Being a fan -- it's difficult these days

If The Netherlands' national soccer team can celebrate two more victories
-- such as after Saturday's penalty-kick shootout against Costa Rica -- the
World Cup championship will be ours. (Associated Press photo)

     Other than being with my family, especially the grandkids, being a sports fan is how most people know me.
      It's always been that way, some 60 years, and it's still true. But, honestly, it gets harder every day.
      This World Cup of soccer, with my beloved Oranje team -- The Netherlands, my native country -- just two wins from a world championship so long in the making (and waiting), could be my ultimate success as a sports fan. It's certainly the ultimate test of my fandom.
      Attention to my friends who know this phrase because I've used it a thousand times: I've got no guts.
      Nope, I could not watch the last 14 minutes of extra-time play Saturday in the scoreless quarterfinal game against Costa Rica. I sure as heck couldn't watch the penalty-kick shootout. Too nerve-wracking.
      I vowed never again to watch Holland in a penalty-kick shootout in a major competition. I've seen our team go down like that three times, and it's sickening.
      We've also won a couple of shootouts and advanced in competitions, which is nice. But I am on record as saying this repeatedly: A PK shootout is not a good way to settle huge soccer games (or any soccer games, for that matter).
      It is a way, and it does prevent an all-day, all-night battle for someone -- anyone -- to score the one necessary decisive goal, and it does satisfy a limited television time slot. But I say make 'em play until someone scores a legitimate goal (even on a called penalty and PK); put in a rule that each team must take a player off the field every 5 minutes. When it gets to be 9-on-9 or 8-on-8, something is going to get settled.
      I digress. Back to my role -- convoluted role -- as a fan.
      I've been able to watch these World Cup games, but only in a room by myself. Beatrice wants no part of watching the game, or watching me watch the game.
      Same for LSU football; I'm better off just watching by myself, although I sometimes share the game with my favorite LSU fan, my son Jason. But it has become a mostly tense exercise; the Les Miles coaching era at LSU has been more often than not -- and much more often than we like -- a how-did-they-pull-that-off experience.
      I can handle that, though -- barely. I can't handle watching the Dallas Cowboys mess up game after game after game; I've pretty much stopped watching the NFL.
      I still watch enough college football and college basketball to send Bea out of the room, but not as much as I once did.
      I love baseball dearly, I love the New York Yankees dearly. But the minimum 3-hour, sometimes 4-hour games are becoming routine -- and not my routine. For the last 3-4 seasons, I have not watched a dozen games start to finish.
      The NBA is Bea's sports love now. She will watch most Dallas Mavericks' games and playoff games they're not involved in, and she can be as intense about it as I am about my teams. But I can't handle much of the NBA and here is what I admire about Bea. If it's a boring game, or the teams aren't playing up to the standards she likes, she can turn it off and not worry about it.
      She says she is more of a fan of the players and the coaches, and that she doesn't look to them to make her feel like a winner or the illusion of being a winner. She also admits that maybe she's not a true competitor, that competition isn't her thing.
      I can't say that. The competition is still a motivator for me; it always was. My team winning is still important to me. That's silly in a way because there's really not a damn thing I can do to help my team win.
