Thank you, Nolan Ryan

Dad's supper included a red/yellow/green layered Jello dessert with the green on top, just like we learned to make in junior high home ec class.  The stripes reminded me of the old Houston Astros uniforms way back when Nolan Ryan was pitching for them. 

Then today I read it is the twentieth anniversary of Ryan's seventh no-hitter.  That was a golden moment for a young family of Texas Rangers fans: 

When we first moved to Texas we attended lots of Rangers games at the old Arlington Stadium. Little Steven would usually fall asleep in my lap. Jeff would count all the airplanes that flew over. Mike would eat fruit roll-ups, raisins, and jalapeno nachos. The Rangers had Bobby Valentine managing back then, Julio Franco 2B, Rafael Palmieio 1B, Steve Bueuchele 3B "Boooosh"!, Nolan Ryan, Pudge Rodriguez (age 19)C, Jeff Huson at SS, Ruben Sierra, Juan Gonzalez, and Gary Pettis in the outfield, Brian Downing at DH, Kevin Brown, Jose Guzman, Bobby Witt, Brian Bohanon, Oil Can Boyd, Rich Gossage, Kenny Rogers pitching.

Someday I might actually be able to retire and sit myself in a rusty lawn chair on a sagging screened porch and listen to baseball on the radio.  Or maybe I will just wallow in disjointed memories of 3B Dean Palmer's arm tendon rolling up like a window shade underneath his skin, of Kevin Kennedy letting Jose Canseco pitch, and of Nolan Ryan putting Robin Ventura in a headlock.

 

Twenty years is just two golden bead ten bars ago in the math manipulatives.  It seems hundred squares and thousand cubes ago in professional sports.

Maybe Dad is playing way-out-out outfield this season.  Perpetual klutz, I always wanted to be in the position least likely to actually have to field a fly ball. 

Dad has been sleeping for over twenty-four hours.  He won't remember Nolan Ryan.  So I just crank him up to sitting in bed and tell him I have to go soon to set up the school's twenty-fifth anniversary fair.  He isn't able to hold the styrofoam cup of coffee all the way up to his mouth.  He will never be able to hold Robin Ventura in a headlock.  He won't be inducted into the Hall of Fame.  The flowers in Dad's birthday bouquet are still golden, and light shines through the purple vase. 

In the hall right outside Dad's room the weekend aides gossip about the new resident who died just after he chatted with them over his breakfast tray.  I wonder if the deceased had orange juice and black coffee at his last meal.  The crossword puzzle is difficult, adding and subtracting "it" from answers.  The aides seem like comic costumed base-runners between innings.  In their muffled fake fur chicken suits they are unaware of the residents or of me.

Recalibrating expectations

What basic best practices benchmarks do you use to decide if your day belongs in the + or - column? This was not a stellar day in the preschool classroom. Still, I can honestly place it in the Hello, Win Column:

• Blood on the rug? I expected my adolescent sons to problem-solve and negotiate most situations themselves with out phoning me at work. I had a job to do, and they did, too. Their job was to avoid creating situations that could lead to permanent carpet stains and loss of damage deposits!


• Trip to the emergency room? As a play-date and birthday party mom, I rated any gathering of small children that didn't require tetanus shots, ice packs, insurance ID cards, or stitches as a success.


• Details at six? A day of parenting or teaching when I don't show up on the video footage from the local station is a good day.


• Bon Appétit? Anything I cook without alarming the smoke detector.

"Hello, Win Column" was the signature phrase of longtime Texas Rangers broadcaster Mark Holtz. It is also the name of a fund to host cancer patients and their families at Rangers games.

A stellar day does include some bird-watching. A Steller's Jay is darker than a blue jay, but has a similar crest and loud, harsh call. It lives in the western mountain regions of North America. The Steller's Jay is named after Georg Steller, a German naturalist who accompanied the Vitus Bering expedition to Alaska sponsored by Catherine the Great in the 1740's.

© 2008 Nancy L. Ruder

Our National Naptime

Eureka! I've found it, but it's nearly two decades since I really, REALLY needed it. I've found a cd that makes kids fall asleep!

If you want to know the name, just mail me a twenty dollar bill... No, I'm going to tell you for free. It's the humanitarian thing to do! It's a good feeling knowing I'm making the world a better place for sleep-deprived mommies (and kids)everywhere.

"Bella Espana" is the name of the cd. My little art students are painting to the music, with some splendid results. They are abnormally calm and focused. Some of them are so calm they fall asleep in class. I'll post images of the paintings soon, but I wanted the word to go out immediately about the nap-inducing effects of this classical guitar music.



The first four tracks are music from Bizet's "Carmen" performed by the Los Angeles Guitar Quartet. The preschoolers love track four, which is the "Toreadors". They know this music from a Disney tv series called "Little Einsteins". Track four gets them really listening to the music. Then the less familiar pieces can work their calming and sleep-inducing magic. As an added bonus, I don't mind listening to it for a solid week of classes.

My colicky son has finished grad school. My son who perfected the technique of ripping wallpaper off the wall by his crib during naptimes is a senior in college. My youngest will probably never tell the guys in his dorm that he could only fall asleep to music from Disney's "The Little Mermaid" or Raffi songs about ducks. I would have loved "Bella Espana" in those years.

