Stan the Man: A Living Legend

“Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. Follow your heart, kid, and you'll never go wrong.”

---From the film, “The Sandlot” (1993)

A great American legend, and one of my heroes, was buried last week. But “Stan the Man” Musial was more than a hero; he was and remains a legend. And legends live on, influencing those who come behind them, inspiring new acts of courage and goodness.

Though dead, Stan Musial lives on.

Even now I can feel his left hand gently resting on the back of my neck, as if he had anointed me for something beyond myself, a budding 7 year boy with a field of dreams. My dad had made reservations for us to eat at Stan Musial and Biggies Restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri. My older brother, Mark, and I stood there in our coats and ties, blinking from the photo flash that captured more than our smiles alongside a baseball luminary: Musial’s taller figure leaned slightly forward over Mark and me, as if he were gracefully bestowing a measure of his greatness on us.

It was the summer of 1963, Musial’s last year as a professional baseball player.

The day before, we had made our way across the prairies of Oklahoma, the tires of Dad’s 1962 Cadillac Sedan de Ville singing along Route 66 as we sped through the foothills of Missouri, finally arriving in St. Louis, the “Gateway to the West,” but more importantly to us, the city wherein back then lay Baseball Mecca: Sportsman’s Park, the home of the St. Louis Cardinals.

“Son, Stan Musial is getting ready to bat,” I recall Dad telling me. “He’s a real legend.” Even though St. Louis lost both games of a double header to the Philadelphia Phillies on that otherwise perfect baseball afternoon, August 4, 1963, we saw Musial single to center field in the bottom of the 9^th in the first game. (He didn't play the second game.) That in itself made the day complete.

I didn't know it that afternoon, but Dad had called ahead and made reservations for us to dine at Stan’s restaurant. I treasure that photograph and the autographed picture of Musial, “To David, Best Wishes, Stan Musial.”

Musial didn’t just sign our baseball programs and pictures. He actually took time to sit down and talk to us. Kind and considerate, Musial was a true gentleman. There was nothing brash about him; not even the slightest hint of arrogance could be detected in his demeanor.

Years later, in August of 1986, Mark took his own family to St. Louis to watch the Cardinals.  Like our dad had done years ago, Mark called ahead and made reservations for dinner at Stan and Biggies. Stan, although retired, was still around, and Mark asked if it might be at all possible to meet the legendary Musial.

Having been seated at the restaurant, Mark heard a familiar voice. “Where’s the family from Oklahoma I need to meet?” Musial inquired.

Then, just like he had done years before, Musial sat down for a visit, taking his time, as if Mark’s family were the only guests in the crowded restaurant.

 “There sat Stan Musial, THE Stan Musial, right there at our table, just talking with us for a full 15 minutes. It was amazing,” Mark reminisced.

Like Andy Griffith, Tom Landry, and 15 cent hamburgers, they just don’t make them like that anymore.

It didn't matter to me that Stan Musial played in 3 world championships, earned 3 Most Valuable Player Awards, had 3, 630 hits in his career, and was selected to a record 24 All Star appearances.

What mattered to my brother and me that August day in 1963 was that Musial cared enough to sit down and talk, even waiting for Mom to snap a picture. As Mark and I stood there for the picture, almost too awestruck to smile, Musial seemed to be saying to us, “Follow your heart, kid, and you’ll never go wrong.”

Sportscaster Bob Costas gave a eulogy at Musial’s funeral last week. He told of Musial’s last time to bat, that year I saw him in 1963. Harry Carey was the radio broadcaster for the Cardinals then. When Musial settled into the box for his last bat, which would be a single to right field, Carey said, “Take a look fans, take a good look. Remember the swing and the stance. We won’t see his like again.”

Costas closed by saying, “Harry was right, we never have, and we never will.”

But for the kid that remains in the hearts of some of us, we can still hope that the legend will live on, and that we will never stop dreaming about being our best and following our heart.

For when we do that, we are at least swinging in the right direction.

  

The unforgiving nature of the internet

The Internet, that daily source of information upon which so many of us depend for so much---from the daily news to updates on friends and their status---can not only be an avenue offering help for today and even hope for tomorrow, but also unfortunately, an escort to our demise, bouncing us along the boulevard of broken dreams, pointing us finally to the exit ramp that lands us in a parking lot bounded by past mistakes.

Was Manti Te’o duped by an online prank, or was he part of the hoax? In either case, his story will never be the same, although his career as an athlete can continue.

Not so for the young lady who until last week was a science teacher in a middle school in Oxnard, California. Stacie Halas is the victim of her own petard---the Internet itself serving as her grand inquisitor, revealing the intimacies of a salacious past she failed to elude. Apparently she wanted to close permanently the door to her brief stint in the world of pornography. The only problem was that some of the other teachers discovered on the Internet that Stacie Halas was at least for a time, a porno star.

Halas was fired. Not a surprise. She appealed. Last week, she lost her appeal. Not a surprise, either.