      But to me, this is also being a true sports fan. Suffering is as much part of the game for me as enjoying it. You'd think as I got older, it would be easier -- being retired, no work pressure, a life of relative ease.
      But no.
      Bea is always kidding me, and telling other people, that I'm a better loser than I am a winner. My standard reply: I don't want to be a better loser. Losing still stinks as much as ever. My team losing does not feel as good as my team winning ... surprise, surprise.
      Here is what I have to keep reminding myself: The players on my teams want to win as much as I want them to win. And what I expect, what pleases me win or lose, is teams/players that give the total effort.
      That hasn't always been the case with the Dutch soccer players, but it certainly has been with the lasttwo World Cup teams. Could not ask for greater efforts.
      We (yes, we) have won 11 of our 12 games in these two World Cup, and the only one that went to penalty kicks was the Costa Rica game. The only loss was the tense, tight, rough extra-time championship game against Spain in 2010, a 1-0 result in which the goal came six minutes short of the ultimate PK shootout (for the title).
      That was tough to take; the third time we've lost in the championship game (1974, 1978). But I was so proud of those players and that team. And I'm so proud of these players and this team.
      If we win the championship this time, it's what we've always wanted. If we don't, I'll still be very proud of the team and the country.
      Do we have a great team? Can't say that. We have a gutsy, resilient team. It won't quit. We have a coach whose moves, whose lineup changes, keep working just right.
      Can we beat Argentina -- and one of the world's greatest players, Lionel Messi -- in the semifinals Wednesday? If we do somehow, can we beat the host team and favorite, Brazil, or our greatest nemesis and probably greatest rival, eastern neighbor Germany -- mighty Germany -- in the championship game Sunday?
        Five wins down, two huge steps to go. Our soccer history against Argentina and Brazil indicates we have a good chance. Against Germany, not as much. But bring 'em on.
        We're the least likely of the semifinalists, a 25-1 pre-tournament shot to win the title. We weren't even one of the eight seeded teams. Most everyone expected defending champion Spain, the team we wiped out 5-1 in group play in our first game this tournament 3 1/2 weeks ago, to be the semifinalist in our spot.
          Heck, yes, we've been lucky. We've been behind in three of our five games; Spain almost had a 2-0 lead on us, which would've been hard to overcome because Spain was still the great power then. We almost lost to a so-so Australian team. We made a late two-goal comeback against Mexico.  We survived the PK shootout because our late-game substitute goalie, Tim Krul, made two saves of Costa Rica kicks.
            But, no question, we outplayed Costa Rica most of the 120 minutes, had many more chances to score. It takes luck to advance in this sport.
            It also takes a lot of patience, if you're a fan. I've seen enough posts from American sports fans who can't watch soccer because they don't think it's exciting and they don't have that patience to wait for the one -- or two -- critical moments in these games.
            I am a fan, but I am a nervous fan, and my patience only goes so far. I stop watching because I hate to see the other team score a last-minute goal (especially if it's been dominated as much as Costa Rica was). And my patience certainly does not include penalty-kick shootouts involving Holland.
            OK, no guts. I know it's just a game, and life will go on and my family is my real joy. But I care; I want my team(s) to win, and I will pull for them -- positively -- as much as I can. Proud to do it. But it's not as easy as it once was.   
          

