James M. Redwine

football

Baseball vs. Football

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“If a woman’s just a woman but a good cigar’s a smoke” (Rudyard Kipling), football’s just a game but baseball’s who we are. Or, as my friend and favorite song writer, Randy Pease, sang about baseball (and life), “Maybe I should quit but that’s a hard thing to admit, God, I love this game.” Randy honed his musical skills when he took a break from his studies at Oklahoma State University where I also found pursuits other than the prescribed curricula. Another Cowboy that Randy occasionally played guitars and sang with in Stillwater, Oklahoma was a songwriter named Garth Brooks who also loved baseball. I wonder if he ever made the big leagues? For as Garth, Randy and the rest of us frustrated would-be major leaguers eventually accept and as the protagonist in Randy’s song knows, “our playing days are numbered and our fastball’s lost some speed” but we aren’t quite ready to “hang up the cleats and mitt.” On the other hand most of us, not Tom Brady of course, have no angst about leaving the sweaty football pads hanging in the dank locker room while we are still a ways from our porch swings.

Baseball is not just America’s Past Time it is America. It is a grimy catcher’s mask and miraculous or stumbling catches in left-center field. It is come from behind in the bottom of the ninth and lessons learned from games that should have been won. It is sweat and spit and grief and grit and all that makes us glad to endure heat and aches. Boys and girls and men and women of all ages can and do play baseball and softball; not so much football once high school fades.

Baseball affords fathers and mothers a parent’s greatest satisfaction, being asked by their adult children for advice. No kid over fourteen seeks football insights from their folks but even aging children who may question a parent’s sanity on matters of politics, music or religion still occasionally rely on mom and dad on how to hit a softball or play old folk’s league shortstop. As a parent slowly rocks and questions decisions she or he once made, when their grown offspring return to ask the best way to use a pinch hitter the cobwebs seem less opaque. On the other hand, no post-teenager cares what a parent thinks about a statue-of-liberty or a flea-flicker trick football play.

So, we can continue to pretend we understand football’s pass defense coverage two and can continue to yearn for our adult children to ask us to explain it and other football errata or we can thank baseball for keeping us in the real game. But I’ll let Randy finish the column because he is a fine writer of both prose and song lyrics:

“Although the song is on the surface about baseball, it’s really about life and how we should love our lives even when it beats the crap out of us nearly every day. In baseball, even the best hitters get on base only three times out of ten. Such is life. It’s full of disappointments and heartbreaks. But there’s always that hope the next at bat you’ll knock the ball out of the park. And baseball is a sign of spring – new grass, new life, renewal, redemption. It represents the hope that comes with a new season. And it poses a tough question: Can I still play or is it time to hang up the cleats and mitt?”

 

Lyrics to “I Love This Game”

♫ My name is Eddie Roberts, and I’m a starting pitcher

For the Winston-Salem Warthogs in the Carolina League.

I’m thirty-four years old.  My playing days are numbered.

I can’t control my curveball, and my fastball’s lost some speed.

 

I’ve been knockin’ ‘round the minors since I got out of high school,

signed my first pro contract on my seventeenth birthday.

From Burlington to Birmingham to Charlotte I have traveled,

But the White Sox never called, and I stalled in Triple-A.

 

Chorus

I love this game.  I love this game.

Maybe I should quit, but that’s a hard thing to admit.

God, I love this game.

 

I won fourteen games one year, led the league in shutouts.

Several of the pro scouts told me I was on my way.

But I hurt my arm in Lynchburg.  Doc said it was a pinched nerve.

And I swear that ever since, sir, it’s never been the same.

 

Chorus

 

I love this game, I love this game.

Maybe I should quit, but that’s a hard thing to admit.

God, I love this game

 

Coda

Maybe I should quit.  Hang up the cleats and mitt.

God I love this game.

