What Every Little Boy Knows

Because of baseball.

A beautifully written, neat little essay by T.R. Heally: "Chin Music"

My recommended reading for the month of September. (See sidebar.)

Jess's Famous Chili

written by Jess and prepared by me

Here is a vegetarian chili recipe that you might enjoy. Keep in mind that when it comes to chili, you can always change and adjust the recipes to your liking. You might want to serve your chili over a long grain white rice. If you want to add meat, then we always used ground turkey or venison. (It is great w/o though.) It has much less fat than beef and would probably fit in the healthy diet that you are striving for. It only takes a few minutes to brown before you throw it in the pot. This is a really mild recipe, add hot sauce if you want to kick up the heat. This recipe can be made on your stove, but the following is for your slow cooker.

Vegetarian Chili

Chop everything bite size

1 large sweet yellow onion, chopped

6 cloves garlic, diced

2 celery stalks, chopped

Sautee together in 3 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil for a couple of minutes until softened, but still crunchy. Add the garlic first and make sure it's cooked completely, but not burnt. Use slotted spoon and add to crockpot.

NEXT, ADD ALL OF THE FOLLOWING TO YOUR CROCKPOT IN THIS ORDER, THEN STIR.

1 pound browned ground turkey or venison, if desired

1 medium zucchini, halved lengthwise and cut into 1/2-inch slices (approx
one and one half cups)

1 red bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 yellow bell pepper, seeded and chopped
1 green bell pepper, seeded and chopped

1 10-oz package of frozen whole kernel corn
1 15-oz can black beans, drained
1 15-oz can red kidney beans, drained
1 15-oz can Great Northern white beans, drained
1 15-oz can pinto beans, drained (only if you have room in your pot)
1 8-0z can of tomatoe paste
2 15-oz can diced tomatoes (only add one at first and then the other if you
have room in your pot)
2 15-oz can stewed tomatoes (same as above)
1 4-0z can of diced chilis

SPICES
You can do one of two things
1) Add one package of McCormicks chili seasoning (any brand will do)
2) Add the following
2 to 3 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground oregano
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
a dash of salt
a dash of pepper

TOPPINGS
Shredded cheddar cheese
Chopped green onions
Sour cream
Eat with saltines or tortilla chips
We like ours served over white rice
Hot sauce

STIR EVERYTHING TOGETHER AND COVER.  COOK ON LOW-HEAT SETTING FOR 8 TO 10 HOURS OR ON HIGH-HEAT SETTING FOR 4 TO 5 HOURS.  TINA AND I PREFER TO COOK THE CHILI ON A LOW-HEAT SETTING OVERNIGHT.  THE CHILI ONLY GETS BETTER THE SECOND, THIRD AND FOURTH DAYS.  IT WILL KEEP.

Redbank: 1958

Papa knelt before Turkey Creek and lowered his arm and cupped his hand and drank from it while the boy swung the pendular axe by the throat and knocked the arch of his boot with the pole of the axe. Papa opened the pouch of chewing tobacco and pinched it, chewed it and spat then rose and returned to the fell. The boy clasped the saw, moved the choke to half, and drew the cord. The saw fired and surged, and he handed it to his father who set the choke back with his thumb, pinching the throttle, and knelt in the heap of saw chips and cut the wood. He lifted and carried and pitched the logs as Papa partitioned them. When the fell was all cut, the boy asked,

“Papa, may I split the logs?”

“Like I showed you,” Papa said.

His father stood over him while he centered the toe of the bit onto the near ledge of the oak log and spread his feet to shoulders' width. The swell knob rested off the heel of his left palm, and he watched his breath. Then, he wheeled and caught the throat of the handle in his right hand and delivered it in line, letting the weight of the bit crack the log and sink into the chopping block. It was a clean first swing that hurled the halves end over end in the crepitant leaf-litter.

“Nice swing young man.”

Fat Pine: 1983

Papa knelt before the hickory embers and wielded the spatula that he cached along with the grill grating in the hickory tree above the fire pit, and he flipped the beef patties. Strewn around in the sandy dirt lay a bow saw, the morning’s newspaper, some ground peppercorn, garlic salt, a hatchet, and a tin of minced onion flakes. The smoke from the embers wafted over to Dad and finally him and on through the clearing into the mother-naked hardwoods.

