In all the hubbub of Roger Clemens' trial for lying to Congress, it's interesting to note that none of the people who profited from the scandal - Major League Baseball owners - was subject to prosecution, much less questioning by the Mitchell Commission or Congress.
Baseball was in the doldrums starting in the early '90s, when the use of steroids became prevalent. Home run kings Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire - to name two - grew from regular-sized men to massive steroidal giants, and their home run production in the late '90s grew as well. The fans came flocking back, but the owners looked away, refusing to adopt even the mild regulations that the NFL had adopted all the way back in 1987.
That was inevitable, given that the owners were allowed to form the Mitchell Commission and then control the proceedings - as clear a case of the inmates running the asylum as you could imagine. If you ask me, Drayton McClain has a lot more to answer for than Roger Clemens.
- Pete Smith, Cypress
http://www.chron.com/default/article/Much-to-do-about-Roger-1479358.php
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
What My Brother Taught Me
One of my earliest recollections of my brother Tom was when I was six and he was nine, with me begging him to let me go snow shoveling with him at the start of Detroit’s winter in 1960. I was hazy on the concept, but had managed to figure out that my brother had a regular route of customers in the neighborhood that would pay him money to shovel their snow. The money was awesome from my perspective: never less than a quarter, most frequently fifty cents and occasionally as much as a buck. Do a couple of sidewalks per Snow Day, and you’re talking real money.
Tom had been at this for a couple of winters before he let me come along. For the first of many times, he did what Big Brothers are so frequently burdened to do: he shrugged his shoulders, said “OK, you can come”, pointed his finger at me and said “but you better do exactly what I tell you to do”. I will never forget the direct eye contact, and I instinctively understood that while Big Brothers may be generous, failure under these circumstances was not an option. There would be consequences, most likely the dread “why are you slapping yourself in the face with your own hands?” Shtick, where my brother would pin me down, take my own hands and slap me in the face with them. All strictly for fun, you know, and judiciously exercised.
That January morning, we bundled up and were off. His preferred territory covered our street, Omira, and the next street over, Yacama, between State Fair Avenue and Eight Mile. The first house we got a hit on was on Yacama close to Eight Mile. Tom negotiated the deal: one dollar, but we had to do everything, including removing a foot of snow from the tops of their two cars. Oh yeah; and the cars would stay in the driveway. I cratered fast. One foot of snow when you’re 4 foot tall was daunting. My brother gave me one of my more memorable pieces of advice, and the first that I recollect from him: “Shovel off the top half of the snow, then shovel what’s underneath”.
It worked. Rejuvenated, I finished the sidewalk while Tom did the walkway, the steps, the porch, the driveway and the cars. I stopped at one point, tired, and marveled at the continuing downpour of snow, and my brother, a relentless silhouette from the light of the nearby streetlight, fighting back the snow from our customer’s property, flurries building on his stocking cap, scarf, gloves and coat. I was cold after a half hour, but my brother taught me the second lesson of the day: endurance. Sure, I could have left when I got cold, but to do so would have meant disappointing him. “Keep moving”, he would say; “you’ll stay warm”. He was right.
I hung in for the whole job. We got paid. Tom cut me in for a third.
It’s Friday, July 1st around 1:30am. Sharon and I have just gotten into Detroit, having gotten the word of Tom’s death early Wednesday. He had just turned 60 the week before he died, and left behind his wife Marilyn, his sons Tom, Tim and Brian, our Dad, two sisters, Susan and Jane, hundreds of other relatives and friends, and me. His health hadn’t been good in the past few years, but to say that his death was a shock to me was an understatement. Tom was my Big Brother, and to me he had been a rock since my earliest memories. To see him work as I have so many times in my life, you would have thought him indestructible regardless of what health problems were thrown his way later in life. Paul Bunyan and Babe The Blue Ox got nothing on Tom, and so it was the last time I saw him before he died; more about that later.