What is astonishing is that Halas apparently thought her past would go undetected, even though she had made not one but several films in her few months in the porn industry. She went by a stage name in her movies, but sooner or later the truth would out. It most always does.

Especially when it’s available to replay on the Internet.

Last April ABC’s 20/20 highlighted the story of Natalie Oliveros, a porn star, who now is intent on shielding her 10 year old son from knowing anything about her career in porn. "I've been trying to knock down all the smut and all the nudity when you Google me that comes up. It's not just about me but it's about Luchino (her son) and his friends," she said. "I still would be devastated if he saw this stuff on the Internet."

Eventually, either he will find it, or someone will show it to him.

Once again we should be reminded ( how long did those involved in the Manti Te’o hoax think the mythical online woman’s identity or lack thereof would stay under the radar screen?) that the  Internet doesn't forgive and forget: it simply reveals and remembers.

To be sure, Stacie Halas committed no crime. In response to the ruling against her, Ms. Halas’ attorney underscored that she “is more than just an individual fighting for her job as a teacher. I think she’s representative of a lot of people who may have a past that may not involve anything illegal or anything that hurts anybody.”

That much is true. And what about the biblical King David---as well as the modern Bill Clinton? Didn't they get entangled in embarrassing sex scandals and still retain their high positions as leaders in the land?

Indeed they did. But neither did Bathsheba or Monica film their trysts and post them on YouTube.

I don’t know if Stacie Halas thinks her involvement in porn was immoral; nor do I know if her seeking a new career path was accompanied by a desire for forgiveness: She may have simply wanted to start over and move on.

But the Internet will forever stymie that effort. The judge in the case concluded that Halas’ “pornographic materials on the Internet will continue to impede her from being an effective teacher and respected colleague.” And the superintendent of the Oxnard school district said, “Maybe it’s not a crime as far as the penal code is concerned, but we feel it’s a crime as far as moral turpitude is concerned.”

Or As “Ulysses Everett McGill” told “Delmar O’Donnell” in the film, O Brother, Where Art Thou? when Delmar claimed he and Pete had been redeemed and therefore should be exonerated from their crimes, “Even if that that did put you square with the Lord, the State of Mississippi’s a little more hard-nosed.”

So is the internet.

As another movie character, Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) put it in the film, The Natural, “Some mistakes you never quit paying for.”

Especially those that can be viewed time and time again with a simple click of a button.

Winter gardening and the cycle of life

“I’m gonna write a book,” my friend, Glen Sandusky announced to me when I saw him Sunday morning in the church office.

Glen was grinning from ear to ear, a sure signal he was up to something.

“What are you going to write about?” I played along.

“I’m gonna write about how my preacher kept his garden going in January!” Then snickering to the audience gathered around him, he proudly proclaimed, “No one told him you can’t keep a garden alive in the dead of winter, so he just did it!”

Glen has been my gardening mentor, and I've been a slow learner at times, so I suppose he has a right to boast. My wife Lori still seems to know more than I do about gardening. She got an early start, spending summers with her grandparents who gardened.

I on the other hand, am a city boy, even though I grew up in a town and not a metropolis. What I've learned from gardening has come from friends who have patiently coached me along the way. During planting season I keep several of them on speed dial, “Now how far apart do I plant okra? How deep should I plant those potatoes? Do you think I should pour more Miracle Grow on them?”

This was the first year I tried my hand at a fall garden. In the past, I wearied of gardening by the middle of September, feeling almost like a slave to the garden’s neediness: it needed weeding; in needed harvesting; it needed watering; it needed weeding, weeding, weeding. Finally, I would tromp away, exasperated by its demands, fearful that I was descending into a co-dependent relationship: I needed the vegetables; it needed my time!

But this year I caught a second wind and went for it: In September I planted broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, lettuce, kale, and my most prized produce: spinach.

And they thrived. I took pictures in November and December and sent them to family and friends who sent me back admiring comments about my fall garden. My nephew Brian, a beginning gardener as well, was especially beholden, amazed at the lushness of fall in Kentucky compared to drought-stricken Lubbock, Texas, where he lives.

I felt like I was on the verge of graduating from gardening grade school, like the 4H boy in his first showing at the county fair, dreaming of blue ribbons.

Spurred on  by the possibilities of success, I worked as if my fall garden were my sole source for food, putting row covers on when the temperature dipped into the 20s, pulling them off when it warmed up, then covering the plants again when a hard freeze threatened. Finally in early January, the week after Glen’s acknowledgment of my accomplishment, I closed the garden, leaving only a few rows of kale and spinach--- just in case.

“Why did I do that?” I asked myself as I brought in the last of my harvest, cradling it in my arms like a proud papa presenting his first born to the waiting family. “Why this effort to prolong the garden’s life?”

Is it just a desire to say I did it? Or is it a matter of enjoying homegrown produce, proving that I can weather the weather, protecting my precious plants weeks after the farmer’s markets have closed for winter?

