Bats left, signs right.

   

"Stanley Musial," by John Falter (1954)

     The day before Thanksgiving we toured the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown. I found it such a moving experience I wrote about it, at sufficient length that paper is holding the story to plug one of the holes that opens up during the holidays.
     The museum was so extensive, I couldn't do it justice. For instance, there is a lovely little gallery devoted to baseball art that isn't mentioned in the pending story at all, extensive though it is. I was attracted to this painting of Stan Musial, particularly because of the placard:
     "Many baseball fans cried foul when this Saturday Evening Post cover showed southpaw Stan Musial signing autographs with his right hand," it begins. "How could artist John Falter made such a rookie mistake? When posing Musial, Falter learned that Stan the Man wrote right-handed, which Falter then correctly portrayed."
     There must be something so satisfying in the act of correction that people leap to do it without first ascertaining whether they are in fact right, as demonstrated in this exchange Friday. Larry B. wrote:

     As a retired lawyer I must point out that the cab driver you talk about in your column today did not attempt to commit "robbery". That word is clearly defined as " taking of something of value from another person through force or threat of violence." I assume this was not the case. Indeed, I do not believe the driver was guilty of a "crime." He certainly was in violation of the Cab Company rules but he was just trying to negotiate extra compensation in advance.

     I answered him thusly:  

       As someone surrounded by lawyers, I expected your note. And like most readers offering corrections, it is you yourself who are mistaken. You are tripping over what I call "The Two Definitions Problem." Yes, the first definition of "robbery" is as you cite. The next definition, in my dictionary, is "unashamed swindling or overcharging." I am permitted to use the secondary definition, just as you are permitted to both set a table and own a chemistry set. That said, I appreciate both you taking the time to write, and you doggedly subscribing to the paper.

     Larry B. wasn't ready to give in.

     Thank you for your prompt reply. I appreciate your pointing out the informal  (and historically incorrect) meaning of robbery. Isn't it a shame what is happening to the English language?It is almost like "highway robbery"!

    I should have stopped here. But I too can be dogged in insisting on my rightness. 

     Again, we have to disagree. The language has always been mutable and plastic. When Herb Morrison saw the Hindenburg explode in front of him in 1937, he said to his WLS listeners, "It's a terrific thing, ladies and gentlemen." Terrific as in "full of terror." Such an event would no longer be considered terrific because the meaning of the word has changed. You may mourn that however you please.

     There's actually more, but that will do for today. 

How much do you tip the guy who tries to rob you?

     A cabbie tried to rob me Wednesday afternoon. At the cab stand outside Navy Pier. An inversion of the usual dynamic. Typically, it is the cabbie being robbed, by the customer.
     The trip started out so normally. Having spent a productive half day at the Sun-Times newsroom — there was a Christmas lunch — I strode through the tourist commotion of the Pier, burst out the doors, tossed a glance to my right at the CTA bus corral, didn't see a waiting  124 bus, so veered left. The first cabbie's door was locked — he gave a brisk shake of the head, and I figured he was waiting for an arranged ride or perhaps just didn't like the look of me. The second cabbie's door opened.
     "Where to?" he asked.
     "Union Station," I said, starting to climb in the back. "Madison Street entrance."
     "It's a $15 flat fee," the cabbie ventured.
     I froze, halfway in the cab.
     "No it's not," I replied, automatically, beginning to withdraw. "I'll take the bus." I began to close the door.
     "Okay, get in," he said.
     And here is the surprising part. I got in.
     "Run the meter," I said. 
     As we pulled away from the curb, I asked myself: why patronize the guy who just tried to rip you off? The short answer: expediency. There was no other cab. If I went back to the bus, I would miss the train. This driver wasn't a hardened felon, just another hard-working jamoke, trolling the bait to see if I was ignorant enough to snap at it. I was at Navy Pier at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday, after all. How on the ball could I be? Fleecing the rubes is as hallowed a Chicago tradition as there is. I'm lucky he didn't also try to steal my land.
     As we drove past Lake Point Tower, he started murmuring on the phone, in Yoruba — or Hausa, or Igbo or Fulfulde or one of the other 520 languages of Nigeria, one of the most linguistically diverse nations on earth. Thanks to WhatApp, cabbies hold continual conversations while they drive, I assume with relatives back home, or wives or girlfriends here. It's annoying, but what can you do? Me, a chatterbox, began talking to him anyway, breaking in on his conversation.
     "Here I try to do the right thing, and patronize cabs, insead of Uber, because there aren't any Ubers just sitting there. I'd have had to wait five or 10 minutes for an Uber to arrive, and I'd miss my train. And my reward is, you try to rip me off."
     Okay, not a Mamet monologue, but I was improvising.
     He replied that Uber is the true ripoff.
     "With their surge pricing," he said. "How am I supposed to make it?"