Besides Work, the other thing that defined Tom was his devotion to Family, and to Tom, the two were opposite sides of the same coin: The Family ruled; hard work allowed the Family to flourish. It was that simple. “Family” included not only the one Tom grew up in, but the one he created with my sister-in-law Marilyn, and the extended family that sprouted up like so many branches off a massive tree over the past thirty eight years, with the roots planted in the Smith house on Lewiston Ave in Ferndale. From the beginning, Tom and Marilyn’s house was the Landing Zone for not only their siblings and parents, but various other relatives, countless of their sons’ friends, and later, those friends’ girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, husbands - and in the past several years - children.
My Brother got a paper route with The Detroit Free Press when he was ten, scoring the same two streets that described his territory for yard work. As usual, I would beg him to let me ride with him and after a couple years (once my parents would allow it), he did. After a few months of this, Tom invited me to take over half the route. I was nine. My Brother offered me a simple deal: He would deliver the four days the papers were heavy: Sunday, Monday, Thursday and Saturday; I would deliver Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, and do all the Collecting. This was not a problem for me. The “Heavy” days were not only heavy, but almost impossible to fold.
We did this for a year, and once I was ten years old, a route opened up just south of State Fair. Jake, our Station Manager, was doubtful that I could do it since I was on the scrawny side, but Tom put in a good word for me, and promised Jake he would help me deliver on Sundays or whenever I needed help, and he did. For the next few months, Tom would do his route and then come help me do mine, and not just for Sundays; there was many a Thursday where he helped me out as well. Soon enough, I was flying solo, but I’ll never forget the sense of accomplishment. I’ll also never forget that this would never have happened without my Big Brother’s help, which included instructing me in the art of dividing up the 75 pounds of Sunday papers on my bike between the front bags and the rear.
It’s Friday morning, and the entire extended Family is either in attendance at the funeral home for the Viewing, or en route from various points around the country. This includes virtually all of the surviving Smiths, Anconas and Malkowskis, numerous of the Boys’ lifelong friends, their spouses and kids in tow, co-workers from decades’ past, high-school friends, aunts, uncles and dozens of cousins. The throng at the funeral home competed with the ever-growing number of floral arrangements for space in the main room. Nobody minded the crowd, or the fact that we had overwhelmed the building’s air conditioner. Tom was in the House, hosting his last and best Family gathering.
I do believe the manager got a little flustered by the sheer number of children on that first day. They were well behaved, but they were numerous. Tom was undoubtedly pleased to see them there, and it reminded me of how little ones gravitated to him. This would not have been entirely expected. See, the Smith family’s idea of a great family gathering was to gather around the dining room table for a nice dinner, clear the dishes, and then commence to arguing. It was generally the men, voices would get loud, many an accusation would be hurled, the women would get everybody to quiet down, and then we would do it again the following weekend. It was recreation. My Brother was generally in the thick of it, larger than life, with the youngsters stationed in the living room or otherwise within earshot. It didn’t seem to matter. Be it baby or toddler, his size and volume had no effect on them. There just purely was nothing more amusing than to watch this giant bear of a man babble gibberish at a baby, or play peek-a-boo with a two year old. However gruff and intimidating he appeared to be, Kids had his number. They knew it. He knew it. They knew he knew it.
I marvel, in retrospect, at the number of times I followed in my Brother’s footsteps, at first shoveling snow, raking leaves and cutting grass - every season offering a different opportunity. After Tom scored work around the neighborhood, I scored work around the neighborhood; after Tom got a paper route, I got a paper route; after Tom got a job as a Caddy, I got a job as a Caddy; after Tom got a job in Construction out of High School, I, uh, well, let’s just say I punted on that one.
At age twelve, Tom started Caddying at the Detroit Golf Club and gave me his paper route, which was literally our neighborhood. He biked the two miles to DGC at 5:00am every morning during the summer and queued up to Caddy for the rich folk. He got there early so he could score an early “Loop” (group of golfers) so as to score another one directly after lunch. At DGC, a rare honor bestowed on very few Caddies when they were short on bodies during the weekend was to pull a “Double”, literally, one Caddy for two Golfers through one round of 18 holes. This involved not only carrying the bags but tracking two balls and hustling the bags to both shots, inevitably on opposite sides of the fairway. Repeat that process for however many shots it took both Golfers to get to the green. By age 13 my brother not only pulled more Doubles than any Caddie at DGC, he often pulled two Doubles in a single day; Tom would return home, sun-burnt but fresh around 7pm on a Saturday, and frequently repeat the process on Sunday.