The hero of my first book in the USA

One of the great moments at Yankee Stadium on July 4,
1939 -- Lou Gehrig hugged by Babe Ruth. (wikipedia.org)

      Happy Fourth of July and happy Lou Gehrig Appreciation Day.
      This is, as you might have heard or read the past couple of days, the 75th anniversary of the tribute to Lou Gehrig at Yankee Stadium and the immortal speech he gave that day -- one of baseball's most famous events.
      Almost at the start, he said the words the baseball world remembers: "... today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth."
      This week, a couple of friends have sent me either the entirety of the speech (which I will add below) or links to it, and I have seen a half-dozen Facebook posts about it, too.
       It was a very short speech, but a poignant and powerful one -- and one from a man who, by accounts I've read, was a vanilla, straight-laced personality ... much the opposite of his more famous Yankees teammate. Babe Ruth was an overpowering, flamboyant figure -- on the field and off. Gehrig was almost as big a star on the field, but with a quiet, workmanlike demeanor.
       I decided almost 57 years ago that Lou Gehrig would be one of my heroes for all time.
       Mickey Mantle was my favorite Yankees player of my boyhood and young adulthood, and my favorite forever. Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera are the heroes of my 50s/60s years.
       There were lots of Yankees first basemen in my lifetime I rooted for: Bill "Moose" Skowron, even Mantle for a few years, Joe Pepitone, Chris Chambliss, Don Mattingly, Tino Martinez, Jason Giambi and now Mark Teixeira.
       But the best Yankees first baseman ever? They retired that designation at the same time Mr. Gehrig's No. 4 became the first number retired in baseball history.
       Still, I have a personal reason why Gehrig was special: The first book I read completely in the United States -- not counting the learn-to-read primers -- was a kids biography on Lou Gehrig.
       I was born six years after Lou died. I did not know anything about him or the New York Yankees when I came to the U.S. in January 1956. Even though I became a Yankees fan that year, I still did not know much about their history or about Gehrig until a year later.
      Here's a reason why: I couldn't read English all that well, other than the first- and second-grade primers.
       But by the fall of 1957, when I began fifth grade in Mrs. Cooper's class in room 6E at Sunset Acres Elementary, I could read well enough and what fascinated me most in the little library in that classroom was the biographies of famous Americans.
       So I read about the childhood days of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Helen Keller, George Washington Carver, Babe Ruth ... and Lou Gehrig.
       I loved Gehrig's story the most, read it three or four times, as I remember.
       He was left-handed, his parents were immigrants who barely spoke English, he loved sports and he was a dutiful son (maybe this is the one part that didn't exactly fit me). Oh, and he was a great athlete (I didn't have that in common with him, either).
       But I loved his story, except of course for the tragic end. And a couple of years later, when my Dad purchased a long-play record of great moments in sports broadcasting, Gehrig's speech was one of my favorite numbers.
       And while we're on favorite numbers, Gehrig's uniform number was 4. Which is why I wore No. 4 when I first played on a team in the late 1950s. (Only made it better that my favorite Shreveport Sports player of that era, second baseman Lou Klimchock, in the 1959 season also wore No. 4.
       The Fourth of July obviously has had great meaning in the U.S. since 1776. If you're a Yankees fan, you probably realized it also meant the birthday of our Yankee Doodle Dandy, the blustery team owner/bully, George M. Steinbrenner III. One year, 1983, it meant a no-hitter pitched by Dave Righetti against the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium -- the first no-hitter by a Yankee since Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series.
       But mostly, every year since 1939, it meant Gehrig, his "day" and his speech.
       It came only weeks after he could play no more, after he took himself out of the lineup and ended his "untouchable" record of 2,130 consecutive games played (Cal Ripken Jr. made it touchable in 1995), after it was obvious to all around him that something physically was dreadfully wrong.
       No one knew much then about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is now commonly called Lou Gehrig's Disease. We all know now, it's fatal. We still don't have a cure. When I think of this loss of the central nervous system, and its debilitating effects, I think of Gehrig and Jim "Catfish" Hunter and our high school/college friend Larry Alexander. And it's so sad.
       Gehrig's story, his devotion to his parents and his wife, his brilliant baseball career and the disease that ended it and then his life a little less than two years after July 4, 1939, was told in the movie The Pride of the Yankees, released a year after his death.
       Babe Ruth plays himself in the movie, but the script doesn't touch the fractious relationship of the two great stars in their latter years with the Yankees (they were good friends at first, but Ruth's often outrageous behavior dismayed the Gehrig family.) Several other Yankees are in it, too.
       I've seen the movie several times, and I know a lot of people love it. Frankly, I think -- and I've read this -- it's corny, cheesy, trite, whatever. Gary Cooper stars in it and he doesn't look much like a ballplayer.
        One of my memories of it is one of the stars is a young Walter Brennan, who plays -- I believe -- a sportswriter (no laughs, please). We remember Walter mostly as the cranky old, limping, wisecracking grandpa on The Real McCoys in the late 1950s/early '60s.         
        But, no question, near the end, where Gary Cooper gives the famous speech, can bring tears. That's not corny or trite.
        "Fans, for the past two weeks you have been reading about the bad break I got. Yet today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of this earth. I have been in ballparks for seventeen years and have never received anything but kindness and encouragement from you fans.
        "Look at these grand men. Which of you wouldn't consider it the highlight of his career just to associate with them for even one day? Sure, I'm lucky. Who wouldn't consider it an honor to have known Jacob Ruppert? Also, the builder of baseball's greatest empire, Ed Barrow? To have spent six years with that wonderful little fellow, Miller Huggins? Then to have spent the next nine years with that outstanding leader, that smart student of psychology, the best manager in baseball today, Joe McCarthy? Sure, I'm lucky.
        "When the New York Giants, a team you would give your right arm to beat, and vice versa, sends you a gift -- that's something. When everybody down to the groundskeepers and those boys in white coats remember you with trophies -- that's something. When you have a wonderful mother-in-law who takes sides with you in squabbles with her own daughter -- that's something. When you have a father and a mother who work all their lives so you can have an education and build your body - it's a blessing. When you have a wife who has been a tower of strength and shown more courage than you dreamed existed -- that's the finest I know.
        "So I close in saying that I may have had a tough break, but I have an awful lot to live for."
        Lou Gehrig was a hero for all time. I've known that for years.       
  