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Scattered ash

 

    We closed on our house in June, 2000, and a few days later a microburst blew apart the large tree off our bedroom. I did not, despite my propensity to draw significance from, oh, black crows blocking my path, gazing at me intently, see this unwelcome development as augury. Stuff happens.
     Replacing the tree seemed essential, though, to restore the karmic balance to our new home. I chose a cimmaron ash because ash trees grow quickly, and indeed this one did. 

     A smart choice, at the time. "The Urban Tree Book," by Arthur Plotnik, published the same year, starts off with the ash. "One of Western civilization's most sacred trees. Among the oldest and largest trees of American towns."   

     Not anymore. Not so smart a choice, in retrospect.
     The emerald ash borer showed up in Michigan in 2002, and soon thereafter a protracted battle began, with regular treatments of the tree fending off continual assaults by the pest. We spent many times more on whatever voodoo potion they shoot into ashes to kill the little green monsters than we had on the tree itself. 
     That seemed to work. For a few years, I held out hope that my tree, separated as it is from its fellow trees, might be one of the rare survivors. I told myself that the weird signs of distress — sending off all these ugly suckers that I dutifully trimmed back — were caused by the borer treatment itself, which was not always applied expertly, in my amateur opinion.
     This past summer a large part of the crown never sprouted leaves. It looked dead. The arborist we consulted said, sure, he could pare back the dead crown, but the tree would look horrible and it would soon die anyway. Having previously condemned the majestic sugar maple in our front yard, I knew I could do this. But I did not plant the sugar maple. The ash I did. You're not supposed to outlive your trees — that's one purpose of planting them. To give shade to generations yet unborn. Not this tree. Since I am taking woodworking, I thought of saving the wood, kiln drying it, making a table, or a baseball bat. But a) that would take a lot of effort b) I'm not good enough to make a table or a baseball bat, yet and c) Owl Lumber sells ash wood.
    The tree came down Monday. Part of me wish I'd fled to the gym, to not be party to the removal process. But it seemed smart to stick around while the work was being done. I put in my Airpods and listened to Mozart to drown out the screams of the chainsaws. Advanced Tree Care did the job quickly and efficiently — so efficiently they almost left without trimming another tree back off our roof, but I pointed out the lapse, and that it was in the contract, and a worker went up and took care of it.  So I was glad I had stayed.
    The space where the tree had been looks surprisingly big. The stump is there — I have to get some stump remover for it. Life is sometimes about planting and looking forward, sometimes about cutting down and letting go.

Play captures Royko the writer, misses Royko the man

Newberry Library

   
     The Royko play is back. At the Chopin Theatre until Dec. 22. Having maintained a manful silence during its first run, the smart thing for me to do would be to continue keeping my big yap shut.
     But being a newspaperman was never a particularly intelligent way to make a living, never mind being a columnist who — I think people forget — is supposed to stir the pot.
     First the short take. I saw "Royko: The Toughest Man in Chicago" during its initial run in September — how could I not? — and enjoyed the one-man show, in the main. I love the part when Royko compares writing for a newspaper to being a kid playing outside at dusk, begging for just a few more minutes, another turn at bat, before he has to go into the house for a bath and homework and all the dull non-fun stuff kids are forced to do. This was in the context of the death of the great Chicago Daily News in 1978. Now we face the looming demise of the entire industry. I'm going to miss this.
     And I'm no Royko. Royko was great, the greased hub on which Chicago spun, span, and the play captures that nicely. Reading a Royko column, I used to say, was like having a computer chip implanted in your brain, a new circuit about whatever subject he was addressing. His thoughts become your thoughts. He was that good. Not all the time of course — people forget that. Royko wrote his share of duds — five days a week, you had to. But enough home runs to keep fans cheering.
     Where writer/actor Mitchell Bisschop falls short is that Royko was not the sum of his writing, but a human being, and a deeply flawed one at that. He could be menacing and mean, there at the end of the bar at the Billy Goat, sucking back his cocktails, snarling at the world. The daring suburbanite or forward young journalist who approached him did so at his own peril.

