Twenty-two years ago today, my dear wife, Carrie, and I pushed our way through the turnstile at McCormick Field in Asheville, North Carolina to take in a game Class A Minor League Baseball game between the Asheville Tourists and the Cape Fear Crocs hailing from downstate Fayetteville.

I have long been a fan of minor league baseball.  The fans.  The stadiums.  The cheaper concessions.  The goofy and enjoyable promotional gigs in between innings, be it racing a mascot or making a participant dizzy by making them  bend forward and hold their forehead to the end of a bat handle and go around in circles and then try to run to a target and invariably one of them stumbles and falls and it is all good fun.  Myron Noodleman may have played your stadium.  I saw his act at many a minor league park.

June 26, 2000 was different.  The game lasted all of 1 hour and 49 minutes.  Yes, this was a nine inning game.  Julio de Paula was pitching for the Tourists and Cristobal Rodriquez was tossing for the Crocs.  Rodriquez threw a complete game giving up one run on only five hits.  de Paula did better.  Coming into the evening with a 2-7 record that could get you a visit to see the manager for the “toughest thing a manager has to do,”  Julio de Paula threw a no-hitter.  He gave up one walk.  The Tourists won the game and dePaula was carried off the field.  It was a thrill to behold and that evening has not been lost on me twenty-two years later.

Carrie and I have made more visits to McCormick Field over the years.  This one is still the gem on that diamond for us.   The headline in the Asheville Citizen -Times sports page the next day was A McCormick Gem.  That it was.  That it was.  Thank you to Tyler Norris-Goode for a great write-up of the game and to photographer Steve Dixon for capturing a photo that gives a great account of the moment we so enjoyed that evening.

If you can make it to Asheville for a game, McCormick Stadium is a sight to behold.  Up the hill off the main road, when you walk out and see that tree-lined outfield, you know you are somewhere special.  You don’t have to decide in the sixth inning.

Today the Ole Miss Rebels bring a 1-0 series advantage in the best 2 out of three College World Series in Omaha, Nebraska.  I have some kin there watching.

Go Rebs Go!

A few days ago, as I was walking on the North Harrison campus, I took a stroll inside the fence of the baseball park.  There is plenty of room to walk!  The centerfield wall is 380 feet out there.

For a few seasons this was my vantage point as I was the DJ and the Public Address Announcer.

Well, the Rebs play in a few hours.  Hope they can pull it off in two.  Hotty Toddy to you!

Speaking the Rights.

Danny Johnson

 

 

On January 23rd I made it known on these pages that I was taking a hiatus from speaktherights.com; I indicated I was working on a chunky piece of writing I needed to complete.

In the unplanned interim, I made posts about the Mississippi State University Library unearthing a John Grisham commencement speech I shared with my students; the Easter season; Henry David Thoreau; Mississippi memories in honor of my Aunt Thula who passed recently; and positive words about the difficult month of May.

In the space since January 23, I finished my ambitious writing project and I am most proud of it.  It clocks in at more than 192,000 words.  Whether it sees the light of day depends on the right publisher.  We shall see.  Any writing perspective I can share with my students is a victory.

I finished the work sitting on a porch at a place my dear wife, Carrie, and I have frequented in The Berkshires. There was no shiver up the spine when I placed the final punctuation mark.  In fact, similarly to a song writing itself, which some of mine certainly have, this writing was finished before I knew it.  That was a pleasant feeling, as there was no pressure as how to wrap it up.  It was over before I knew it was.  I have said it a thousand times.  If you want to make God laugh, tell Him what your plans are.  There’s a lesson.

If you are staying in a hotel thirty-three miles from Walden Pond, you go to Walden Pond.  This was my fourth sojourn to Walden Pond.  It was cloudy and very cool.  I could have used long britches.

There is a nice polite trail around the pond that is narrow and respectful.

The two views above are across from each other.  Cool temps and mid-week yielded a sparse crowd.  I walked hundreds of yards at a time without seeing another human soul.

This photo is one of my favorites.

A replica of Thoreau’s house he built there.

My office on Lake Erie for three days of writing in Willowick, OH.

We met a few new friends there.

Carrie and I have grabbed a sandwich at a  Brattleboro, Vermont deli and rode up a hill to a baseball diamond to have lunch many times on the way to see our friends in New Hampshire.  What a great place to play baseball and to picnic.

