Review of Scott Berg's WILSON: A Man Who Put Country First

You cannot help but be moved by Scott Bergs 743 page biography of Woodrow Wilson. His fight for what was right is almost unbelievable by today's standards. The man never did one thing for himself that did not put the country first. Even when he was out of office when most people cash in on their position Wilson walked from millions of dollars because they smacked of using his office for personal benefit. And Woodrow Wilson was not a rich man during a time when there was no Presidential pension. In fact he considered going back to work because he needed the money.

But the heroism of Wilson will break your heart as he led the nation to victory in World War I then watched his dream of The League of Nations be destroyed by a recalcitrant congress led by Henry Cabot Lodge. Imagine going over to France for six months to hack out the Treaty of Versailles to end World War I and fighting for a A League of Nations so a war like this would never occur again and then coming home to have your own government refuse to sign the treaty and worse to make it their mission to destroy the League of Nations. Sadly, we can relate.

And this did kill Wilson in the end. He was literally fighting for the League of Nations when he had the stroke on a whistle stop tour that made him into a semi-invalid in the White House. And yet he never gave up. He never compromised. He stayed true to his vision of peace and justice for the war ravaged world. He knew the danger of another World War and it broke his heart when he saw his treaty destroyed because of partisan politics. Again. We know the feeling.

And in the end Wilson was vindicated sadly. The Treaty had no vehicle to stop German aggression and of course war did come. But looking back on this man of ideals through over very jaded prism of 2014 we can only sigh and hope that this type of man has not vanished with his time. This is a biography well worth your time

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have


 

Parent Sports

Maybe it is the hope we will never get old or die. But for some reason parents go into this regression back to when they were twelve. It happens when their kids play sports. Suddenly the cares of the day which centered around making a buck take a back seat to winning a game nobody cared about before. Suddenly a  baseball game played by twelve year olds in some dusty field in the middle of nowhere has the import of a life or death struggle for the parents.

And then parents go back to being twelve. They scream. They yell. They argue. The son or daughter now has an advocate they never wanted.  They will see imaginary sleights and grand conspiracies directed against their progeny. They see scholarships and pro careers in the offing as a travel league uniform and a self important coach are the signal flares that something beyond league ball beckons and this moment could be the bellwether between obscurity and fame.

I kid you not. Listen to any parent who has a son who is about ten years old and have demonstrated some talent. There is no longer any humor in their voice as they discuss the league choices and the coaches who "want" their son. It is hilarious when you are on the other side because you have been there. You rode the train of this could really lead to something right up to the day high school ball implodes and your son says he doesn't want to play anymore.

And the parent sports end right there. No longer. No more games. All that sublimated rage goes back to the gym or overeating or the good old standby of drinking like a fish. And the worst thing is the parents realize they are no longer twelve. They are old and their sports progeny is now in college and they wonder distantly what all that was about.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

 

School and the Agrarian Cycle

Used to be kids went home to the farm to help with the harvest. Planting and then harvesting and then back to school. And yet we no longer have any type of Agrarian Cycle at all. We just have the grocery store and the belief that summer is for kids to be off school and fall is for the return of school. My whole life up until I was twenty four was governed by this cycle. June was for going home and leaving the cinder blocked incarceration of dusty erasers and lead pencils and the smell of mimeographed sheets.

Summer was to go on forever. In June there is no belief that fall will come. School will not resume. There will only be summer forever. And the empty school lot proved the point. The teachers had all disappeared too and the school stood empty with the flag pole rope flapping for no one. Only the janitor was still there and I would ride by on my bike and see him there smoking a cigarette out by the back door. The last remaining soldier.

But the fall did come back and suddenly we were back in the classroom .And so it still is. Next week all the kids will return and the adults will continue their same day in day out routine. And the kids will begin their cycle again until one day they too will leave for good. And they may stare out the window and sigh as the last days of summer expire on the hot pavement and think they will be lucky one day to be free of the old Agrarian cycle.

Never knowing how lucky they are to be on that old clock.

The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have  

The Reality of High School Sports

You go along like I did as an assistant coach starting in T Ball. And then you move along through the In House Leagues. The playing gets more intense and more fun. The kids are starting to know what they are doing and talent springs eternal and you start to think your kid really has something. There are the standouts. The kids who in sixth grade are pounding the ball into the outfield. And then there are the kids who can pitch and have a fastball that freezes kids at the plate. All of this is with Dad Coaches and the parents are way into the games now and people scream because they are glimmering something bigger. High School ball.

And then it happens. Everyone troops off in the ninth grade and the numbers move in along with a reality that just seems so unfair. The majority of kids who have been playing baseball for nine years will not play anymore. They will either not make the team or they will make the team and sit on the bench. The chosen few continue on in high school but for most kids it is the end of playing sports. How did it come to this?

Too many people. The large high schools of the Chicago land area are a good example. The level of competition is such that only the very best of the best get to play. The influence of personal coaching and high priced sports clinics and programs. The parents who shell out the heavy duty cash just have a better chance of seeing their kids play in high school. Maybe it starts with the mentality of travel ball where kids wear uniforms like major leagues and parents again shell out thousands for the best teams.

So the reality of high school sports is that for most kids is marks the end of playing not the beginning. Gone are the days when everyone could get a chance to play. That belongs to a time when there just weren't as many people.

The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have



 

The Madness or what Happened to Kid Sports?

Used to be you just played baseball or soccer of football. There was Little League and Pony League and the Majors but after that you played for a school. If you are a parent then you know what has come to fill in the gap for the passionate sport parent who doesn't get enough time with their child. The Travel Sports. Question. What cost about two thousand dollars, sucks up half the year, and puts you in the same league with every man who did not get his fill of high school or college sports or worse yet believed he was overlooked as a possible major league contender?These overgrown athletes can find succor in the twisted halls of Travel Sports.

