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st speaker my first choice had been the aforementioned roger kahn but i never heard from him until the following year when he was in town promoting his bos while it was too late for him to speak we did have a wonderful leisurely dinner before i drove him to the radio station for his interview the class also warranted an invitation from nbc s today show i spent an exciting 3 and half minutes with gene shalit on may 9 1974 local sportswriter bob broeg who is honored in the cooperstown hall of fame in the writers wing started calling me the professor of baseball i turned it around so that the sobriquet has been part of my identity ever since it is part of who i am i treasure that name and have used it ever since in my e mail id and on my vanity license plates i officially registered it as a service mark over 30 years ago it was at pee wee s induction that i got the idea for the st louis browns fan club an organization that is still going strong despite the demise of most of its players who now number a mere 19 out of 795 men who wore the uniform from 1902 53 it is truly a dying franchise since it is the only team name that has been stricken from the modern history of baseball save the short lived seattle pilots who moved to milwaukee in 1970 after just one season on august 17 2015 the st louis cardinals honored my fan club with a night at busch stadium we had 200 people buy tickets our cardinals host brian finch regaled us with an informative history of the browns this was quite a big step since the relation between the two teams was never that good when they were rivals for the affections of the st louis public the owner of the cardinals william dewitt ii has a very strong interest in the browns his father owned them when he was a little boy it was his small uniform that they used to clothe the most famous pinch hitter in baseball history the 3 7 eddie gaedel who had one major league at bat as casey stengel used to say you could look it up while my participation in the game has waned as i have grown older my passion for the game is still vibrant when walter o malley broke a 13 year old boy s heart with his move of the dodgers to the gold coast for the 1958 season i longed for a team like them while the new york mets probably have broken my aging heart more times than the dodgers ever did and no player can compare to pee wee save maybe tommy terriffic i feel strongly that god is in his heaven and all is right with my world this past month s experiences with the kansas city royals underscored that my ability to feel and experience the thrill and abject pain of a bitter and devastating defeat at the hands and bats of a superior team has not lessened in any way though it hurt badly i do not want to lose the inner ability to feel because it is part of what makes us human baseball brings it out every april and october posted in uncategorized tags bill dewitt jr eddie gaedel gene shalit pee wee reese roger kahn st louis browns fan club the 8th sacrament october 30 2015 leave a comment i must confess that saying grace before meals was never a common practice for me as a child or even while my wife and i raised our three children grace was something reserved for christmas easter and family celebrations at home my failure to make it a habit has resulted in some embarrassing moments when breaking bread with the tallest deacon in the st louis archdiocese the late hall of fame basketball player ed macauley some years ago i had a mouthful of tuna salad when easy ed lowered his head and started to pray another time at lunch my oldest child mark surprised me when he bowed his head just as i started to bite into my tuna sandwich it was not quite the old adage of the son being father to the man but it did strike home his wife is a convert and she has always impressed me with her moving extemporaneous prayers before our family gatherings the few times i dared to emulate her resulted in nothing better than the perfunctory bless us o lord as an aside it has taken years of extemporaneous practice for me to final reach a stage where i think i am in patti s league while saying grace is a small thing in the overall religious scope of things i am proud of my son and my daughter in law for setting me such a good example while the biblical story of the publican and pharisee warn against making little things the center of our faith in this case the exact opposite ring true my father used to lecture me on not being wasteful whether it was two minutes of electricity or throwing away perfectly good scrap paper he also said if i took care of the cents the dollars will take care of themselv es if more catholics took care of the little acts of devotion like saying grace and saying the rosary i doubt we would have to worry so much about following the church teachings on some more serious subjects like abortion euthanasia or embryonic stem cell research on her deathbed st therese of lisieux worried that the other members of her order would grieve too much over her death she believed that everything is grace one s death she instructed her caregivers to treat her dying as a gift from god that is another moment of grace in their lives a catholic columnist echoed her sentiments when he asked why stop with grace before meals he suggested that we say grace before every activity that we perform and take advantage of an unlimited number of opportunities for opening our hearts and maybe those of others to the divine will of god this is a profound idea that reminded me of my orientation for the catholic lay extension volunteers in 1965 at barat college in chicago one day we attended a lecture by sister charles borromeo she taught us about the 8 th sacrament consistent with church teaching she defined a sacrament as a visible sign instituted by christ to give grace she said that the 8 th sacrament was the human person and it was the only sacrament that everyone in the world could receive no matter if they were catholic as far out as that may sound after all it was the 60s she made an interesting point i believe she anticipated the columnist who advised seeing everything as an opportunity for grace this revolutionary idea can literally sanctify every moment of our lives it can also force us to focus on how our actions and our words affect other people no action or word is ever neutral they either push us closer to our divine destination or lead us away from god there is also such a thing as satanic grace we can lead others astray by scandal or by enabling them to rationalize their bad behavior that is why it is so important that catholics stand up for the truth of the faith at all times all this should leave us with the new challenge to bless us oh lord before all our daily activities not just a tuna salad lunch then everything we do and everyone we meet will be another gift of grace from god posted in uncategorized tags barat college catholic extension charles borromeo ed macauley grace before meals publican satanic grace windmills of the heart october 30 2015 leave a comment i have to chuckle every time my fellow catholics pray for world peace it reminds me of an irreverent bumper sticker i saw years ago that encouraged us to pray for whirled peas while praying for universal peace is a noble gesture the thought of actually achieving real world peace on this deeply flawed earth is a fruitless exercise in self delusion peace on earth will never be possible because of what philosopher emanuel kant called