 

This was taken in Erie, PA.

In 2013, when Carrie was studying nonstop while I was enjoying our stay at Williamsburg, VA, on a whim I got us tickets to see the music group Train perform at Virginia Beach.  Carrie was a fan.  I became one that night.  A week ago today we saw them at SPAC.  The Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York.  Train follows us for some reason.  We have seen them at SPAC three times.  2015, 2017, and 2022.  Since we have been going to see them, they have not made a stop in Louisville.

Others on the bill last week were Blues Traveller and Jewel; they were both quite good.  We sat in bag chairs and took the atmosphere in.  The SPAC pavilion is in the background.  When Train came on we sat our chairs next to a tree and took our seats.  Yes, the chairs were waiting for us after the show.

This was the largest crowd Carrie and I had seen since July 2019 in Nashville when we saw Train and The Goo Goo Dolls at the Ascend Amphitheater downtown.  Train brought the goods last week.

A few nights ago I had the privilege of taking my Dad to see Justin Hayward sing in Knoxville, Tennessee at the Bijou Theatre.

We had a great time.

Remember this name, if you have not heard it yet: MIKE DAWES.

Look Mike Dawes up on youtube. Justin did.  And he found a winner.  How Justin has held on to this kid for nine years is amazing.  He adds so much to the arrangements that are becoming classics themselves, given the current line-up of talent Justin has with him.  Julie Ragins, singing and playing keyboard, and Mike have been with Hayward since he started his solo shows in 2013.  Add flautist-singer Karmen Gould, who studied at Indiana University, and that little stage sounds a great deal larger.

Mike leads off the show with thirty of the fastest minutes in music.  There is not time to keep up with everything he is doing with that guitar. Makes me want to sell my guitars.  It is amazing.  Do take time and look this guy up.  You’ll thank me later.

In the 1988 Moody Blues song Vintage Wine, Hayward wrote a line:

And the lights go up on the empty stage…

They sure did.

Dad and I were sitting on the front row.  And the sound was still pristine.  That is not a guarantee.

Justin sang songs spanning the 60s to 2013, his latest solo effort.  We heard Tuesday Afternoon, The Voice, Question, Nights in White Satin, Your Wildest Dreams, The Actor, Driftwood, I Know You’re Out There Somewhere, Never Comes the Day, Forever Autumn, and more.

When I was heading to a concert in April of 1992 and my buddy Tim Mullins asked the question, “How long can they keep going?” as I was heading to see The Moodies for the sixth time since I first saw them at age 18 in 1986, I thought I knew something when I told him if I get three more shows in I will be good with that.  Well, thirty years and from Red Rocks to The Newberry (SC) Opera House, I have seen more than nine shows.

Though Justin has been kind giving me a nice promo to thank Robert Becker when he hung up his Radio DJ mic, he has not granted me an interview here and I have requested via the proper channels on a couple occasions.  My interview would be short.  Through all of the concerts, record collection, posters, videos. photos both tangible and in my mind, I just have one question.

American rock and rollers turn to The Beatles as the influence.  How many times have you heard it or read it?  The Ed Sullivan Show changed everything.

But for the British boys and girls, the name you hear over and over is Buddy Holly.  The guy who showed them they can write their own songs and make it happen their way.

My question?

What if Buddy Holly had lived?  What then?  No mantle to pick up?  Or not?

We’ll never know.  I know in my own musical life, when Tim Krekel died in 2009, recording a new album fell more on me.  Everything sounded different.  We carried on.  Ten years later on album number three, with the help of Jefferson Carpenter and a host of great players, I finally heard a Danny Johnson album for the first time; I enjoyed it and I missed Tim the whole time.

I have my suspicions of what Jus’ answer would be.  Some mysteries were made to be exactly that I suppose.

Though we only had a few minutes, it was good to catch up with Julie Ragins.  The last time Carrie and I had real speaks with her was before the Nashville show in 2019.

While you are checking out music, don’t forget to look for Pear Duo, Julie and her husband Curtis Brengle can lay down some sweet tunes.  7 Fairway Drive, oh my.  Thank me later.

Speaking more than I had planned; it has been a while.

Danny Johnson