After lunch, he led his grandfather to the spring for a drink. The glistering frost on the leaf-litter winked and melted in the noonday effulgence while they walked down the drive, the boy watching his breath and balancing on the rib of grass splitting the sandy ruts. They descended the embankment and crossed another trail into the cedar glade where the inky cypress boards constructed a coruscating box of water in the ground. A tarnished ladle was hooked over the backboard, and they both knelt and dipped it in the water and drank from it.

“It’s good Papa.”

“It is good. Mmm. Best water in the world.”

“Where is Dad?”

“He is at the ravine looking for fatwood.”

“Why didn’t he come for water?”

“There is Pepsi Cola in the truck. And work to do.”

“May I help Papa?”

“We need your help.”

“Good. How big is a hundred acres Papa?”

“You know that.” Papa held out his arm and pointed it across the woodland above them. “From the upside-down pine to here, at the spring, and from the far side of the ravine to Turkey Creek.”

“Is that big?”

“Not especially.”

“How many is all of South Carolina Papa?”

“Too many to count.”

They found Dad down in the ravine kneeling before the pine stump digging out the roots with the fold-shovel, brow and forearms beading sweat. His father didn’t stop digging and picking as they drew near. Papa stepped in front of the remnant and wrapped his arms around it and wobbled it, but the stump was not yet free. Papa knelt and his father handed over the shovel.

“How was the spring?”

“It is the best water in the world Dad.”

“Good. Take that shovel from Papa and dig out around those roots.”

He picked and dug, making a small tunnel under the stump, and then he started at it from the other side. Papa lifted his arm and pulled the chewing tobacco out of the shirt-pocket and opened the pouch and pinched it and chewed it. The boy stopped and watched.

“Do you want some young man?”

“No. I won’t be able to dig.”

“No sir?”

“No thank you sir.”

“I’m going for the peach baskets,” his Dad said.

“Will you bring him a Pepsi Cola?”

“Yes sir, you want one?”

“Not now, I’m alright.”

Papa knelt before his grandson and watched him work at the stump. It was almost free. Papa told him to shake it, and he did, but it wouldn’t come. So he handed his grandfather the tool and stood up while Papa finished the business. When Dad returned from the truck, the fat pine lay on its side next to the hole, and he was striking it with the hatchet.

“I smell turpentine! You got it."

“Yes he did.”

The slivers of wood fell before the stump, and the men stacked them into the baskets filling each of them. Then they walked away from the oddment and out of the ravine carrying the baskets and set them in the truck bed.

“Can I feed the fire Dad?”

“Ask your Papa.”

“May I feed the fire Papa?”

“Yes you may. Saw up that hickory branch.”

The men watched him work down the length of the branch with the bow saw. He stopped once to rest and to watch his breath. When he finished he carried the sticks and stacked them next to the fire pit. He went to the truck bed and removed a few pieces of the fat pine from one of the peach baskets and returned to the embers and stirred them with a piece of the lightwood. It lit off straightaway, and he positioned it and the other slivers over the glowing coals, and then he crosshatched the sticks of hickory around the resinous blaze. The flame spread swiftly to the hickory. He plodded back to the truck bed and held out his arms.

“Load me up please.”

“You want a fire, do you not?”

“Yes sir. A big one.”

The boy lugged the split logs and stacked them next to the fire pit. He looked at his father, then propped the logs over the hickory.

“Like a teepee, right Papa?”

“That is right young man.”

“It is a good fire son.”

“It is getting warm Dad.”

“It is a fire son. On a deep bed of coals.”

They stood around the fire pit and watched the wood burn. Then Papa told him the story about the cemetery across the road. Once some boys in the Sunday school class were camping there in the clearing, and they went to the cemetery at dark to look around. An especially ornery boy was pining for something to supervene, and when he sat down and leaned back against the headstone, the grave marker shifted and groaned, and the boy shot hell-bent out of the cemetery hurdling the fencerow and didn’t look back and didn’t let up until he made camp.

The Junker

Mighty Heroes, we need you in Copenhagen!

Not Charlie Brown Too!

#7 Mickey Mantle

Mickey Mantle is Big J's all-time favorite ballplayer.  When he was growing up in Columbia, a young boy, there weren't any professional baseball teams west of Chicago and St. Louis, and there were none at all in the South.  Papa, Perky, Big J, and Uncle L didn't get their first TV until about 1953 or 1954.  That was while they lived on Denny Road in Columbia.  Big J said, "Believe it or not there was only one televised game a week, creatively called The Game of the Week by CBS."  Papa and Big J started watching the game together, and since the Yankees were the dominant team in the land, the televised game usually turned out to be the Yankees versus whoever they were playing that day.  They watched Mantle, Maris, Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, their home-state boy Bobby Richardson from Sumter, and manager Casey Stengel every time they were on TV.  

