Baseball Card of the Week

At a surprise party in the neighborhood a couple of us somehow got to talking about baseball. Discussing the book Moneyball started it and somehow the town of Fargo, North Dakota came up and for me that was a natural segue into Roger Maris. In 1964-65 I lived in Grand Forks, ND. Roger Maris of course was a favorite son of just about everybody. He was still with the New York Yankees then. 3 years earlier Maris had his 61 home run season. There has been much said about what he went through, especially with the vicious New York City press. In the back of my mind I recall seeing a baseball movie with Maris and Mickey Mantle (I think it was call Safe at Third). As a youngster Maris breaking the Great Bambino's record for home runs in a season was a big deal. Everybody said he did it in more games. Well he did, he played in 161 games that year and Babe played in 151 games in 1927 when he hit 60. 1961 was an expansion year and the schedule went from 154 games to 162 games. That didn't matter to me. He did it in the last game of the year. Tracy Stallard, that was the opposing pitcher's name, of the hated Red Sox delivered the pitch that Maris poked out of the park. Roger was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals and was an integral part of the team in their consecutive Worlds Series appearancaes. The '67 Series was against the Bosox and Yaz had won the Triple Crown that year with Jim Lonborg having a Cy Young season. The Cards won. I admit I was pulling for the Red Sox in that one. The next year the Cards played the Tigers in the Series and the Tigers won. That was pretty much it for Maris. He had a beer distributorship that sustained him until he died of cancer. In Fargo, ND you still see the influence of Roger Maris around town. He and the Mick were quite a duo. Roger Maris is my card of the week.

Book of the Week

This little volume has a lot to offer. The first paragraph caught my attention. "America faces a new culture war. This is not the culture war of the 1990s. This is not a fight over guns, abortion, religion, and gays. Nor is it about Republicans versus Democrats. Rather, it is a struggle between two competing visions of America's future. In one, America will continue to be a unique and exceptional nation organized around the principles of free enterprise. In the other, America will move toward European-style statism grounded in expanding bureaucracies, increasing income redistribution, and government-controlled corporations. These competing visions are not reconcilable: We must choose."

In this well thought out book Arthur Brooks is frank and clear in his presentation. The book covers in its 128 pages the internal conflict. The four main chapters are entitled: The 70-30 Nation, A Bill of Goods: The 30 Percent Coalition's Story of the Financial Crisis, Free Enterprise and the Pursuit of Happiness, and The Moral Case for Free Enterprise. I found very little to criticize in his presentation of the thesis. I recommend this book as a 4 STAR read.

Bear Lake

Here is a wave runner on beautiful Bear Lake with my son and daughter-in-law, just returned from an adventuresome and wet ride. Some say the water is too cold in this lake but his time of year it is delightful and refreshing. We enjoy going up a few times in the summer and it really gets busy for us up there now. We have two more trips before Labor Day planned. There is nothing better for me than putting up the canopy, getting settled in the beach chair with a book or my Kindle, having a few delicacies within easy reach in the cooler and hunkering down for a few hours enjoying the water, the sun and the breeze.

You may find this hard to believe but we love our daughter-in-law Melissa and she admits to liking us. Cool! Of course you have to be careful when you have a grandson on the loose with a weapon. Especially when he thinks he is a Power Ranger or a Jedi Knight. Elijah knows how to take care of himself.