Neil Peart Helped Me Find My Way

I spent the summer of 1981 sweaty and shirtless in my bedroom as I air-drummed relentlessly to Rush’s Moving Pictures. An inveterate desk-tapper through much of my schooling, I knew nothing about playing drums, having attempted it several months earlier in seventh-grade music class and coming off a fool thanks to my lack of coordination.

Still, instinctively seduced by a thumping, mesmerizing backbeat played almost as if a lead instrument, I sat for hours on the edge of my bed learning roundhouses and mimicking beats in time signatures I couldn’t determine—fairly competently before long, as I rosily recall—my concession to ignorance the misbelief that the snare drum is placed outside of the right knee, not between them, and unenlightened to the futility of performing two-handed snare work across my body on an actual drum kit.

Fully “awakened” to music’s magic only a few months earlier (during a genuinely epiphanic moment delivered by Jimmy Page in that same seventh-grade classroom), I, like so many soon-to-be Rush fans, turned onto the utterly unique Canadian trio through the ubiquitous radio presence of “Tom Sawyer” and “Limelight.” Electrified, I made Moving Pictures my first record purchase. Teenage-hood commenced the moment I dropped needle to vinyl.

Yet it wasn’t just the dynamic music and stellar production: Rush’s secret of success lay in its mature, evocative lyrics. Rock never had particularly been the playground of the erudite, but first glance of the lyric sheet proved that this Neil Peart guy had weightier topics to poetize than unrealistic I’ll love you forever’s or frivolous paeans to sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Rush immediately captured my fascination—and nearly four decades later, it has not let go.

Several years would pass before actual drums lay beneath my flailing limbs, and even longer until I put pen to paper, but I quickly found a tenuous association with Neil. Growing up in a suburban neighborhood eerily reminiscent of that featured in its music video, “Subdivisions” caught me at the precise moment of teenage vulnerability—the Signals album being released the very week I entered high school. A tall, gawky freshman, lost in a sea of faces—most of them more appealing than mine—I was living the very words Neil expressed about his high school halls. Like Neil, I was a misfit, an outsider, maladroit at making either friends or conversation and virtually invisible to girls. I even resembled that confused, pitiable boy in the “Subdivisions” video, although, mercifully, I had exchanged my bulky, socially debilitating eyeglasses for contact lenses a year earlier (though that had not improved my self-esteem very much). Possessing no idea how to be cool and unwilling to conform, I was cast out.

Before high school ended, I was a drummer, and before college concluded, a lyricist as well, adding to that tenuous bond (albeit with a fraction of Neil’s talent and monastic discipline on the drummer’s throne). When I finally joined bands after college, I insisted on contributing lyrics and quickly became the primary lyricist because it was one of the few things in which I held implicit confidence. (Unlike Neil, I’ve always considered myself a lyricist first, a drummer second.)

Though Neil was less a direct influence on my lyric writing than Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Pete Brown, his commitment to integrity helped me refute the age-old stigma that drummers are incapable of writing compelling lyrics and that for a band to depend upon a drummer’s words is creative suicide. I could express myself in a way that I was never able to do verbally, opening up my life in a manner that I’d never dreamed and inspiring me to write lyrics of which I could be proud even though, as a Middletown dreamer, few would ever hear them. What a dreadfully barren existence I would have suffered had Neil not provided the example of mastering words as well as drums.

Neil Peart very likely had a more profound influence on my life than any other individual. He, Geddy Lee, and Alex Lifeson made life better, for me and countless others, often when life became oppressive—or even hopeless. That’s an incalculable legacy—an even richer one than the many songs and books Neil leaves us. Although, these days, I often lament my age—and how quickly I’ve gotten to it—I feel hugely fortunate to have been born when I was so that I could come of age at the very moment at which Neil’s words and Rush’s music could catalyze my restless dreams of youth. There very well might not have been anyone to fill that role had I been born at some other time.

Neil Peart deserves a Thank you beyond my capability for that.

Salt Lake City Is No Place for All That Jazz

Countless professional sports teams have relocated when their financial situations became untenable in their hometown. It is a reality nearly as old as professional sports itself. Yet relatively few peregrine franchises choose to bring their nickname with them. And why should they? Sure, the Brooklyn Dodgers, New York Giants, Baltimore Colts, and Minneapolis Lakers possessed franchise monikers that were too deeply ingrained in the fabric of their sport—and too valuable in their marketability—to be rechristened, but owners are often eager to rename their incoming team something with indigenous appeal that will bring locals into the arena.

