Rita and I are now at Day 14 of our…
Self-Isolation? Self-Quarantine? Social Distancing on Steroids. Shelter-in-Place. Chris Shanklin sent another idea from Naples (Florida, not Italy). House Arrest.
As of March 24, Mayor Quinton Lucas defined our current legal status. He issued a “Stay-At-Home” order for Kansas City and was joined by the surrounding counties.
It is also Day 14 for me not shaving. Scruffy.
Day 8, March 24 (Tuesday): Day 8 for Rita and me. Day 1 under Stay-At-Home. We were already within the guidelines, not having left our condo except for grocery shopping and exercise walks.
Rita attended a yoga session today via her Zoom class. Other than that, it was reading, writing, housework, laundry and cooking meals. I was not as active as Rita in some of those. Caught up with some TV. Loving Season 5 of Better Call Saul. In HBO’s The Plot Against America, Episode 2 ended with Lindbergh beating FDR in the 1940 election.
Kansas City Star sportswriter Vahe Gregorian tweeted his idea for a theme song for Day 1 of the Stay-at-Home order. It was “Stay,”, and he linked a live version of the song by Jackson Browne, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty. I like Vahe’s choice of song, but I would have picked a different (older) version. Showing my age, as will be seen as this story continues in Lonnie’s Jukebox below.
David Von Drehle: Today, I learned that I personally know someone who likely has COVID-19. I got the news from a column in the Washington Post, headlined “I probably have a “mild or moderate’ case of COVID-19. I don’t think I could survive worse.” The author was David Von Drehle, a Post columnist based in Kansas City.
I met David when our mutual friend Adam Sachs lured us to join the Monarchs Club, a booster club for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum. This led to David being a Hot Stover, and he has made contributions to a couple of posts. We also cross paths at Truman Library Institute events where he often leads conversations with historians and dignitaries. Below, David with Congressmen John Lewis and James Clyburn at a 2017 Truman event.
David wrote his COVID-19 column while ill: “It’s going to be a race now to see whether I can finish this column before I pass out. Writing even this much has been the most taxing thing I’ve done in a week, since I finished my last column in a delirium.” Please read his moving column (click here; might be a paywall; it was reprinted in yesterday’s KC Star).
David followed up with a column three days later (click here), headlined “What the gift of this unpleasant infection has helped me understand.” An excerpt:
“My weakness is my community’s strength. The less I am good for, the more magnificent my family and friends become…I am surviving the virus but not spreading it. Some of us are chosen to suffer, some to console; some to isolate, others to plunge into the fray; some to give, some to receive; some to be broken, others to be healers…We need to respect it and give it the fullness of time…But joy comes in the morning. Joy comes with the breaking of fevers and easing of fears. Joy comes with the battles won or bravely lost. With the sacrifice of self to the service of others, joy comes. We won’t be the same country that awakens from this illness, but I believe we can be a stronger country, with a greater appreciation for the parts we each play in the only community we’ve got.”
Get well soon David.
Satchel Paige: Joe Posnanski’s countdown of the Baseball 100 is moving by three a week – on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. This week’s Monday choice was #10. Satchel Paige.
Joe’s essay on Satch begins with this…
“Let’s take a moment at the start to appreciate the sheer unlikeliness, the fantastic improbability, the pure impossibility of Satchel Paige. He is not like any other ballplayer, not even Babe Ruth. He is closer to the American folk heroes, fictional and non, closer to Johnny Appleseed and Harry Houdini and Marilyn Monroe and Casey Jones and Muhammad Ali and Paul Bunyan and Calamity Jane and Huck Finn.”
Joe then tells several colorful Satch stories, many having been recounted to him by Buck O’Neil while Joe was working on his book about Buck (The Soul of Baseball). Satch was a legendary pitcher and a true celebrity. Posnanski concludes that the key component of Satch’s greatness was his impeccable control. Satch thought it was natural: “A musician is born with music. A pitcher is born a pitcher.”
“‘How do you do it?’ he was asked many times about that control, and he always shrugged. Of all the extraordinary things he did in his life, working up through poverty and racism and becoming a legend, throwing strikes seemed to be the easiest part of all.”
“’Home plate don’t move,’ he said.”
Day 9, March 25 (Wednesday): One of the first tweets I see in the morning is that Jackson Browne has tested positive for Coronavirus. I had just listened to him yesterday as noted above. Three days later, he released a song that is scheduled to come out on his next album. He decided to release it early because of its message of uncertainty. Although written before COVID-19, he saw parallels. His song was inspired by the current generation, such as the Parkland students and Greta Thunberg, who are vocal in their attempts to save the planet. “I wanna see you holding out your light/I wanna see you light the way/But everything will be alright/It’s just a little soon to say.” Listen to it here: “A Little Soon to Say.”
I joined Rita in her Zoom yoga class. We later walked Loose Park where she modeled a llama shirt, a recent gift from Diana Brewer. Yes, there is a story that goes with this.
