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Merlefest at 25: Gifts in small packages

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Sometimes the best gifts come in small packages.  That’s how it felt for me on the opening evening of the 25th anniversary of Merlefest – the Americana music festival tucked away in the hills of North Carolina.

Opening day at Merlefest is the easiest to navigate, because virtually all the music is centered around the main “Watson Stage” – named for the blind guitarist Doc Watson from nearby Deep Gap and his late son and musical partner Merle.  (It was Merle’s tragic passing on October 23, 1985 that led to the first festival twenty-five years ago in 1988.)  Juggling between the 14 venues and making tough decisions about which acts to see and which acts to miss only happens later in the weekend.

So I arrived after my drive from Silver Spring in time to catch the first of the main acts on the Watson Stage – The Boxcars. Coming together after stints with Alison Krauss + Union Station, J.D. Crowe, and Blue Moon, this is a “new” band with a lot of experience.  Even with mandolinist Adam Steffey under the weather, they produced a terrific kick-off set of good contemporary bluegrass.

The other Watson Stage acts were equally strong.  Donna the Buffalo with guest Jim Lauderdale (above) had the joint jumping, with tunes such as Except For That One Time and the accordion/washboard-fueled Hot Tamale Baby. Both Donna the Buffalo and Lauderdale are long-time Merlefest favorites, and it was clear that many had come to the Watson Stage area to hear their set, and then had plans to skip out to the food or merchandise tents.

But Merlefest is full of surprises.  There is this small “cabin” stage that sits to the side of the Watson stage, and while the main acts set up, small half-hour sets are performed, sometimes by up-and-coming artists and sometimes by big names playing solo.  The music never stops in this area, and you can hear some real gems.

That was the case tonight.  When the last notes of the Buffalo/Lauderdale set were ringing out, festival goers were heading up the aisle.  But many were stopped dead in their tracks…and then returned to their seats…by the opening number from a Shenandoah Valley band that hails from Harrisonburg, Virginia, near my old stomping grounds of Staunton.

The Steel Wheels kicked off their Cabin Stage set (above and at the top of the post) with an incredibly powerful a cappella number, Rain in the Valley, and then held the crowd in their hands until they wrapped up with The Shape I’m In as a tribute to the recently-departed Levon Helm.  While short in time, the band’s set won many new fans last night as evidenced by the standing ovation they received.

The other gift in a small package came later on the Cabin Stage, when Jim Lauderdale, Claire Lynch, and western singer Wylie Gustafson shared solo tunes on a songwriter showcase.  Special treats included Gustafson’s Buck Up and Huck It — three little vingettes of modern western life woven into one song — Lynch’s Wednesday Child tune for all the “bad boys” — and then a beautiful bit of high plains yodeling as the festival grounds grew quiet to let the clear notes from Gustafson sail off into the clear spring evening.

The final two Watson Stage acts for the evening certainly satisfied those who came for the headliners.  I’m not a huge fan of Dailey & Vincent, but I was more impressed with this set than with my first encounter at Merlefest three years ago.  They’ve dropped some of the canned stage patter, added B.J. Cherryholmes to the band to play some hot fiddle (on Black Eyed Susie and the show-closing Lee Highway Blues) and sing some beautiful harmony.  While I know I’m not suppose to say this, having lived in Staunton for 15 years, but a little bit of the old Statler Brothers style goes a long way with me…and Dailey & Vincent have adopted it as a big part of their show (including the incredibly low bass notes in the harmony).

Vince Gill (above and left) came on stage with a bit of an Eric Clapton look…scruffy beard, black glasses…and on at least a couple of tunes could have given the old guitar master a run for his money.  Oklahoma Borderline is his show-off guitar number, and he didn’t disappoint.

But Gill also knows “I live in a big house because I sing high like a woman” and so the majority of his show featured his vocals on love songs.  Gill was having fun, however, and before singing a cheating song (“country music today doesn’t have enough cheating songs” he opined), he asked for a show of hands of people who “were here this weekend with someone they shouldn’t be…just to see who was going to like this song the best.”  He also credited his bluegrass roots with teaching him the harmonic structure for vocals that shaped his country music career.

The evening’s final gift came in the dance tent on the way out to the car.  Blind Boy Chocolate & The Milk Sheiks – who will NEVER be confused as a mainline country music act – were raising the roof with their unique takes on Frankie and Johnny and a bunch of other “old songs.”  That’s the Merlefest I wanted to remember as I headed out into the night.