     Fame can be as addictive as any drug. It does bad things to people, and it inflated Royko's self-estimation and made him a jerk to his younger admirers. He was the king of the hill, but was also terrified of being knocked off his lofty perch. Everything was a battle for supremacy. You shook his hand, he tried to crush it. 

     I never had a good encounter with him. Not one. He once threatened to break my legs, and not in some teasing, avuncular way, but in a dead serious "I'll-break-your-fucking-legs" way.

     A little of THAT Royko might have given the play more bite. But then, I suppose Bisschop wouldn't have gotten the cooperation of the family needed to pad his play with big blocks of Royko's classic columns.

     Maybe this play will inspire someone to write an actual play about Royko, the man, and his era that doesn't quote any columns. The material is certainly available.
     Right here, I have a letter from Royko framed in my office, displayed as a kind of trophy and a reminder of the frequent price of success. Not addressed to me, but to a woman he accosted in a bar, and when she didn't recognize him, threatened with a broken ketchup bottle.
     "Please accept my apologies for my disgusting, boorish, and inexcusable behavior," Royko begins. "If I caused you any discomfort or inconvenience, I am truly sorry. Any anger you felt, and I probably gave you cause to be outraged, can't equal the self-disgust and anger I experienced when I eventually realized what a sorry fool I had made of myself."

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Mailbag

 

     Monday's mailbag of email was particularly heavy — metaphorically, of course — after my column on the murder of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Most commented on aspects of our national healthcare disaster. But some were the kind of off-base attack that I've grown to savor because, really, how else can you approach them but as a connoisseur of contempt? I'll share two. The first correspondent, perhaps new to my column, or new to the entire idea of opinion writing, registered displeasure with both my views and my sharp prose.

Mr. Steinberg:

First, starting your article with a recitation of your issues getting a prescription refill for your pen needles made “all killing is bad” insincere at best.

Second, those with Type 1 or other insulin dependent diabetes are hardly “junkies.” Injecting insulin is not “shooting up,” and there is absolutely no reason that anyone needs to inject insulin in a bathroom.

I was disappointed in your column.

Debra S.

     I didn't know quite where to begin on that one — if you're supposed to take fast-acting insulin five minutes before you eat, and you're at a restaurant, where are you supposed to take it? At the table? Should it be considered a kind of weird subcutaneous cousin of breastfeeding? Not me. Not yet anyway. Trying to introduce the idea that not everything is for everybody, I replied:

Dear Ms. S.:

Thanks for writing, mistaken though you are, on several levels. First, both my opening and my belief that killing is bad are completely sincere. Odd that you would pretend to look into my mind and conclude otherwise. Second, as a vivid writer, I am allowed to couch my life experience in whatever terms I like. While it is a shame you are disappointed, the problem is yours, not mine, since I write for people who like what I do. If you don't, then it is not for you. Why would I take advice from people who don't like my work? Anyway, here's hoping you stick around, and perhaps like future columns better or, barring that, find someone whose writing matches your internal demands for ordinary, literal prose.

Best,
NS

     Then there was the reader irked that we had ignored the anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Email is a cold medium, and I can't tell whether this guy is a fan who expressed himself poorly, or someone touting the past and future president. 

Neil,
     Couldn't help but wonder if the 47th president elect, Commander Bone Spurs attitude towards our men and women in uniform** had anything to do with the fact that there was no mention in Saturday's Sun Times edition of "the date that will live in infamy"

Bill C. ( the faithful reader from Highland Park whose fears you calmed during the paper's printing fiasco with your speedy reply to my e-mail)

     ** "they are all suckers and losers"

     I wondered where he was coming from — someone trying to blameshift Trump's treason onto us? How did that jibe with his citing the bone spurs, plus his being a "faithful reader?"
 I probably shouldn't have unleashed the dogs of snark. Perhaps I was being too literal myself, but then, I am an imperfect vessel myself, and was set off by the Remember Pearl Harbor! complaint, which I've been pelted with for decades by people who certainly need no reminding. I replied:

     Really? You did? The short answer is "no." For starters, because of the linearity of time — the liar, bully, fraud and traitor expressed his contempt for our soldiers years before the Sun-Times did not mark the 83rd anniversary of Pearl Harbor. Thus the chances of the latter being responsible for the former are zero.