the crooked timber of humanity wars violence and other human evils are a regrettable but undeniable part of the human condition like the poor wars will always be with us to pretend that we can eliminate them is foolhardy and a sign of the materialistic disease of the spirit that has infected our culture fantasies are fine for football leagues or poetry recitals but in the real world utopian goals can only serve to distract us from our eternal destiny in chasing such windmills of the heart as peace on earth many of us have lost our moral equilibrium on the way to sunday mass i often remark about how religious all the runners bikers and other exercise fanatics are with their physical regimens they are out there every sunday and on many weekdays in all kinds of hot and inclement weather what dedication they show for maintaining their sleek bodies i can t help wondering if they pay as much attention to their souls our country is a sick society morally sick amid a cornucopia of boredom violence and material excess we are restless and unhappy with the state of our society yet we can t understand why we have developed a propensity for ignoring the spiritual causes of our maladies that have given rise to a victimhood philosophy that has sapped the very strength of the american spirit giving rise to a litany of social and moral pathologies such as pornography infidelity homosexual marriage abortion and euthanasia in other words we are knee deep in a culture of death and the faucet is wide open to offset the emptiness in our souls we have vainly attempted to fill it with a culture awash in a flood of sex exercise weight reduction programs jogging marathons and spa visits to the extent that our lean bodies which have become our personal idols stand it stark contrast to our empty souls this painfully evokes strong biblical images of whiten sepulchers filled with dead man s bones too many of us have substituted neuroses and psychoses for our venial and mortal sins we often try to medicate away our feelings of inner conflict this is just one facet of the imbalance or the lost of moral homeostasis that our society has created just watch television or attend the local cineplex it is difficult not to see the nihilism perpetuated in the anti heroes of the silver screen or on the average sitcom each evening on tv i used to read all of robert ludlum s novels many years ago until i noticed that his characters and vapid plots always seemed to meld into a seamless garment of emptiness and despair his protagonists more energetic but less philosophical than hemingway s existentialist code hero recognized no other power than their own physical skills or mental acumen ludlum s heroes especially the long lived jason bourne had no religious or moral faith in that he reflected the barren spirituality of our own times the current and ever popular lee child s protagonist the infamous jack reacher is cut from the same amoral whole cloth before the advent of the shrink s couch and confessional tv like mother oprah philosophers stressed the need for keeping equilibrium between the spirit and the body bishop fulton j sheen whose tv show life is worth living used to be more popular than mr television himself milton berle s show in the 1950s warned that peace of soul was the only way to rid society of many of its psychological afflictions a few presidential candidates such as michael huckabee and dr benjamin carson seem to be saying the same thing bishop sheen constantly admonished americans for standing outside the psychiatrist s office when they should be kneeling inside the confessional life in america has become so busy and so demanding that it is too easy to lose sight of our ultimate goal like ludlum s characters too many of us never stop to contemplate the question all men and women must ultimately confront the universal eschatology of what happens at death gen john black jack pershing underscored this nearly forgotten reality when he challenged his troops as they embarked from the new jersey piers in 1918 en route to the war in europe to consider the three possible outcomes of their service heaven hell or hoboken posted in uncategorized tags ben carson black jack pershing dead man s bones fulton j sheen jack reacher robert ludlum polish yoga october 30 2015 leave a comment yoga has always fascinated me though i am not certain what possessed me to take some lessons quite possible it could be just another thing i had never tried and wanted to before i became too old to do so maybe a bucket list entry i knew very little about it except that it had something to do with hinduism breathing and quiet time its advocates always looked graceful and even mysterious in performing all their various positions and exercises that should have dissuaded me from even thinking about it i have been taking yoga for well over a year i knew i did not want to take a class with a sorority of women not because of their sex but because i knew i would not be able to keep up with them because of my age and a minor case of rigor mortis i am amazed how women can bend and twist into positions that would delight a contortionist but that s natural for them anyone whose body is designed to give birth to a football sized being can do yoga in her sleep so i arranged for private lessons at the local yoga and pilates studio its primitive conditions disqualify it from ever calling itself a spa first of all there is no separate locker facilities for men and women i wonder what the gender equality mavens would say about that in fact there isn t a facility for either of us when i change into something more suitable i have to use the only restroom in the place when i first entered the y p it reminded me of some of the very narrow italian restaurants in new york city that seem to be a block long and a doorway wide the room appears even smaller when filled with a receptionist desk and two lines of pilate s machines students use these to stretch and sometimes inflict self damage i quickly learned to prefer the touch of the live instructor for my instructor they paired me with valerie a lithe and deceptively strong and shapely woman with beautiful silver hair and an infectious smile that betrayed a nurturing soul she was exactly what this old dog or is it down dog needed from the first moment she twisted and bent me i think we had a kind of mentor disciple simpatico i think she had been an occupational therapist or had worked in a pretzel factory before she heeded her true calling in life val is as equally at home discussing the mysticism of franciscan father richard rohr as she is the biblical imperative of the fictitious lisbeth salander to make things even more private we have virtually all of our sessions up in the loft a semi private unenclosed though elevated section of the restaurant i mean studio where they hide their worst students mostly the men i was happy for the privacy venue because yoga has an intimacy to it not unlike massage therapy except in yoga you usually have clothes on i have read about some people who actually do all the yoga positions in the nude i mean being free natural and uninhibited is fine but they have to admit that some of their positions lend themselves to full exposure of every appendage crack and crevice the human body has perhaps this variation is the direct result of what my daughter takes hot yoga where they turn the thermostat up to 750 fahrenheit personally yoga is one thing i want as 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