More to come…

DJB

Adding Another Calatrava to the Collection

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I was heading out of Dallas to Ft. Worth this morning, when I caught a glimpse of a signature white bridge crossing the Trinity River.  Could it be a Calatrava?

No sooner had the thought crossed my mind, when a friend across the aisle said, “That’s the new Calatrava bridge which just opened here.  Yes!

I knew then what my late afternoon schedule would include: a trip to photograph yet another Santiago Calatrava creation for my small but growing collection.

I began photographing Calatrava bridges while on a 2009 trip to Dublin, Ireland, where two of his signature bridges cross the River Liffey.  My son Andrew is a big Calatrava fan and had alerted me to the existence of the bridges in Dublin.

A couple of weeks later I was in Milwaukee, and was fortunate to be able to photograph the “flapping” of the wings of the Calatrava-designed Milwaukee Museum of Art.  That blog  has been one of the most popular I’ve ever posted, as web surfers have found the images online.

So on a beautiful spring day in Dallas, I visited the Margaret Hunt Hill Bridge over the Trinity River – the first of three planned Calatrava designs for the city’s Trinity River Project.  The central span – a graceful curve – adds a beautiful sculptural element to the city’s skyline.

Enjoy the photographs.

More to come…

DJB

History says, “This is what happened.” Preservation adds, “Right here.”

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Spot Where Lee Harvey Oswald Was Shot at Old City Hall

On the spot where Lee Harvey Oswald was Shot in 1963

I’m in Dallas, Texas, for a meeting with preservation supporters.  On our tour, the preservation architect stands outside a building and says, “We’ll restore this building to its 1914 AND 1963 levels of significance.”

Guess the building.

It could only be the Beaux Arts style Old City Hall, where Lee Harvey Oswald was held and interrogated by Dallas police and then – while being transferred to the County jail – was shot and killed by Jack Ruby on a November weekend in 1963.

Everyone of a certain age remembers where they were on November 22, 1963 when they heard the news that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated while riding in a motorcade through the streets of Dallas.  The various members of our tour group heard at their offices (one was actually working in Dallas at that time), from their children who had been watching cartoons, and from their parents.  As for me, I remember the principal at Cookeville’s Capshaw Elementary School coming over the intercom to tell us first that the president had been shot, and then a little later that he had died.

It is history that one never forgets.

So touring the Old City Hall in Dallas today – even amidst the buckets catching water dripping through the ceilings and while stepping over piles of trash that have accumulated since the police department left the building to move to a shiny, new LEED-certified headquarters – gave a fresh focus, understanding, and relevancy to those long-ago events.

We saw the elevator where Oswald was transported between floors, and where he took his final, fateful ride on Sunday morning.

The cell, in the “maximum security” wing of the jail where Oswald was held for two nights, was as foreboding as any I’ve seen.

The office of the chief of homicide, where Oswald was interrogated on more than one occasion, remains much as it was in 1963 – minus the furniture.  Pictures from the period show the window to the larger office where the homicide team did its work, and the crowds of reporters crammed into the hallway outside this office waiting to catch a glimpse of Oswald on his way to-and-from the interrogation.

Finally, we descended to the basement where we walked down the hall and stood on the drive-through where the car waited for Oswald on that fateful Sunday morning.  A colleague – holding a historic structures report with photographs of the shooting – provided the perfect foreground for a picture of the place where the events of that November weekend spun out-of-control once more.

When I speak around the country, I often use the borrowed line, “History says, ‘This is what happened.’ Preservation adds, ‘Right here.'”  That never felt more real to me than today, walking through the corridors and jail cells where the history of the world was changed.  And I’m glad that when this remarkable old building — probably the best Beaux Arts structure in Texas — is rehabilitated into a law school, those areas that witnessed the seismic shifts that took place on a November in Dallas will be restored, interpreted, and open to the public to help us better understand how these events that so affected us all unfolded in time and space.

Yes, restoring this building to its 1914 AND 1963 areas of significance is absolutely the right thing to do.

More to come…

DJB

Earl Scruggs, R.I.P.

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Earl.

That’s the only name you had to say in bluegrass circles and everyone immediately knew the subject.  Jimmy Martin could open the seminal Will the Circle Be Unbroken album by saying “Earl never did do that,” and you knew exactly what he meant.