         

Hall of Fame for a baseball mogul

   
         The news came across Facebook on Sunday night, and it made me smile (and re-post): Taylor Moore has been selected for the Texas League Hall of Fame.
        My comment, on the original post and my re-post: "Tremendous! Taylor was the second 'Mr. Baseball' in Shreveport; the first was longtime Sports owner Bonneau Peters. Not only is Taylor a gentleman and a family man, he's been a great friend over a lot of years."
        Here is an additional comment: This is a great achievement for a mogul.
       Yes, a mogul.
       OK, so I had to look up the definition. Here is the one that fit: "an important, powerful, or influential person."
       That's Taylor.
       He will laugh at this because it's an inside joke, something we've joked about for years and years. I don't remember the exact circumstance, but I think in a conversation one day, Taylor remarked that he always liked a newspaper or magazine story that referred to a person as a "mogul."
       So now you know why I've referred to him as a mogul from that day on.
       Taylor, who is my age and was my friend for years before he got involved in pro baseball, is a modest guy, so he also will laugh at the thought of being regarded as "important, powerful, influential."
       I think he was just happy to be the operator/majority owner of Shreveport's Texas League team from 1976 to 1999, happy to be a big part of keeping the pro game in town for that long. Because he loves baseball and he loves Shreveport-Bossier.
       When he and his ownership group sold the team after the 1999 season, it lasted three more years in Shreveport. Independent teams followed for nine years, but that wasn't like having a Class AA team affiliated with a major-league parent club.
      Now the ballpark that was home to the Captains -- and other nicknames (Swamp Dragons and Sports) -- for 26 years sits idly, and sadly, on the Fairgrounds next to Interstate 20 and just down from Independence Stadium, and it's a decaying facility.
       A little more than two years ago, I wrote about pro ball in Shreveport, and what it meant to many of us (http://nvanthyn.blogspot.com/2012/06/sports-and-captains-made-our-summers.html). Taylor Moore, like me, was one of those kids who relished those days.
       Keeping the team in Shreveport -- and losing money while attendance was minuscule (200, 300, 400 fans on many nights) -- until the city officials finally found a way to get the new ballpark (Fair Grounds Field) built was the crowning achievement of Taylor's ownership days. The three Texas League championships that followed (1990, 1991, 1995) -- ending a Shreveport title drought of 35 years -- were gravy.
       It was the opening of the ballpark, and the interest in the team and sport it generated in its first year, that was the crux of my story for the Shreveport Journal in January 1987 when we named Taylor as our "Sportsman of the Year" for '86. The top half of that clipping is what you see at the top of the page.
       So I'm pleased to be writing about him again. To be honest, before Sunday night, I did not realize there is a Texas League Hall of Fame.
       Doing my usual diligent research -- about five minutes -- I found that it has been in existence since 2004; Taylor is part of the 11th class selected. And among the 121 inductees, there are only a few with Shreveport credentials.
       There are Ken Guettler, the 62-home run man of 1956, and George Ferran, who won the TL Triple Crown of pitching (wins -- 16-1 record, ERA, strikeouts) in 1986. A few spent one or two seasons with Shreveport, including Homer Peel, hitter extraordinaire, 1939-40, and Grant Dunlap, first baseman of the 1951-52 Sports.
      That's not nearly enough Shreveport representation. Darned right, I'm biased.
      For some reasons -- and I find it inexplicable -- Bonneau Peters is not in this Hall of Fame. He was one of baseball's most respected minor league owner/operators for three decades. Yes, it was a different era, an all-white era, but that's not kept anyone out of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.
       There are two title-winning Shreveport managers: Francis "Salty" Parker, who played in the league for nine years and manager for nine (eight with the Sports) and Mel McGaha, who played eight years in the league and manager for four of those (with two championship Sports teams).
       There is pitcher Billy Muffett, who on his way to the big leagues and a World Series appearance and then a longtime pitching-coach career, had three really good seasons in his four full TL years (including a 1955 no-hitter in the playoffs for the Sports). Ev Joyner, a Shreveport favorite and longtime resident, had three strong seasons in 1954-56 (he hit .328, .294 and .344, with 116 doubles, 19 triples, 37 homers and 243 RBIs). 
       And I can provide a half-dozen others who had at least one Hall of Fame-caliber season for Shreveport.
      There are several radio announcers in the TL Hall of Fame; Dave Nitz broadcast Captains games in the TL for 14 years, has 33 years as a play-by-play guy in pro ball (and still active) -- and he's a good one.
      So, attention Tom Kayser, Texas League president. Trying to give you some suggestions.
      But I don't mean to take away from our man of this year, Taylor Moore. This is an honor which he certainly deserves. He did a wonderful job with the team; he did it in a graceful and thoughtful manner; and -- as Kayser noted in the story announcing the selections -- he always had the best interest of the league in mind.
       And he's a mogul. Now everyone knows that.

