Blog Archives

Gary Sheffield was released by the Tigers today.  He is one home run shy of 500.  Sheffield has had a great career.  I think he’s a Hall of Famer, but he’s also burned more than a few bridges in his time. 

Think anyone will pick him up?

A few days ago a friend asked me what I had learned on my recent trip to Belgium and I told him that I discovered just how good my family is at keeping secrets.  But does this make my family special?  Doesn’t every family have more than its share of secrets?

And really, some of the things that I found out for the first time–stories of alcoholism, violence–both physical and emotional, infidelity–are these kinds of secrets necessarily bad?  After all, there are reasons to keep secrets and sometimes it is to protect people from being hurt.

Still, I keep thinking about this word: secrets, and how it struck me as the major theme of my trip.  I now realize that just by using that term, I was holding on to a fantasy about my family, in particular, my parents’ marriage.  I wanted to believe that there was a Garden of Eden period for them, a time, no matter how brief, when my parents were happy and truly in love. 

I don’t believe that time ever really existed.  But clearly, it was important for me, on a subconscious level, to hold on to that myth.  (I’ve spoken to my brother and sister some during the past few months and my impression is that they see my parents far more clearly than I do.)   The more I delve into my family history, the more sadness I find.  But I am not afraid to look at it now.  And the most important word–or theme–for me has nothing at all to do with secrets. 

Instead, it is about something more complicated and difficult:  compassion.

There are a bunch of good Yankee-related articles in the Times today, starting with Richard Sandomir’s profile of Randy Levine, the Yankees’ own bad cop:

Levine’s headstrong style has been visible in telling the Boston Red Sox to tend to their own business; encouraging questions that put Joe Torre, then the Yankees’ manager, on the spot after games on the team’s YES Network; and in talks to secure the stadium deal and to create Legends Hospitality Management, a food-concession company with the Dallas Cowboys.

“It’s tough love with Randy,” said Gerry Cardinale, a friend and managing director at Goldman Sachs, the investment bank that is a partner in YES and Legends. “He is brutally honest, has a very high demand for performance and little tolerance for not getting his way. He respects me because I won’t back down.”

During labor negotiations with correction officers in the mid-’90s, the union’s president, Norman I. Seabrook, said recently, Levine’s closed-door demeanor was close to a blood sport that neither man took too seriously.

“He’ll smile, shake your hand and cut your heart out if you’re not prepared,” Seabrook said. “Don’t mistake that smile for anything but a knife.”

Next, is a story about a promising documentary project, followed by a compelling piece about the fate of Stan’s sports bar.

Finally, an essay by William Zinsser:

My Mets are moving into a park named for a bank that I’m helping the government to bail out. The Yankees’ new stadium comes wrapped in a vocabulary that has no connection to baseball: luxury boxes, bond issues, cost overruns. My fellow taxpayers and I are also footing that bill, though the announced prices will dissuade many of us from going there to enjoy the fruits of our charity.

I assume that the new stadiums will feature the newest advances in audio-visual assault. I stopped going to Mets games at Shea Stadium when my friend Dick Smolens and I could no longer hear each other talk between innings — such was the din of amplified music and blather from the giant screen in center field. But baseball is also a game of silences. After every half-inning, it invites its parishioners to meditate on what they have just seen and to recall other players they once saw performing similar feats. Memory is the glue that holds the game together.

Excellent job by the Times.

Ba Ba Booey

I groaned when Pat Jordan told me the Times assigned him to do a piece on the playwright, screenwriter, director, Neil LaBute.  Pat’s writing has an almost feral quality and when matched with a plump, if deserving target like LaBute, well, you know it is not going to be pretty.  I’ve seen a couple of LaBute’s movies and can’t think of one good thing to say about them.  I found them empty and vicious and completely phony.  The thought of what a hard old sharp shooter like Jordan would do with a misanthropic mo mo like LaBute was not exactly appetizing.

The story is in this week’s New York Times Magazine.  I think Pat went easy on him all considering though I don’t imagine that LaBute will see it that way.

At the Sunday market in Waterloo:

Groggy but still standing–okay, sitting–I am happy to back in the States, home with my wife and our two kittens.  I returned from a week-long visit to Belgium yesterday and with flight delays and traffic jams, it was a long day of travel.  But I had a truly wonderful trip re-connecting with my mother’s family, French-speaking Belgians, who live just outside of Brussels.  I ate frites and yes, a waffle, cheeses and chocolates, salamis and hams and wonderful bread (if only I drank beer; dag, that place is like heaven for beer drinkers). 