Few people define an instrument and a musical style so completely as Earl Scruggs, who passed away today at age 88, did for bluegrass banjo.  Bill Monroe will forever be known as the Father of Bluegrass, but it wasn’t until he brought a young Earl Scruggs on the stage of the Ryman Auditorium for a Grand Ole Opry show in 1945 that the full sound of bluegrass was realized.  I’ll let Richard Smith, author of Can’t You Hear Me Calling:  The Life of Bill Monroe, pick up the story from here.

“For Earl’s first night on the Opry, Monroe picked out a fast number that would show off the newcomer’s dazzling style — “White House Blues,” an old song recounting the 1901 William McKinley assassination.  It was a perfect selection.  Scruggs stepped up to the microphone with apprehension, knowing that nothing like this had been heard on the Opry or even over WSM radio.

Used to the banjo as a country comedian’s prop, or hearing it picked or strummed in one of the quaint old styles, the audience was totally unprepared for the speedy, leaping avalanche of notes that issued from the five-string in the hands of this twenty-one-year-old from North Carolina.

They went wild.”

John Hartford once stated that “bluegrass was invented on the stage of the Ryman,” where Scruggs made his debut with Monroe.  And from that electrifying beginning in 1945 until today, musicians from every genre and corner of the planet recognized the unique musician that was Earl Scruggs.

Peter Cooper, writing in today’s Nashville Tennessean, had this to say about Earl’s ability to work across musical genres and to bring together disparate points of view:

“Rather than speak out about the connections between folk and country in the war-torn, politically contentious ‘60s, he simply showed up at folk festivals and played, at least when he and Flatt weren’t at the Grand Ole Opry.  During the long-hair/ short-hair skirmishes of the ‘60s and ‘70s, he simply showed up and played, with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and The Byrds. And when staunch fans of bluegrass – a genre that would not exist in a recognizable form without Mr. Scruggs’ banjo – railed against stylistic experimentation, Mr. Scruggs happily jammed away with sax player King Curtis, sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar, piano man Elton John and anyone else whose music he fancied.

“He was the man who melted walls, and he did it without saying three words,” said his friend and acolyte, Marty Stuart in 2000.

In truth, Mr. Scruggs could sometimes be quite loquacious, but he rarely made an utterance that wasn’t considered. He said what he thought, but never before he thought.

Asked about recording with Baez during a time period when Baez was viewed by many in Nashville as hyper-liberal and undesirable, Mr. Scruggs said, ‘Well, I didn’t look at it from a political view. And I thought Joan Baez had one of the best voices of anybody I’d ever heard sing.’”

I was fortunate to hear Earl often at virtually every stage of his musical career.  In the 1960s, my father rose early to get to his job, and WSM radio was always on when I – also an early riser – came into the kitchen.  Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs had a long-running show, sponsored by Martha White Flour, on WSM.

As I began learning more about the roots of American music in the early 1970s, I remember watching a wonderful documentary on Earl Scruggs on the Nashville public television station.  The film featured Earl and his sons playing with a variety of musicians, from old-time mountain men to Bob Dylan and The Byrds.  This wonderful clip shows Earl and Doc Watson playing John Hardy at Doc’s home in North Carolina.

Later in the 1970s I went to see The Earl Scruggs Revue countless times.  Earl and his sons had morphed into a country-rock band, but Earl’s musicianship still shown through the sometimes bad covers.  In recent years, Earl seemed to become more comfortable going back to his bluegrass roots in his elder statesman role.

Many people don’t realize that Earl was also a stellar finger-style guitarist.  Especially on gospel numbers, where the banjo wasn’t always used, Earl would pick the lead on a beautiful Martin guitar.

So on the day he passed away, it seemed appropriate to have Earl take us out with Uncle Josh Graves’ dobro and Lester’s voice on the classic, Turn Your Radio On.*  Without Earl around, it will be a little harder to turn your radio on and “heaven’s glory share.”

Rest in Peace, Earl Scruggs.

More to come…

DJB

*UPDATE:  Since this was posted, YouTube took down the original video.  But you can hear John Hartford and friends play Turn Your Radio On, a tune he no-doubt heard from Flatt and Scruggs before including it on his Steam Powered Aereo-Plain album.

Changing Seasons

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I love March Madness.  After a boring set of games on Thursday (although I’m glad Vanderbilt’s game was somewhat pedestrian), Friday finally got us in to the “madness” part of the event.  Two 15s beating number 2 seeds on the same day – that’s as good as it gets!

But as much as I enjoy these weeks of one-and-done basketball, I had an experience this afternoon that really gets me excited – sitting down with a friend over a glass of wine and choosing games out of the Washington Nationals season ticket package we’d purchased together.  Now I’m pumped!

