The second speaktherights.com photo after Bob Biddle took me to see Fenway Park in 2014.July 10, 2023? Did I hear one of you say that?
Gads. Summers do fly by. So do Falls and Winters and Springs.
On July 8, 2014, I wrote my first speaktherights.com entry. I never dreamed I would still be here. I never dreamed I would not. We just do what we do. If anyone is reading that is fine. Some people talk too much. Some people write too much. In the infancy of speaktherights.com, I felt compelled to play catch-up. I wrote many entries often. When I look back, I marvel at the material and the drive to put it here.
Like the seasons, times change. I don’t have that great sense of urgency to run to the keyboard each time I am inspired. I have written a few new songs lately. That has been good. One day I may make another proper recording. Like all things, time will tell.
But here we are. Just a few things on my mind today. Inspired? Somewhat, I think so. I am working on new material for the upcoming school year. That is inspiring. I think I enjoy teaching and appreciate the opportunity to help students more than ever. With youth comes optimism. Lord knows we need it.
Have you seen this guy? Elly De La Cruz plays for the Cincinnati Reds and has invigorated a team, a city, a league. We have not seen anything like it in the 55 years I have been on this orb. On this play he stole home after stealing second and third. The first Cincinnati Red to do so since 1919. I saw a photo of this from the third base side and the umpire looked like he’d swallowed his snuff when Elly touched home. The best day any sports pioneer ever had was the day the guy looked at his baseball diamond and pointed to the plate pitchers aim for and called it “home”.
This was the HOME of my heroes. Walking up through one of those holes you can see at the red seat level was a voyage of pure possibility. In doing so, I found a way to see Sparky Anderson and The Big Red Machine, harass Enos Cabell in left field, see George Foster hit a red seat home run, watch a kid attempt to throw a foul ball back from the second row of the red seats behind home because he thought they needed it to keep playing. Would you believe the second base umpire saw it all and summoned an usher to give the kid another ball. I saw Bill Dorn hit a homer and stand in the dugout afterwards to see an ump look to the Reds bench and call it a “foul ball”. I saw Joe Morgan flap his elbow while he was at bat. I saw Lou Pinella throw second base-twice. I was there for Johnny Bench Day in 1983 and watched him put in a huge chaw of Beech-Nut. As a child they had a promotion called “Bat Day”. Every kid got a regulation sized Louisville Slugger as they entered Riverfront Stadium. When the stadium organist played “DA-DA-DA-DA-DA-DUH!” Every kid rose to their feet, raised their bat by the handle and yelled “CHARGE!!!”
Perhaps the best of any of it was having seen enough games there, more than I can ever remember, to enable me the visual point of reference to see what Marty Brennaman and Joe Nuxhall meant when they called Reds games on radio. I listened to many. If they were winning, I always had to wait to hear Marty say, “And this one belongs to the Reds.”
Elly De La Cruz has charged a team to raise their game to his. Otherwise, he’s just going to make them all look bad. But that’s the way it happens when some great teams are made. Joe Montana took the 49ers from woeful to legendary. Yes, the unthinkable is possible.
I was in a school musical about Thomas Edison. The Electric Sunshine Man is what it was called. There was a song in that yellow book that said, “Nothing is impossible if you try.” Sometimes gifts are handed to us for no reason other than it was meant to be.
That is why I am interested in baseball again for the first time in a long time. The snooze fests I used to try to watch are now reminders of how and why I once enjoyed a game and a team so much. To be given just a remote dose of that is worth the time.
Speaking the rights.
Danny Johnson