Or is there something else? The end of the growing season, suggesting the ending of life, reveals in me---one who conducts funerals as a part of my job description--- the resistance of death as a part of life: I want the greens, yellows, and reds of a fruit laden garden lush with life, not the brown grassed plot of dry deadness.

And anyone who has left an empty, silent schoolroom where there was once laughter and learning, or a vacant house where once a baby giggled and a family grew, or a locker room where once teammates high-fived in celebration and cried together in defeat---knows that saying good-bye to one season of life while the next is yet to be---is itself an act of faith, a claim that there is more to come, that the class will reconvene, that the family will stay together somehow, and that the team will remember.

And where there is faith, doubt usually lingers in the corner of the next room, or in the adjacent closet.

Or right beside you.

Or inside you.

And so we want to hold on.

But giving in to death is a part of life---a life that gives rise, in time or beyond time, whether measured in three days or three months, or forever--- to something new, bright, scary, fascinating, hopeful, and mysterious. As I gaze at the setting sun, standing with my feet at the edge of my barren garden, I long for that garden to be: the one for next season.

And while waiting, I see it.

By faith, it works.

Deep in the cold of winter.

Finding the real deal

“You don’t seem like a preacher, at least not a typical one. You’re ‘the real deal.’”

The comment, coming from an inmate in jail, I took as a compliment, although I frequently ask myself if I’m really real.

His comment was followed by a question: “How did you ever get to be a preacher in the first place? (“Do you think I should have been something else?” I am tempted to ask.)

Choosing to do what I do wasn't something that came on sudden like---a flash of lightning followed by an etching in the clouds, “BE A PREACHER.”

More like a boy carefully crossing a shallow creek on stepping stones, round and slippery, I came to it cautiously, carefully sizing where to plant my foot next, yet still moving forward, if ever so slowly, until I hopped and finally skipped across stones to the bank, at last resting peacefully there at my place on shore.

I learned about Jesus while being rocked on my mother’s lap and watched Jesus walk through my house in the actions of my parents.

But when I ponder the answer to that question, how did you get to be a preacher?, I can’t help but think of my great granddad, the Reverend A.F.Whitlock, or as I called him, Great Granddad.

Great Granddad’s entry into the ministry, unlike mine, was born from the cauldron of despair. In the early 1900s, his daughter (my Great Aunt Byrcha) was deathly ill. In desperation Great Granddad cried out to the Lord, “God, spare her life, and I’ll serve you with mine.” God answered his prayer, Aunt Byrcha was miraculously healed, and Great Granddad sold his farm in Osage, Texas, enrolled at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and moved his family to Ft. Worth.

Years later, while I myself was a student there, I found his picture in the library’s archives. There he was in the 1917 class photo: square jaw, youthful face, piercing, determined eyes that I could have sworn followed me as I looked at him from every angle; I think I could even feel his breath on my back as I turned and walked away.

When I knew Great Granddad, he was far from young; indeed to me he was ancient---well into his 90s. But his eyes were still penetrating, his jaw still set, and though his steps were unsteady, he at least walked with deliberation.

“Who’s going to take Granddad a plate of food?” Grandmother Whitlock would ask after she had fed us ample portions of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, and fried okra.

“Can I go?” I always tried to be the first to volunteer.

His house was across the street, and there I would find Great Granddad sitting in his plain, cotton upholstered Easy chair. A single light bulb hanging from the ceiling would barely lighten the room. During the summer I might find him tuned in to radio station KMOX, the home of St. Louis Cardinals baseball.

I often felt like Jacob or Esau when Isaac wondered which son was which, for Granddad’s eyesight was clouded by cataracts, so taking my hand he would ask, “Now, which one are you?”

“L.D.’s youngest boy,” I would say.

Having passed the identity check, I would start asking questions, simple ones at first like, “Can I help you with your knife and fork?” Or, “How are the Cardinals doing?”  Then as he nibbled, I would proceed, “Tell me what it was like back then, when you first started preaching? What churches did you pastor? What was it like to preach revivals? How did you make it through tough times?”

One time Granddad was with me as I once again peppered Great Granddad with questions. Great Granddad was 102 at the time, and his son, my granddad, was then 82. Having recounted the churches he had pastored, Great Granddad paused, and Granddad interrupted, noting that Great Granddad had forgotten one church. Without missing a beat, Great Granddad said, “Well, I never did like that church anyway.”

Another church had a few people who apparently antagonized Great Granddad. “But I had helped work in their fields when they were short handed, when sickness kept some from bringing in their crops. They remembered that and weren't about to let the trouble makers have their way.”

“Why do you still wear a suit every day, Great Granddad?”

“I never know when I may be called on to minister,” my century old Great Granddad would tell me.

Not your typical 102 year old preacher, I suppose. But then, how many century old pastors do you know?

Chances are, if you find one at that age who is still dressed and ready if someone calls, you’ve found the real deal.

That’s for sure.