Basketball is fun, but baseball is on another plane.  So in honor of the distribution of the season tickets, I give you a smattering of baseball quotations to bring a smile to your face and anticipation to your heart:

There are two theories on hitting the knuckleball.  Unfortunately, neither of them works.  (Legendary hitting coach Charlie Lau)

It doesn’t take much to get me up for baseball.  Once the National Anthem plays, I get chills.  I even know the words to it now.  (Pete Rose)

Just when my fellows learn to hit in this ball park, they’re gonna tear it down.  (Casey Stengel, as the Mets manager, on the Polo Grounds in 1965)

What do you want, a bonus or a limp?  (Fresco Thompson, on trying to persuade a prospect to choose baseball over football)

It is just about time to “Play Ball!”

More to come…

DJB

DJB is listening to…

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Many of my younger (read “hipper”) Facebook friends have regular status updates that read, “Joe Cool is listening to Still Sound by Toro Y Moi  on Spotify.”  Or something similar.

I’m behind the times (what else is new), so somehow I haven’t gotten around to letting everyone know what I’m listening to at any time.  Plus, my children would be mortified.  They run from the room when my iPod is in the dock.

But every now and then I listen to something and want to tell someone.  I have to do it the old-fashioned way:  through my blog.

I don’t usually drive in to work, but today was different.  And so instead of the iPod, I picked up a couple of CDs (you remember them) – Norman Blake’s Live at McCabe’s (which I’ve written about before) and the Tony Rice/Norman Blake duet album.  These are two beautifully simple albums that are anything but simple musically.

Blake and Rice are in the upper pantheon of acoustic country/bluegrass/newgrass guitarists.  They’ve both played on seminal albums that set the direction for acoustic music for a generation:  Blake on Will the Circle Be Unbroken and Rice on the inaugural offering of The David Grisman Quintet.  But on the two CDs in my car’s player today you get to hear them at their most basic.  Most tracks just feature a vocal and one or two guitars (or the occasional mandolin and guitar).  With the sun roof open and the windows down on a glorious early spring day, I could have been on a country road instead of 16th Street.

More to come…

DJB

A Note of Thanksgiving As I Enter My 58th Year

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I had difficulty getting out of bed today…the last morning wake up of my 57th year.

For some inexplicable reason my life is full – on the verge of overflowing – on the eve of my 57th birthday.  (I had to ask Candice, and she confirmed – when you turn 57 you are beginning your 58th year.  I never was great at math.)  First and foremost, Candice is wrapping up her stay in the hospital after successful hip replacement surgery on Wednesday.  We head home today to continue the recovery.  Both children are getting ready to go overseas (Claire by herself to Sweden; Andrew to Costa Rica) over spring break. Yikes!  How did that happen? My sister texted me last night to say my father went to the emergency room with a lung infection, high enzymes, and low sodium…and the news got worse when she called to say he had a mild heart attack this morning. I just spoke with my brother and Dad just came out of surgery where they found 95% blockage in one of his arteries. We think all will turn out well, but this is not what you want to hear for your 86-year-old father.  In addition, one of my brother-in-law’s closest friends was in a devastating car accident earlier this week, where her mother was killed and she’s facing a long recovery period after a seven-hour surgery.  On top of it all, work remains full of challenges and opportunities.

Lying in bed, I was letting all of this get me down.  Showering and breakfast helped, but it wasn’t until I was on my way to the hospital this morning that I fully realized how sorry I was feeling – for Candice, for Dad, for Janice…and, yes, for me.

Then I thought of the wonderful bumper sticker we saw in Northampton, Massachusetts, during our college visits a couple of years ago:  the one that says “Just Say NO to Negativity.”

That woke me up!

So I did a mind game to turn things around:  with all that is weighing on me, what was I thankful for entering my 58th year?

Family and Friends:  I have a wonderful family – both our core family and the extended one.  I’ve been blessed with a wife and children who love me unconditionally – which is a hard thing to do at times. Their talent and capacity for goodness amaze me. My father was one-half of an amazing set of parents who believed in grounding us in values but allowing us to find our own way and our own values as we grew into adulthood. Our extended family is always there for each other.  Today I’m especially thankful for my two sisters and brother who live near my father and are watching over him. We have friends all over the country who stay in touch, look out for us, and enrich my life every day.

