Davy Jones' Locker Is Opportunity's Knocker

Davy Jones, lead singer of The Monkees and the object of fantasy for millions of teenage girls in the 1960s, died of a heart attack earlier today. Only 66 years old, this is a sad passing, both for a man not yet reached the end of the road and for fans of the made-to-order Beatles knockoff group—which actually recorded some very good songs during its brief run in the 1960s.

Yet as the music world mourns Davy Jones' passing, opportunity knocks for David Bowie, who—as is well known—was born David Jones but changed his surname to Bowie so as not to be confused with The Monkees' vocalist. As an aspiring singer hoping to hop the Tin Pan Alley conduit to stardom, little-known David Jones took the surname of the legendary defender of The Alamo, who also gave his name to the knife he used, so as to avoid countless inevitable comments that he was much taller in person than on telly next to Mickey Dolenz.

Sure, David Bowie has achieved great success under his adopted name, and although some might consider it career suicide to return to his birth name after more than forty years as an icon known by his present appellation, when has changing names ever hindered David Bowie a/k/a Ziggy Stardust a/k/a the Thin White Duke a/k/a Moishe McManus (from his aborted 1983 Let's Hora project)?

So we say rest in peace to the man who crooned "Daydream Believer" and wait to see if David Bowie takes this rare opportunity to go home again.

Time may change you, David Bowie
But Davy Jones is covered with lime

Two About Killebrew

This morning, Minnesota Twins great and Hall of Famer Harmon Killebrew succumbed to a six-month battle with esophageal cancer after choosing to end unresponsive treatment and die at home. I never saw him play (or if I did, I have no recollection, owing to young age and the fact that he was long past his prime and bore no resemblance to an all-time great whom I would remember), so a platitude-filled eulogy would be misplaced.*

*Sadly, as an employee for a sports-memorabilia company in 1989, I met many great baseball players but did not work the day that Killebrew came into the office to sign items—a missed opportunity that I've long regretted because he has always been known as a gracious and classy gentleman, as was confirmed by my then-coworkers.

However, two aspects of Killebrew's great career bear mentioning:

» Signed as a "bonus baby" in June 1954 by the Washington Senators, had the Sens given Killebrew a regular spot in the lineup earlier instead of allowing him a mere 254 at-bats during the first five years of his career, he may well have taken a run at Babe Ruth's mark of 714 home runs. Instead, Senators brass wasted Killebrew's first two years on the bench—for awful second-division teams going nowhere—and then sent him to the minors (under "bonus baby" rules, Killebrew had to stay with the parent club for two seasons before he could go to the minors). After three seasons climbing his way up the minor-league ladder (during which the Senators failed to play even .400 ball and clearly had nothing to lose by giving Killebrew more playing time), Harmon came up for good in 1959...and promptly smashed a league-leading 42 home runs (earning the first of six home-run crowns). That he did this while playing his home games in Griffith Stadium, one of the most unforgiving pitcher's parks in Major League history, is a testament to his brute strength—and Washington management's five-year short-sightedness. The Senators soon moved to the Twin Cities—and Killebrew would quickly lead the Twins to the World Series—but had foolishly deprived Harmon of at least several years in his early twenties when, with a full season to swing the bat, he could easily have hit at least 100 home runs before what eventually became his breakout year (based on the 11 HR he hit in those 254 AB, over five 650-AB seasons). Without question, Killebrew would have reached a minimum of 600 career home runs (he retired with 573)—placing him in "baseball immortal" territory...possibly ahead of Willie Mays—and within reach of Ruth, of whom he fell 141 homers shy...an amount for which he was almost exactly on pace during those first five years that the Senators squandered his talent. In any event, Killebrew would have retired a household name rather than a "second-tier" great.