I love spending time with my kids and I coached for seven years, but the fun, the joy of a child playing sports was sucked right out when we entered the realm of Travel Baseball. Suddenly there was no joy in Mudville. Win or lose the games had become deadly serious. Parents agonized over defeats and critiqued the wins. Coaches screamed and hollered over calls and boys of twelve were reduced to tears after coaches benched them for an error or a loss where the boys shamed themselves. Its all so overblown and out of line that we have to wonder who started this madness of sham professional athletics for boys and girls.

Only our times could generate the kind of entitlement that would translate to grown men wearing custom made uniforms and traveling thousands of miles to have twelve years old play a game I used to play in the streets. Times change. Yes Yes Yes...everyone plays travel now. But that kind of major league competition does not produce games where kids can learn. It produces neurotic parents juiced on winning at any cost and children who learn less about the game and more about parents funneling every bit of sublimated stress into a game that should be on par with playing catch in the backyard.

But we live in a time when everything is overblown. So it is not surprising that kids sports are the latest casualty of the generation that produced helicopter parents and the self satisfying mantra of hope I die before I get old. So to everyone who thinks I know nothing of the joys of organized travel sports and the excellence that can come from intense competition and the bonding that occurs when groups of parents and their children travel thousands of miles together to arrive at some field in some distant city--I say,as my father told me long ago when I lost in Little League--it is only a game. Lighten up guys.

The Pitcher...sometimes a dream is all you have
www.williamhazelgrove.com

The Pitcher--Lessons

We knew he was there. He would always just raise his garage about a third of the way and let his dog out on the driveway. You could hear a ballgame blaring from his plasma. The dog would sit there and we could see his ankles moving in the garage. My son and I would go out into the street every day and play catch, hoping he might raise his garage and give us a few pointers. He was a pitcher who had won a World Series and that was enough for us. In Florida you have a lot of people who used to be somebody, but we looked him up on the internet and he was the real thing. So we figured we had a week for him to come out.

It must have been the third day getting close to dusk when we heard the garage go up suddenly. The black Lab was still there on the driveway but the whir of the garage motor kept going and I knew he was coming out. He was a big man with thick tan legs and a cupped cigarette fuming from his hand. "Keep playing," was all he said and walked into the street past me and headed toward my son. "Move over a little," he said over his shoulder. I moved to the side and I watched while he moved my boy one way and another and adjusted his arm. Mostly he watched. He watched my twelve year old wind up and deliver fast balls and curve balls. It was getting toward dark when we collected in the street and he put the cigarette to his mouth.

"Always pick a spot," he began. "It doesn't matter about the batter. It is you and the spot. Pick the catchers knee or his elbow. Or pick the batters wrist. If you can, break the batters wrist." His light blue eyes crinkled. "When I was on the mound I didn't think about anything except the spot. I knew the batter expected me to throw him a fast ball and so then I would pick another spot and go with a breaking ball." He touched his temple. "You got to out think them. It's all about what they least expect you to do. The ball will go where your eyes go. I used to pick a guys emblem on his cap when I was throwing catch. Or when I was pitching, there was an imperfection sometimes in the back wall and I would aim for that spot."

"Another thing," he began after a moment. "Only pitch the way you want to pitch. If the catcher tells you a fast ball and you want to throw a breaking ball, let him know. Coach would get all over me about not throwing what he wanted. I always threw the way I wanted and told the coach I didn't get the signal. " He flared his cigarette again. His hands were large. "I always used two fingers on the ball for my fast ball, see, but if I put three fingers on it, the ball slowed down about seven miles an hour. That always threw them off. "

He held the ball up to the street light.

"Another thing. Don't ever let the bastards see the ball. I always kept it in my mitt. It makes them wonder where it is. It's your game, not theirs. They are getting paid to hit it and you're getting paid to get it by them. " He held the ball out to my son. "And if they get hold of your fast ball and blast it out of the park. Then just shrug and go, "boy they sure got hold of that sonofabtich. But never think down. Always stay positive. Even if they hit it out of the park, put a positive spin on it. That way you are always playing for the better. Even if I made a lousy pitch, I tried to think how I could make it better."

He looked at my son. "It's like hitting a guy. You got to come at him with your body. Throw a punch. That way you put your whole body behind the ball. It's you or him." His dog waddled over and sat down. "It comes down to this . You have two kinds of players....those that want to learn and the rock heads. A lot of guys can pitch one hundred miles an hour. I pitched a steady ninety seven all through my twenty years in the majors. But that's not enough. Lot of guys have talent...you got to have more than that."

We could hear the crickets now and the bats flying over the bungalows.

"The rock heads never make it. They can pitch a hundred mile an hour fast ball but that's not enough. You got to learn. If you can't learn then it doesn'tmatter how much talent you have." I looked at my son with his eyes glued to this tall man in the street. "I knew a kid once. Had the fastest breaking ball I ever saw. I told him he was sitting on a million bucks. He was major league material. I even agreed to coach him his senior year in highschool. " He paused. "I go out to his school and I look at the coach and ask him where this kid is...Bill I think his name was." The coach shook his head and said he didn't come out. " I said what...whadday mean. "The coach said, nope, he wanted to spend time with his girlfriend. The pitcher shook his head and looked at me. "Can you beat that, a guy with a million dollar arm wants to spend time with his girlfriend. Well he never did anything. No scholarship, nothing. I think he ended up selling insurance."

He called his dog and looked at my son again. It was nearly dark now and he dropped his cigarette to the street.

"I told his father his son made the biggest mistake of his life...."

He shrugged and tossed my son the baseball.

"Like I said," he called, walking back toward his garage with his dog.

"You got to pick a spot."

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/