After all, why would the NHL’s Colorado franchise retain “Rockies” when moving to swampland whose most mountainous feature is the New Jersey Turnpike rising over the Hackensack River? Just as Denver would have proved très stupide to keep the Nordiques nickname in its new mile-high home.

And the Dallas Texans would have been dang suicidal not to have switched to the “Chiefs” upon arrival deep in the heart of Kansas City.

So it is perplexing that the NBA’s Utah franchise retained its Big Easy–born Jazz nickname.

Utah, and specifically Salt Lake City, is both the temporal and spiritual home of Mormonism. Mormonism, like most religions, is—at least in principle—a strictly codified belief system. In Mormonism’s case, guided by its 13 Articles of Faith. Its Book of Mormon contains a “history” far older than Christianity and is supplemented by lengthy scriptures such as the Doctrine and Covenants and the Pearl of Great Price. All in all, the Book of Mormon seems—from its own sources as well as interviews with “average” members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints—to be a highly regimented template of conducting one’s life righteously and steering clear of sin (even though Mormonism’s founder, Joseph Smith, and his polygamous congregation lived lives that made them—even by standards of their day—outcasts of mainstream Christianity).

So, it goes without saying that straight-laced Salt Lake City—home of the Utah Jazz—bears no cultural resemblance whatsoever to vivacious, hedonistic New Orleans. More to the point, jazz is the spiritual antithesis of religion—this most improvisational of art forms thrives on its lack of boundaries and its emphasis on personal expression. Whereas religion arose to curb the chaos of an uncivilized populace, jazz embodies, musically, that very chaos. Frankly, jazz never could have evolved in a button-down town such as Salt Lake City or a state as conventional as Utah—only the melting-pot, loose-moraled, devil-may-care streets of a city such as N’awlins could have birthed this deeply emotive and unpredictable art form. 

One need only look upon one of the great practitioners of personal expression on the basketball court, Pistol Pete Maravich—perhaps the John Coltrane of the hardwood—whose freewheeling style of play personified New Orleans and its Jazz franchise. Considering both that Pistol Pete was hardly the poster boy for Salt Lake City’s reverential atmosphere when he and his Jazz arrived in 1979 (Maravich was quoted in a biography of the same name as having no interest in Christianity during his playing days) and that, by 1979, Maravich’s days as a basketball virtuoso were behind him, it’s beyond baffling that Jazz owner Sam Battistone, Jr., didn’t rename the franchise.

So, why weren’t the Utah Jazz redubbed something closer to the city’s—and by extension, the state of Utah’s—heart?

Such as for what Salt Lake City is truly known—even more than its homegrown religion and choir:

Salt, of course.

Long in the vanguard of team names utilizing a collective noun, Battistone could have continued that fashion by rechristening his NBA franchise the Utah Salt. After all, the Great Salt Lake—sitting just west of the city founded by Mormon bigwig Brigham Young—is larger than Rhode Island and, on occasion, Delaware, providing both Utah’s capital and the state, itself, with its foremost secular identity.

And the marketing opportunities didn’t end there. The Utah Salt would be ripe for a third jersey: the “NaCl.” Similar to “NOLA” of New Orleans renown, “NaCl” would represent both the chemical formula of table salt and, when either read or spoken as a quasi-nickname for the team, a hip phonetic reference to Salt Lake City’s famous Mormon TaberNACLE Choir.

Such a marketing plan even could have included the rallying cry “Get the NaCl” to capitalize on the Get the Knack album and its single, “My Sharona,” that debuted just four months before the Utah Jazz played its first game and were each massive No. 1 hits by then. A lawsuit likely would have ensued, but a quick settlement would have provided invaluable buzz for the fledgling team and been well worth the legal wrangling.

Who could have predicted that young jazzmen going west would culminate in such a lost opportunity?

A Tris Speaker Sing-along

“(They Call Me) Tris Speaker”

Click the YouTube link at bottom and sing along...

I’ve clubbed them for pairs
I’ve slugged the most doubles
I’ve hit almost as many
As stars seen by Edwin Hubble

They call me Tris Speaker

I’ve been roundin' first so spry

I won’t get the fame that I’m after

’cause of a guy named Ty

I asked Stengel, Charles Dillon

Who was Speaker’s equal?

