What a year it's been ... (un)forgettable

      We are all more than happy to bid the year 2020 farewell. Go away. 

      It has been a year we'd all like to forget. But, loss of memory excepted -- and we hope that's not anyone's fate -- it will stick with us forever.

     Been here 73-plus years, and many years had moments we suffered, but overall nothing like this.

     C'mon, 2021 ... and a vaccine that will make the pandemic -- the COVID-19 horror -- a (sorry) thing of the past.

     So many families have been touched by this, many tragically. We've had our cases -- our son, our son-in-law -- and they weren't severe, but they were worrisome. (They are OK now.)

     Personally, there was that little heart problem in May. Well, not so little (a triple bypass). But I am fine now (I think). Thanks for asking, and thanks for caring.

     It left plenty of time for reflection, for gratitude (as written in my daily gratitude journal), for the blessings I and my family have had ... and plenty of time to read and research.

     Spent much of the year working on ON TRACK, the book pieced together on the updated history of high school outdoor track and field in Louisiana. 

     So, hours of looking back in newspaper files online and searching the Internet and Facebook for names and records, hours of typing in all the results from Jerry Byrd Sr.'s 2004 book being updated, researching for and then writing sketches on teams and individuals, and then -- trial-and-error, mostly error -- formatting pages (346 of them).

     It was, on and off, a two-year project, but the bulk of the work came from June to November. Still not done entirely; still making corrections and updating, and hoping that someone will publish the book (at an affordable cost). So far, no luck, other than a do-it-myself method.

     Sports history and records always have been a hobby, or maybe -- as my roommate of 44 years suggests often -- an obsession.

     (If one has obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and I might, it's not always a positive. Caused us and others trouble and pain, and I apologize -- again.)

     Had to laugh when a sportswriter friend, mentioning the book, referred to me as "a track enthusiast." Well, not exactly.

     I'm OK with the sport -- my Dad loved it -- and I covered it some, but I always preferred baseball, basketball, soccer and football (not necessarily in that order).

     Anyway, the Louisiana track and field high school records, results and history needed updating ... and so it's done. Hopefully, 2021 will mean my work needs updating. 

     I know the book won't have wide appeal or even have moderate sales (if and when it's printed), but getting it done was important to me.

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     Speaking of sports ...

     It is amazing how much was achieved for much of 2020 despite the pandemic. There was a long pause beginning near the last portion of basketball season, then so darned many postponements/cancellations ... most of them necessary and the safe choices. 

     Dang, what a scheduling hassle this has been (and still is).

     But through much travail and many stops-and-starts, games were played, and championships decided.

LSU's national champions: If this had been the 
last game  of 2020, that would have been fine. 

     One championship made my year: On January 13, LSU whipped Clemson to win the College Football Playoff championship and complete the perfect season. 

      It was the greatest LSU team ever, one of the greatest, period. Not much in my sports world tops that.

     (Confession: I did not watch that game live. Recorded it, watched it late at night, not knowing the result. In fact, I did not watch many of LSU's games last season live.)

     What I found early last football season (2019) was that watching games as they were happening -- for any of "my" teams -- was causing too much stress. I could feel the tenseness in my body.  

     (What I didn't know then was that my heart arteries were severly blocked. Somehow I survived -- even watching recorded version of the games and taking many too-long daily walks).

     Better now, but I still don't watch all that many sports events live. My roommate does not care to watch (or care about the results at all), or have it on TV live, when she's in the room. So if I watch, it is mid-to-late evening -- sometimes live but usually recorded and games are long finished.

     Keeping up with scores on the phone or computer as games are being played still is tense enough for me. 

     Hate watching my teams lose or even play badly or sloppily in victories. And not many of those teams did all that well in 2020; my baseball team, in fact, underachieved and -- oh, gosh -- choked much of the season. 

     Here is something else: I don't like the thought of being old-school or old-fashioned, not don't like idea of "it was a lot better in 'our day,' " but when it comes to sports these days, I am ... well, old school.

     I don't like many of today's trends in sports (this is a separate blog).  Way too much money involved, in every way. Games take far too long. Rules are altered regularly. Hence, I don't enjoy watching all that much.

     Still very interested, but it's not my life as it was when I was younger. And it's no longer my work (but I loved it).

