at the Langham’s restaurant and people form the Benefit would be there. She said that Patrick would be integrated into Pasadena if he recognized anyone from the Benefit. He explained about living in Athens and Troy and the large amount of travelling that he does. She realized that her life is not too relationship friendly either. She cannot integrate him into her life in Pasadena because his departure would hurt even more now. They agreed that the timing of their meeting was not the best. But it looks like he scored with her one more time. Then Helen went back to her house and saw that Annabeth called her twice. Aiden was studying since school would be out soon. Her calendar is pretty full over the next few weeks – Pat’s departure, artwork being auctioned, Aiden graduates Millington, and then close on the Sunset Street house (?). This house would be perfect for Aiden and her. Rita told her to make an offer because it may not be another “forever” house but it’s perfect for now. Later on she went to Pat’s suite at the Langham to see him off but she learned that he was gone and she was furious. Pat left her a note saying that he wanted to stop in London to see his daughter. But he also left her a bag with the scented nubby sweater. She cried. At the start of chapter 23 Helen, Tina & Candy are walking around the Rose Bowl and talking about vacations, and then schools for their kids. Tina also started on a new career as a lawyer/life coach. Helen tells her friends that Olympia and Annabeth offered her the position as Executive Producer of The Dirty Archaeologist show because she proved her worth and skills while she was a research assistant for Pat and knew how to get things done. Her office was in Burbank and not in Pasadena. Annabeth and Olympia wanted Helen to go to Troy to follow up with Pat, especially about the visit to the museum and Priam’s Treasure. But she didn’t want to see Pat again at first since it would be too awkward. She is still in grief therapy and also had Aiden stay with her parents in Oregon. Candy and Tina tell her to go to Troy. Later on Sarah White and Helen run into each other and Sarah fills her in about what has been taking place at the Huntington: Meanie is the new Director of Development and there is a new Distinguished Scholar by the name of Milton Westbrook. Milton is a professor of Lithographic History and Ephemera, especially from the 19th century. Sarah is hooked on him, so maybe this will be hew new guy. Sarah also told Helen that everyone felt that Part and Helen made a good couple, She also told her that Pat told Sarah that Helen broke it off. Also that Pat’s daughter had meningitis and was hospitalized and that is why he left a day earlier. Sarah also told her that it was Helen who said that the timing was off. Helen thought that that was what Patrick wanted to hear. Helen was later at home in her new downsized bungalow with only one A/C unit, in the window. So it’s hot and to keep cool she took a lot of cold shower and dress as scantily as custom would allow. One day Mitsy came by to visit. Helen related that she and Mitsy did get through social events over the last several months like Mother’s & Father’s Day and Aiden’s graduation. Mitsy was not too keen on Aiden’s going to Los Angeles County for the Performing Arts. She did bring over the prize from the auction that she won and told her that the tickets were for Aiden and her. Mitsy wanted to do something for the kinds of Pasadena so that is why she had bid $250 grand. Mitsy also told her that she knew what Merritt had done to her and how Helen cleaned it up. She also wanted Helen to get up when she was down after Merritt’s death and his infidelity and do it on her own. She did not want Helen to do the same thing that she did when Merritt’s father died and sit and mope. She commended Helen for bouncing back and moving on with the job, new house and a new environment for Aiden. And Helen finally won Mitsy’s approval. She told Helen that when Merritt’s father died, he learned to cope but not with honor. So Mitsy wanted Helen and Aiden to go on the trip to troy. She ended the visit by inviting them to her club’s Lobster Cookout on Labor Day. Helen and Pat later exchange e-mails She first tells him about why Mitsy bid for the two tickets. And she learned about his daughter’s illness. Pat replied and told her the Gambles are coning to Troy and the 4 of them should coordinate the visit. It turns out that Helen will arrive on August 7th and the Gambles and Aiden will arrive 5 days later. At the start of chapter 24 Helen arrived in Turkey and is on a boat crossing the Dardanelles to the site of Troy and is a bit seasick. But she was thinking about the history there, from the Trojan War to when the Schliemann’s arrived in the 19th century. But she was getting nervous thinking about Pat and being alone with him for 5 days. She also realized what a difference a year made. Once she got onto dry land she headed to Pat’s tent and he is happy to see her and he will spend time with her. After her shower she thought about the pull of history at this site from Helen of Troy to Sophia Schliemann. Then she and Pat talked about the day Helen told Pat that the timing was off. Pat told her that he could not offer a traditional life. But he did want her to be part of his life and make it work. Soon Helen puts her scarf into her pocket and Pat puts it around her neck and they go off together.
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