He perfessor’ed back to me

There was only one Gray Eagle

They call me Tris Speaker

I’ve been roundin’ first so spry

I won’t get the fame that I’m after

’til the Hall opens in ’39

People tend to rate me

In the middle of the pile

As I ransack their fields

And ruin pennant plans

Focusing on home runs

Not the records I’ve compiled

I’ve got more doubles

Than Rose, Cobb, and The Man

I won’t get the fame that I’m after

’cause of a guy named Ty

I learned how to cut down base runners

In assists, no one’s within a hundred seventy-five

I was happy in Boston, even more in Cleveland

I’m most valuable in socks of red, blue, or argyle

You’re lookin’ at me

I’m lookin’ for two

Once you pitch that ball

There ain’t nothin’ you can do

They call me Tris Speaker

I’ve been roundin’ first so spry

I won’t get the fame that I’m after

’til the Hall opens in ’39

I won’t get the fame that I’m after

’til the Hall opens in ’39

Atlanta's Fiery Nickname Flamed the Fans Rather Than Fanned the Flames

Apart from the Braves, Atlanta has never enjoyed much success as a sports town. In 50 seasons, the Falcons have lost nearly 57% of their games—yielding the fourth worst winning percentage among all 32 current NFL franchises. Reaching the Super Bowl but once, Atlanta lost handily to the Denver Broncos in 1999. Unlike their sharp-eyed namesake, the Falcons have possessed poor vision and rarely drafted well. This team 250 miles from the Atlantic Ocean somehow also spent the bulk of its existence in the same division as the Los Angeles/St. Louis Rams and the San Francisco 49ers, long-time powerhouses that took turns beating up Atlanta for three decades and left it little room for playoff hopes.

And since emigrating from St. Louis in 1968, although the Hawks have qualified for the playoffs more often than not, their hoop dreams have fallen achingly short season after season. Even Hall of Famers Dominique Wilkins and Pistol Pete Maravich—freshly off NCAA superstardom—could not lead Atlanta even to the finals. Consequently, the Hawks have perennially ranked among the worst in NBA attendance since arriving in Georgia.

But the Falcons and Hawks largely are cases of subpar general management and small-market struggle. 

Atlanta’s original hockey team, the Flames, is an altogether sadder story: Born in 1972, the Flames were the first franchise to bring NHL hockey south of the Mason-Dixon line—no easy going for a fledgling team competing for talent with the brashly spending World Hockey Association. But General Manager Cliff Fletcher drafted shrewdly and acquired skilled youngsters who made the Flames competitive almost from the get-go. Led by such gritty skaters as Tom Lysiak, Eric Vail, Bobby Leiter, Pat Quinn, Guy Chouinard, and the exciting goaltending tandem of Daniel Bouchard and Phil Myre, Atlanta reached the playoffs by its sophomore season, after which it never failed to finish at least .500.

Unfortunately, the promising Flames contained a fatal flaw: Owner Tom Cousins (already the owner of the NBA Hawks) named the franchise after General Sherman’s burning of Atlanta. How Cousins—a native Atlantan—could select such a mind-blowingly inept name is beyond comprehension. Even today, the city’s torching at the hands of Sherman’s army is a sore spot for deep-rooted Atlantans, some of whom still refer to the Civil War as the “War of Northern Aggression.” And if Atlanta’s ignominy continues to be a touchy subject now, it was even more so in pre–politically correct 1972, when Jim Crow and Civil Rights remained fresh wounds in the Southern psyche. Why would Cousins risk alienating his fan base by reminding them daily of their city’s ultimate humiliation?

The fact is that, for all of their success and promise, the Flames never drew well. Attendance dwindled throughout the 1970s, and the franchise relocated to Calgary in 1980. But forget the dearth of Stanley Cups and superstars—the Atlanta Flames’ failure can be blamed solely on its name. Let’s face it: If you’re going for the perpetually popular Civil War angle, at least name your team the Atlanta Hydrants so as to fill potential fans with the defiant hope that their city and their homes will be spared rather than bashing already-fragile Confederate egos by reminding them of the cinders their ancestors’ homes became.

Sure, a logo of a hydrant isn’t as flashy and inspiring as a flaming “A”—but who cares how good a uniform looks when traumatized spectators are too frightened to leave their homes for fear of Blue Bellies setting torches to their town?

Spahn and 750 Games—How’d He Keep His Numbers the Same?

As a young southpaw, I naturally felt an affinity for major league left-handers. Lefties, by nature, are outsiders. The consensus of sources spanning more than three decades states that only about 10 percent of the population is left-handed, making we portsiders indeed a rare breed. I, personally, never experienced the forced switching of penmanship meant to “cleanse” left-handed schoolchildren of earlier generations—a barbaric act harmful to the esteem, if not to the wiring of the brain itself. However, I was encouraged to slant my lined paper at a right-hander’s angle. And many a classroom offered a dearth of one-piece desks built for left-handers, my left elbow hanging humiliatingly in midair while my “normal-handed” classmates wrote in fully supported olecranal luxury. 