      What made sports in 2020 so odd, most of all, were the "bubbles," and even more, no fans in the stands, or a limited amount of fans. Awful. (But ticket prices, when tickets are available ... out of sight.) 

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     We all suffered too many losses, of people, in 2020. So much suffering, so much sadness.

     Reviewing the year, it is unbelievable how many nationally known and my personal connections, in some way, we lost. More than I can remember in any one calendar year. 

     Here at our facility, we lost 47 residents  (though only one that we know of from coronavirus complications). Especially cruel was the loss of an outgoing, funny, delightful, at times bawdy 86-year-old woman to Lou Gehrig's Disease, ALS. Oh, Carol. She didn't have to suffer too long, but it hurt us.

      We lost friends, pals and neighbors -- too many to name.

      Losses in the sports world were profound. Kobe Bryant (and his daughter) so early in the year, so tragically. Baseball was rocked by seven Hall of Famers lost -- Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Tom Seaver, Al Kaline, "Little" Joe Morgan, Phil Niekro, Whitey Ford. And other greats, such as Dick Allen and Johnny Antonelli, Jimmy Wynn ("The Toy  Cannon") ... Joe Morgan's cohort with the early Houston Astros.

     So many Yankees connections: Don Larsen, Phil Linz, Lindy McDaniel, Horace Clarke, Damaso Garcia, Jay Johnstone, Jimmy Wynn, (general manager) Bob Watson, Hank Steinbrenner.

     And our old Shreveport Sports or Braves: Jay Hankins, Dan Pfister, Oscar Brown, Remy "Angel" Hermoso.

     On a personal level, sadness about two newspaper sports department buddies named Steve -- Oakey (leukemia) and Schroats (massive heart attack). They were my good friends who helped make me a better journalist and better person. Miss those guys, and always will.

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   It was a horrible year for politics, for social issues. Think most people would agree, unless they were not paying attention. This great divide in our country -- maybe in the world -- isn't likely to subside; we are all so dug in to our beliefs.

     It is so difficult to see and hear -- on TV, on Facebook and Twitter -- the harsh and empty rhetoric, the name-calling, the blaming, the conspiracy theories, the excuses, the blind belief.

     Have to say that it has caused me to break with some people. I think about my late friend Dr./Coach James Farrar's logic about friends and acquaintances, and where that line is.

     Everyone is entitled to their opinions. What is unacceptable to me is when I am told what to think or how to act. I try not to reciprocate. You live your life and believe what you want; I will do the same. Don't cross my line; I'll try not to cross yours.

     (I did cross the line with one political post this year, and was told by a half dozen people they didn't want that ... at all. It was not repeated.)

     If you posted something online or to me directly that I found objectionable, it likely means we no longer are connected. That is kind of sad, but too bad.

     Among my goals are to be civil, not use foul language -- another reason not to watch sports events live -- and not be directly critical personally of people I respect. If you find any of my language foul in the blogs or online, let me know. 

     The biggest goals for 2021 are to be the best I can be, keep exercising (strength-training and yoga here or at the YMCA, daily walks, although I have to cut back because of the wear and tear on my legs and feet), and just be nice and helpful to people. Sports, politics and social issues will take care of themselves; I have no control over them (but I do have opinions). 

     Beatrice and I wish you a Happy New Year, but mostly we wish you a healthy new year. Stay safe. 

Danny Hodge was our "good guy" in wrestling

An anonymous baseball name from the past

         Johnnie Dawson was a catcher in professional baseball in the 1930s and 1940s, and he was from rural Caddo Parish who became, for a time, a Shreveport resident.

      Or maybe his name is Johnny Dawson. We're not sure which spelling is correct.

Reno newspaper
July 25, 1941
(clipping provided by
Dr. Margaret Gripshover)

     You will not find him in all the Shreveport area pro baseball material that we published in 2019 and early 2020 because -- frankly -- we had never heard of him until a couple of months ago.

     In all our research back to 1895 -- of the early Shreveport teams and then the Gassers, Sports, Braves, Captains, etc., and players from Northwest Louisiana that played pro ball -- he was anonymous.

     It was an avid baseball researcher who found Dawson for us and identified him as a Negro Leagues player.