Big J wrote about some of the highlights of the new, televised games:  

The broadcasters for The Game of the Week were Pee Wee Reese and Dizzy Dean.  Often when the game was slow (or truth be told, most of the time), by the late innings, Old Diz had drunk one-too-many Falstaffs.  One time, the TV camera panned over into the right field bleachers where the crowd was sparse and showed a young man and young woman really going to it.  Dizzy's all-time great Falstaff-inspired line was, 'Ah, look out yonda in the bleachers.  A couple of youngsters having fun out at the old ballpark this afternoon.  It appears as if he's kissing her on the strikes, and she's kissing him on the balls.'  There was a blacked-out silence for two or three minutes while the booth got their composure back.

The summer after Big J's high school graduation, Papa won a trip to the Provident national convention in New York City for selling a lot of insurance.  He took the whole family along.  They stayed in a big, fancy hotel.  The popular band, The Herman Hermits, was staying in the same hotel so there were screaming groupie girls running around everywhere.  They took a Gray Line boat tour that week up the East River, under the Brooklyn Bridge, turned onto the Harlem River going north, came out on the Hudson, and followed the whole western length of Manhattan going south back down to The Battery.  The 1964 New York World's Fair was also going on at the same time at Flushing Meadows in Queens.  The family spent a whole day there.  

The city had constructed a brand new stadium on the fairgrounds, Shea Stadium, which was the first of the monstrous, multi-purpose, cookie-cutter stadiums built for football and baseball, concerts and other entertainment events.  There happened to be a game that day between the new New York Mets and the San Francisco Giants.  Many New Yorkers were still bitter because the Giants had moved to the West Coast from New York along with the Brooklyn Dodgers.  It was practically a home game for the visiting Giants.  That day, Papa, Perky, Big J, and Uncle L sat in the third deck of the new stadium and watched Gaylord Perry, a country boy from North Carolina, pitch for the visiting Giants.  It was a muggy summer day and Perry was soaked by the end of the first inning, sweat streaming off of his chin.   Willie Mays hit the game winning home run for the Giants, and the crowd went went wild.      

   

There is something that I want for you to know about Big J and me, and I want for you to understand it plainly.  We were both born and raised in the Deep South, not only physically, but also ideologically.  Our childhoods were very different from yours.  South Carolina has never been a friendly place for black folks.  Your ancestors were slave owners.  We have family documents officially freeing the slaves years after Lincoln's "Emancipation Proclamation."  Schools and busses and restaurants and water fountains were segregated while Big J was growing up.  When he was a boy, he said it was common for pranksters to ride through "Niggertown" in their cars throwing rotten apples at people in their yards.  While I was a boy in Camden, I went to an integrated school, but there was a deep divide between whites and blacks.  Train tracks literally cut Camden into two distinct communities.  South of the tracks, there was extreme poverty.  As I grew older and started to drive, I would secretly explore streets most whites never dared to drive.  Sad images are stuck in my mind of dilapidated shanties, weathered and oppressed men and women sitting on their porches in the severe heat of summer afternoons.  North of the tracks, there were beautiful, shady, oak-lined avenues, horse-drawn carriages in the streets, marvelous marble-columned colonial houses with four-foot high slave entrances in the back--dark tunnels that led into the kitchens.  I heard racist jokes on a regular basis.  I laughed at them.  I even learned to tell them by the time I was 13 or 14.  I used the "N word" on a regular basis for a few years, and I believed that I was part of a superior race of human beings.  I only tell you this because I want for you to know.  I want you to know how far we have come.  You see it now.  People can change, R.L.

Sometimes when Big J talks about Mickey Mantle now, there is a tinge of regret in his voice--just sometimes.  Now, when he speaks of Mantle, he often points out that one of the biggest baseball questions of the day was whether Mantle or Mays was the better player of the era.  According to the numbers, it's obvious that Mays was the better of the two, but many whites at the time couldn't see past the contrasting colors of their skins.  Mantle was a good ol' country boy from Oklahoma with a million dollar smile.  He appeared to be the All-American kid.  The TV camera loved him.  But Mays was another black boy, born into a working class family in Alabama, trying to break into the white man's world.  A lot of people resented Mays and lauded Mantle as a heroic baseball god.  Period.  No matter that Mantle was a womanizing alcoholic in real life who showed up to as many games hung over or drunk throughout his career as he did sober.  I would not understand this side of the Mantle vs. Mays question if Big J had not explained it to me, and I am grateful to him for being so reverend in his honesty about the subject matter.  His anomalous transformation from a typical, racist South Carolina boy to the all-inclusive, accepting, and loving man that he is today is heartening.  

