Holland v. Rooney, round one

I hate Andy Rooney. Maybe hate is too strong a word. Perhaps the things I hate about him (that he pretty much exists on his own reputation, for whatever that's worth) just remind me that I don't have a reputation on which to exist. Anyway, back during the 2002 World Series, he wrote some pretty stupid stuff about baseball. I responded.

Dear Mr. Andy Rooney:

You are a boob.

Your column that ran in Thursday’s Clinton Herald titled “Baseball: No longer a great pastime,” paints you as an aging white supremacist with sexist tendencies so out of touch with the rest of American society that with each passing word you inflate your ego to proportions larger than your eyebrows.
And you’re a lousy writer.

First of all, you begin your column degrading baseball by stating that you don’t know a lot about baseball, and that it’s not your favorite game. This is like me saying I don’t know much about Tibet, and it’s not my favorite country, but we’d better liberate the political prisoners there before we’re all condemned by an angry God.

Second, you use the globalization of baseball as an excuse for why you don’t like it. Is that because you don’t like to see men named Rodriguez or Lopez succeed in contemporary society? While the baseball world is captivated by the sudden success of 20 year-old Angels pitcher Francisco Rodriguez, you perhaps would like us to return to baseball as it was in 1946. You know, before that upstart Jackie Robinson laced up his spikes?

You further assert that one out of four New York Yankees (possibly the only baseball team you could name if forced to at bayonet-point) was not born in America. You further state that “it seems likely that this is a league average." It seems likely? Quality research, Mr. nationally syndicated columnist.

So what if it’s a league average? And then you compared this “problem” to football, where the league is having a hard time explaining why minorities can’t seem to get head coaching jobs, and basketball, where two of the biggest stories this year are a giant rookie from China and the wave of Eastern European players. But hey — most of those European guys are white, so that shouldn’t be a problem... right?

And Mr. Rooney, do you read anything? If you did, you would know that you’ve taken an awful lot of heat for your recent negative comments regarding female sportscasters. Apparently, you missed the fact that the rest of the world was calling you a boob last week and decided to restate your opinion that women on the sidelines are no more than pretty faces and a main detriment to television sports coverage.

Major networks are finally moving qualified women into the play-by-play booth (where old coots like you don’t have to look at their pretty faces), elevating them from roles they’ve proven they can handle, sideline reporter and studio host. Female athletes are just as much professional athletes as males, its about time that female broadcasters got the same respect. But as always, Mr. Rooney, if you don’t like the announcers, turn down the volume.

Your suggestions about rules changes are simply too asinine to address. For someone that doesn’t know a lot about baseball, you sure do have a lot of ridiculous suggestions. I don’t know a lot about the Supreme Court, but I think things would be lightened up a bit if they wore rainbow colored robes, made their decisions based on the outcome of Yahtzee games and enforced punishment by the use of a spinning “Wheel of Torture.”

The real shame, Mr. Rooney, is that you may somehow convince people that you are right. You seem to prey upon people like yourself, with no real interest in what you criticize, and easily sway them to your side of the fence. And let’s sum up what you have taught us today: You don’t need to know much about something to criticize it, non-Americans don’t belong in our society and professional women are bothersome.

Gee, Mr. Rooney. I’m glad you cleared that up for us.

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On another note, I watched with mild curiosity the unveiling of baseball’s 10 greatest moments during game four of the Angels-Giants series, which is turning out to be a true Fall Classic. Here are some quick observations.

• Wasn’t it nice that Pete Rose showed up? Although Rose has been “banned” from baseball and was not allowed to be at a farewell party at Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium, Commissioner Bud Selig seemed to have no problem with Rose appearing at one of the most important baseball games of the year, wearing a Reds hat. You don’t suppose the millions of dollars that Mastercard paid to Major League Baseball had anything to do with that, do you? How can Selig continue to bar Rose when he, too, does anything for a buck?