     Dr. Margaret M. Gripshover -- whose informal name is Peggy -- is a professor of geography at Western Kentucky University. That field also includes environmental studies.

    Originally from Cincinnati, she has been at Western Kentucky for 11 years after previous faculty stops at Marshall University and the University of Tennessee.

     So geography is her j-o-b. But she's also passionate about -- and has researched and written on -- horses, the thoroughbred racing industry, mules (yes, mules) ... and baseball.

     Pertaining to the great game, she is partial to the Chicago Cubs and the Wrigley Field area, and her current project -- which brings her to us and Mr. Dawson -- is research on African American contributions to baseball.

     She is a member of the Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) and is contributing a chapter on Dawson to a book on the 1942 Kanas City Monarchs, a combined writing project for numerous SABR members.

     So Dawson was a missing piece and, having seen some of our work online, she wrote us seeking what information we had on him. Which was ... none.

--- 

     Here is what we did find on Dawson from a, well, sometimes-not-sure source, Wikipedia:

     Johnnie Dawson (November 8, 1914 – August 6, 1984) was an American Negro league catcher between 1938 and 1942.

     A native of Shreveport, Louisiana, Dawson made his Negro leagues debut in 1938 with the Kansas City Monarchs and played with the Chicago American Giants and Memphis Red Sox in 1940. He returned to the Monarchs during their 1942 Negro World Series championship season. It was Dawson's final season in baseball. He died in Los Angeles, California, in 1984, at age 69.

Negro league baseball debut — 1938, for the Kansas City Monarchs

Last appearance — 1942, for the Kansas City Monarchs

Teams — Kansas City Monarchs (1938); Chicago American Giants (1940); Memphis Red

Sox (1940); Birmingham Black Barons (1942); Kansas City Monarchs (1942)

     And from the Baseball Reference web site, here is a link to the scant Negro Leagues statistics on Dawson:

     https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=dawson003joh

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     Going to let Dr. Gripshover -- "Peggy" -- take it from here. Following are parts of what she wrote to us in mid-October:

    "Dawson’s baseball career mirrors that of many second-string players in the Negro Leagues of his day. His life off the field was no walk in the park either. I am pretty sure that it wasn’t easy  to be an African American man in “Bloody Caddo.”

      Dawson’s immediate family was fractured and unstable from the get-go. He and his brother (Kemp Dawson) were raised in rural Caddo by different sets of aunts and uncles in the Greenwood and Flournoy communities. His father, also named John Dawson, vanished from the picture by 1920 and his mother remarried and moved to Shreveport.

      Johnny and Kemp had their scrapes with the law in Shreveport, but nothing major (mostly gambling). Kemp left Shreveport before Johnny did and moved to Los Angeles where he had a brief career as a boxer.

     The Dawson boys were just two of the many African Americans who left Shreveport for LA during the “Second Great Migration.” One article I read claimed that there were so many former Shreveport residents in LA, that there was a neighborhood that was informally called “Little Shreveport.”

     Johnny ended up in LA after his service in World War II. Dawson continued to play baseball in the burgeoning post-WWII semipro leagues in California, along with some other former Negro League players. He played semipro baseball for a variety of teams until around 1949. 

    After that, I lose track of Johnny and his brother Kemp until their deaths in the 1980s. Kemp died in San Francisco in 1983, and Johnny passed away a year later in LA. I have a few documents that indicate that both brothers were probably married at least once (maybe twice), but no records of any known children.

     I am fairly experienced with doing African American genealogy, but the Dawson family has been a real challenge. Endlessly interesting, but a challenge nonetheless. 

     … There were a few bright spots in the Dawson family story. The uncles who raised the Dawson brothers were fairly successful farmers in Caddo Parish, and one of the uncles was a  regular exhibitor (and winner) at the Louisiana State Fair in the 1910s. Fast forward to the 1990s, and you will find Johnny’s cousin, Matel “Mat” Dawson (1921-2002), a Detroit autoworker turned philanthropist who endowed a scholarship at LSU-Shreveport."

—- 

     And there you have it --  the story of Johnny (or Johnnie) Dawson, as we have it. A small, previously unknown — and somewhat sad — segment in Shreveport baseball history uncovered by Dr. Margaret “Peggy” Gripshover (photos left and below).

    And we thank her.