Suffice to say that once I reached age twelve, I wanted to Caddy too. Tom introduced me to the Caddy Master, who had the same doubts as Jake, given my size. A good word from Tom – who was a “Captain” in the ranks of Caddies after his first year – and I was in. I remember in my first year being hustled at cards – as were many of the Newbies in the Caddy Shack – by some of the older boys. The Ring Leader was a Caddy named Hybor. He was two years older than my brother at this point, who was 14. I was too ashamed to tell Tom that I had lost ten bucks (the entire day’s earnings) playing poker, but he found out anyhow. He took me aside, called me a dumb ass, and then patiently explained how the older boys cheated, using marked cards and spotters that would signal the strength of your hand. He also pointed out that they knew how to play cards, and I didn’t. He went back to the Caddy Shack the next day and had a talk with Hybor. My brother could be very persuasive, and thereafter, Hybor and various of his Toadies swore off gambling, or at least with the younger Caddies, and I learned another valuable life lesson.
It’s Saturday morning, July 2nd, and the funeral is set for 11am. Sharon and I are staying with Marilyn, so she, the boys and we bustle out just before 10am. The funeral home is only two minutes away, and we all go in for a final visit with Tom before Folks start arriving. Within minutes of our arrival, Friends and Family were flooding in, and the place was practically full a half-hour before the service.
After high school, Tom worked Construction, picking up the variety of mechanical skills that would serve him later in life. Over the years, in addition to his regular job Tom would do side jobs, usually concrete. He was also the de facto concrete guy in the family, and did work on all of our houses: driveways, patios, you name it. Tom could single-handedly excavate, form, pour and finish a driveway in one day, and do it all with hand tools. I know, because he used to hire me to help him on some jobs, with my contribution mainly being propping a form or getting him the tools he needed. Until you’ve formed and finished concrete by hand, you don’t know what work is, especially since there’s this tiny window to get it all done before the concrete sets.
There was a school of thought that maintained you could extend your work time by watering the concrete. Tom would have none of that, claiming it cheapened the end result, so we worked hard and worked fast, and nobody more so than him.
From my perspective, if his work life didn’t kill him, nothing would. Family. Work. Everything else takes care of itself. My brother first and foremost taught me the value of work, an ethic we picked up from our Dad and which Tom – through his example - handed down to me. My Brother demonstrated to me what was possible. Over the years we would talk about our jobs. Overtime was a frequent topic, and he made it clear how important OT was. I remember one time squawking about working a Sunday at the supermarket where I unloaded trucks and stocked shelves. “How much are you making on Sundays?”, he asked. “$12.50 an hour”, I replied. “Peter, that’s a hundred bucks in one day. Work as many of those damn things as you can get”. After that, my Sundays were fixed in my mind as a “hundred dollar day”. I worked 26 of them a year until I got a job in the telephone business.
There was a steady stream of Folks going up to the casket. When it came Sharon’s and my turn to go up to the casket, I felt at peace. Sad, but at peace. I watched as several of my nephews’ friends struggled with his death as if a member of their own family had died. The place was packed to over-flowing, including tons of kids, who all had their opportunity to walk up to the casket and see Tom one more time. This has been a much-discussed topic amongst the adults of my acquaintance. When are they old enough? How will it affect them? Watching the Kids, it occurred to me that there was no age at which they’re too young, no effect other than a good one. Tom had one last thing to give, one last lesson to teach.
The funeral service finished, and there was an announcement of a wake at the Oxford Inn, the Family’s favorite place for dinner. In true Irish/Italian style, this was a Wake with a capital W, and I suspect exactly as Tom would have liked it: Family and Friends all gathered together, having a good time, reconnecting, and celebrating with food and drink.