• The quest was to pick baseball’s most memorable “moment,” yet some of the finalists were full seasons, such as the 1998 home run chase between Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa or Ted Williams’ 1941 campaign in which he was the last player to hit over .400. Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak made the list. All of these achievements were remarkable and indeed memorable, but they were not moments. Moments are things like Kirk Gibson’s dramatic home run in game one of the 1988 World Series, or Lou Gehrig’s farewell speech.

• In what appears to be a casualty of the Internet voting process, Bobby Thomson’s 1951 “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” home run that spawned the famous “The Giants win the pennant!” recording didn’t crack the top 10. This, of course, was a moment — a singular play on a singular pitch with an identifiable result. The No. 1 “moment” was Cal Ripken Jr. breaking Gehrig’s consecutive games played record. The memorable moment here was Ripken’s victory lap around Camden Yards, not the game itself. But how many people of the 282,821 that voted for Ripken were alive and watching the Dodgers-Giants playoff game in 1951? Probably not even 1,951.

Well, you know what? I didn’t vote at all, so I suppose I lose my right to complain about the outcome. I just hope I remember how I feel now when Nov. 5 comes around and I have a chance to vote for something truly important.

When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school...

... it's a wonder I can think at all. Here's another October 2002 entry, this about the joy of trying to be young again, or something like that.

Cafeteria pizza seems to have gotten better.

That’s not my main sentiment coming out the first ever Clinton High School Media Day on Thursday, but I mean it when I say my high school never had hand-tossed Pizza Hut pepperoni at its disposal.

While a free lunch is the highlight of most days, especially when it includes some good, honest Midwest food like ham and scalloped potatoes, I got much, much more out of my Media Day experience.

I already knew a lot of the background on the changes to closed campus and block scheduling, but as the semester goes on it’s nice to hear that more and more people are really in favor of the trimester plan. Of particular note was Wes Golden, who attended the “old” Clinton High School, then returned to teach at it. In this, his sixth year at his alma mater, he can say with complete volition that the new system is really working out well.

But the real highlight of the day, for me, was getting to sit in the high school cafeteria (commonly “The Commons”) and enjoy a tour of the CHS campus. No more than six years ago, I did’t think I’d ever see high school lunch and classrooms as a novelty, but certain things change when you leave college and hit the real world.

The tour was led by Sonja Young, community relations director for the district. It was unofficially led by Brad Seward, a former senior class president at CHS and current employee of KCLN-AM radio. We got to see Seward’s old locker, learned who taught where and got insight into what the cafeteria really used to be like.

For a while I thought he was a bit too giddy at the chance to roam his old stomping grounds. But I soon realized that I would have the exact same attitude if I could lead my colleagues through the halls of my high school.

It’s a weird thing to be a 23 year-old in a high school. All the kids know you don’t fit in, but at the same time, there’s 17-year-olds who can grow more facial hair in second period than I could in a month. I look at all of these miniature adults and they seem a world apart from me, even though my brother, sister and sister-in-law are all seniors in high school this year.

In the professional world, I feel light years away from people who own houses and have kids in junior high. At the same time, I’m way too old to be hanging out with high school kids on a regular basis. Plus, my wife would probably like me to stay at home. As a teacher, she’s no longer thrilled by the novelty of being around students.

It’s all about perspective. To her, school is a workplace. The kids we talked to yesterday may be excited about getting their name in the paper, something that’s an everyday occurrence for me. To my parents, I may be more of an adult since I got married, but I’ll always be one of their kids.

So my trip to the high school wasn’t really a novelty — no more a novelty than anything else my job as a reporter exposes me to, be it a trip to the Mississippi Belle II offices or some inside information on local government.

But life in itself is a novelty, each day a new experience even if it happens in the same place we go to every day. Live for the little things, I guess. Sweat the small stuff. Without that, life just blurs, and that’s no fun at all.

Fast food in the news

I have no idea now what originally inspired me to write this. It ran in October 2002.