Soccer: It's boring ... for boring people

U.S. fans are fired up in Brazil, and at home (photo from Time.com)

      So big-time soccer enthusiasm finally has reached the United States.
      Really?
      Short memories, people.
      I'm going to address the "boring" argument about soccer shortly, and the usual criticism the sport -- and the World Cup -- receive, but first a reminder: Soccer enthusiasm has been here for at least 20 years.
      I remember full stadiums all over the country when the U.S. was host for the 1994 World Cup, and I remember some people being excited when the U.S. national team -- after upsetting Colombia 2-1 on Andres Escobar's infamous "own" goal (that eventually led to his being shot to death back home) reached the round of 16.
      In 2002, the U.S. team even reached the quarterfinals, and lost 1-0 to Germany (sound familiar?). And people here were watching then, too.
      OK, maybe not as much enthusiasm then as now. But I sense it's not so much a love of soccer -- yes, the world's most popular sport -- as a love of this country. We love to watch our athletes beat the rest of the world.
      Think about it, think about the attention the U.S. women's national team received when it won its World Cup in 1999 -- the penalty-kick shootout win against China at the packed Rose Bowl Stadium, the Brandi Chastain-tears-off-her-jersey finish.
      Think about how we love to watch U.S. athletes win in the Olympics ... any sport, winter or summer. And otherwise -- maybe basketball aside -- we care little about those sports.
      I believe this month we are rooting for the Americans, not for the soccer team per se. You can just see the nationalism all over TV. When the major network news programs make the U.S. team and its support the lead item on their nightly programs, that's a clue.
      Look, we all know how everyone kept saying that because our kids were playing the game, soccer was the "sport of the future" here. I never bought into that. That's never going to happen.
      Our football and baseball and basketball have so much tradition, and millions more fans, and those fans are not switching sports. Our son played soccer for 11 years, through high school; he loved it, and he still does now that he's 40, but he's a bigger LSU football fan than a soccer fan.
      Soccer might take the headlines a few days here in June, but it's not ever going to overshadow college football, the NFL, NBA and MLB.
      I keep hearing that we'll see how the U.S. team's success helps grow the game after this World Cup. I don't see that.
      Major League Soccer, which has been here since 1996 and has had some world-class stars, seems to be solid and it will remain that way. It has its fans, and they're loyal, but it is not -- and won't be -- one of the world's best leagues.
      And this is coming from -- as you might know -- a lifetime soccer fan. As I wrote early last week, The Netherlands' national team was my first love, at age 5 maybe, and remains the team I pull for most. I am nervous watching the Dutch play as I am for LSU football, the Yankees, Cowboys, Mavericks and my other loves.
      (A Netherlands-United States semifinal, which would happen if both teams win twice more in the next week, would be wonderful. Very, very unlikely, though.)
      No question, soccer has its strange rules and no clock to watch (the referee is the decider), players who flop and fake injuries, players who bite other players (what is wrong what that guy?), and it's hard as hell to score (which is what makes it so difficult). But boring? I don't agree at all, if you have passion for a team.
      So as usual, as expected, there are people on Facebook and Twitter and in the media taking their shots at the sport, leveling their criticism and their "boring" argument. Some of these are my friends, people (writers) I respect, sports fans. Some I don't respect in the first place (Skip Bayless, Ann Coulter). Don't give a damn about anything they say.
      One I respect, the editor of the local newspaper where I worked, should stick to newspaper subjects. Three more fine journalists left the building for good this week.
      These people's "boring" snipes, frankly, bore me.
      I've always said that if people think soccer is boring, I think they're boring people. (It's a joke, see).
      I have problems with American football these days -- the violence of it, the concussions, the memory loss, the brain damage, the eventual artificial knees and hips. I have problems with the outrageous salaries paid to our coaches and athletes (and entertainers) in a country with so much economic inequality.
      Honestly -- and I've written this before -- a lot of baseball, NFL, NBA and NHL games bore me these days. Maybe if the Cowboys were still an elite team, I'd be more interested in the NFL. But you know that story.
      Almost any tennis match bores me now (and I used to watch the majors). So does a lot of golf; I like watching the sport, but it does take time. Auto racing? No thank you. 
      Maybe it's because I'm older, and I don't care as much, and I have to share the TV with someone who doesn't care (except for the NBA). I still read about all these sports, and about politics and the world, but I limit my sports watching on TV. I overdid college football and the NCAA men's basketball tournament, but that's about it.
      I've even limited my World Cup watching. Unlike my Dad, who could watch every game every day, I've picked my spots. And I have been pleasantly surprised by both the Dutch team and the American team.
      It's been an interesting World Cup through the first two weeks, even more exciting than I thought it could be. Hope the next two weeks are the same -- and that none of these games end in penalty-kick shootouts (which, in my opinion, is the worst thing about the sport.)
     So, if people want to criticize soccer (football in the rest of the world) and the American fans' enthusiasm, they can be asses about it. Live in your world.
     You don't have to "get it." It won't stop those of us who enjoy it. 
                      

