The Blue Period Comes to an End

Almost a Red, Vida was special when Baseball was king

What if?

Down to the Banana Republics. . .

Ever have a tune looping in your head? I’m cutting the grass Saturday, listening to Buffett on the ear buds, Changes in Latitudes to be precise, and the aforementioned line enters my skull and stays. For two days now, I’ve been with the expatriated Americans, running tons of ganja.

The Loop could be anything. It could be a good tune, or it could be Billy Don’t Be a Hero. It leaves when it wants.

I once had The Night Chicago Died in my head for six days straight, barely avoided a frontal lobotomy.

Down to the Banana Republics. . .

VIDA BLUE DIED SATURDAY. . . To some of us Of a Certain Age, he was and remains The Last Original. Blue was emblematic of everything we loved about baseball, when baseball was everything.

I was 13 in 1971 when Blue threw 312 innings, 24 complete games and eight shutouts, led the AL with an ERA of 1.82 and was named the league’s MVP and Cy Young winner. Five of his first dozen starts were complete-game shutouts. He turned 22 that July.

And that name. Straight from a novel conjured by a struggling Hollywood screenwriter, down to his last typewriter ribbon. Or so it seemed. Vida. Blue.

A 13-year-old living in whitebread suburbia found something pleasantly dangerous in those Oakland Athletics. The mustache of Rollie Fingers, Reggie Jackson’s perfectly immense swagger. A pitcher named Catfish, another nicknamed Blue Moon. Our backyard Wiffleball existence orbited around who got to be Vida (rock, paper, scissors, loser was Blue Moon, not bad consolation), we’d divvy up Reggie, Catfish and Rollie.

If you’re edging toward retirement, you know what I’m talking about. Baseball wasn’t another in the current conga line of sports options. It was the option. Baseball was front, center and immovable in our consciousness. We’d never flip a Vida Blue card against a wall or tape it to our bicycle spokes.

Blue epitomized the game then, for better and worse. He was part of the roiling center of turbulent race relations, he was suspended for a drug violation. He feuded with kooky A’s owner Charlie Finley, who himself personified an entire generation of Ridiculous Old White Men, at least to us kids.

When Finley tried to lowball Blue with a $50,000 contract for 1972 (Blue made $15K in ‘71) Blue said he’d rather retire. President Richard Nixon called him “the most underpaid player in baseball.’’ Vida settled with Finley for $65,000 and a career-long dislike of the man. “Treated me like a damned colored boy,’’ Blue said.

In ‘71, Finley offered Blue $2,000 to legally change his name to True. Blue took offense and turned down the deal. “If Mr. Finley thinks it’s such a great name, why doesn’t he call himself True O. Finley?” Blue said.

That July, he and the Pirates became the first Black pitchers to start an All Star Game, after Ellis had said Baseball would never start “two brothers’’ in the Midsummer Classic.

In December ‘77, Reds GM Bob Howsam thought he had a deal with Oakland: Blue to Cincinnati, for a promising kid 1st baseman named Dave Revering and a thick wallet of cash. Commissioner Bowie Kuhn vetoed the deal under the commissioner’s authority to act in the “best interests of baseball.”

Needless to say, a commissioner blocking a deal like that involving the Reds would be beyond unlikely today. Howsam wanted to pair Blue with Tom Seaver in the Club’s rotation. Wow.

Finley did trade Blue, to SF, where he went 18-10 in '1978.

Vida was a man of the times, A man of our times. Imaginations weren’t stunted by cable sports networks in 1971. You had the Game of the Week on Saturdays and, eventually, Monday Night Baseball. Vida Blue’s exploits lived in the boxscores and in our moonstruck baseball heads. Players were still a bit mythical. Nothing is mythical now. Progress is a dubious game.

Blue was The Last Original. That’s as true today as the day he arrived. The difference is, we appreciated him then in a way that seems quaint now. Overexposure, snark, cynicism and baseball’s general demise would have done in Blue, or at least the Vida that lived in our heads.

Sometimes, it’s good to be old.

Now, then. . .

Down to the Banana Republics. . .

“So you’re telling me there’s a chance.’’

I WISH BASEBALL HAD A RULE that prevented its teams from hiring and paying the salaries of its announcers. I wish the Voices could be as outspoken and independent as the Reds allowed Marty Brennaman to be.