Health:  First of I’ll, I’m thankful that I’m relatively healthy.  Yeah, I need to lose 20 pounds or so, and I really do need to get that toe on my left foot checked out, but day-in and day-out I have no complaints. Our children are in great health – and Claire is especially rock solid after a strong year of college-level swimming and the workouts that go with it.  Mostly this year, I’m very thankful for the health care that we’ve received.  Candice had wonderful doctors and nurses at the neurological unit at Rhode Island Hospital following her fall last August.  Back home, Dr. O’Connor, Dr. Herzfeld, and now Dr. Durbhakula have been a terrific team in leading Candice back to full recovery.  Down in Tennessee, I’m thankful for the cardiologist at Vanderbilt who is checking out Dad’s heart at the moment.

Work:  I have a job that I enjoy and that brings meaning to my life.  My colleagues at the senior management level are all terrific professionals who know their work.  I’m learning from them every day.  The staff throughout the National Trust combine passion and skill in ways that are inspiring.  We get to help save some of the most important places in America – what could be cooler than that!  I have former colleagues and friends from the Trust and from all my previous jobs who continue to enrich my life and work.

Art:  We’ve indulged Candice’s love for theatre and film this year – and to my amazement I’ve loved it!  Among other things we’ve seen War Horse in New York City, Oklahoma! at the Arena Stage, and eight of the nine Best Picture nominees. I think back on some of the great music I’ve heard over my 57th year: Andrew’s senior voice recital, his debut in opera at college, and his role in Hairspray – as his yearbook says, Andrew will be Corny Collins when he grows up!  Wonderful IMT performances  throughout the year have fed my love for acoustic music. And in looking ahead, I have tickets to Merlefest for next month, and that’s always a treat!

Enough Stuff…but Not Too Much: I just noticed that none of the things listed above has anything to do with stuff.  I’ve learned from family that stuff doesn’t matter.  We have a home that could fit in the Not So Big House series.  It is just right for us.  The 11-year-old car just passed 170,000 miles, but still seems to get us around.  Someone recently told me I HAD to get a high-definition television because of my love of sports, but the television we have works and now when I go to a hotel I get a treat with the HDTV.  I have two guitars and a mandolin and they seem to keep me busy.  We’ve been paring down, not adding stuff…and I’m thankful that we’ve kept the clutter at bay.

Hope Springs Eternal:  And on the day before I turn 57, my Washington Nationals have their first spring training game of the season – where everybody’s a champion. But the Nats have the look of a good – if not great – team this year. For the first time in my life I went in with friends as part of a season ticket packet – so I’m guaranteed to see 8-10 games.  I’m with Annie Savoy: I believe in the Church of Baseball.

With March 4th on the horizon, I’m not feeling old.  But as a wise person points out, not too many people live to be 114 – so 57 is a little high in the “middle age” bracket. Birthdays put you in the frame of mind to think a bit about age, I suppose.  As Daddy likes to say, “Getting old isn’t for wimps,” and all the things swirling around in my life today seem designed to reinforce that fact. But whatever comes, I’m thankful for what I have and – most importantly – for the people who have made, and continue to make, my 57 years so rich in love.

More to come…

DJB

If I Had a Vote (Or “Quest for the Best, The Final Chapter”)

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Tonight is when the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announce their awards, and for once I’m ready!

Friends who have known me for a long time will find it impossible to believe that I’ve seen eight of the nine Best Picture nominees BEFORE the Oscars are awarded…much less that I have an opinion on them.  I’m just not a film junkie.

But empty nestdom brought a change in habits, and Candice and I made a pledge to see all the nominees.  We made it through eight before life, health and work kept us from closing out our pledge…but since Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is NEVER mentioned in all the pre-Oscar write-ups as having a chance of winning, I think we’re on safe ground here.

Number eight in our marathon was The Tree of Life – which we watched today thanks to iTunes.  Easily the most complex of the nominees, Terrence Malick’s film was not among my favorites even though it attempted to explore greater depths on issues of life and loss than some of the other, more celebrated, nominees (read The Descendents). 

But let’s cut to the chase:  which picture deserves to win the Best Picture award?