I learned a ton about the family history, both in Belgium and in the Congo.  I also learned to better appreciate what I have inherited from them as far as personality, taste and even talent is concerned.  My grandmother had a gift for drawing.  My aunt is a photographer and painter.  My uncle is a graphic designer.  My interested in paiting, in movies, in cooking, that all comes from them. 

My grandfather in the Congo:

Here I am in an African shop in Brussels:

I also recalled the summer vacations I spent there as a kid and noticed how much about the world has changed since.  I used to pine for my grandfather to take me to get the Herald Trib so that I could read three-day old box scores; I eagerly awaited letters from my family back home, which took more than a week to arrive.   Now, everything has changed thanks to technology.  I checked in on e-mail and the blog while I was gone, and saw my wife every day via skype, which is really a fantastic thing–and free, to boot. 

Here’s a shot of my mother and my aunt, Anne–kids in the Congo.

Still, while there is plenty of Americanization there, some cultural differences exist of course. For instance, nobody has ever heard of Derek Jeter or Alex Rodriguez (if they were ever to hear about Rodriguez it would be as a footnote, as Madonna’s lover).  It is a place where baseball does not matter at all, and I found that to be refreshing.  It reminded me that while I love the game, really what draws me to it more than anything else, are the stories, the characters, the language, and the way it brings people together.

By Hank Waddles

Imagine that it’s the spring of, say 1931, and you’re starting to think that Babe Ruth just might end up being one of the best players ever to grip a bat. The recent downturn in the economy has left you without a job, so you figure, hey, why not spend the year following the Babe – every game, every at bat, every swing. You drive to places like Boston and Philadelphia, take the train to Washington, and ride busses to Detroit and Chicago. Along the way, you make friends in the bleachers in Cleveland, catch a series with a cousin in St. Louis, and sleep on couches in all corners of the American League. Your bank account feels the bite of your mission, your wife and children become strangers, and close friends question your sanity, but somehow it’s still worth it. I mean, this is Babe Ruth we’re talking about, right? If you could, you’d go back in time and do it in a heartbeat, wouldn’t you?

Now flash forward to 2008 and the Babe Ruth of this generation, Tiger Woods. Writer Bob Smiley shadowed Tiger for every swing of every hole of every tournament in places like San Diego, Augusta, and Dubai, and the result is an extremely engaging book, Follow the Roar: Tailing Tiger for All 604 Holes of His Most Spectacular Season. Last week Bob was kind enough to spend some time talking about his journey. Check it out…

BronxBanter: One of my favorite aspects of the book was that it wasn’t just about Tiger Woods, it was secretly about you, so I thought we might start with Bob Smiley. How important was golf to you when you were growing up?

Bob Smiley: It was really important. It was the first and really only sport I could every really play with my dad. I mean, I played little league and basketball, but golf was something that he taught me how to do when I was eight years old. We would go out and he would try to teach me the point of the game, but I would purposely hit it in the sand trap so I could play in the sand. He really wanted me to embrace the fact that golf is fun and when you get older you’ll appreciate the challenge of it. So for me it was always just a great place, and I had so many memories with my father as I was growing up. When my parents split up when I was a teenager that sort of remained the one spot, even to this day, where he and I still see each other is on the golf course.

(more…)

According to this AP report posted at ESPN, Hideki Matsui will not be playing the field anytime soon.

Thanks to Chyll Will, we have an interview with Sadat X, one of my favorite emcees, by D-Nice.

Ah, Sadat X.

Oh, and you remember D-Nice, right?

Here is my favorite version of the New Orleans classic “Big Chief.”  Thank you, Professor Longhair.  We are not worthy. 

Just makes me want to jump up and wish I could like so:

I’ve been reaching out to some of my father’s old friends recently and talking to them about the old man.  Family members too.  It’s been an engaging if sometimes painful experience.   It’s not that I’ve discovered things about Pop that I didn’t necessarily know–although I do have more details than I ever did before–it’s just that so much of my childhood was filled with sadness that it isn’t an easy time to revisit.  I also realize how much of that sadness I’ve chosen to leave behind.

In the course of learning more about my dad I’ve spoken to my mom and also reviewed her story and her family’s history.  Mom was born in Belgium but moved to Zaire in 1948 when she was four years old.  She lived in the Congo until 1960 when she and her mother and her sister fled back to Europe as the revolution broke out.  She was picked up at school one day and brought directly to the airport.  Didn’t get to say goodbye to her friends or her pets, didn’t get to take any of her things.  Poof, they were gone.