Over the last 20-plus years, we have owned a series of large inflatable penguins – just one at a time, but they tend to leak and need replacement. We don’t have a live pet, so “Willie” is our substitute. One version of Willie was kidnapped by “friends” who sent photos of Willie from many places, including Mexico and a cruise ship. After several months in captivity, he was released and showed up on our doorstep on New Year’s Eve of 1999. Rita carried this over to acquiring penguin-themed items – napkins, tee shirts, jewelry, etc. We got so many penguin Christmas ornaments as gifts that we had to ask people to stop. We also did the ultimate – walked with real penguins in Antarctica in 2008.
Now Rita has found a new animal friend. The llama. It started innocently in 2004 during our Machu Picchu trip when she tipped a woman to get a photo with a llama.
The llama interest resurfaced last December when Rita bought a 2020 calendar with llama photos. That reminded her of the old photo which she found, framed and hung next to the calendar. Then came the napkins. A dishtowel. Friends sending news, videos and cartoons with llamas. For her yoga sessions that end with the traditional “namaste” – she got a tee shirt that says “llamaste” and depicts a seated llama.
Rita also purchased a stuffed llama and named it Dolly (get it, Dalai Lama). Dolly joined Willie in our condo for a few weeks, but was then gifted to great-grandchild Dominic on his second birthday. Goodbye Dolly.
That leads back to the tee shirt that Diana gave Rita. That was nice of her. But now it’s time to stop. Especially no llama tree ornaments. Our storage locker is already full with penguins.
In what is likely an uncommon segue, let’s move from llamas to baseball. Specifically, to #9 on Posnanski’s Baseball 100 – “Stan the Man” Musial.
When I speak with Cardinal fans, there is a universal reverence for Stan Musial. Even those who did not see him play feel this way – they got it from their fathers. Musial was the biggest star for baseball radio listeners for a huge part of the country before the days of expansion and relocation.
In Posnanski’s essay, I was reminded of one of my favorite bits of Musial trivia. Two of the greatest left-handed-hitting, left-handed-throwing players were born in Donora, PA, on November 21. Stan Musial (1920) and Ken Griffey, Jr. (1969).
Musial had astounding batting stats in his 22 years, but the one that almost always gets mentioned is just a coincidence (or proof of his consistency) – he had 1,815 hits at home and 1,815 hits on the road.
Some of the best parts of Joe’s essay are comments from the baseball world. Here are three: “I had success against Musial by throwing my best pitch and backing up third,” Carl Erskine said. “There is only one way to pitch Musial, Leo Durocher said. “Under the plate.” In a meeting of AL pitchers and catchers before an All-Star Game, there was a long discussion about pitching strategy for Musial. Yogi Berra said disgustedly: “You guys are trying to stop Musial in 15 minutes when the National League ain’t stopped him in 15 years.” Below, Yogi and Stan with Joe Garagiola.
A pitch for The Athletic: First to you Cardinal fans. If you want to read the excellent Musial essay, you will find that it is behind a paywall. But the good news is that new subscribers can get discounts and free trial periods (click here). For sports fans of all teams (and all major sports, pro and college), I highly recommend you also give it a try.
Day 10 – March 26 (Thursday): We are quickly going through dishwasher tabs and coffee beans.
Opening Day: But for COVID-19, the Royals would have opened the season today in Chicago (49 degrees and raining). Whit Merrifield: “Whenever it’s safe to play, we’ll be back. Our fans will be back. Our players will be back. And we will be part of the recovery, the healing in this country, from this particular pandemic.”
Sportswriter Tyler Kepner of the NYT started a column with a Rogers Hornsby story. When asked what he did in the off-season, Hall of Famer Hornsby said “I stare out the window and wait for spring.” Kepner also quotes Seinfeld’s George Costanza, a fictional Yankee executive: “Spring! Rejuvenation! Rebirth! Everything’s blooming and all that crap!” But the blooming is delayed this season. Kepner notes that the return of baseball this year will be “[A] powerful signal that we can all resume our comfortable routines. No other sport serves as such a daily companion for its fans: at the ballpark, on TV, radio or smartphone, even just somewhere in the background…We need baseball out there beyond our windows. Until it returns, we are all Rogers Hornsby.”
Opening Day Substitute: The predicted rain and clouds in KC did not materialize, so we went for another walk. Loose Park has become crowded, so we took a different route that got us to the Nelson Gallery. It was very quiet and perfect for social distancing. The only others we encountered in the winding pathways of the sculpture park were the Henry Moore statues. Below, Rita keeping her social distance from the crowd in “Rush Hour” (by George Segal).
Message of the day from baseball stats guru Bill James:
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Day 11 – March 27 (Friday): Today brings yoga and an exercise walk up to Westport. Lots of reading. Another episode of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
Posnanski released his next player in the countdown. Ty Cobb is #8.
A brilliant and fierce (some would say vile) ballplayer. Some excerpts from Joe’s essay in The Athletic:
“[Cobb] retired with a .367 batting average…and it is not just a record that will never be touched, it is an absurdity. Nobody has hit .367 in a season in 15 years…He was not just the dominant player of Deadball. He was the only player of Deadball who mattered. He determined exactly how the game was to be played, how the bases were to be run, how a batter was to swing, how a ballplayer was to compete, and all anyone else could do was follow.”