Regardless of all that ugly stuff, Mickey Mantle was a fabulous ballplayer.  There's no telling what he might have done if he hadn't torn up his knee in a stupid drain grate out in center field at Yankee Stadium during the 1951 World Series. 

#7 Mickey Mantle.  5-11.  198.  Throws right.  Switch hitter.  Outfield.  Hall of Fame.  536 career HR's.  Mantle was the greatest switch hitter ever.  A real legend of the diamond.      

   

#36 Robin Roberts

When Big J was a boy, Papa and Perky gave him a weekly allowance of 25 cents.  He started his Brae Springs Train Fare Fund with that money, and over a period of several years, he saved up the $17 or $20 necessary to purchase a train ticket from Columbia, South Carolina to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to visit your great, great grandparents, Lee Leslie MacLellan (Dad Mac) and Irma Baker MacLellan (Mom Mac) at their home in Bethlehem, PA.  (I met Mom Mac several times when I was very young.  I called her Mom-mom.)  When Big J was 9, he purchased the ticket, Perky and Papa put him on a train in Columbia, and he made the trip up the East Coast all by himself.  At a changeover in Richmond Perky's sister, Aunt Sally, met him for a hug and a snack.  Then Dad Mac picked up Big J in Philadelphia when he arrived and drove him back to Bethlehem to their home, Brae Springs.

That week, Dad Mac and Mom-mom paraded their first grandson all over town.  Big J went to work with Dad Mac.  He and and his brother, Uncle Alden, owned Plymouth car dealerships in Bethlehem and Allentown.  They visited the Bethlehem Steel Company farm, the owners of which were Dad Mac's and Mom-mom's good friends, to see their champion Labrador Retrievers straight from Scotland--one of the original Lab bloodlines to come to the United States.  They frequented the storied Saucon Valley Country Club where Dad Mac and Mom-mom golfed and socialized with Pennsylvania's educated elite.  And Dad Mac took Big J to his first professional baseball game in Philadelphia to see the Phillies and the Chicago Cubs.

The game was at Connie Mack Stadium (formerly Shibe Park), by that time a decrepit old place.  Big J called it a "barn,"  even though when it was built in 1909 it had been America's first concrete and steel stadium.  He said he sat behind a post because "there weren't many seats in Connie Mack that weren't behind posts.  You were lucky if you didn't get a splinter in your ass, too! [from the weathered wooden benches]"  That ballpark witnessed 7 World Series and 2 All-Star Games and was the site of the first night game in the history of professional baseball.  Your Dad Mac and Big J watched the great Philly pitcher, Robin Roberts, defeat the Cubs 3-1.  The only run he allowed was a solo home run off the bat of Cub-great, Hall of Famer, Ernie Banks.  Your grandfather said he left the stadium "thrilled cause our team had won."

#36 Robin Roberts.  6-00, 190.  Throws right.  Switch hitter.  The Phillies' greatest right-handed pitcher ever.  In his 19 year, Hall of Fame career, he won 287 games and had an ERA of 3.41.  The game's toughest pitcher for most of the 50's, he had 6 consecutive 20 win seasons.  He worked with a great fastball and incredible control.  He challenged hitters, keeping the ball over the plate, so he gave up some runs.  Roberts claimed that he never slept after a loss.  He'd watch the sunrise, the pitches, hits, and runs playing out over and over in his mind.  Critics say he hung on a little too long.  The end of the career was rough.  Several seasons of lack-luster ball hurt his stats, but there aren't many folks around who don't believe he was one of the great right-handed pitchers of all-time.  Big J is convinced.

#8 Carl Yastrzemski

In the summer of 1982 I was nine.  I had just finished fourth grade at Bradley Elementary School in Columbia, and my best friends were classmates named Tucker and Rob.  