My grandfather, a mechanic who co-operated a Renault dealership in the Congo, remained for a few years trying to salvage his business.  He also helped preists and missionaries escape.  He loved living in Africa and later returned in the Seventies for another ten years.  The Congo was really my mother’s childhood home.  And it no longer exists as she knew it.   She never returned.

Mom finished high school and went to college in Belgium, then met my father and came to the States by the time she was 23.  So Belgium was never as much a home.  Still, her brother and sister live there, along with lots of cousins and aunts and uncles.

I haven’t been to Brussels since my grandfather died, fifteen years ago next month.  I remember four priests who he had helped escape from the Congo were present to pay their respects.   This is the longest stretch I’ve ever had not visiting.  My siblings and I took turns during the summers when we were growing up.  Turns out my grandfather’s younger brother is still alive.  At 87, he’s still lucid and alert.  I said to my mother recently, “Well, someone has to interview him and get the stories.”

One thing led to another, I saw that flights are cheap, so hell, I’m off to Belgium on Thursday night for a week to visit my family, and learn more about their lives and their history.  My mother has complicated feelings about her childhood and has never been comfortable talking about the political nature of being a Colonist (and Belgium, like so many European countries, had an undeniable history of brutality in Africa). Ever hear of Heart of Darkness?

So, I’m curious. To see how things have changed since I was there last. To hear what my aunt and uncles’ experiences were, to see old photo albums and 8 mm movies from my mother’s childhood.

I won’t be gone long, and who knows, maybe I’ll even blog from overseas. In the meantime, Cliff and Diane, Will and Bruce will hold the fort down over here.  Oh, and I’ll have some frites and think about y’all.

Here’s a great mega-mix by my friend Steinski.

Quiz: What movie is quoted at the start of the track?

I caught two innings of AJ Burnett yesterday and he was throwing cheese. I want to like Burnett even though I’ve spent a lot of time not liking him over the past several years. It’s hard to get overly excited by him because even in his best seasons he hasn’t been as great as you might like to see from a guy with great stuff. Will he throw 200 innings? Can he make 25-30 starts? Can he post a sub 4.00 ERA? Or will he strike out a lot of dudes, have an ERA of 4.30, make 21 starts and throw 160 innings?

One thing…if he manages to improve over his performance last year, the Yanks are going to be tough.

Recently, I’ve been hearing about the “Swisher Effect” on the Yankee clubhouse this spring and I think it’s an appealing development. Dig this, from Ben Reiter’s recent column at SI.com:

The first thing one perceives upon walking into the home clubhouse at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa is the mid-90s hip-hop music — stuff like Warren G’s Regulate and Skee-Lo’s I Wish — blasting from an iPod speaker in the back of the room. The iPod belongs to Nick Swisher. Swisher’s role on the field is still to be determined (he’ll probably play mainly right field, a little left and a little first base), and Cashman says that while his unusually gregarious and enthusiastic nature wasn’t a factor in the decision to acquire him from the White Sox in November, his impact on the team’s dynamic has already been deeply felt. “We’re a little sterile now and then, and we need to be livened up,” the G.M. says. “Swish is just the guy to do it. He’s got a great personality.”

The New York clubhouse has at times seemed businesslike to the point of somberness in recent years, but with Swisher aboard, it’s hard to see that being the case in ’09.

And while you are at SI, check out Tim Marchman’s piece on Alex Rodriguez as well as Joe Posnanski’s cover story on Albert Pujols.

“It bothers me to have been careless on some of these small details, especially when I was painstaking about most others…I trusted my notes and my memory on some smaller details, and there were obviously a few instances in which I didn’t have things quite right. That’s my fault, and I’ll take the blame…But if people are waiting for me to break down and confess that I made everything up, it’s not going to happen.”
—Matt McCarthy, USA Today

Mr. McCarthy has asserted that the Times has “crafted a chronology that simply doesn’t exist.” We did not create any chronology. The chronology already existed and we merely followed the chronology of the season that Mr. McCarthy claimed to be writing about. Obviously, some errors are endemic to publishing. No one understands that more than a daily newspaper such as ours. Rather, what we wrote about were events and quotations attributed to real people that could not possibly have taken place as Mr. McCarthy asserts. Given that many people to whom those events and quotes are ascribed are claiming that they didn’t happen, the examples that we found to be provably false lend credence to those concerns.