In the blink-and-you-miss-it world of national news these days, I’m here to keep you up-to-date on the most important of all news: the world of food.

And I’m not talking about McDonald’s changing its fry oil. That, for some reason, actually was national news. We have CNN on non-stop at the Herald offices, and one of the “Breaking News” stories a few weeks back was McDonald’s decision to change their fry-cooking oil to something less fatty.

This prompts two reactions. One: If you ever watch CNN, you notice that everything is breaking news, even if it’s simply a rehash of a three-day old story. They could show footage from 1995 of O.J. Simpson driving his white Ford Bronco, and it would have the “breaking news” logo splashed on the screen.

The second reaction is if McDonald’s makes their fries half as fatty, that allows people like me to eat twice as much, right?

Back to the pressing news of the day, we have Carlos Ayala, a 26 year-old employee of the Mill Valley, Calif., KFC. Mr. Ayala, it seems, has been selling marijuana from his post as drive through operator. Allegedly, customers that use a secert word when ordering, not only get an extra helping of mashed potates, but two bags of pot. Ayala apparently graduated from a KFC academy in Amsterdam, where legalized weed most likely leads to escalating fast food sales totals.

When Ayala was arrested by Marin County Sheriff’s deputies (seems he distributed his goods to someone who actually wanted extra biscuits), he was found to be in possession of a small amount of marijuana, a handgun and about $500. We can only hope that he wasn’t apprehended at work, because the last thing we need to think about is fast-food employees with concealed weapons.

Burger King is also making news these days, as one of its brand new commercials has already been pulled off the air.

Perhaps you’ve seen the ads featuring a drive through menu/speaker placed in such random environs as a zoo or elevator. The catch is that this menu talks back with the voice of Adam Corolla (of cable TV’s “Love Line” and “The Man Show”).

The bit is that the menu talks to unsuspecting passers-by, who after the conversation are informed of the operation and sign consent forms for commercial release. Pardon me, but if you see a drive through menu in an elevator with a well-known voice coming out of it, wouldn’t you possibly suspect something?

Anyhow, the problem was that the menu, when speaking with junior college students, suggested that junior college should just be called “more high school,” and that the students would need to know about BK’s new 99-cent value menu because “Let’s face it, you’re not gonna be maing a lot of money.”

Predictably, some people affiliated with junior colleges got upset and the ads are on their way off the air, destined for one of those summer specials featuring the so-called funniest commercials you’ve never seen. The result for BK, however, is that the added publicity simply draws attention to the advertising campaign.

The intended result of the ad campaign, as those in touch with the food world know, is for BK to hopefully overtake McDonald’s as the world’s largest food chain. Not content with tromping the likes of Wendy’s, Subway, Taco Bell and KFC (although, with the right promotion and some lenient laws, KFC could see a major spike in business), Burger King will never be satisifed until it beats McDonald’s. Of course, expecting Burger King to eventually win is kind of like betting on the Washington Generals.

What the world really needs is an a la carte fast food mega-complex, where one could eat McDonald’s fries, Wendy’s’ Frosties and the BK Chicken Whopper. Or, as my family does, we could all just go to Culver’s.

An early favorite

Here's one of my early Herald favorites, about our annual camping trip to Elizabeth. I probably could write about this trip every year, but I don't know what kind of broad appeal it would have. It originally ran in October, 2002.

The tradition is simple — fathers and sons enjoying time together in the great outdoors.

On a personal level, it’s something I’ve been doing with my best friend, Nick, and our dads since we were both 5 years old. We only missed one year — senior year in college when Nick was studying science in Tennessee.

It started as a pack of six, with other family friends from Wyoming, Iowa. But family shifts subtracted them from the equation by the time we all got to junior high.

The campsite has been several places — for years it was an Elizabeth pasture owned by my grandparents, a place where my dad use to camp as a Boy Scout and where my uncle rode his motorcycle, shot guns and built a small house in the trees. We kept using the site even after the land was sold to a fellow suburbanite. He charged us $2 a night and sometimes sat around the campfire with us telling life stories that were hard to believe but even harder to make up.