» It has long been rumored that the official Major League Baseball logo designed in 1969 was based on Harmon Killebrew's batting stance (and perhaps it was no coincidence that Killebrew was in the midst of his greatest season in '69, eventually winning the AL MVP...so who better to "represent" baseball in tumultuous 1969 than the quiet, ever-respectable Killebrew?). This rumor was finally quashed by the logo's creator, Jerry Dior, in a 2008 Wall Street Journal story...but did it even need to be? That ball is coming right at the hitter—a hit-by-pitch for sure. Baseball, always staunchly conservative, obviously viewed the hit-by-pitch as a symbol of self-sacrifice in the overindulgent, anti-war '60s. Yet Harmon Killebrew was hit by a pitch only 48 times during his career, which ties him for 429th on the all-time hit-by-pitch list—hardly the emblem of the hit-by-pitch. And what pitcher would want to? Killebrew, although only 5-foot-11, was regarded as one of the most powerful men in baseball because of his many tape-measure blasts. No pitcher in his right mind would throw at Killebrew, even in that rebellious, anything-goes decade. Sure, Harmon led the AL in hit-by-pitches in 1964, but that was a season during which a lot of young and disillusioned American League pitchers were still shaken and angry over the Kennedy assassination (1964 was, in fact, the AL's highest year in hit-by-pitches since 1915—like John F. Kennedy, the season after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, which surely affected many politically aware pitching staffs).

No, he didn't get to 600 home runs and beyond. No, he didn't serve as the model for Major League Baseball's official logo. But the humble Harmon Killebrew lived, and died, with dignity and grace.

(MLB logo is a registered trademark of Major League Baseball.)

Grand Old Blanda Makes Final Pass

I collected primarily baseball cards as an adolescent. They were, in some respect, my closest friends during those unsure and impressionable years. But a pack of football cards regularly found its way into my shoeboxes. Along with my bubble gum–scented diamond heroes, I equally cherished gridiron icons such as Bob Griese, my pitiful pre-Vermeil Eagles, and, heretically for a Philadelphia-area boy, my favorite player, Roger Staubach—most of them holding ridiculous poses for the lazy and unimaginative photographer. But one player in my football-card collection filled me with wonder: George Blanda. He sat in profile, head somberly in hands, a river delta of creases flanking his eye, and, most curiously, more silver in his hair than on his vaunted Oakland Raiders jersey. How could a man that old still be playing professional football? I had probably seen him kick field goals or extra points during a televised playoff game, but his helmet obscured that aged coif, so Blanda never achieved memorability on screen as he did from my football card. In those days before the Internet, and even easily accessible sports encyclopedias, I gleaned virtually all of my sports knowledge from the reverse side of trading cards, where the statistics were listed and proved each player’s greatness or mediocrity. George Blanda’s fascinated me. His statistics went all the way back to 1949! How was that possible? Wasn’t that, like, right around World War II? I’d never seen so many rows on the back of a trading card. There was no room for the player’s standard capsule description. So many rows, in fact, that Topps didn’t even have space for his biographical information. This Blanda had no equal—not even the Kansas City Royals Lindy McDaniel, whose reduced-sized print went all the way back to a medieval 1955. But the Forties! Ancient Blanda surely must have played against Red Grange, the only black-and-white football legend of whom I was aware.

 

But wait—the front of Blanda’s card surreally denoted that he was not only Oakland’s kicker, but its quarterback as well! I knew he wasn’t the Raiders’ starter, because I counted my fellow southpaw, Ken Stabler, among my favorite players, but this silver-haired geezer played quarterback and kicked? Blanda was some kind of superman, even if I couldn’t ascertain his passing statistics from the back of his card, which only displayed his ungodly kicking totals. In actuality, not a superman—Blanda had merely been “elected King of the World” by Raiders radio voice, Bill King, a few seasons earlier, after a remarkable five-week run of second-string heroics achieved with both arm and leg. Several years elapsed before I realized that the multi-positional Blanda was the last of a dying breed—even spending part of his early career as a linebacker. It took a few more years until I learned the history of the AFL and that Blanda had led the Houston Oilers to its first two championships in the upstart league. Despite his success in the AFL and his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Blanda never won a Super Bowl, set the all-time record for interceptions thrown, and was quickly being pushed down prestigious career lists by beneficiaries of an increasingly pass-oriented NFL. Yet, for me, the silver-haired man with his head in his hands and stats that almost ran off the bottom of his football card retains a powerful aura as a player of unique toughness and resiliency.