Alan Schwarz, New York Times

Last week, Benjamin Hill and Alan Schwarz wrote an article in the New York Times about Matt McCarthy’s recent memoir, Odd Man Out. The piece pointed out a series of factual errors made by McCarthy while calling into question the authenticy of the book.  A second article lists the errors that the Times reporters found.

I read Odd Man Out and enjoyed it.  I also interviewed McCarthy for this site.  Needless to say, I was disturbed when I read the two articles in the Times.  

If he was guilty of embellishing the truth or of flat-out lying, I reasoned, McCarthy deserved condemnation. That said, I was struck by how forcefully the Times went after McCarthy.  I thought it was a stretch on their part to associate McCarthy with James Frey, infamous for his memoir fraud in A Million Little Pieces.  Many of errors that were listed seemed innocuous to me, and suggested sloppiness on the part of McCarthy and Viking, his publisher.  I didn’t find anything malicious behind it.  On the other hand, the sheer amount of mistakes the Times brought to light was troubling.  They had McCarthy placing people in places where they were not, having conversations that could not have occured, at least not as how they have been presented in the book.  

I don’t think McCarthy was trying to be lurid necessarily, but the accumulation of so many errors led me to question his authority as a writer.  I was left wondering, “What was really true?” Whether McCarthy was being naive or arrogant, I can’t say.  But his carelessness, as reported by the Times, did not reflect well on either him or the book. 

As a writer, my greatest concern is how this could potentially make things more difficult on the rest of us, simply by creating a standard of excellence that can’t be met without stretching the truth.

McCarthy toured the country promoting the book last week.   He first responded to the Times’ articles in this piece for the USA Today.   Here is one TV interview McCarthy did later in the week, and another.

I conducted a second Q&A with McCarthy via e-mail this week, and I also spoke to Alan Schwarz.  McCarthy has been amiable and professional with me.  I know other journalists in the industry who think highly of him.  I also know he’s in the business of promoting his book.  I’ve known Schwarz for several years and think he is a first-class reporter, as well as an exceedingly ethical and even-handed journalist. 

I will leave it to you to decide what to make of this fine mess.

BB: Your book has achieved a good deal of early success, but that was marred last week by the New York Times article which reported many inaccuracies in your story.

MM: I stand by the contents of Odd Man Out. The journals I kept were very specific and extremely detailed with regards to dialogue. I was a ballplayer keeping a journal, not David Halberstam, and so I made several mistakes in chronology. But I can say this with absolute certainty: not a single one of them changes the tone or meaning of my story, or makes me doubt the truth of the experience as I wrote it down in the book. The lies James Frey and Herman Rosenblat told were fundamental to and pervasive in their narratives – to compare that with a mix-up here and there in dates in Odd Man Out, which has no true effect on the book’s nature, is at best grossly unfair and at worst sensationalistic on the part of a newspaper.

BB: So do you believe this is an unfair attack on the part of the Times?

MM: It appears to me that Benjamin Hill and Alan Schwarz in the New York Times story are writing a partisan article and acting as advocates for Tom Kotchman et al., and using their lawyer’s letter as gospel truth and accepting their statements as fact. I find it interesting that Benjamin Hill and Alan Schwartz have constructed a detailed chronology of dates, which is 90% of their “error’ argument, when in Odd Man Out I do not use dates. I use only general references (a day later, two weeks earlier). Many of their claims to so called “errors” in the book have been created because Hill and Schwarz assign dates to events that I did not assign dates to. Each of the players and former players quoted in the New York Times piece are naturally nit-picking at minor details since they are not represented in a positive light. They are not going after the fundamental truths in Odd Man Out.

BB: I understand that you didn’t use dates, but since you are writing about a specific season it is easy enough to re-construct one. Why do you think the Times would want to pick on you?

MM: I don’t know if I should be the one to speculate about why the Times wrote their article. But I encourage your readers to check out my book and read the Times article and decide for themselves. I’ve received an overwhelmingly positive response from people who have read both.

BB: You mentioned that you were a ball player keeping journals and not David Halberstam. Still, you were writing a book for publication, and I’m sure that Halberstam, too, needed someone to double-check his reporting at times… Can you understand how people might feel that if the facts that can be checked don’t check out how it throws the rest of the material into doubt, lending credence to the criticisms by Kotchman, etc?

MM: My book contains tens of thousands of details that I recounted from journals I kept. For example, from pages 102-104 I recount my performance against the Ogden Raptors inning by inning (and pitch by pitch in some cases) and it was all accurate down to the type of pitch I was throwing. At one point I write that Manuel Melo popped out to end the inning when it turns out someone else popped out to end the inning. In no way does this oversight change anything material about the book.