        

      
    

Mixing the past with the present

      Here is what I have to balance almost daily: living in the past, and living in the present. I hope, I sense, you can identify with this.
      I've had more than a few people over the years tell me how good I am at living in the past; Bea likes to remind me often. It's true ... but only to an extent.
       Sure I love to watch television recaps or YouTube videos of sports events, musical stars, big bands, orchestras, comedians, Johnny Carson's Tonight Show clips, etc., and I can do this hours at a time.
       And I like to read the links to sports stories and historical events that friends send me -- and that happens several times a week. Other friends and I can talk for a few minutes, or many minutes, about where we've been and who we knew (and where are they now?).
       Plus, Facebook friends can post photos from the past or remembrances and, for me, that means virtual trips back to Shreveport, to the Sunset Acres neighborhood and to the days in school there, and then later at Louisiana Tech. That's only 45-55 years ago.
        Then there's stories/tales of the newspaper days and the long days in athletics, in sportswriting.
        The reality is that many of my blog pieces deal with past experiences, and I've received much positive feedback on those. Which tells me that a lot of people enjoy looking back, too.  
        So it's sort of a never-ending adventure. There's a lot of past; that's what happens when you're a senior citizen (and you have to admit you are). And it's fun -- well, most of it.
         I have to admit some of it leaves me feeling melancholy; I always come away from reunions that way. Fun to do, but also fleeting. It's always a kick seeing the Woodlawn people or, as in the past couple of years with reunions for Bea, the Ringgold and Jamestown people.
         I turned down three reunion invitations last year and a couple the year before that. No offense to anyone -- I appreciate the invitations -- but I have to be in the right mood.
        And again, I hope the people who grew up there understand, but every so often -- usually a couple of years apart -- I drive through the old neighborhood in Sunset Acres and past the old schools, and I feel a little sad. Well, sad and grateful for the good times we had there.
         It's certainly not the same; I mean, that's not surprising. Some neighborhoods do stay much the same; I'd say the area we live in now, around Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth, has not changed a great deal.
         But Sunset Acres and southwest Shreveport -- and other areas in town -- well, I don't like going there anymore.
         On Facebook a year or two ago, one of the Woodlawn people posted that the school isn't like it used to be and he was wishing it could be the way it was in the 1960s and early 1970s. Hello, time has passed. We were there for the "glory days," I suppose, but the past is the distant past.
         Here's what bothers me: revisionary past. One of my classmates, who I don't talk to often (once every couple of years when he calls), was saying how he wishes we could play the Byrd (football) game of our senior year again; how badly he played in that game, and we could/should have won the game.
         A ridiculous notion ... although I diplomatically didn't say that.
         Beyond that, I have a classmate who I've heard tell me, and others, that he should have been a starting running back as a freshman in college, that the coach told him he was better than anyone we had. I think he actually believes this, because I've now heard the story twice.
         He can fool some people, but he can't fool me. I was there and my memory -- not infallible but pretty good -- is that he (1) was a redshirt who actually didn't play much until his third year in school; (2) the coach he's talking about would never have said that; and (3) we actually had three -- three -- all-conference backs on the team at that time, plus one other pretty darned good player.
         That's living in the past, and not even honestly. There's also a certain quarterback turned duck hunter/preacher whose football embellishments could be exposed (and I did a blog piece a year ago on what the record/statistics were back then).
         That's the kind of past remembrance I want nothing to do with, thank you -- a good reason to stay away from certain reunions.
         Hey, I've embellished a few events events myself and there are plenty of things in my past I wish I could change, too, problems I caused myself and others. Can't do it, of course, but what I try to remember -- what Bea reminds me of -- is that we should use the past as a guide for the present, to learn from what we've experienced, and to apply the lessons.
          We try to stay in the present here, finding things to do every day, new adventures and challenges. Here's our newest challenge -- figuring out the new phones and new phone systems which we acquired yesterday. We'll be a few weeks working on that.
           Proud as I am of many of my favorite teams' past achievements, I'm well aware that they don't help the present-day teams. So I look forward to tonight's game, and Sunday's game, and this fall's games.
           More than that, we're eager for the daughter and granddaughter's visit the next few days and the three grandchildren being together this weekend, and knowing that they'll be joined by a fourth grandchild in a couple of months.      
           Because that's the present and the future, and they will make moments and memories that beat anything from the past on YouTube or television.