               Does that help?

               NS

We can't kill our way out of our healthcare woes.

 

"The Gates of Hell," Auguste Rodin (Rodin Museum, Philadelphia)

     Last Wednesday, the same day UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down in New York, an assistant pharmacist at Walgreens phoned me.
     The prescription for needles that fit my insulin pen, she said, can no longer be filled, because my insurance company, Aetna, is now insisting it must be done through the mail, in 90-day batches. I might be able to get an exception, but should call Aetna.
     No problem! Calling people is what I do for a living. I phoned the number on the back of my insurance card, jumping online — multi-tasking! — during the long delay to try their website.
     Online, a form to fill out and mail to Texas, along with my credit card number. I gazed at the form and tried to imagine it resulting in boxes of BD Nano 2nd Gen 4 mm Pen Needles showing up on my doorstep. Unlikely.
     Meanwhile, on the phone, I was passed along to several people whose mastery of English was sub-ideal. My suggestion of an exception meant nothing. Negotiations for obtaining the needles via the mail went nowhere. Eventually, what we worked out was that I should have my doctor call in a 90-day prescription to CVS — did I mention that CVS owns Aetna? It's true. My cost for three boxes — a 90-day supply — would be $78.
     Now I've liked CVS ever since Nicholson Baker published "The Mezzanine," a lapidary little novel about a man who breaks his shoelace and goes to CVS to buy a new one. Excellent, but not enough to snatch brand loyalty away from Walgreens, a venerable Chicago company that invented the malted milkshake. I can ride my bike to Walgreens. Plus I know people there, thanks to routine visits to secure the seven prescriptions I need every day so as not to die from diabetes.
     Social media exploded with joy at the slaying of Thompson. Many Americans are denied medical care, either because they can't navigate the insurance labyrinth or because companies say no to necessary treatment in some arbitrary fashion. Countless people have endured the agony of watching loved ones suffer and die because an unseen bean counter wouldn't check a box.
     Let me be clear. All killing is bad, but Thompson's slaying is especially bad because it was a targeted assassination. There are many countries in the world where helmeted assassins on mopeds routinely gun down executives on crowded city streets then roar away. We don't want to live in one of those countries — well, we already do, given last week's slaying. We don't want it to get worse.

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Grindstone Elementary

     I attended Fairwood Elementary School in Berea, Ohio. It was about a mile from my house — 1.1 miles I see now, from Google maps — and I walked every day, with my older sister, before she transitioned to the junior high for 7th grade, and my little brother when he began kindergarten when I was in 5th grade.
     I don't remember much about those walks — there was a bully, Trent Caruthers. There was a large weeping willow whose branches we'd break off, strip of their leaves and make into whips that would whistle through the air.
     After I left Berea, I went back to Fairwood a couple times on visits to my hometown. There was the same Winslow Homer reproduction of New England fishermen, the same brown and beige floor tiles. The place was  very small. To drink out of a water fountain, I had to fall to my knees, which is quite symbolic — the person you are now, humbled before the person you were then. 
     Then Fairwood school was gone. Berea was changing, populations shifting. When we went back on our way out east for Thanksgiving, there was a new school, huge — our host said seven former elementary school districts funnel into it. The name stunned me.
     "Grindstone Elementary School."
     I don't have to say anything more, right? It would be too obvious for Dickens. I suppose I should point out that Berea was known for sandstone — to this day, there is a Berea sandstone. The town's lakes — Baldwin Lake, Wallace Lake — started as sandstone quarries. The sandstone was made into paving stone, building stone, and grindstones, large circular discs, bigger than a manhole cover, used to grind grain. If you were a longstanding Berea family, you showed off with a grindstone in your front yard.

     Still. Grindstone Elementary? Really? 

     On the upside, the kids must have a field day with the name.