BB: Based on the kinds of errors you admit to, why should readers not question the veracity of the remainder of the book?

MM: I have acknowledged several errors related to box scores and chronology. Not a single one of them changes the tone or meaning of my story.

BB: The Times pointed out dozens of errors in their piece. Were they in fact correct on the amount of errors?

MM: No. Numerous situations were taken out of context. Is it an error for me to write “Breslow had something like 9 scoreless innings” when in fact he had 12 scoreless innings? They also consider it an error for me to quote Jon Steitz as saying, “I’ve pitched in 11 games and lost all of them,” despite the fact that he went 0-11 that season. They say it’s an error for me to say Joe Saunders “made batters look silly” because he gave up four runs in a game even though batters were swinging at balls over their heads and in the dirt.

BB: I think it is understandable that you could make some of these errors. However, the more puzzling ones include the incident on Larry King night where a person is placed at a scene where, as the Times claims, he was not. Was the Times correct in pointing out this mistake? And if so, do you see how that could effectively undermine your credibility as an author?

MM: Regarding Larry King Night: I said that King’s kid went around punching a bunch of my teammates in the groin and I mistakenly included Matt Brown in this list. I regret including him in the list, but it doesn’t change the fact that King’s kids were in the clubhouse before the game wreaking havoc on our midsections.

BB: I thought the suggestion that your book was like A Million Little Pieces was a stretch. Still, while a fraud, Fray was writing about himself, while you are being accused of hurting other people’s reputations. Do you regret any misleading characterizations that were the result of an error on your part?

MM: No. This book wasn’t about the box scores. It was about brining people closer to the game and I’ve received countless emails from fans who now feel closer to the game. It’s a great feeling.

BB: Have you had any direct contact with the authors of the Times piece since it appeared?

MM: No. I offered to correct the errors they have attributed to me and the errors that appear in their own article, but they said it wasn’t necessary…

BB: Who at the Times did you contact to correct the errors? Did they give any reason why it wasn’t necessary?

MM: I created a point by point rebuttal and gave it to the head of publicity at Viking who was in frequent contact with the Times authors. She offered them my rebuttal but they said they were going ahead with their story and didn’t need my side.

BB: How did the writing process work with your publisher?

MM: I worked closely with my editor on the organization and the overall tone and message of the book and it went through copy-editing and was vetted by legal.

BB: Looking back on it now, would you have used a fact-checker? Or do you feel that the mistakes that have been publicized are essentially innocuous?

MM: I suppose the simple answer is that I would’ve used a fact-checker.

BB: SI ran an excerpt from the book. What involvement, if any, did they have with the publication of the book?

MM: SI read an early draft of the manuscript and requested the opportunity to excerpt a portion.

BB: I know you faced some criticism even before the Times article came out last week. An Angels blogger left a comment in the thread for our original interview. Still, what was your initial reaction when you read the article in the Times?

MM: There have been a wide range of responses to the book and at some level you prepare yourself for anything.

BB: But how did it make you feel? Angry? Do you feel that in essence, the Times’ article is making legitimate criticisms or do you feel that it is an unfair attack?

MM: You’re upset any time someone takes things out of context, but that’s to be expected and there’s nothing you can do about it but defend your work.

BB: You say that you stand by your book. Would you have changed anything in your process knowing what you do now? What has this taught you?

MM: In hindsight it would have been nice to have gone through the box scores from the 350 to 400 high school, college, and minor league games that I played in.

BB: I read that Viking is considering putting out a revised version of the book. Doesn’t that suggest that they are unhappy with the book, or that they could be facing a lawsuit?

MM: Viking was misquoted in the USA Today article when it says, “McCarthy’s publisher, Viking, said it’s likely a revised version of the book will be released…” There are no plans for a revised version at this time.

BB: How has this controversy impacted sales?

MM: Sales have remained strong- last week the book was number 21 on the New York Times Best Seller List.

* * * *

I contacted Schwarz to get his take on some of McCarthy’s responses. I have set up Schwarz’s answers in paragraph form for easier reading.