Maybe then, an announcer wouldn’t look at a 1-14 Reds deficit in the middle of the 3rd inning and declare the Reds could “get right back into it’’ as a Reds announcer did Sunday afternoon.

Look, I get it. If I were paid by the club, I’d say the same stuff. (Actually, if I had to be “positive’’ calling Reds games these past couple seasons, I’d check myself into Randall Patrick McMurphy Memorial until Labor Day.) It can’t be easy constantly assigning nice descriptions to what we’ve witnessed too regularly on the field in recent seasons.

I was forever grateful that the Enquirer never asked me to pull a punch. I’d be a lousy PR guy. Howevuh. . . there’s a difference between being professionally upbeat and treating your listeners like dopes. Marty’s greatest attribute, IMO, was the respect he had for the people tuned in.

Maybe next time, wait ‘til the Reds cut that 1-14 deficit to 10-14, yeah?

Abbott and Costello

STICK TO SPORTS. . .

Thoughts and prayers go out to the families.

Eight deaths in Texas. Eight words.

Only two of the murdered have been ID’d.

Christian LaCour “was a sweet, caring young man who was loved greatly by our family,” his older sister Brianna Smith told various media. There was this, on social media: “He was such a beautiful soul, 20 years old with goals for his future. I was so proud of him.”

Aishwarya Thatikonda was an engineer, and her family lives in India.

That’s all we know at the moment. Six others died, allegedly shot by a man carrying an assault rifle, wearing body armor and lugging several extra magazines.

It’s possible at least one of the other six victims cannot be identified with total certainty.

“The first girl I walked up to,’’ bystander Steven Spainhouer told CNN, “I felt for a pulse, pulled her head to the side, and she had no face.”

Their stories will emerge, one by one, dead testaments to lives lived in fractions. Innocent people with hopes and dreams, who loved and were loved. Somebody’s children, somebody’s parent, sister, brother, cousin, friend. Committing lives of meaning. Mattering to others. Dead.

A country that forsakes its citizens doesn’t have much of a future. A Texas governor who offers the usual condolences, fake and empty, yet runs a state as loose with gun laws as any should be seen as hypocritical at best.

Texas law does not specifically put restrictions on who can carry a long gun such as a rifle or shotgun. (Texas State Law Library)

Business as usual in Texas

You can pack a pistol in Texas, too. No license required. As of 2021, people who qualify under the law can carry a handgun in a public place in Texas without a license to carry.

Texas has no restrictions on “assault rifles” and you can open carry any long gun in Texas as long as you don’t do so in a “manner calculated to alarm.” (Americangunfacts.com)

Does Texas restrict magazine capacity?

No, Texas has no restrictions on magazine capacity.

Do you have to register your firearm in Texas?

No, you do not have to register your firearms in Texas.

Does Texas have a waiting period for buying a gun?

No, Texas does not have a waiting period for purchasing firearms. You can go and purchase a gun and take it home the same day.

That’s pretty much the gun-warrior’s trifecta, isn’t it? In Texas, they don’t mess with the hassle of a waiting period. They don’t even make you register the gun or regulate how much ammo you can buy. Cash, carry and kill. You can buy an assault rifle and murder people the same day. It’s your right, after all.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s reaction to the murders was to offer the predictable “better mental health’’ solution. Yeah? Really?

News services:

Despite his stance about mental health, Abbott decided last year to cut nearly $211 million from the state's Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees mental health programs.

Well, I’ll be.

And again, why can’t we have both? Why do people like Abbott and (Costello) Ted Cruz always leave out the tighter gun laws aspect of the solution?

No civilian needs an assault weapon. If you disagree, please elaborate.

Do not use the argument that “they (whoever “they’’ are) are coming after our guns.’’ “They’’ are not. They never have. There is zero reason to think they ever will.

Does a sportsman require an assault weapon to “harvest’’ a deer? Lord help the quail/duck/grouse/rabbit/turkey shot by an AR. His insides would be in six counties.

It’d be a great debate. All it lacks is reason, legitimate principle and humanity.

Meantime, eight innocent Americans are still very much dead.

Let freedom ring.

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . Down to the Banana Republics. . .

Off my favorite Buffett set.

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