I have one other tip for getting little kids to fall asleep: "You must get in bed now, but you may listen to the baseball game on your radio." Mark Holtz died from leukemia in 1997. I had nominated him for sainthood several years before for his ability to engage my boys in radio baseball. Mark, with his signature expression, "Hello Win Column," did the play-by-play for Texas Rangers baseball games on the radio, with Eric Nadle doing color commentary. Following a baseball game on the radio takes considerable concentration. It's exhausting. Eventually, little ears and brains wear out, forgetting to stretch in the seventh inning. When kids drift off to sleep, many moms have thought, "Hello Win Column".

Baseball highlights reel

A friend is attending an Orioles/Royals game in KC tonight. I've been showing my students a clip from the baseball time travel movie "A Kid in King Arthur's Court". Baseball is on my brain, so maybe I've been beaned. These are special baseball memories for me:

Wilson Alvarez throwing a no-hitter against the Orioles during one of the last games at old Memorial Stadium in 1991. After arriving in the majors with Texas in 1989, it took Alvarez a while to get his act together. He gave up two homers and three earned runs without retiring a batter in his major league debut with the Rangers and, five days later, was traded with Scott Fletcher and Sammy Sosa to the White Sox for Harold Baines and Fred Manrique. In just his second major-league start -- on August 11, 1991, at Baltimore's Memorial Stadium -- Alvarez showed his potential by becoming the eighth-youngest pitcher in history to toss a no-hitter.

We were sitting up really high with our backs against the chainlink. The boys all had on blue Texas Ranger caps. (That was how we kept track of them on the Metro and at the museums on the Mall.) My sister drove us up to Baltimore. We were plagued by yellowjackets the entire game, and were afraid to eat or drink anything because of the bees. We had spent the morning at Ft. McHenry. It was Jeff's ninth birthday. I had forgotten that. Mike was six and Steven four. It was an unusual vacation because no one broke their arm or required stitches.

I think Jeff was four when he went to his first Major League game in Kansas City. It was my first, too. Mike was maybe one, so '85 or '86. I had been to Royals Stadium before for a Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young concert with the Beach Boys back in '74 or '75. I am pretty sure George Brett hit a triple at the game. We mostly watched the fountains and scoreboard as I recall. A fan three rows behind us got excited and flipped his beer and hotdog with sauerkraut into the air. It all landed on me. As soon as the boys got cranky I was real glad to go back to the motel and take a shower.


When we first moved to Texas we attended lots of Rangers games at the old Arlington Stadium. Little Steven would usually fall asleep in my lap. Jeff would count all the airplanes that flew over. Mike would eat fruit roll-ups, raisins, and jalapeno nachos. The Rangers had Bobby Valentine managing back then, Julio Franco 2B, Rafael Palmieio 1B, Steve Bueuchele 3B "Boooosh"!, Nolan Ryan, Pudge Rodriguez (age 19)C, Jeff Huson at SS, Ruben Sierra, Juan Gonzalez, and Gary Pettis in the outfield, Brian Downing at DH, Kevin Brown, Jose Guzman, Bobby Witt, Brian Bohanon, Oil Can Boyd, Rich Gossage, Kenny Rogers pitching...

I remember an especially scary night when all the fans were told to exit to the concourses. The sky was dark and very green. I was sure we were all a-gonna die in a tornado at the ballpark. The weather was too bad to attempt the long trek across the parking lots to our car with three tiny boys, so we just had to hang out as the temperature dropped about thirty degrees and golf ball-size hail fell.

The boys each had a radio in their bedroom, and I would let them listen to Rangers games until they fell asleep. It takes amazing concentration for anyone to create a mental picture of the action of a baseball game just from radio descriptions while wrapped in blankies in a dark room. I figured they were either being lulled to sleep as pitchers tediously reviewed the signals, or they were developing impressive skills that would last a lifetime, and either way they were being quiet after a long day. They also developed math skills figuring out baseball statistics that make absolutely no sense to me to this day.

When Mike played T-ball he would put a clip-on earring on one ear so he could be Ruben Sierra. We would play a cassette tape of "We Are the Champions" on the way to the field so he could get psyched. I was supposed to imitate the KRLD radio announcer saying "Roooo-Ben Sierra!" when Mike walked up to the plate. Always fashion-conscious, Mike had to have a batting glove even for T-ball. He didn't like soccer because soccer players don't wear caps.

Steven spent many hours during his bigger brother's T-ball, coach-pitch, and kid-pitch baseball games playing in the dirt behind the backstop. He would bring a case of GI Joes or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and hang them all from the chainlink backstop. Even then he appreciated members of the opposite sex if they had brought sidewalk chalk to the games.

Some other day I will post about the meaning of the '68 World Series between the Detroit Tigers and the St. Louis Cardinals to an eighth grade girl in Lincoln, Nebraska. I can't write it just at the moment. I'm having a bad flashback of 3B Dean Palmer's arm tendon rolling up like a window shade underneath his skin.

My dad used to tell a story of breaking his arm during the Depression. He didn't let that put him on the DL. He just used the plaster cast on his arm as a bat. Amazingly, he grew up to have pretty good sense later on.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you (Wo wo wo).
What's that you say, Mrs. Robinson?
"Joltin' Joe has left and gone away" (Hey hey hey, hey hey hey).

Dizzy Dean and PeeWee Reese on a tiny black and white t.v. My dad snoozing on the couch with the newspaper over his face after a lunch of saltines, summer sausage, and cheese, priceless.