The buzz says that The Artist has a lock, due to a strong publicity campaign by the distributor and that cute little dog.  I’m okay with that, but I feel that Hugo is the better picture.  Too bad it has been publicized as a children’s film, because it is wonderful.  The story is lovingly told and the 3-D production is terrific.  I’m not among those who thinks The Descendents is a strong second choice.  It was nice, but not really Best Picture quality.  My rankings of the eight I saw came in as follows:

  1. Hugo
  2. The Artist
  3. The Help
  4. The Descendents
  5. Midnight in Paris
  6. The Tree of Life
  7. War Horse
  8. Moneyball

I had dinner Friday night with someone who is intimately connected with the film business, and her assessment that there is no truly worthy Best Picture this year rang true to me.  I’d probably watch my top three, Midnight in Paris, and Moneyball again (hey, I am a baseball fan), but I don’t think that I’ll be seeking them out two or there years from now.

So, a few other observations:  Brad Pitt won’t win Best Actor for Moneyball, but he should.  If Viola Davis wins Best Actress for The Help, she’s a deserving winner.  That was a terrific performance.  And in another pitch for Moneyball (which was a good film – just not the Best Picture), Jonah Hill should absolutely win Best Supporting Actor.  And finally, I hope that Midnight in Paris wins at least one award for Woody Allen.  I thought it was a fine picture and is probably the first one I’d pick to see a second time.

There you have it…a true layman’s (if not idiot’s) guide to the Academy Awards.  Bring on the popcorn!

More to come…

DJB

A Day at Joshua Tree

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National Parks are all unique.  They have different histories, different stories of how they were saved, different challenges in today’s world.

I was fortunate today to be introduced to one of the most unusual:  the Joshua Tree National Park in California.  With a half-day to myself, I stuck my toe into the vast park where the Mojave and Colorado deserts converge and was fascinated with what I saw.

What follows are photos from the northwestern edge of the park – from the village of Joshua Tree down to Key’s View, where one gets a remarkable panorama of the San Andreas Fault.  Here’s a bit from the park’s brochure about what one sees in this part of Joshua Tree:

Amid the boulder stacks are pinyon pines, junipers, scrub oaks, Mojave yuccas, and Mojave prickly pear cacti….What tells you most you are truly in the Mojave Desert is the wild-armed Joshua tree.  It isn’t really a tree but a species of yucca….Joshua trees can grow over 40 feet tall – at the leisurely rate of an inch a year.

Enjoy!

More to come…

DJB

Baseball in America (Academic Edition)

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I have found a place in America where February baseball lives!

For the Presidents Day holiday, I’m in Southern California for Family Weekend at Claire’s college.  We’re new to this whole Parents/Family Weekend deal, but if today is any indication I could definitely get use to these trips!

This morning, I visited two political science classes that were very interesting.  One compared the works of Luther and Calvin; the other focused on the U.S. Congress.  Claire joined me for lunch at her favorite dining hall  (most of her classes – of the science variety – weren’t open to parents).  But as she prepares for the conference championships this weekend for her swim team, I’ve found myself with choices for how to spend my time that are entirely up to me.

Which takes me to Baseball in America.

That’s the title of the class I attended after lunch.  It was a synopsis of a fall semester interdisciplinary class that was designed to introduce freshmen to the rigors of college-level writing.  Taught by a life-long Dodgers fan (and politics professor), we had a great discussion about baseball writers such as Tom Boswell, Roger Angell, and even John Updike (yes, for that classic Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu piece on Ted Williams’ last game).  I brought up Boz’s classic line on last September’s Red Sox collapse:  Red Sox, report to the River Styx at dawn.  After class, I recommended Elizabeth Bobrick’s Oriole Magic, about the classic writing in the Baltimore Evening Sun and the Washington Star during the 1979 season.

So what are the texts for Baseball in America?  Just a terrific list of books about baseball, cities, economics, race relations, and scandal:

  • Asinof, Eight Men Out
  • Bouton, Ball Four
  • Costas, Fair Ball
  • Helyar, Lords of the Realm
  • Kirwin (ed.), Out of the Shadows
  • Lewis, Moneyball
  • Mitchell, The Mitchell Report
  • Simon, Jackie Robinson
  • Sullivan, The Dodgers Move West
    (accompanied by a side bar about Robert Moses)
  • Zimbalist, May the Best Team Win

So what better thing to do after talking about baseball than go watch a game.  As luck would have it, the home nine was in action this afternoon on a picture perfect day with a snow-covered mountain as a backdrop.

The school knew how to pick a foe for Family Weekend:  the home team won 16-1.  I spent a good bit of the game sitting next to a father of a young woman (also a freshman) from Seattle just talking – about Ichiro, Strasburg, and everything in between.

I had no idea when I signed up for this weekend that I would be able to scratch my baseball itch.  But I’m sure glad I did.

Play ball!

More to come…

DJB