 

My name is Eddie Roberts, and I’m a starting pitcher

For the Winston-Salem Warthogs in the Carolina League. ♫

 

© I Love This Game

Randy Pease Decaf Music 1998 (BMI)

Football vs. Politics

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Democracy is messy but usually bloodless. Football is sweaty and sometimes painful. Football teams choose representative colors such as black and orange or cream and crimson. American politics are red versus blue. Football teams are led by coaches and financed by taxpayers or fat cats. Political parties are led by politicians and financed by drips and drabs via the internet or fat cats. Football teams have a few stars supported by several Sherpas. I was happy to be one of the Sherpas on the Pawhuska, Oklahoma high school Huskies football team a while ago and enjoyed every minute of it, except for wind sprints of course. I am still enjoying supporting the Huskies team which is undefeated and on their way to what I hope will be Pawhuska’s first state championship in football.

Political parties have a few stars supported by, usually, faceless minions. Football teams have one mission, to win, whoever the opponent is. Political parties believe their mission is to provide better government than competing political parties would provide. I will leave it up to you, Gentle Reader, if you believe any political party manages to achieve this goal.

Both football teams and political parties are governed by rules of procedure and conduct. With football teams a conference sets the standards and with political parties governments from the local level on up to the top have a hand in determining policy and ultimate victory. Football games are controlled by officials on the field who can enforce the rules. Their rulings are immediate and not subject to appeal but some can be reviewed. Albeit the final ruling, in effect, is made by the same people who made the initial one. Political races are governed by laws and can be subject to recount, review, repeal and reversal. Football fans sometimes must just grimace and bear a referee’s egregious error, such as giving one team an extra down as in the 1990 Colorado v. Missouri game. Of course, the problem with any attempted remedy in football is it would be impossible to completely and fairly recreate the original game circumstance. On the other hand there is the benefit that, other than endless conversations over beer, the calls at football games are final. But political races such as Bush v. Gore in 2000 may end up in the U.S. Supreme Court and may never be universally accepted as final.

As for me, I am currently marveling how my alma mater, Indiana University, can be undefeated in football after many years of wandering in the football wilderness. This column was written before Michigan v. I.U. upcoming on November 7, 2020, so I am hopeful it remains valid when you read this. And I am chagrined that Oklahoma State University where I started college could have lost to Texas last Saturday. I want a recount! I know I personally saw several blown calls that might have changed the score of the Cowboy game.

Regardless, what I have decided after suffering through the entire 2020 political season and cheering (or moaning) my way along the football season is that the temporary pains that I experienced playing football pale in the excruciation caused by the clanging brass of competing political parties and noxious news anchors. I am thankful for football and am past caring about the motes in the eyes of those who do not see eye to eye with me on politics.

 

Yea! Football Is Back!

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“The crisp autumn air. The dry brown grass. Sweaty pads and the exhilaration of combat without weapons. The kind of battle where one can experience the thrill of having been shot at and missed without even being shot at. Football. Ersatz war. Clashes of pride, power and cunning.”

Echoes Of Our Ancestors: The Secret Game, p. vii

James M. Redwine

Baseball may be America’s Pastime but football is America’s Passion. The only thing more endemic to the American psyche than football is politics and I am sick of politics. If, “politics ain’t bean bag”, it ought to be. Any sporting event from ballet to boxing is healthier for our country than political conventions and cable news. Heck, even a good old-fashioned fist fight often results in life-long friendship versus contemporary political campaigns in which social media is used much as small pox was allegedly used against Native Americans by the British colonial soldiers in 1763.

The difference between sporting contests of all types and modern national politics is glaring. When I think back to those times my erstwhile adversaries became my current friends via a skirmish over some forgotten controversy, I long for those days. My friends and I spent no time accusing one another of being a liar or a murderer or even a traitor to our country. We would just drop our baseball gloves or kick our opponent’s marbles out of the way and start the shoving process. Every now and then we would even throw a punch. I will not name those who bloodied my nose or tore off my T shirts but we buried our hypothetical hatchets immediately after each fray. Our politicians and news anchors could learn something.

Another thing we learn from sports versus politics is that the pain of physical injuries almost always goes away whereas the sickness of false comments can grow fatal to our body politic. There is something liberating from a sweaty fight or a sweaty game. But often permanent harm results from accusations of venality and planted stories of misdeeds.

