It is October and the League Championship Series are in (yes) full swing. The Astros took the Red Sox 5 to 4 in Game 1 of the ALCS and meet again today. The Braves meet the Dodgers this evening. If you’ve followed the game for 50 some-odd years like me, as you enjoy today’s games, you will surely note that it was today, October 16, that the Mets won the 1969 World Series.

The expansion Mets had never previously had a winning season and became the Amazin’ Mets by simply making it to the World Series. They were up agains the world-class Orioles and the likes of Frank and Brooks Robinson, and pitchers like Jim Palmer and Jerry Koosman. The Mets, managed by the great Gil Hodges, had future greats with now familiar names like Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan, whose appearance in Game 3 was his only World Series game in 27 years pitching.

When the season started in April, the Mets had a 100 to 1 chance of winning the World Series. Tom Hanks may have said there’s no crying in baseball, but now and then there are miracles. Looking back on my life not that long ago, that serendipity inspired this little piece, that seems appropriate to share today.

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As best as I can determine, John Lennon’s Imagine was released in the US on this date in 1971, fifty years ago today. At any rate, it has been half a century and is still beloved by old and young.

The best of any art, even a popular song, ages well, and this is a perfect example. It’s a simple tune and impossible to forget. I’d repeat the lyrics, but I imagine you know them by heart.

If you really consider what it says – no country, religion or possessions – many would pause at all it proposes, but it does challenge you to imagine this world being a better place. I so hope we can all agree on that.

In the fifty years now passed, we ended one war and eventually embarked on what became our nation’s longest. If we’ve learned anything, it should be that if wars could ever be won, they certainly cannot any more. Perhaps we are finally learning that wishful thinking that the climate will take care of itself is too little and perhaps too late.

I could go on, but imagine what we could do if we learned to live as one.

Imagine.

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Pandemics have plagued (yes) humanity since perhaps before recorded history, although history records its first in the reign of Justinian in 541 CE, later confirmed to be the same bacterium that caused the Black Death or Bubonic Plague of the Middle Ages.

The deadliest of modern times was the 1918 Influenza, which killed an estimated 675,000 in the US and perhaps 50 million worldwide. I posted a note about that flu in March of 2020, as the reality of COVID 19 began to emerge. Even with modern testing, COVID’s toll is necessarily an educated guess, but it has killed at least 4,739,231 worldwide as of today and counting. In the US it has now killed 687,096, more than the 1918 flu, and growing at a current pace of about 2000 daily deaths.

Some point to the Delta variant as the reason that COVID remains with us at the levels we suffer, and certainly the disease has grown more contagious and perhaps more deadly, but this also happened in 1918-19 as the flu circled the earth twice. That argument, however, overlooks that COVID has killed a vastly higher percentage of Americans than worldwide: far less than 1% of the world, by my calculations one in about 1600 worldwide, yet over 1 in 500 here. One would hope that our costly medical resources would have made us safer than elsewhere, and they may have helped, but have been overcome by whatever has led so many to live in, and too often die from, vaccine denialism. One’s odds of dying from COVID are now substantially greater than a pedestrian crossing the street, and probably much more among the unvaccinated.

I find it tempting to rail against those who endanger themselves and the vaccinated by refusing to take two shots but being willing to take untested remedies such as horse dewormers. Many of the unvaccinated deny natural selection, but somehow have chosen to risk the Darwinism of herd immunity, even at the risk of their own lives and those they love. They render aid to the first horseman of the Apocalypse, riding his white horse and spreading pestilence upon the world.

When all is said and too little done, will enough be left to speak the last words of regret and of woe?

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“Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

Dante Alleghieri

Seven hundred years ago today, Dante Alleghieri died in exile, having long before been banned from Florence, a living purgatory that ironically gifted generations with his Divine Comedy, consisting of the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradisio, written during his exile and completed a year before his death.

The work begins with Dante’s descent and travels through the nine layers of Hell, guided by the poet Virgil. Throughout his Inferno, Dante exacts revenge upon his critics, by reciting their tortures as he meets them in Hell, poetic justice in its truest form. This name dropping, no doubt entertained readers in his times, but this book and the remainder of his masterpiece are still enjoyed today. Apart from the breadth of his imagination, his work broke new ground by being written in the Tuscan Italian of the time, and not Latin, which was then read by the educated classes. This choice helped cement and broadened the use of the language, much as the King James Bible did with English.

