Hello I Must Be Going

Page 8

  Credits:
  • Dugout drawing on Page 5 from undated mid-forties Sports Aces Magazine.

  • Graphics on pages 9 and 17, and right down below (strip dated 9/5/57) are from Ray Gotto's Cotton Woods. The Cotton Woods strips have been reprinted in a glorious hardcover edition by Kitchen Sink Press, No. 2 Swamp Road, Princeton, WI 54968, available for less than $20, and it's signed!

    It features a great intro by our old pal Max Allan Collins—used to write Dick Tracy, does crime novels nowadays and does anyone have a new home address for Max, whom I've not heard from in 3 or 4 years? While I'm at it I'm also hunting for Bill Helmer, ex-Playboy editor, Chicago crazy and founder of the John Dillinger Died for Your Sins Society. Where are you guys?





Dear Diary:

3/20/94 - 2:00 am—I wonder how it happens that every now and then the world shifts and groans and bursts out of its toady human crust to become something other: a place where justice actually prevails; where deserving receives deserved; where perhaps a fairy-tale version of some benevolent god does exist.

We all dream of wedding a lighthouse keeper, so we might live by the side of the sea...



Various:
  • Someone asked if this was "an on-going thing," as if they didn't know me, as if anything I've ever done hasn't been.

  • Reports surface that this is read on a beach in Tobago. Also that a few someones in towering office buildings in downtown San Francisco have run off copious copies and sent them away. Very good.

  • I recently heard, o'er the radio airwaves, the phrase, related to something-baseball: "slappin' the midget." My apologies for preferring poetic license to current bland political correctness, but I think it sounds great and does anyone know what the hell it means?

  • Do some good and write The Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, at 1601 E. 18th Street, Suite 260 / Kansas City, MO 64108. It's relatively new, and could use and deserves your support. Or call (816) 221-1920 and Buck O'Neill may answer the phone!

  • Another Hot Tip: Send $7.00 to The Gettysburg Review at Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, PA 17325, and beg a copy of the Summer 1992 Baseball Issue. It's a literary mag, has a beautiful color portfolio of Vincent Scilla paintings, some Donald Hall, Geoff Schmidt's "The Man Who Saved Ted Williams from Death..." A great piece of work.

  • The "Line-up" is still a sort of bibliography, a list of influences, contributors, players, etc. Roster moves not noted elsewhere include call-up of relief-pitcher Robert Peterson, author of Only The Ball Was White, A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams, ©1970; and demotion of my son Aaron back to the minors for awhile so he can get in some innings and work on his control.




Lift a Glass, say Thank You and Farewell to:

William Conrad, died 2/13/94, putting Rocky and Bullwinkle through their paces with a voiceover that we'll never forget.

John Candy, died 3/4/94, saying "melanoma" with that devilish oh-I'm-sorry-(the-hell-I-am) grin.

Charles Bukowski, died 3/9/94, known best for the Rourke/Dunaway Barfly. Sherman and I and the Kangaroo Court published one of his pieces way back in '84, the old days. Post Office his best book for my money. See ya, ya dirty old bastard.

Jackie O., died, O. O. O. O. O. ...at last she lets go the horror.




"Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs.
Let us leave our closed rooms...
The game of ball is glorious."


—Walt Whitman





The Terms:

Baseball—A silly game.

The 10,000 Things—As in: "the world and its 10,000 things," (Lao Tzu) its multitude of riches, its infinity of nourishments for our minds and hearts, you know—The Whole Shebang.


The response has been marvelous. Thank you so much. Perhaps I'm not deluded after all. Perhaps...

Repeatables, Now & Then... sometimes altered, sometimes not:
  • See "The Copyright Thang," page 4, center.

  • Anything is liable to surface here. Understatement, anyone? A few particulars will be intended for certain individuals, meaning some references are so vague and obscure that I hardly understand them.

  • If you know someone who would enjoy this, send them to me.





"The struggle for knowledge hath a pleasure in it like that of wrestling with a fine woman."

—George Savil (Lord Halifax) 17th Century



All uncredited material © Rick Lopez 1994

Baseball & the 10,000 Things
Rick Lopez
Erie, PA



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