Mr. McCarthy’s claims that he was denied an opportunity to, in his words, ‘rebut’ his own errors are not only preposterous but adds to his growing list of outright falsehoods. Our interview spanned more than an hour and was comprised mostly of my describing to him every substantive error — sometimes literally showing him things like transaction logs that proved he had the wrong person involved in some distasteful scene, and a copy of his own original contract that proved one quote-laden episode with Tony Reagins to be completely fabricated — and explaining its relevance to the larger picture. He offered explanations for each of them (and I put the most relevant ones in the article so that his side was fairly represented). This went on for probably 10 or 12 of the most substantial errors, with my explaining at every juncture that, while some were clearly not that big of a deal, they called into question the veracity of many other, less provably false scenes that real people said had not happened as he described.

I said that I would be happy to quote portions of the journals he said corrorborated what he had written in the book; he declined to let me do so. I asked to speak with the teammates he claimed supported him; he declined to say who they were.

At the end of the interview, I asked Mr. McCarthy if there was anything he wanted to add, anything that was important given what the story was going to be about. He thought for a moment and said no. I then told him that if he realized there was anything he wanted to add or clarify, that he had my cell phone number and I would be available to him all day for as long as he wanted. He said OK. I have not heard from him since.

The only person I did hear from, in mid-afternoon, was a call back from the Viking publicist. She said that Matt had given her explanations for each error, and would I like to hear them? I said that, to be honest, I had already gone over the errors with Matt in great detail, and that the purpose of my call was to provide opportunity for Viking to comment itself on the situation, its vetting procedures, et cetera. With no objection or hesitation she continued the interview, answering a few questions and offering a few comments — the relevant ones of which I put in the article. She asked if I had talked to Craig Breslow to seek corroboration of McCarthy’s version of events; I explained that Mr. Breslow, McCarthy’s best friend from Yale, was not on the Provo team and could not possibly speak to what happened in 90 percent of the stories told in the book. I mentioned that I had asked McCarthy for the names of the Provo teammates he said supported him so that I could call them, and that he had declined. At the end, knowing that the story was running that evening, the Viking publicist said she wanted to check with Matt on some things and she would call me back. She never did, which is of course her prerogative.

Mr. McCarthy is now saying that the New York Times told him about his list of rebuttals, and I am quoting him here, “We don’t want to hear it. We’re running our story.” Once again, he is putting words into people’s mouths that are blatantly untrue only to further his distorted (and false) image of reality.

And once again, he has done so forgetting that there is 100 percent proof of his dishonesty — in the form of my recording of his interview and a transcript of my conversation with Viking, which I can make available to any interested party. Last I checked, he still has my number.

Ted Berg has a great head of hair.

New York, back when.

And the sounds of Amsterdam Avenue…

There is a crawl space on the side room over my parent’s garage that is filled with boxes.  Stuff from my two siblings and two step-siblings.  I have a couple of boxes of books there–some filled with notebooks, sketching pads, and others with oversized art books I inherited from my grandfather. 

Of course, I’ve got seven or eight shoe boxes full of baseball cards too.  And a crate filled with classic comics from the Eighties by artists like John Byrne and Frank Miller and George Perez.  There are a few bags filled with more drawing pads.  Growing up, drawing and painting was my thing, not writing.  Even when I kept journals, I used the pads to draw a lot.  I drew comic heroes and action pictures from my sports magazines. I also used them to give updates on the Yankees, my favorite musicians (David Bowie, The Talking Heads, Eric Clapton) and movies that I liked. 

I was up at my ma’s last week and found some of the old journals.  Here’s a couple of random entries. 

November 6, 1984. I was 13 years old.

10:00 pm. In bed. Mom came back today, very tired [from visiting her family in Belgium]. She fell asleep about 2 hours ago. Dad I think was sorry to leave. I enjoyed his stay a lot. Mondale just lost terribly and Reagan won New York state and that SUCKS and so does Reagan. I got an airbrush book from [uncle] Herve and I am thinking of something to airbrush. The Frankie Goes to Hollywood album came out today. I taped it off Gordy.

March 18, 1985.

Today I got to 3rd [base] with Jeanne. I didn’t like frenching that much, maybe because she had Dorito BREATH. Anyway it was beauty.

October 10, 1985. 

Bad week.  I was sick today.  In the last week Rock Hudson died of AIDS, Yul Brenner died of lung cancer, and Orson Welles died of old age.  

“Your mother says that it’s to [sic] late to write.  Your [sic] going to school tomorrow.” –Mom.

P.S.  Saturday is Ali (cousin) and David’s wedding.

                      Score

Blue Jays   2

Royals 0

Doders 1

Cards 0

(Dodgers lead Cards 2-1 in the 4th)

The Cosby Show was GREAT Tonight.