McHuston Booksellers

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Tag: baseball (Page 1 of 3)

New headlines, familiar stories.

October 6, 2014 /

A lot of talk and a lot of worries about Ebola. Misinformation and fear are the words used by the Center for Disease Control. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins made a point of appearing without protective clothing when visiting the family of the Liberian man currently battling the infectious disease.

But this isn’t the first go-round.

Twenty years ago, Random House published a book by Richard Preston – a non-fiction effort – titled The Hot Zone. Above the author’s name on the front cover, in red letters, are the words “A Terrifying True Story.”

the-hot-zone1

Preston points out that “none of the living people referred to in this book suffer from a contagious disease,” and that his work covers events from 1967 to 1993. He writes about the history of the African virus and associated strains, and also provides details about the discovery of an Ebola virus-relative in Reston, Virginia – less than 15 miles from Washington, DC.

One edition of the book features a cover-blurb from Stephen King, who states that The Hot Zone was “one of the most horrifying things I’ve read in my whole life.”

Maybe that’s one of the reasons that folks are feeling a little bit nervous about the idea of such a disease landing on US soil.

The outbreak that Preston discusses was contained, but the last four words of the book text are: “It will be back.”

He was right.

If it is possible to have an up-side, the current US distress over the possibility – however remote – that the virus could have an outbreak here, may provide the attention needed to focus on relief for those areas in which the virus has its origin. History is filled with stories of those who won’t concern themselves with the problems of others, until they are caught up in the problems themselves.

I haven’t read The Hot Zone. Used to read scary books, but no so much any longer. Scary books that are non-fiction, even less. Having scanned through the text of a paperback copy on the shelf, I have reassured myself that it has plenty of information that would be of interest to someone, even if I pass.

That kind of Scary I can get enough of in the daily headlines. And I suppose that’s one of the reasons that last night I completed my revisiting of David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens. Mr. Murdstone and his sister are the scariest things in that book, and even they get their comeuppance from David’s Aunt Betsey. The Hot Zone is a little more open-ended.

You’ll find both sorts of stories on the shelves currently, un-quarantined and ready to go, so –

Come visit!

McHuston

Booksellers & Irish Bistro
Rose District
122 South Main St. Broken Arrow OK!

Public figs and cigs.

February 25, 2013 /

Even before remembering the race to break Babe Ruth’s home run record, when I saw this ad on the back of an old TV Guide magazine I immediately thought of John Kruk. He played major league baseball for several teams, but I remember him best for his time with Philadelphia Phillies.

Before a game, he was standing outside the stadium, casually smoking a cigarette, when a woman admonished him for his habit. The always quotable Kruk responded with:

“I ain’t an athlete, Lady. I’m a baseball player.”

It was a reply that was obviously overheard. It caught traction and was repeated so often that when the former ballplayer wrote his book, he used the first part of the quote for his title.

Roger Maris, on the other hand, was a lot more athlete and a lot less quotable. In fact, he was considered almost surly by the New York news media during his Yankee days. In all likelihood, he was more straightforward with his answers than he should have been, and never kowtowed to the press like some of his teammates did. Some of the questions from the media had to do with the string of injuries that plagued Maris in the years following his 1961 season. You can click on the image to read his quote for R.J. Reynolds. The date across his face is courtesy of the Postal Service, which cancelled the wrong side of the magazine during the mailing process.

The Minnesota native hit more home runs than Babe Ruth – 61 in ’61 – as the media recorded it, but the media attention took a toll. At the time, there were a number of folks associated with baseball, as well as fans, who thought Ruth’s record should stand forever. Roger Maris related later that the stress in 1961 was so great that – at times – his hair fell out in clumps.

Interviewed at an All-Star game twenty years later, Maris still harbored ill-feelings about the negative attitudes.

“They acted as though I was doing something wrong, poisoning the record books or something,” he said. “Do you know what I have to show for 61 home runs? Nothing. Exactly nothing.”

Who knows whether smoking was a factor? Roger Maris died in 1985 of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, a form of cancer. He was 51.

Times change. You don’t see a lot of celebrity endorsements of tobacco products. In fact, you don’t see a lot of cigarette ads these days.

For that matter, you don’t see as many magazines near the checkout stands any longer, but the venerable TV Guide is still hanging on, and will celebrate its 60th birthday in April.

Trash and treasures in moving boxes.

May 6, 2012 / / 0 Comments

It’s Sunday afternoon, over a month after getting the keys to the new building, and I’m still moving boxes. It is a humid day and I’m already feeling the need to wring myself out.

Today’s focus is getting the antique Sony Vaio and its younger but equally slow brother connected to the primitive store network. It isn’t so much a network as it is three computers strung together in a desperate attempt to preserve the data that exists separately on each machine. Programs and such.

I did transfer the customer database over to the laptop and have been using it since switching the Open sign on last week. The older machines give me a spot to save a backup copy. No ‘cloud’ storage here yet.

Baby steps.

Moving is a colossal pain, but it presents the opportunity to review the life-long collection of what-nots that are being dragged around over the course of a lifetime. As I tend to save rather than ditch them, I’ve assembled a pretty large collection of precious junk.

There have been times I have wondered whether it would be better to send some of these things off to the dustbin, but then I run across something that is worth a smile and a couple of memories. You can click on the image for a close up look at that Gladstein Plumbers infield. We were a mighty foursome. I’m the third from the left in my pre-beard days, back when caps did not signify receding hairlines.

That was the same year I got selected to play on a McAlester Boys Club all-star team for a game in Fort Smith, and during the opening warm-ups tripped on the raised infield turf and took a throw from the catcher on the forehead.

Knocked me out cold.

It also bumped me right out of the ballgame, thus ending my all-star career without so much as an at-bat.

I did take home a nice trophy, in the form of an egg-sized lump just below my hairline.

Needless to say, that was centuries ago, back when Charles Dickens was covering sports and the typewriter had yet to replace the quill and inkwell. In fact, I believe the sport of baseball had just been invented. Actually, looking at the photo credit, I noticed the name of Steve Lalli, whose younger brother Jim was a classmate of mine at St. John’s school in McAlester and quite the artist. I didn’t recall Steve being so much older that he would have a job at the newspaper, but perhaps he was a prodigy in the field of reporting. I was no prodigy in the infield of baseball, but I loved to play.

Maybe that’s why I have the clipping in a cardboard box. Who knows? It is, no doubt, the perfect time to rid myself of all the other papers and flotsam filling this particular carton.

But of course, I’ve closed the lid back up on it and taken it up to the loft for safe storage – for who knows what reason.

As to the store’s progress: Books are being sold, folks are wandering in everyday, and the kitchen equipment is still being assembled for the rollout of the bistro. Hopefully it will be in the next couple of weeks.

As for me, it’s back to the boxes and reconnecting the computers, feeling just a little older at having seen how long ago my sports prime actually was.

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