‘Cobb is a prick,’ Babe Ruth said. ‘But he sure can hit. God Almighty, that man can hit.’
‘The greatest of all ballplayers,’ Ernest Hemingway called him in a letter to Lillian Ross. ‘And an absolute shit.’”
In Stay-At-Home legal news: Hollis Hanover, my friend since law school, is a mediator. He has been forced to work remotely before a camera for his multi-party meetings. Makes for an interesting dress code.
Day 12 – March 28 (Saturday): No yoga on the weekend. For the third day in a row, we took a new route for our exercise walk – this time over to Stowers Institute and back through Volker Park.
This is part of the long weekend that would have seen the Sweet 16 of March Madness reduced first to the Elite Eight and then the Final Four. If only.
The April edition of Sports Illustrated came in the mail. An empty stadium. Could be titled “Baseball in the Time of a Stay-At-Home Order.”
Day 13 – March 29 (Sunday): Sunday NY Times, CBS Sunday Morning and a pot of coffee. Another nice day, so we walked again. This time over to the Westwood area (Missouri side), our neighborhood before moving to condo life. Be assured, the next Hot Stove will drop this day-to-day banter – we’ve now walked in every direction from the Plaza.
I ran across a good read about living in isolation. From astronaut Scott Kelly who spent almost a year in space. Click here.
I don’t listen to much sports radio, but I thought this tweet from Bob Fescoe of 610 Sports added some good perspective:
“We waited 30 years to win a World Series. 50 years to win a Super Bowl. We can wait 30 days to save lives.”
Lonnie’s Jukebox – Gregorian Chants: Not really chants. Actually selections by Vahe Gregorian who is tweeting daily theme songs for KC’s Stay-At-Home order. Just click on the song title to play the music.
Day One (March 24): Vahe’s choice has a direct word-link to the Stay-At-Home order. It is “Stay”, a song covered by many artists since it first hit the charts six decades ago. The version linked in Vahe’s tweet is a performance by Jackson Browne, Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen at the 1979 No Nukes concert (below). The year before, Jackson Browne had taken the song to #20 – it was a track on his monster 1977 album Running on Empty.
For those of us who grew up on rock ‘n’ roll in the 50s and 60s, our pick would be the original by the guy who wrote the song, Maurice Williams. His doo-wop version with the Zodiacs went to #1 in 1960. It is the shortest #1 song in chart history (96 seconds). Listen to his “Stay” here. In 1963, the Hollies and the Four Seasons also recorded popular covers. There is a fun Williams interview on YouTube on how he came up with the lyrics (click here).
[Maurice Williams Trivia: In 1957, Williams was a member of the Gladiolas, an earlier name for the Zodiacs. The group released a song written by Williams, “Little Darlin’,” which went to #11 on the R&B chart. A cover by a white Canadian group, the Diamonds, took it all the way to #2 on the pop chart. Many years later, the Diamonds were doing a show and were joined on stage by Williams (see that “Little Darlin’” here).
[No Nukes Concert Trivia: Nicolette Larson grew up in Kansas City, Kansas. She had a hit in 1978 with Neil Young’s “Lotta Love,” which she performed at the concert with the Doobie Brothers. She died too young (45).]
Day Two: Vahe tweeted that he was going off-theme for a day, inspired in part by Satchel Paige’s plans for staying young – “keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move.” Vahe wrote a column the prior week about Bob Kendrick and the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and so had Satchel on his mind. The pick is “Sugar, Sugar” by The Archies, a fictional band featured in the animated TV series. The group of session musicians assembled by Don Kirshner produced a hit that held the #1 spot for four weeks in 1969.
Day Three: “You Can Look But You Better Not Touch” by Bruce Springsteen. The title says it all.
Day Four: “The Waiting” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Very apt lyrics:
The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part
Day Five: “Not Fade Away” by Buddy Holly. Vahe was tempted to pick the covers by Springsteen and the Stones, but went with the original. I was glad he did. Buddy is on my Mount Rushmore of rock ‘n’ roll along with Fats Domino, Chuck Berry and Little Richard.
Day Six: “In Your Time” by Bob Seger. The closing lyrics:
There’ll be peace
Across the great unbroken void
All benign
In your time
You’ll be fine
In your time
I can’t play Bob Seger without adding my favorite of his. You can probably guess. “I reminisce about the days of old…The kind of music that soothes the soul.” “Old Time Rock & Roll.”
Day Seven: “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” by Rosanne Cash, Mary Chapin Carpenter and Shawn Colvin (singing at the Bob Dylan 30th anniversary concert). I’m assuming “nowhere” is like “stay” – you can still go out for groceries and take exercise walks.
The song was written by Bob Dylan, but the first released version was by The Byrds who took it to #74 in 1968 (listen to that one here).
The Byrds also sang a song that gives hope as we wait out the virus – “ to everything, there is a season” – “Turn, Turn, Turn.”
Thanks for the music Vahe.
In closing, llamaste.