Just a few months before he died, I happened to score a work assignment in the Detroit area. Of course, I stayed with Tom and Marilyn. The morning after I arrived, there was a foot of fresh snow on the ground. Tom and Marilyn bundled up for their regular ritual, which included clearing snow not only on their own lot, but that of several of their neighbors. Of course, I joined in on the fun. Tom muscled the snow blower out of the shed and pulled it backwards through the snow in the yard, and once again I marveled at his strength. Tom worked the Blower, Marilyn and I worked the shovels. An hour later, three houses were cleared but at that point I had to leave for my regular job. As I rounded the corner of their house towards my car, I could see Tom and Marilyn, still methodically clearing snow at a house across the street. It’s strange to think that one of my last impressions of my Brother was also one of my first: him battling the snow on a bitter cold day, clearing walks and driveways, the discharge from the snow blower collecting on his hat, shoulders and other portions of his massive frame. When we were kids we were clearing the neighbors’ snow for profit. Fifty years later, we were clearing the neighbors’ snow for free.
Family. Work. Take care of those things and everything else takes care of itself.
I miss him.
Tom had been at this for a couple of winters before he let me come along. For the first of many times, he did what Big Brothers are so frequently burdened to do: he shrugged his shoulders, said “OK, you can come”, pointed his finger at me and said “but you better do exactly what I tell you to do”. I will never forget the direct eye contact, and I instinctively understood that while Big Brothers may be generous, failure under these circumstances was not an option. There would be consequences, most likely the dread “why are you slapping yourself in the face with your own hands?” Shtick, where my brother would pin me down, take my own hands and slap me in the face with them. All strictly for fun, you know, and judiciously exercised.
That January morning, we bundled up and were off. His preferred territory covered our street, Omira, and the next street over, Yacama, between State Fair Avenue and Eight Mile. The first house we got a hit on was on Yacama close to Eight Mile. Tom negotiated the deal: one dollar, but we had to do everything, including removing a foot of snow from the tops of their two cars. Oh yeah; and the cars would stay in the driveway. I cratered fast. One foot of snow when you’re 4 foot tall was daunting. My brother gave me one of my more memorable pieces of advice, and the first that I recollect from him: “Shovel off the top half of the snow, then shovel what’s underneath”.
It worked. Rejuvenated, I finished the sidewalk while Tom did the walkway, the steps, the porch, the driveway and the cars. I stopped at one point, tired, and marveled at the continuing downpour of snow, and my brother, a relentless silhouette from the light of the nearby streetlight, fighting back the snow from our customer’s property, flurries building on his stocking cap, scarf, gloves and coat. I was cold after a half hour, but my brother taught me the second lesson of the day: endurance. Sure, I could have left when I got cold, but to do so would have meant disappointing him. “Keep moving”, he would say; “you’ll stay warm”. He was right.
I hung in for the whole job. We got paid. Tom cut me in for a third.
It’s Friday, July 1st around 1:30am. Sharon and I have just gotten into Detroit, having gotten the word of Tom’s death early Wednesday. He had just turned 60 the week before he died, and left behind his wife Marilyn, his sons Tom, Tim and Brian, our Dad, two sisters, Susan and Jane, hundreds of other relatives and friends, and me. His health hadn’t been good in the past few years, but to say that his death was a shock to me was an understatement. Tom was my Big Brother, and to me he had been a rock since my earliest memories. To see him work as I have so many times in my life, you would have thought him indestructible regardless of what health problems were thrown his way later in life. Paul Bunyan and Babe The Blue Ox got nothing on Tom, and so it was the last time I saw him before he died; more about that later.
Besides Work, the other thing that defined Tom was his devotion to Family, and to Tom, the two were opposite sides of the same coin: The Family ruled; hard work allowed the Family to flourish. It was that simple. “Family” included not only the one Tom grew up in, but the one he created with my sister-in-law Marilyn, and the extended family that sprouted up like so many branches off a massive tree over the past thirty eight years, with the roots planted in the Smith house on Lewiston Ave in Ferndale. From the beginning, Tom and Marilyn’s house was the Landing Zone for not only their siblings and parents, but various other relatives, countless of their sons’ friends, and later, those friends’ girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, husbands - and in the past several years - children.
My Brother got a paper route with The Detroit Free Press when he was ten, scoring the same two streets that described his territory for yard work. As usual, I would beg him to let me ride with him and after a couple years (once my parents would allow it), he did. After a few months of this, Tom invited me to take over half the route. I was nine. My Brother offered me a simple deal: He would deliver the four days the papers were heavy: Sunday, Monday, Thursday and Saturday; I would deliver Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday, and do all the Collecting. This was not a problem for me. The “Heavy” days were not only heavy, but almost impossible to fold.
