I'd Read the Phone Book if Kindred Wrote It

What's a phone book, Doc?

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Today’s Hemingway is my idol, Dave Kindred. Dave wrote a newspaper sports column for something close to 40 years — “one century into the next,’’ he says — in Louisville, Washington and Atlanta. He is the also the author of several books, all of which I have read and recommend. Dave grew up in the substantial metropolis of Atlanta, IL, pop. 1,300.

Without further ado. . .

I have written from the co-pilot’s seat of a single-engine airplane flying out of the deep Mississippi woods. I have written on the Amtrak Acela at 150 miles per hour. After an electrocution at a Georgia prison, I scribbled words on my palm and dictated them from a 7-Eleven telephone between the men’s and women’s rest rooms. I have written from cruise ships and Greyhounds. On a mountainside in Pennsylvania, I would have called the office from Muhammad Ali’s Cadillac but he couldn’t get the mobile phone to work. (This was 1974.)

Nice ride. Lousy phone. (Photo: Dave Kindred)

From chaos, creativity. (Kindred)

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Here you see a picture of my home office. I have written lots of words while nailed to that chair covered by the dog’s towel. Those white scraps of paper hanging from the shelves carry reminders of everything I must write. Like “Thurman Munson is looking for you, and he’s got a baseball bat.” And “Grantland Rice’s stroke at his typewriter, died.” 

Most of the library behind the trinkets are books done by sportswriters, with an occasional Mark Twain raising the room’s literary IQ.

What you do not see is the book I want to write. 

Doc, who invited me to be his Hemingway today, has given me free rein to talk about that book that does not exist. The book would be about the 1946 major league baseball season. During daylight hours, I think it is a good idea, But in the small hours of night, the haunting 3 and 4 o’clock hours, I stare at the ceiling. The batwings of doubt flutter there. 

Shortly after dawn on Monday, I reached out to a friend who has survived her share of weak moments. I told her my idea.

“Dave! Dave!” she said. “Nineteen! Forty-six! Really?”

I thought to explain. “Stan Musial was a kid,” I said. . . . All summer the Cardinals and Dodgers were at each other’s throats. . . . Enos Slaughter’s famous “mad dash” will be a thrilling, climactic chapter telling how he ran through a stop sign to score from first on an eighth-inning single and win Game 7 of the World Series. . . .The world was young, America was reborn, everyone celebrated the end of  World War II. . . .  I said, “It was a great year, 1946.”

“Dave, sorry, Dave, just sayin’,” she just said. “Nobody today remembers World War II, let alone Stan Musial.”

I texted a second baseball thinker. He said 1946 was so far out of any living person’s field of interest that such a book would be “annoying” and “mocked as irrelevant.”

I did not seek a third opinion.

Instead, I thought of Dan Jenkins.

“Write what you’d like to read,” the great man once said.

*

Stan Musial was my boyhood hero. The first words I ever typed, chosen so I would remember the first words I ever typed, were Stanley Frank Musial. As a grown-up sportswriter, I met him twice but it was long into his retirement and I never had a chance to write about him. (It was 1990, with chemical enhancers in fashion, and I asked if he had ever used supplements. “A steak and a cocktail,” he said. “They called me a highball drinker and a low-ball hitter.”)

I want to do a book with Musial as the primary character. I grew up in Central Illinois, near enough St. Louis to stay awake nights listening to Harry Caray’s broadcasts on KMOX radio. Through the 1940s and 50s, major league baseball had 16 teams in only 11 cities. The NFL and NBA were infants. Hockey was Canada’s thing. Only baseball mattered. 

The book will live in St. Louis, then the nation’s fourth-largest city, on the west banks of the Mississippi, the edge of the time’s baseball world. We will see Musial 24 years old, lean as a greyhound, a left-handed hitter working from a curious, corkscrew batting stance. (“Like a kid peeking around a corner to see if the cops are coming,” a pitcher said.) We will see the kid already good and en route to baseball immortality. 

If I get brave enough to write a proposal – an essay of sorts persuading someone to pay me to write such a book – this might be the proposal’s first paragraph:

Except for the Yankees, about whom too damned many books have been written, the St. Louis Cardinals are the most successful team in baseball history. Yet no one has written a passionate, exuberant book about the Cardinals. Certainly no one has done a book in which the happiest and greatest of Cardinals, Stan Musial, strides into view, naked in the clubhouse, a bat in hand before going out to play two games that day. A Polish immigrant’s kid having fun out of the steel mills, he declares, “Ten hits today for Stanley, ten hits!” 

Late in ‘46, we would take a seat on a train rolling west out of Brooklyn. We would ride alongside a young newspaperman named Bob Broeg. He covered the Cardinals for his hometown paper, the Post-Dispatch. Each time Musial came to bat, Broeg heard something from the raucous Dodgers fans in Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field. He asked a neighbor in the press box, “Are they saying, ‘Here comes that man’?” The neighbor said, “No, not that man, it’s the man.” 