Finding the way back ... a long way back

(24th in a series)
         In mid-January 1945, Dad (Louis Van Thyn) and the 26 other prisoners remaining in the Janina mining camp -- a satellite camp of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp -- weren't sure what to do next.
         Sure, they were grateful to the Russian Army members who found them in the camp abandoned only a little more than a week earlier by the Nazis. But they also received little help from those Russians in terms of their futures.

Reality is that my Dad (Louis Van Thyn) was in a group like this in
 Auschwitz--Birkenau camp and its satellite camps (from martinfrost.ws)

         It appeared their lives had been spared, that they were free after some 2 1/2 years under Nazi Germany's control. But they couldn't know how much freedom was out there in southern Poland, that the Nazis weren't waiting for them in the forests.
          And besides the scraps given them by the Russians, they were damn hungry. Malnourished, some of them ill and just hanging on, they were desperate for a future.
          And what of their families? What had become of the people they loved? For Dad, that meant his original family in Amsterdam -- mother, father, two brothers, one sister-in-law, one baby nephew -- and the family he'd married into in Antwerp -- wife, in-laws, sister-in-law.
          Lots of questions, no immediate answers. The answers to the family part would be forthcoming ... horrible answers.
           But Dad didn't know that at Janina. What he knew was he -- and the others -- needed a way out.
           Obviously, Dad made his way back home -- both homes -- but the route he took, the challenges he faced, weren't easy ones. Before he went west, he went east.
           In fact, he would go from Poland to Romania and would wind up in Russia, then back west to France and finally to Belgium ... and he wore a Russian Army uniform for much of his trip.
           It is a trip he talked about in his 1996 USC Shoah Foundation interview, and the trip began with a couple of stops in southern Poland. His recall is a bit disjointed and repetitive, but he is telling this 51 years after the fact and I'm transcribing it 18 years after that. So bear with it.
           Some of what he relates, the first time I heard it on the tape, I found difficult to fathom. I still feel that way.
---
           The Shoah Foundation interviewer asked Dad, "When you finally left the camp, where did you go?"
           The Russians told them to go to Katowice, a city 30 miles northwest of the mine (it is now the major city of the Silesian region of southern Poland). Dad does not say how he got there, but I imagine he walked a great portion of the way or hitchhiked.
           "... They say there was a house over there, they call it the Red Cross or maybe something else, they say they go take care for us," he recalled. "When I arrive by myself in Katowice, there was an old school, dirty, no food, nothing.
           "I met a man I know from Amsterdam there and we become real close friends," he added. "We start begging on the street, we go from house to house and begging on the street. We got fed by some people, not too many, but we were fed."
           (I cannot imagine this, the man I knew as my Dad, begging for food in the streets. Every time I hear this, and now as I write it, it leaves me feeling sick.)  
            "I saw people near Katowice I know, a couple of Dutch people I saw (and), Greek people," he said. "It was a mess over there. We go in a school. I remember I walked out the gate over there and they told me go on that road and I was walking a couple miles, and a horse-and-buggy there comes by and they say you want to have a ride, and they took me naar [near] Katowice."
          After a couple of weeks in Katowice, it was on to Krakow, some 43 miles east of Katowice. Krakow, the hometown of a young man, Karol Wojtyla, who about that time there was beginning the priesthood journey that would culminate with him becoming Pope John Paul II.

          "... They said we have to go to Krakow, there was an organization (there)," Dad recalled. "And I cannot remember how I come from Katowice to Krakow; if we took a train. No, there was no train. Yeah, maybe there was a train. I cannot remember that time.
         "And in Krakow, there was wier [again] an old school and we spent time over there and we did the same we did in Katowice, begging in the street.
         "My friend was a boxer and he organized a boxing party with another boy, and we got some money and food."
         The interviewer asked, "Who did he fight?"
          "Somebody else," Dad answered, "and we got some money together. We stayed together a long time. He passed away now."
          Next: Romania, Russia ... then home (and heartbreak)

 

Gratitude for 67: It's only a number

Rachel posted this on Facebook two days ago ... one of the
two "selfies" I've ever taken; this one on her I-Pad.