Anyway, I am glad football and other games are coming back and I hope we will soon be able to engage in them and/or enjoy watching them in good health. I leave it up to each community and every individual to decide whether they feel comfortable participating in or watching in person any sporting event. Peg and I certainly want the right and ability to decide such highly personal matters for ourselves and we will afford the same right to others. However, the lessons from sports are easily learned and, unlike high school Algebra, one will always remember them. In fact, as I think of the fist fights and sporting contests I engaged in it now seems to me I never lost and I have gotten a lot faster, stronger and more talented as the years have transpired.

Empty Chairs At Empty Tables

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Echoes of Games Gone By

Last week’s column was fueled by my current fear that the upcoming football season will not come up and my fond memories of football seasons past that did. It is not just football but all team sports and communal activities such as church and school choirs that each of us is anxious about and yearning for. And that yearning is truly about personal relationships, not the games we played and the songs we sang. The symptoms of ’Ole 19 include social distancing from friends and family but, ironically, our current isolation evokes poignant memories of times we did get to share with people who once filled our lives and now do not.

Should you have read last week’s Gavel Gamut you probably saw the photograph of my high school football team. It was my wife Peg, you know, the one who actually does the work on Gavel Gamut (and most everything else at JPeg Osage Ranch), who suggested using the team photo that appears in my 1961 high school annual. I am glad she did as it was a virtual reunion for me and, I hope, for others such as Ron Reed who is the brother of my friend and teammate Jim Reed who appears next to me in the picture. Ron contacted me after last week’s article appeared. Gentle Reader, you may hear more from Ron in some future column. Anyway, there are several of my friends in the team photo who look young, strong and positive who went on to greater accomplishments such as Jim’s service in the Viet Nam War.

Another of our teammates was Bud Malone who, along with his twin brothers, Jerry and Gary, also saw combat in Viet Nam where Gary gave his life for his country on July 28, 1966. The team photograph caused me to concentrate on several other of our teammates who no longer can bring laughter and high jinks to my life and it evoked thoughts of two of my favorite songs from one of my favorite musicals.

In Les Misérables young revolutionaries are filled with idealism and bravery in their quest for social justice, kind of the elàn our football team had hoping for a championship season. Our team did achieve such success but some of the young revolutionaries in Le Miz paid with their lives in their losing cause.

In the song “Empty Chairs At Empty Tables” one of the young survivors, Marius, sings to his fallen comrades:

♬ ”Empty chairs at empty tables
Now my friends are dead and gone.
…
From the table in the corner
They could see a world reborn.
…
Oh, my friends, my friends, don’t ask me
What your sacrifice was for.
Empty chairs at empty tables
Where my friends will sing no more.” ♬

However, in the song “Drink With Me” the young friends sound to me just the way I remember those footballers from 1960-61:

♬ “Drink with me to days gone by
Drink with me to the life that used to be
At the shrine of friendship never say die
Let the wine of friendship never run dry.
Here’s to you and here’s to me.” ♬

Well, here’s a thank you for those times we have played and sung in the past and to the fervent hope the next opponent to fall will soon be ’Ole 19.

 

A Tale of Two Counties

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Posey County, Indiana
Osage County, Oklahoma

 

 

America is a wonderful country from the amazing amalgam of cultures in cities such as Miami, New York City, San Francisco and Portland to the majesty of Yellowstone and the Mississippi River. We are truly fortunate to have the privilege to live here. As for Peg and me, we are most familiar with two counties in two states, Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma.

Of course, the basic element of all inhabited areas is the same, the inhabitants, and those inhabitants are more alike than unalike wherever we live. I have found this to be true from Russia and Ukraine to Palestine and Bahrain as I have taught judges from several foreign countries and from every state in America. Of course, I have also physically visited a few places around the world. It has been my great pleasure to discover practically everybody I meet is interesting. I understand why Will Rogers who grew up near Osage County, Oklahoma said he’d never met someone he didn’t like.