Dante also used a new poetic form, iambic terza rima using three rhyming stanzas (aba bcb cdc, etc.), later used by Boccaccio and Petrarch, the other two most beloved of Italian poets.

I can’t say which of his three destinations Dante entered seven hundred years ago, but somehow I suspect that Virgil was there to greet him.

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Some weeks after 9/11, I went to New York for business and made my way down to the wreckage of the World Trade Center, which was still in embers. I had a poignant experience at a church two blocks away that it seems appropriate to share today.

May your remembrance bring you closer to those you love today.

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When I wake tomorrow, it will be to another bright and clear, early-Fall morning, as it is apt to be in New York Washington and Pennsylvania, just as it was on September 11 in 2001. I was at work in Atlanta that morning and happened by a crowded, but mute, conference room watching images from the twin World Trade Center towers as they burned and then crumbled. Much of my work in that era dealt with disaster contingency planning, but we had never imagined a day like that.

Needing something to do other than to watch endless repeats of the second plane implode, I went home to be with my children, knowing they would see these images and would need what comfort and understanding I could offer. As I sat with them, I thought that that day would change everything for them and our country, and that perhaps the new Millennium might have actually begun that day.

I expected that the attacks of the day would galvanize and unite what was even then a badly fractured nation, as Pearl Harbor had once done. As we all now know, our reaction was turned from targeted response to what we seem to do best, making massive attacks and invasions at targets with too little relation to the attacks. The chance to forge national unity seemed squandered, at least to me.

As the years have passed, the less-than-half truth of Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction devolved into out-and-out lies in the news and social media, accepted by too many because they wanted, or perhaps needed, something to believe in. It seemed, and does now more than ever, that the more outrageous a claim the more it is deemed by some an article of faith and shared identity among those who have fallen behind in changing times, an irrational desire to tear it all down, rather than accept truth and work together for a better future. Instead a vocal minority have tried to stop the constitutional process and put themselves and others at grave risk by refusing vaccines. Such steps beg the question, “Did Bin Laden in some perverse way actually win?” The question is, of course, rhetorical but worth some introspective thought. As for me, the answer is a resounding “NO,” and I hope you agree.

In times like now in which billionaires compete to be the first in space, rather than build libraries like Andrew Carnegie, I find myself jaded even me more than a bit, and yet, even after all the failures of this Millennium, I have to believe that Lincoln’s call to the “better angels of our nature” can still ring true. We embrace dissent, but we are too great a people to be brought down by wrong ideas, even when acted on by the misguided.

Much has been written and more will be tomorrow about September 11 and the ensuing two decades, and should be, as we share our journey and seek answers. When all is said and done, I hope we still see those two towers of light and all we can still be.

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Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak from 1941 stands still today, 80 years later, and is certainly sure to stand this season, what with the game’s overall batting average around 240, a 50-year low. Pete Rose reached 44 games in 1978, but fell to Atlanta’s Phil Niekro and Gene Garber, who Rose said pitched like it was game seven of the World Series, despite the Red’s 16-4 lead. In the Modern Era of baseball, no one has come close.

In what qualifies as old news to perhaps every fan but me, The New York Times published an article today about MLB’s now 20-year old game, Beat the Streak:

The contest (with a 5.6 Million Dollar prize), let’s you pick any two hitters each day, but no one has beaten DiMaggio’s streak, though three have reached 51. Of course, DiMaggio was hitting 408 at the time, an average no one has come close to in those 20 years, so….

DiMaggio’s streak ended on July 17 against Cleveland. His last at bat that day came with the bases loaded. Cleveland’s shortstop, Lou Boudreau, fielded a short hop and turned a double play to end The Streak.

A few years ago, I wrote a poem of sorts upon the death of Joe DiMaggio. It seems fitting to share today:

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As the second act of the pandemic takes the stage and the debate rages on over denial versus ever-unfolding science, it may seem there is nothing we can agree on anymore. Last evening though offered a moment of wonder and joy that surely we all shared.

As the sun set on a diamond carved out of an Iowa cornfield, the White Sox and Yankees walked out of the stalks in centerfield wearing uniforms from 100 years ago to play a game before a small but fortunate crowd of appreciative fans.

Sure, it was not the Field of Dreams film set, but another cut to the dimensions of Comiskey Field and separated from it by a corn maze, and yet it was real baseball played at its best by teams that seemed to appreciate the setting and who rose to the occasion. If you believe in the “church of baseball,” as Susan Sarandon soliloquized in Bull Durham, that space last night was holy ground.