A typical day in 4th grade was pretty dang cool from what I can remember.  I was one of the older kids in the K-5 school.  A proud Bradley Bee. Big J was the President of the PTA.  I had one of my favorite teachers ever, Mrs. Vaughn.  I wore cowboy boots.  I had a crush on a cutie named Lela, and she even had the same last name as me.  Everywhere we went at school, we were together.  While I sat in class, stood in lines, was pictured in yearbooks or checked for lice, she was there.  But the best part was that Tucker, Rob, and I rode our BMX bikes to school rain or shine.  When the bell would ring at the end of the day, we'd race out to the bike racks and tear outta the parking lot like a three-car bullet train and run a course that we had carefully plotted at recess.  The route varied from day to day but always included several distinct obstacles.  One was a long stretch by a chain-link fence with a barking Husky with one brown eye and one blue eye.  One was a ramp in the sidewalk where a water main had busted and a city work crew had torn up the sidewalk into a perfect launching pad.  The last was a wash in the street that collected loose, fine Carolina sand.  After landing the jump clean, we'd stand on the pedals, bikes violently thrashing back and forth beneath us, and in the middle of the wash, slam on the brakes for a big, long skid mark in the sand and at the end sling the back tire around to a perfect perpendicular stop right in front of Lela's house.  We'd wave and then coast on down Dalloz Road to the house for a pick-up baseball game in Scott and Chuck's backyard or turns on the ski rope swing Dad had built us in the oak tree whose limbs reached out over the street from our sloping front yard.  Although we lived in the city, I had free rein on the whole area surrounding our neighborhood.  My home range on bicycle or skateboard was a 2 or 3 mile radius from my house in any direction by the time I was 9.  As long as I checked in every now and then.

That summer, Tucker invited Rob and me to visit his grandparents at Hyannis Port on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  Rob spent summers at his dad's so he couldn't go.  But for two weeks, Tucker and his family showed me one of the best times of my life to this day.  Their place was on the ocean and they had a boat and a floating dock about a quarter-mile out in front of their house.  We'd swim out to the dock in the mornings and do flips off the diving board and go for rides on the boat.  His aunt was a college student, and she liked to skinny dip in the sea.  Didn't even care if her own parents were watching.  Hell, I think all of em did it at one time or another come to think of it.  The highlight of the trip though was a trip into Boston for a Red Sox game.  We sat directly behind home plate about ten rows up in the shade, and the sun shone on the Green Monster of Fenway.  We could here the players talking, see into the dugouts on both sides, practically smell the pine tar.  Before the game, we went behind each of the team's dugouts with our gloves to solicit autographs.  Don Sutton was pitching for the Brewers that day and when Tucker asked him for his autograph as Sutton descended into the dugout after warm-ups, he said something like, "No time kid but have this."  And he flipped him the ball he had thrown his warm-up pitches with.  Tucker stood stunned and stared at the ball for the rest of the game.  I ran over behind the Sox dugout determined to get my own souvenir, and I did, but it wasn't a ball or an autograph.  Yaz spoke to me for a second.  He has been one of my favorite ball players ever since.  

#8 Carl Yastrzemski.  5-11, 182.  Bats left.  Throws right.  CF, LF, 1B, 3B.  Second-best Red Sox player of all-time behind Ted Williams.  452 career home runs.  In his Hall of Fame induction, he told his fans and peers, "I can stand before you today and tell you honestly that every day I put on that Red Sox uniform I gave a hundred percent of myself for my own.  I treated it with dignity and respect in deference to our fans.  A high regard for my teamates, coaches, and management.  Anything less would not have been worthy of me.  Anything more would not have been possible."  I didn't get to watch much of his career.  He retired the next season in 1983.  And I don't remember what he said to me exactly, but in my imagination, it goes like this: "Where you from kid?  That's a long way away.  Listen.  You don't always make an out.  Sometimes the pitcher gets you out."     

#3 Dale Murphy

Big J moved your grandmother and me from Chattanooga, TN back home to Columbia in 1977 to work with Papa in the Family business.  Your grandparents had lived all over the country while he was on active duty in the Navy, and after I was born they were ready to settle down for a while.  When Aunt M.C. was born in '78, Big J converted a big, screened-in porch on the back of the new house on Dalloz Rd. into a family room and rewarded himself and the family with a new, color TV and cable service.  The year was 1981, and I was eight.

