Sunday and the 70s O's

A lovely morning to spend procrastinating with the newspaper. I'll get to taxes this afternoon.

First, there was an excellent article in the Washington Post on the impacts of the recession and other budget cuts on modern dance choreography by their staff dance writer, Sarah Kaufman: "Assessing the Future of Modern Dance" (in connection with which I will simply point out how great it is that the Post still has a resident dance writer).

When society tightens its belt, the arts are often the first "luxury" item removed from from public budgets, the ripple effects can be wide-reaching and long-lasting. But Ms. Kaufman does a better job of outlining these effects. Go read.

There was also a piece by columnist Hank Stuever on the comeback of music videos as media for promoting music: "The Vids Are Right." I will confess, however, that this is an art form that only interests me insofar as the next Clay Aiken CD, "Tried and True," which will be released June 1.

But the story that caught my eye and broke my heart was the obituary for legendary Baltimore Orioles pitcher Mike Cuellar. As I learned from the obit, the southpaw Cuellar, he of the unbelievably torqued windup for his crazy screwball pitches, was the first Latino to win the Cy Young Award, sharing the honor in 1969 with Detroit legend Denny McLain. Cuellar was one of the four titans of Orioles pitching in the '70s, along with Dave McNally, Pat Dobson, and that lanky blue-eyed dreamboat, Jim Palmer.

One of the inconsolably unforgivable things my mother did was toss out my Orioles memorabilia from that era (I'm thinking 1971-1973), among which was a small poster print of the Norman Rockwell painting of Brooks Robinson signing autographs. I might have had that autographed, I'm not sure. I was about 14 at the time and a little unclear on this whole autographing business. I did get the signatures of several O's stars on pages of a simple unlined writing pad that my mom happened to have with her.

Imagine if you will a Sunday afternoon in the bright breezy summer, Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The O's were on top (despite their '69 Series loss to the Miracle Mets - I was the only one in my class who was rooting for the heavily favored O's). After my dad had done his duty by explaining baseball to me while we watched the snowy black-and-white images on the TV in his bedroom, my mom carried on the daughterly indulgence by driving us over to Baltimore for our first game. It was to become one of my favorite mother-daughter traditions for a couple of summers.

There is no feeling like that of peering through the tunnel from the concourse of a cool, concrete, parking lot of a stadium and seeing your first glimpse of a bright green field and pure white pillows of base pads glowing in the high overhead beams of sunshine, and of hearing the cracks of bats during the batting practice and the heavy, musty "poofs" of balls caught in tough but softly seasoned leather gloves.

And then there were men. Men! Grown-up adult men who were not fathers, uncles, teachers, preachers, or even (blech) big brothers. Baseball players in bright white uniforms, stretching their masculinity out for all God's glory. Ah, to the adolescent female heart it was all so perfect and splendidly tempting.

We got great seats at the box office - about a dozen rows up behind the third-base dugout and the home team of shining knights. We saw that several players were leaning up over the dugout and taking items from the fans to sign. So Mom dug around in her purse and retrieved the writing pad and gave it to me with a ball-point pen. I raced down to the MEN!

And somehow I was surprised that they paid attention to me. Mom later said she wasn't surprised a bit, as she watched pitcher Dobson, in particular, hone in on the willowy blonde youth heading down the aisle toward the dugout. Hee!

I remember collecting the autographs of good-hearted first baseman Boog Powell and the mischievously gleaming-eyed hurler Dobson. The one I remembered most was the wiry, quiet shortstop, Mark Belanger, who, as I reported to my mother, had beautiful long black eyelashes.

Ah, Belanger, my first sports crush. Oh what it did to me to watch him warm up at the plate while the pitcher was deciding how to play him. Slim hips stretch to the left, stretch to the right, square off, swirl the bat, tighten the butt, then swing away. And I must say, the third base side offered a very good view of the right-handed hitters.

The afternoon was a good one for Palmer; he not only threw a great game, but also had a homerun. (This episode obviously predates the designated hitter era.) As much as my mom teased me about loving Belanger's hips and eyelashes, I knew Palmer's piercing blue eyes had an equal effect on her.

So I remember and pay tribute to Cuellar as a man among the Men of baseball, whose outings I recall mainly from the snowy black-and-white screen of my dad's put-together-from-parts TV, but also from the treasured senses of a few warm days in the fields of young girl's dreams.

love, hosaa,
daydreaming of the tight, impossibly torqued spine of a bedeviling left-handed screwballer