On September 20, 1946, Broeg typed the dateline, “EN ROUTE TO CHICAGO.” His story began . . .

“It took the baseball-batty borough of Brooklyn, where you’re a crumb-bum if you’re not a Dodger, to supply with begrudging respect the best nickname yet bestowed upon Stanley Frank Musial. To Brooklyn’s fanatic baseball followers, Musial is simply ‘The Man.’

“In the recent series at Flatbush, where failure in a key series kept the Cardinals from riding the rails today with more than the slim lead they held, the appearance at the plate of the Cardinals’ apple-cheeked first baseman frequently brought from several sections of the Ebbets Field stands a distinct: ‘O-o-h, here comes The Man again.’”

I would read that book. 

**

Meanwhile, I actually wrote two books from that chair with the dog’s towel.

*

 

The first was “Leave Out the Tragic Parts.” It was about the addiction and death at age 25 of my train-hopping grandson, Jared Kindred. It was a hard one to do, but it was one I could not NOT do. I loved him in ways beyond understanding. 

The second book will be published September 12. It is a memoir: “My Home Team, A Sportswriter’s Life and the Redemptive Power of Small-Town Girls Basketball.” It shows my journalism career leading me back to Central Illinois where in 13 years I have written 500,000 words, most of them joyous, on a girls high school basketball team, the Morton Lady Potters.

AND NOW. . . If you can’t find something to do after reading Hey Michelle! you’re not very interesting:

Label Less Cincinnati ~ Our local dream team Drew & Lea Lachey, Brave Berlin and a fantastic group of young, passionate performers have a week of amazing performances for you, July 8-16 at Playhouse in the Park. This is a musical journey toward acceptance. Touching on topics of acceptance using popular music and dance. Grab tickets now 

OTR International Film Festival ~ July 6-8. Grab the family and see at least one of these movies led by the disability community. I’ve seen many of these movies over the years and the experience always puts life in perspective. Celebrate diversity and differences. 

Water Lantern Fest ~Saturday you can decorate and then launch your cool lantern into the waters at Mirror Lake in Eden Park. Tickets are going fast but if you just want to watch the festivities it’s pretty darn cool. 

Sam Adams Party~ Friday from Noon- 6pm hit up Sam Adams in OTR for the release of their new Blackbeards Vacation beer in collaboration with Colonel De Spices.. throw on your pirate hat and beach shirt and join in the fun. Prizes , beer tastings and seasoned wings! 

Steve Miller Band at Hard Rock ~ Friday night! Did you know that the casino is bringing back concerts? Grab your tickets and hit the rock. 

Plan your Burger Week attack!  July 10-16 enjoy $7 burgers all over town. Get the entire list on the Burger Week Website 

OFF Market~ Summit Park in Blue Ash Saturday 10-4pm 

Hey Michelle,

Do you want to know where to eat, drink and have fun in Cincinnati? Follow me @HeyMichelle1 on IG 
https://heymichelle-help.com

Imbiber Dave’s Travel Report takes us to Portugal.

The last stop on our European journey earlier this month was Lisbon, Portugal. You can immediately feel that this culture places imbibing above everything else. People take their time, are relaxed, and really take their food and drink seriously.

For seaside cocktails, many usual suspects are available, like Sangria or Aperol Spritz, but Portugal has a lot of unique options, like Vino Verde. This green wine is like a cross between white wine and a Prosecco, perfect for a summer cookout.

If you research Lisbon, you will see how this town from the Middle Ages is tucked into the side of a mountain, and you can walk through endless streets and alleys to explore. My lovely wife was kind enough to walk me up a great hill to a tiny restaurant that ended up being one of finest dining experiences of our life.

Ritalinos is a small neighborhood spot, full of locals who show up for the daily special, and don’t even look at the handwritten menu. Now we found out after we ate that our host Luis literally grew up in this building, and it was his parents corner market until they decided to retire a few years ago. So Luis said that everyone already knows me here, I might as well cook for them.

For us, he chose the carrot soup, grilled calamari, tempura fried green beans, and in season sardines, which were nearly a foot long. White wine was delicious, and they always bring you a cherry digestif called Ginja at the end of your meal. Words can’t describe how amazing the food was, but the experience of sitting with some local coworkers on their “lunch break” really captivated us. Everyone has a glass of wine and isn’t in a rush.

Here’s hoping we can hold on to that feeling a little longer. I was reminded why I love trying to new places around here so much, and sharing stories about what others have found. I’m sure I’ll be in a drive through line again soon enough, but I’m going to keep searching for other neighborhood gems like what we found abroad.

Cheers!
cincybeerguydave@gmail.com

(DOC’S) TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . The sweetest of the sweet from my favorite folkie guitarist.

We were only kids. . .