That season, Dad and I started watching TBS games, and manager Bobby Cox moved a struggling catcher named Dale Murphy into center field.  Murphy had a great bat, but his confidence (and 6 foot 5 knees) had suffered as a catcher.  Dad said Murph led the league in "throwing out center field." In 1982, Joe Torre took over Cox's team, named Bob Gibson as his pitching coach, and they won the division.  That's the year Dad took me to my first game so I could see Murph hit a homer in person.  I remember it well.  Several friends and I were begging to go so he loaded us up in our Datsun stationwagon and took every kid in the neighborhood.  We lugged our entire baseball card collections and gloves along to get autographed.  At The Varsity restaurant in Atlanta, it became apparent that the game against the Mets was gonna be rained out.  So we headed on out and toured Fulton County Stadium in the rain and then drove home to Columbia in the middle of the night.   From 1982-1987, Dale Murphy hit between 36 and 44 HRs a season and was named to the NL All-Star team every year.  Dad watched all the games in his new family room on his new color TV with his new cable service, and I missed fewer and fewer the older I grew. I owe a great deal of my love for baseball to Dale Murphy, my first hero.  It seemed like every time I saw him at bat, he hit it over the fence.  I practiced his pigeon-toed batting stance and unique bat-waggle in backyard pickup games with neighbors Scott and Chuck, T.W., and R.S.  We played two on two, taking turns at all-time pitcher. 

#3 Dale Murphy. 6'5", 215.  Bats right.  Throws right.  Center Field.  Murph was a natural lefty, but his folks made him learn to hit and field right-handed.  Dale Murphy was best known in baseball for being Mr. Clean.  He didn't drink, smoke, or cuss--or use steroids as they gained prominence in the league.  With a .265 career batting average and 398 HRs, he's not a Hall of Famer--yet, but he'll always be one of the best in my book.  Seven-time All-Star. Twice voted the NL MVP. Best player in the 80's?  Great human being on and off the field.  If only-if only he coulda laid-off the curve ball down and away...   

--MJF

#44 Hank Aaron

This series is dedicated to R.L. for your first birthday.

Kshof took me to my first baseball card show yesterday.  Several tables set up with striking sports memorabilia.  Cards, coins, pictures, balls, autographs, jerseys and the like.   I was looking specifically for a Chipper Jones rookie card for R.L.'s first birthday, and Kshof found one for us, professionally graded and encased, preserved forever.  Larry "Chipper" Jones is my favorite baseball player of all-time.  

It got me to thinking.  My personal standards for greatness have a lot to do with the baseball players that I watched and/or heard about growing up.  Baseball was paramount in the "F"amily home.  Longtime Braves voices Skip Caray, Ernie Johnson, Pete van Wieren, and Don Sutton helped Dad raise me.  From the day that he subscribed to cable TV in Columbia, through my Camden High School and Mars Hill College summers, until the day that H and I left for Arkansas, we watched more TBS-televised Braves games than we missed.  We were dazzled by Phil Niekro knuckle balls and Dale Murphy home runs.  We saw Glavine and Smoltz and Maddux pitch most of their games in Braves uniforms.  He would fall asleep upside-down in the lazyboy and snore, and I would sneak upstairs usually about the eighth inning unless there was a chance for a complete game or a save.  He tried to take me to games in Fulton County Stadium every so often too.  We'd stop at The Varsity on the way into town and then go to the game wearing baseball gloves and binoculars and listening to Skip on headphones,and we'd eat boiled peanuts and hot dogs.  He got a smile out of Chipper once with his booming game-voice.  We were sitting in right field, and Chipper was warming up out there, playing catch with Deion Sanders and "Crime Dog" Fred McGriff.  Then, he'd drive us home safely while I slept, east into the early-morning Carolina summer air.  My buddies and I danced in the halls of the dormitory when Smoltz shut out the Pirates in Game 7 of the NLCS in '91 to go from worst to first in the National League.  He was the first person I called.  We couldn't even talk over all the ruckus.  That started a run of fourteen consecutive division championships for our Braves, the most stunning feat in the history of sports if you ask us.  We had watched the whole thing develop from the ground up, across two decades, and that's how we learned to communicate with one another, and it's how we became best friends.  We still attend games almost every year at Turner Field.  My standards for greatness stretch beyond Atlanta Braves.  Dad taught me about lots of players and teams.

Today I'm starting a series on greatness through baseball based on the Family way.  Things I learned from Dad and Skip and Ernie.  

#44 Hank Aaron.  We have to begin with him.  6', 180.  Bats right.  Throws right.  Right field. Best Brave of all-time.  Purest power hitter ever.  Under-appreciated as a fielder.  Humble.  Determined.  Serious and often silent ambassador.  He got to where he was with talent and hard work, not performance-enhancing equipment or drugs.  Hand-eye coordination and strong wrists.  755.  A complete man, R.L.

--MJF