But just focusing on Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma, the two places Peg and I call home, I find much to admire in both. In Posey County the soil is so rich and the people are so industrious that enough wheat, corn and soybeans are produced to feed much of the world. And Osage County’s Tallgrass Prairie and hardworking cowhands furnish the accompanying beef. One need never go hungry if he or she spends time in either county.

I hope I have made it clear that I truly appreciate the county where I was born and the county where I have earned a living. On the other hand, just as there was a serpent in the Garden of Eden, both Posey and Osage Counties fall a little short of perfection due to the foibles of Mother Nature. I suppose life just requires that we occasionally find half a worm in an apple. Let me explain.

Neither Posey nor Osage County has unbearable weather. Each gets a couple of snows each year and each has a hot July and August along with a rainy spring and fall. Both experience tornadoes. For Posey County, Big Creek and the Ohio and Wabash Rivers occasionally flood as does Bird Creek in Osage County along with the Arkansas and Caney Rivers. But all in all the climate for both counties is fairly salubrious. In fact, the weather in both helps make them more interesting and for Indiana it gives citizens something besides basketball to talk about and for Oklahoma it expands the topics beyond football. Both states used to discuss politics but recently most rational people do not broach that topic.

However, it is not the occasional weather phenomenon that keeps paradise just out of reach for both counties. No, it is Mother Nature’s diabolical sense of humor. Let’s take up spring in Posey County first. You may know that Osage County, Oklahoma has thousands of roaming buffalo (bison). Well, just to make sure Hoosiers remember who dictates what happens in heaven, each April, May and June millions of biting/blood sucking buffalo gnats (flies) descend on Posey County much like the Biblical hordes of locusts. And like beachgoers after the movie Jaws it simply is not fun to be outside.

But Osage County has its own flies and to add to Mother Nature’s amusement She has supplied Osage County with several varieties of scorpions. Gentle Reader, should you never have been stung by a scorpion, as I have in Oklahoma, trust me, it is an experience you do not want. Peg, who is a born Yankee who spent her childhood in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and northern Indiana, has now learned to shake out her boots in the morning to be sure some scorpion has not chosen them as a residence. And the ubiquitous sand rock of Osage County appears to be a scorpion’s version of the Garden of Eden where the scorpions play the serpent’s role.

I guess what it comes down to is both Posey County, Indiana and Osage County, Oklahoma are wonderful places to live. But don’t forget to channel Katherine Hepburn in The African Queen and wear screening over your head and carry a fly swatter in Posey and shake out your boots in The Osage nine months out of the year.

Ohio State 13, I.U. 14 (Half Time)

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After treating me to 8 weeks of basic training in the Texas summer heat the United States Air Force extended the misery by subjecting me to Indiana University football. In 1963 the Air Force stationed me in Bloomington to learn Hungarian. First they gave me a Top Secret Security Clearance. Silly me, I thought the reason was to keep secrets from the Soviet Union. I discovered the only secret being protected was that there are two halves to a football game; I.U. often plays only the first.

From my first IU football game in 1963 through 7 years on campus up to last night, August 31, 2017, I have repeatedly had my hopes raised in the first half only to see them crushed on the shoals of reality. At least IU has often been inventive and original in finding ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

My most painful memory is the game we lost after it was over. Yes, over! What happened was Indiana went ahead with less than thirty seconds left to play and was so excited, and surprised, to be ahead the team started celebrating during the kickoff and the other team ran the kickoff back for a go-ahead touchdown as time ran out. That was the first IU game I saw. It was an omen, a harbinger, a curse.

On the other hand I have watched numerous football games where we led at half time. What is it about IU football and the second half? We often play well and smart and tough the first half then have to invent a way to lose in the second. Perhaps our approach has been misguided.

Indiana University is a fine academic institution with a beautiful campus and generous support from Hoosier taxpayers. We have smart students and even smarter professors and we require our football players to go to class. Maybe we should demand a rule change based upon the empirical evidence. I suggest we simply walk off the field at half time and not come back. Then such debacles as 13 (Ohio State) to 14 (IU) at the half will no longer turn into 49 to 21 at the end.