When you’re left-handed, it dominates your whole being in a way that the majority of the world cannot understand simply because the world is fitted to them.

Still, even from a young age, I was told that baseball teams are forever on the lookout for left-handers who can throw with control, which made me feel special, even if my backyard catches with Dad hadn’t yet graduated from tennis ball to horsehide.

Thus, it’s no surprise that I possessed an innate connection to southpaws who took the mound at Veterans Stadium, on television, and on my baseball cards. Hometown Phillies Steve “Lefty” Carlton, Tug McGraw, Jim Kaat, and Randy Lerch (a lefty with my name!). Randy Jones (a Cy Young–winning lefty with my name!). Don Gullett, Mickey Lolich, Fred Norman, Paul Splittorff, Frank Tanana, Jerry Koosman. And, of course, the deity of all southpaws, Sandy Koufax, who, though just before my time, commanded the highest respect in my household because the electrifying southpaw, by virtue of his Jewish heritage, single-handedly revived my Flatbush-born father’s interest in baseball after his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers broke his heart. (Sadly, that renewed vigor for the game once and for all abandoned my father with Koufax’s retirement.) 

Of course, I also knew of the great lefties of old: Lefty Grove, Lefty Gomez, Eddie Plank, Carl Hubbell, even Babe Ruth himself! But the southpaw who loomed largest, of course, was Warren Spahn. One of my baseball magazines contained his lifetime record. Thirteen 20-win seasons. Thirteen?! And a win total, 363, to which no other lefty stood remotely close. For me, and perhaps other young southpaws, 363 became something akin to 714 and 4191, an instantly identifiable benchmark in baseball history that spoke for itself.

But in examining Spahn’s record more closely, one finds a statistic that is both so ironic and improbable as to almost defy belief.

During a career in which Spahn pitched 363 victories, the multitalented hurler also recorded 363 batting hits.

When one takes into account the myriad variables that go into this mind-boggling confluence—from the fact that a starting pitcher’s at-bats vary from game to game depending on how well his hurling keeps him in each contest, to the fact that Spahn relieved in 85 games, further fluctuating his at-bats—one wonders how something so weird could happen. And then there’s the additional confounding variable that Spahn appeared in 18 games as a pinch-hitter, which chance would likely employ to further skew two totals rather than bring them together.

Macroscopically, how could one total derived from a pool of 750 (games) end up equaling another from a pool of 1872 (at-bats)—especially considering the first is accrued at a maximum of one per game whereas the second is almost always accrued multiple times per game?

It is for strange cases such as this that I wish I were a mathematician so that I could calculate the odds of two wholly unrelated totals, incurred at vastly different per-game rates (0 to 1 for wins; 0 to infinity for hits), somehow matching up perfectly over the course of 21 seasons. Still, it doesn’t leave me exactly hollow to state abstractly that the chance of both totals landing on 363 is merely astronomical.

Even considering that Spahn possessed an uncanny (though surely unrealized) knack for knocking as many hits in a season as he tossed victories—Warren authored 11 occasions in which his win total of any given season equaled his hit total of any given season, including an incredible eight times in the same season—the fact that 10 seasons not only did not match but varied in range from 0 to 21 for victories yet from 1 to as high as 36 for hits still makes this statistically improbable in the extreme.

Yet there exists another layer to this algebraic madness.

Spahn, who seemed as if he would continue winning forever, going 23–7 at age 42, finally was snared by Father Time in 1964. After suffering only his second losing campaign since breaking into the big leagues more than two decades earlier, he was purchased from Milwaukee by the young New York Mets just before Thanksgiving.

As the ledger closed on his Braves career, Spahn boasted 356 victories—again, the exact number of hits he notched as a Boston/Milwaukee Brave.

Struggling through 20 games with the ever-floundering Mets, Spahn staggered to a 4–12 record, his bloated 4.36 ERA hardly helping the punchless New Yorkers. Yet in those 20 games, as well as one in which he pinch-hit, Spahn collected four hits, equaling his victory total.

Going nowhere, New York released Spahn on July 17. Two days later, the San Francisco Giants, tangled in fourth place yet only 5½ games off the lead, signed Spahn, hoping to coax a last bit of magic from his left arm for the stretch drive. Perhaps revitalized by taking the mound once again for a contender, Spahn pitched better, for a time. He cut his ERA by nearly a run and chipped in three victories, although his last five appearances were spent in relief, as the Giants came up two games short at the wire.