We did this for a year, and once I was ten years old, a route opened up just south of State Fair. Jake, our Station Manager, was doubtful that I could do it since I was on the scrawny side, but Tom put in a good word for me, and promised Jake he would help me deliver on Sundays or whenever I needed help, and he did. For the next few months, Tom would do his route and then come help me do mine, and not just for Sundays; there was many a Thursday where he helped me out as well. Soon enough, I was flying solo, but I’ll never forget the sense of accomplishment. I’ll also never forget that this would never have happened without my Big Brother’s help, which included instructing me in the art of dividing up the 75 pounds of Sunday papers on my bike between the front bags and the rear.
It’s Friday morning, and the entire extended Family is either in attendance at the funeral home for the Viewing, or en route from various points around the country. This includes virtually all of the surviving Smiths, Anconas and Malkowskis, numerous of the Boys’ lifelong friends, their spouses and kids in tow, co-workers from decades’ past, high-school friends, aunts, uncles and dozens of cousins. The throng at the funeral home competed with the ever-growing number of floral arrangements for space in the main room. Nobody minded the crowd, or the fact that we had overwhelmed the building’s air conditioner. Tom was in the House, hosting his last and best Family gathering.
I do believe the manager got a little flustered by the sheer number of children on that first day. They were well behaved, but they were numerous. Tom was undoubtedly pleased to see them there, and it reminded me of how little ones gravitated to him. This would not have been entirely expected. See, the Smith family’s idea of a great family gathering was to gather around the dining room table for a nice dinner, clear the dishes, and then commence to arguing. It was generally the men, voices would get loud, many an accusation would be hurled, the women would get everybody to quiet down, and then we would do it again the following weekend. It was recreation. My Brother was generally in the thick of it, larger than life, with the youngsters stationed in the living room or otherwise within earshot. It didn’t seem to matter. Be it baby or toddler, his size and volume had no effect on them. There just purely was nothing more amusing than to watch this giant bear of a man babble gibberish at a baby, or play peek-a-boo with a two year old. However gruff and intimidating he appeared to be, Kids had his number. They knew it. He knew it. They knew he knew it.
I marvel, in retrospect, at the number of times I followed in my Brother’s footsteps, at first shoveling snow, raking leaves and cutting grass - every season offering a different opportunity. After Tom scored work around the neighborhood, I scored work around the neighborhood; after Tom got a paper route, I got a paper route; after Tom got a job as a Caddy, I got a job as a Caddy; after Tom got a job in Construction out of High School, I, uh, well, let’s just say I punted on that one.
At age twelve, Tom started Caddying at the Detroit Golf Club and gave me his paper route, which was literally our neighborhood. He biked the two miles to DGC at 5:00am every morning during the summer and queued up to Caddy for the rich folk. He got there early so he could score an early “Loop” (group of golfers) so as to score another one directly after lunch. At DGC, a rare honor bestowed on very few Caddies when they were short on bodies during the weekend was to pull a “Double”, literally, one Caddy for two Golfers through one round of 18 holes. This involved not only carrying the bags but tracking two balls and hustling the bags to both shots, inevitably on opposite sides of the fairway. Repeat that process for however many shots it took both Golfers to get to the green. By age 13 my brother not only pulled more Doubles than any Caddie at DGC, he often pulled two Doubles in a single day; Tom would return home, sun-burnt but fresh around 7pm on a Saturday, and frequently repeat the process on Sunday.
Suffice to say that once I reached age twelve, I wanted to Caddy too. Tom introduced me to the Caddy Master, who had the same doubts as Jake, given my size. A good word from Tom – who was a “Captain” in the ranks of Caddies after his first year – and I was in. I remember in my first year being hustled at cards – as were many of the Newbies in the Caddy Shack – by some of the older boys. The Ring Leader was a Caddy named Hybor. He was two years older than my brother at this point, who was 14. I was too ashamed to tell Tom that I had lost ten bucks (the entire day’s earnings) playing poker, but he found out anyhow. He took me aside, called me a dumb ass, and then patiently explained how the older boys cheated, using marked cards and spotters that would signal the strength of your hand. He also pointed out that they knew how to play cards, and I didn’t. He went back to the Caddy Shack the next day and had a talk with Hybor. My brother could be very persuasive, and thereafter, Hybor and various of his Toadies swore off gambling, or at least with the younger Caddies, and I learned another valuable life lesson.