One year we didn’t get the pasture and we found a patch of grass just down the road from my grandparents farmhouse, yards away from the old Weston cemetery. That pasture has been sold again, and for two years we’ve found good earth on the dairy farm of my dad’s cousin, Chuck.

We used to go as part of a summer vacation, which always included trips to Apple Canyon Lake for boating, fishing and swimming. Those summer trips also seemed to always include hiking through the Palisades in Savanna, or a visit to Story Brook in Hanover where three young boys would get to watch their big fathers golf. On the holes away from the road and the clubhouse, those boys sometimes got to drive the golf carts.

As young boys, our breakfasts and dinners were always cooked over the open fire, with my grandparents coming down to join us. On lucky times the event would fall over my mid-August birthday, or perhaps when my uncle was in town (a rarer occurrence when he moved from Wisconsin to Montana. Now we’ve learned that breakfast is much better bought in downtown Elizabeth, though trips for good deals have been made to Galena and Dubuque. And instead of bringing the party to the pasture, we bring the food to the farmhouse.

Young boys soon become young men, something the fathers probably know better than the sons. For the past couple of years, we’ve golfed with our dads instead of just keeping score. We can all drink beer and talk about work or the college we all graduated from. This year I was the third married man at the campfire. In 2001, I asked Nick to be my best man as we packed up camp. Just last Sunday, he returned the favor. With a wedding date of Sept. 25, 2004, however, we’re going to need to schedule camping a little earlier than usual… and his future Mrs. will have to understand.

Some times the camping weekends were highlighted by planned excursions — canoeing the Apple River from Elizabeth to Hanover, a trip to see the Chicago Bears train in Platteville, Wis., or pilgrimages to the Field of Dreams in Dyersville. But in these later years as the trips move later into September and less is happening, we tend to simply show up and see what’s going on. These are the trips that are truly magical.

Less than a week before we left for college, the four of us found ourselves attending a weekend of races: Dogs and dragonboats in Dubuque and downhill BMX riders at Galena’s Chestnut Mountain. Just last year we finished breakfast — still with no itinerary — then spent the day at Mallardfest in Hanover.

Our timing can be unexpectedly excellent. In 1994 we visited the Field of Dreams just after the baseball strike began. In 2001, the Mallardfest Parade was a true patriotic experience just four days after terrorists rocked our country.

The 2002 camping weekend just concluded. The only item on the itinerary was planting two volunteer maple trees in my in-laws’ Fulton, Ill., back yard. On the way down, however, we decided to stop in at the Thomson, Ill., flea market. Once we got to Fulton, we decided to enjoy our lunch at Eagle Point Park overlooking the pools of Lock and Dam 13. After years and years of the tri-state area, we found that Clinton and Whiteside Counties are also beautiful and interesting. Future excursions may bring us to Heritage Canyon, De Immigrant windmill or perhaps on a river cruise on the Mississippi Belle II. My living in Fulton and working in Clinton is beginning (note: I'm not sure what happened to the original copy here. Hopefully this lapse never costs me a Pulitzer.)

Some things never change. Only once have we had to break camp and sleep on my grandparents living room floor. Only once did we have to start Saturday morning and not Friday night. And never have we been happy to break camp on Sunday and return to the real world.

My dad noted Friday that we never really took pictures of the things we do, and I kind of like it that way. We can watch ourselves grow up in school portraits or holiday snapshots. But camping belongs to us — the memories in each of our minds are more than enough to build up excitement for next year’s experience.

Although the longest I ever stayed in Elizabeth was about a week, all of our excursions in and around the area have helped it to feel like home. That’s why I was excited to move back here from Independence. What a wonderful place to make memories and share life, building bonds that can withstand the test of any time or distance.

Here, in the rural farm land and banks of the great river, we are home, and we are happy. And that can never change.