Yet with eerie consistency, Spahn once again managed to rap as many hits as victories, rapping a trio of singles to match the 3–4 record he put up with San Francisco. The Giants released Spahn after the season, ending his remarkable major league career.

Not only had Spahn managed to produce equal victory and hit totals across 21 seasons (interestingly, he stroked his first hit in 1942 yet had to wait, because of highly decorated military service in World War II, until 1946 for his initial victory), but he, improbably, registered matching numbers of hits and victories with each franchise for which he played.

Such a quirk in the statistics seems only to make already-astronomical odds exponentially longer.

Were I capable of calculating the odds of merely accruing 363 for both totals across a career as long as Spahn’s, then trying to do so while including the further factors of identical sums across three franchises might cause my calculator to explode. It simply doesn’t seem as if it could happen.

And if all that weren’t enough, the breakdown of Spahn’s corresponding pitching wins and batting hits achieved as a Brave by city very nearly match as well: As a Boston Brave, Spahn won 122 games while collecting 120 hits, which, of course, leaves his totals after the franchise moved to Milwaukee Brave at 234 pitching wins and 236 hits.

Then again, neither did the probability of a pitcher not winning his first major league game until age 25 yet going on to win 363 for his career.  

! Spy Too Many Exclamation Points on !-95

While driving home from Florida, I passed this sign yesterday, which stands at Exit 169 on the southbound side of I-95 near Florence, South Carolina. It looks to me like writer Jake Jarmel now manages the Triple T Truck Center and he hired on-again-off-again girlfriend, Elaine Benes, to edit his billboard.

Of course, Elaine, upset that Jake’s latest endeavor lacked a certain emotion and intensity, apparently added unnecessary exclamation points—ostensibly to connote such messages as:

“It was a damp and chilly afternoon, so I decided to drive my semi!”

and

“I pulled the lever on the clutch, but the truck’s engine wouldn’t start!”

Okay, the dialogue implies a plot so banal that an inordinate number of exclamation points may be the only thing keeping this truck-repair place from being boarded up in bankruptcy, but Mr. Lippman isn’t going to see it that way and will want those exclamation points gotten rid of, should he drive by…

(Images from Seinfeld copyright NBC.)

Maybe the "T.S." Stood for "Terribly Similar"...

Jesse Lee Tally, known as “Doc” Tally, played baseball for the barnstorming Israelite House of David team from 1914 to his death in 1950. The House of David was a religious commune founded in Benton Harbor, Michigan, in 1903 and thrived through the 1920s and 30s. Its founders—not the most visionary of religious leaders—declared sex a sin (even for procreation), in principle dooming their movement after a single generation.

The House of David became a national phenomenon during that time for fielding a long-haired, long-bearded evangelizing baseball team (actually, several teams) that crisscrossed the country playing amateur; semipro; and professional opponents, including squads from the major, minor, and Negro Leagues. Sort of the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball, the House of David team grew famous for its fancy, yet very formidable, play. It even, for a time, boasted several former Major League greats, including Three Finger Brown and Grover Cleveland Alexander, as well as the legendary Negro Leaguer, Satchel Paige—all of whom were required either to grow their whiskers or don a fake beard.

The House of David even beat the Major Leagues to night baseball, playing its first game under electric light in 1930—five years before the Bigs. (Ever shrewd in enlarging opportunities to play for paying customers, the House of David brought portable lights on its buses to allow night games.)

Anyway, I find Jesse Lee Tally the spitting image of the recently deceased Robin Williams. Reputedly the House of David’s best player, Tally invented the famous pepper games with which players would wow crowds with their acrobatic and dexterous skills before, and during, contests. Tally thus seems like the same type of good-natured, entertaining ham that Robin Williams came to be. Interestingly, Williams was born little more than a year after Tally’s death and just a hundred miles from Benton Harbor (in Chicago).*

* Perhaps stranger still, Williams starred in the resemblant-named 2004 “dramedy,” House of D.

It’s almost as if Jesse Lee Tally’s spirit entered the newborn Robin Williams’ body in 1951—all it had to do was float to the far side of Lake Michigan, and it had more than a year to do so…

So, it is entirely possible that Robin Williams possessed great baseball potential, even if he never sensed it. However, the world is a better place for him taking the route that he did—not only because he left a legacy of laughter, but because Williams’ natural inclination to field a batted ball, then toss it in the air while declaring, “Fly, be free!” would have led to a catastrophic amount of unearned runs…      

(Image from Good Will Hunting copyright Miramax Films; image from Mork and Mindy copyright ABC.)