It’s Saturday morning, July 2nd, and the funeral is set for 11am. Sharon and I are staying with Marilyn, so she, the boys and we bustle out just before 10am. The funeral home is only two minutes away, and we all go in for a final visit with Tom before Folks start arriving. Within minutes of our arrival, Friends and Family were flooding in, and the place was practically full a half-hour before the service.
After high school, Tom worked Construction, picking up the variety of mechanical skills that would serve him later in life. Over the years, in addition to his regular job Tom would do side jobs, usually concrete. He was also the de facto concrete guy in the family, and did work on all of our houses: driveways, patios, you name it. Tom could single-handedly excavate, form, pour and finish a driveway in one day, and do it all with hand tools. I know, because he used to hire me to help him on some jobs, with my contribution mainly being propping a form or getting him the tools he needed. Until you’ve formed and finished concrete by hand, you don’t know what work is, especially since there’s this tiny window to get it all done before the concrete sets.
There was a school of thought that maintained you could extend your work time by watering the concrete. Tom would have none of that, claiming it cheapened the end result, so we worked hard and worked fast, and nobody more so than him.
From my perspective, if his work life didn’t kill him, nothing would. Family. Work. Everything else takes care of itself. My brother first and foremost taught me the value of work, an ethic we picked up from our Dad and which Tom – through his example - handed down to me. My Brother demonstrated to me what was possible. Over the years we would talk about our jobs. Overtime was a frequent topic, and he made it clear how important OT was. I remember one time squawking about working a Sunday at the supermarket where I unloaded trucks and stocked shelves. “How much are you making on Sundays?”, he asked. “$12.50 an hour”, I replied. “Peter, that’s a hundred bucks in one day. Work as many of those damn things as you can get”. After that, my Sundays were fixed in my mind as a “hundred dollar day”. I worked 26 of them a year until I got a job in the telephone business.
There was a steady stream of Folks going up to the casket. When it came Sharon’s and my turn to go up to the casket, I felt at peace. Sad, but at peace. I watched as several of my nephews’ friends struggled with his death as if a member of their own family had died. The place was packed to over-flowing, including tons of kids, who all had their opportunity to walk up to the casket and see Tom one more time. This has been a much-discussed topic amongst the adults of my acquaintance. When are they old enough? How will it affect them? Watching the Kids, it occurred to me that there was no age at which they’re too young, no effect other than a good one. Tom had one last thing to give, one last lesson to teach.
The funeral service finished, and there was an announcement of a wake at the Oxford Inn, the Family’s favorite place for dinner. In true Irish/Italian style, this was a Wake with a capital W, and I suspect exactly as Tom would have liked it: Family and Friends all gathered together, having a good time, reconnecting, and celebrating with food and drink.
Just a few months before he died, I happened to score a work assignment in the Detroit area. Of course, I stayed with Tom and Marilyn. The morning after I arrived, there was a foot of fresh snow on the ground. Tom and Marilyn bundled up for their regular ritual, which included clearing snow not only on their own lot, but that of several of their neighbors. Of course, I joined in on the fun. Tom muscled the snow blower out of the shed and pulled it backwards through the snow in the yard, and once again I marveled at his strength. Tom worked the Blower, Marilyn and I worked the shovels. An hour later, three houses were cleared but at that point I had to leave for my regular job. As I rounded the corner of their house towards my car, I could see Tom and Marilyn, still methodically clearing snow at a house across the street. It’s strange to think that one of my last impressions of my Brother was also one of my first: him battling the snow on a bitter cold day, clearing walks and driveways, the discharge from the snow blower collecting on his hat, shoulders and other portions of his massive frame. When we were kids we were clearing the neighbors’ snow for profit. Fifty years later, we were clearing the neighbors’ snow for free.
Family. Work. Take care of those things and everything else takes care of itself.
I miss him.
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