A Great American

In a perfect world, George Carlin would have been president, for he possessed far more intelligence and honesty than any actual candidate. Carlin's incisive wit peeled away the layers of bullshit that the government, organized religion, big business, and everyday idiots heap on the world, exposing human foibles with the visceral precision of a forensic pathologist.

Yet, as Carlin demonstrated time and again, this is anything but a perfect world.

My introduction to George Carlin occurred circa 1977 as I watched an airing of Saturday Night Live. He walked on stage and stared blankly at the audience, not uttering a word during his entire routine. At first confused, the crowd's reaction slowly turned to pockets of giggling, until, after two or three minutes, the audience couldn't contain itself and bubbled over in torrents of laughter as an expressionless Carlin eyed them silently. I was about ten and too young to grasp the courage of such a routine. But Carlin had the courage to say and do what he believed, whether it be his infamous "seven dirty words" or his diatribes on the fallibility of religion and our leaders. Sometimes he made his audience squirm because they were among the characters and ideologies he lampooned—but he made them laugh as they squirmed, and he made them think with his wonderfully constructed routines. Carlin's rapid-fire wordplay fell from his acerbic tongue so eloquently that how he said it almost overshadowed what he said. And when he microscoped the mundanities of everyday life, such as on A Place For My Stuff—one of the funniest comedy albums ever recorded—Carlin created timeless humor that will remain forever relevant.

In one of his many HBO specials, Carlin claimed, "I'm not a very good American, because I like to form my own opinions. I don't just roll over when I'm told to." His all-too-accurate knock on Americans' sheep-like proclivity aside, George Carlin was, perhaps, the ultimate American. Anyone can waive Old Glory and proclaim America "great"—it is the courage to question (and when necessary...denigrate) the highly suspect actions of those in power that constitutes the rarefied essence of what it means to be an American.

The Supreme Court ruled Carlin's "seven dirty words" routine "indecent, but not obscene," but Carlin, watchdog as well as comedian, highlighted life's true obscenities in its iniquities, prejudices, and idiocy. He never mellowed with age or grew complacent with fame, maintaining to the end his prolificacy and dissatisfaction with the state of the world. Carlin is one of the few people about whom I can honestly say that our world is a lesser place without him, because—if you'll consult his seven dirty words—George Carlin was one funny #6.

Heston Peace, Charlton

As a youngster, one of my first personifications of God was Charlton Heston’s Moses in The Ten Commandments. Sure, I little grasped biblical hierarchy, but Moses’ austere white beard, commanding voice, flowing robe, and superpowered walking staff epitomized a Supreme Being to my young eyes. Not long after, Dad took me to see Earthquake, and the ultimate eye-opener proved not to be the oh-so-lame Sensurround, but witnessing the man I previously identified as God struggling to lower a screaming yenta down the side of a wrecked skyscraper with a chair and firehose. That’ll take the luster off a deity right quick.

Still, as both actor and activist, Charlton Heston played a leading role on the American scene for more than half a century, fooling thousands into believing he was Jewish through such iconic roles as Moses, Judah Ben-Hur, and the narrator in Armageddon, while lending star-power to every Rambo-wannabe nutjob itching to get his trigger finger on an automatic weapon. With the passing last Sunday of one of the earliest influencers on my conscious, I can’t help but pause to reflect on the man who, for a time, filled my young mind with otherworldly wonder.

Nor can I help but wonder if his final resting place will be marked by a Ten Commandments–like double-headstone. Or possibly a half-buried mini–Statue of Liberty. Will any apes attend his funeral? Will he be buried with a rifle, or will the funeral director indeed pry it from his cold, dead hands? Will he even be buried, or will his corpse be used to make soylent green? Tough questions to ask about the man who once embodied my concept of God.

Yet they needed to be asked. Needed to be asked because I’m bored out of my freakin’ mind by my job and all I have for jollies during daylight hours is this goddamn Web site that nobody reads and it now costs almost $3 for a friggin’ slice of plain pizza and I can’t get my hands on a DVD of the original Ultraman series, which I haven’t seen since 1975, and no one uses a goddamn turn signal anymore and the world is teeming with idiots, all of whom find their way into my life, and the country is doomed and I’m hungry and I have no money for the vending machine and I just wanna lie down.

Yes, these questions needed to be asked.

Heston peace, Charlton.