There are game highlights all over Youtube that share the experience and New York Times piece that describes the real life Hollywood ending, a walkoff homer by Tim Anderson to lift the White Sox to victory and perhaps a long overdue moment of redemption. If you still are hungry for more, watch the movie again and marvel. It was made for under $15 million and opened in just four theaters. Its magic drew crowds and soon it was not just a hit, but a beloved classic.

Money and metrics may weigh the game down, but there is still magic there to be found.

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The 28th Modern Olympic Games begins this week, having been delayed a year by the pandemic. For the athletes it has been a long wait, but the IOC and Tokyo’s decision to go forward could prove troublesome, given the limited vaccination rate to date in Japan and through much of the world.

I had the good fortune to have an inside view of the Barcelona and Atlanta Games, at least as to the Yachting (now Sailing) events. The athletes and volunteer officials that I knew appreciated their chance to be a part of the pinnacle of their sport and seemed to embody the “Faster, Higher, Stronger” motto of the Games. Many may have been the best in their country, but were far from the sport’s elite. Despite that difference, the best and the rest competed equally and respectfully from all I could see.

In the 25 years since the Atlanta Games, the IOC and related sports federations have suffered from the growing need for, and the corrupting effects of, the enormous amount of money it takes to put on more than 400 events in an ever-increasing number of sports. Many have suggested solutions which the New York Times reviewed today.

One thing television gets right with the Games is its focus on athletes and the competition. What isn’t shown is how much of Olympic attention and funding goes toward pleasing sports and other dignitaries as well as the media. Athletes’ facilities paled in comparison to theirs in my time, and I’m sure the same is sadly still true today.

The Atlanta Games were marred by the park bombing on July 27. The next morning my first task at the Savannah Yachting venue was to make sure every athlete’s and official’s boat was checked for any such risk. Like others at each venue, I did my job to assure the safety of the athletes who had dedicated so much of their lives to compete there.

Forty-five years ago today, a 14 year-old Nadia Comaneci scored the first perfect 10 in Women’s Gymnastics, to the thrill of all who watched. It as a magical moment. Certainly the Olympics needs to reform. Still, we can hope for more magic in the coming days.

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I wanted to note this morning that the steeple on London’s Cathedral of St. Paul’s burned on this day in 1561 after being struck by lightning. It was never rebuilt, which struck me (sorry) as a particularly appropriate decision. After all, if God preferred his house without a belfry, the truly devout would surely take his demonstrative hint.

But then I found an incongruous bit of history that intrigued me more. On June 4, 1411, King Charles VI granted a monopoly to the town of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon for the ripening of Roquefort cheese. The history of their cheese making by ripening in caves dates from time immemorial, so what King Charles thought he was bestowing seems presumptive in the extreme. I suppose his grant precluded others from claiming to make that unique flavor of sheep’s milk cheese, which interestingly is still limited under trademark law to this particular area, even though the demand long ago exceeded what could actually be processed in caves.

The Greeks deemed the art of cheesemaking to be a gift of Aristaeus, the god of shepherding, though it found its way into cultures throughout the world. At some point, I ran across a somewhat silly quote on the subject of cheese, which cultured in its own way into a little poem, which I thought I’d share:

Ode to Cheese

The poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese 

Gilbert K. Chesterton 

So much of what mankind has come to cherish 

we first found when things turned bad  

grapes into wine – malt beer – old bananas to bread 

and perhaps even the eternal fruitcake

But above all these we must praise the creation of cheese

the gift of Aristaeus whose alchemy turned soured curds

into aromatic edibles enjoyed wherever creatures yield milk

with each land’s method duly prized as best above all

Cheddar – Gruyere – Danish blue – Greece’s feta

Stilton – Camembert and even Stinking Bishop

the names roll on the tongue as easily as their tastes

all essences as diverse and divine as its tasters

All cheeses aged to essence to form the perfect

appetizer hors d’oeuvre lasagna or dessert

What would we make of chips without queso

Norway without fondue or macaroni without its Velveeta?

I suppose it is true that poets have been strangely silent

on the subject of cheese in all its creamy flavors

but that is because they have been too busy savoring it and in fact

I hear the faint cry of ham and rye calling for some Swiss even now

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