       Rumor has it that today is my birthday. Rumor? Ha. Facebook has it, so obviously it's no secret.
        So thank you for all the birthday wishes. I appreciate everyone who takes the time to send greetings. Once a year, at least, we should feel special. I get more than my share of good feelings.
       This is my fourth Facebook birthday; it's funny -- a good funny -- to see the birthday messages begin coming in eight days ahead of time. It's my third birthday as a regular blogger, which is about all the work I do these days.
        And it's not really work; it's an incentive to continue writing and, as many of you know, to recount my life/work experiences and to share the story of my mother and father and their families -- especially as they relate to the days of the Holocaust.
         The previous two years I wrote blog pieces for my birthday; the first, at age 65, was about becoming eligible for Medicare and then turned into a Q&A with myself. Last year I wrote about my birthday and Father's Day falling on the same day -- first time that had happened in 11 years -- and I then listed a long series of birthday wishes, some serious, some whimsical. (OK, some stupid ... how's that?)
          Some of you might know that I do a daily gratitude journal and I generally keep it up to date. It is not for publication; no one has seen it but me ... and maybe someday my daughter and/or my wife will read through it and hopefully be pleasantly surprised.
          There is something to be grateful for every day. You don't have to think about it long.
          Many of my topics are family-oriented and sports-related, but the journal also extends to TV shows or movies or books or shows that I -- we, if Bea agrees -- have enjoyed.
          So I'm going to turn the rest of this blog into a gratitude journal, and I hope you can relate and enjoy it. Some of it will repeat thoughts of the previous birthday blogs (but then Bea reminds me that I tend to repeat myself repeatedly ... about everything).
          Here's what I'm grateful for ...
           -- Turning 67. Not so bad. Staying young mentally is a mindset and, except for days when I'm a little sore from exercising or after I didn't sleep well and feel tired, I get up with the intention of having a good day.
           -- Good health. (I know I'm repeating this from previous years). There is nothing like this, except ...
           -- My family. Bea, the kids, kids-in-law, three grandkids (my favorite role is being "Opa") ... and one to come in late August or early September. That baby boy already is on the gratitude list.
           -- Extended family ... my sister and her family, Bea's sisters and sister-in-law and all their crew. Fun to be around all of them, and it doesn't happen enough.
           -- Enough friends to last a lifetime -- the ones from Shreveport-Bossier and Sunset Acres, Oak Terrace, Woodlawn, Louisiana Tech, North Louisiana and the state in general, from Holland, those from the journalism/newspaper field, those from athletics, the Facebook friends ... and I still haven't covered them all. Nice to have.
           -- My teams. Oh, they all test me and -- no surprise here -- I detest losing as much as ever. But I think I've stayed loyal to them and I love following them as much as I always did. I also try more than ever not to let them dominate my life or my thinking. (Bea is laughing at this.)
           (That said, how about The Netherlands' opening game in this World Cup? Three days after my blog declaring the Oranje as "my first love in sports," that 5-1 rout of Spain -- defending champion Spain -- was glorious and unexpected. I don't want to get my hopes up too much, but ...)
           -- (Another aside: Forgive me if I'm not grateful for the Dallas Cowboys' owner and, damn, general manager. I don't want, or need, to elaborate. OK, so he's far from the worst owner in our major sports world -- there's this total whack job in the NBA, in Los Angeles -- but he's a big reason the fun is out of the NFL for me.)
            (Darn it, I meant to keep this positive. Sorry.)
           -- Journalism and athletics. For me, it was a perfect combination. I had passion for both, and they gave me a career. Yes, I have some regrets; no, there's not a thing I can do about it now, except look back with fondness at the positives.
           -- Books. I don't read daily newspapers anymore (I can explain, but don't want to here), so I've read more books in the past two years than maybe in 40 years combined. Plus, following daughter Rachel's example, we're doing audio books regularly. 
           -- A flat-screen TV. Our next addition, two weeks ago. Welcome to the 21st century. What now? Hi-def? Not yet.
           -- This country. We have our faults, we have our political battles, our social battles, there's too much division, too much poverty ... pick your complaints. I was so blessed to come here at age 8 1/2, with my family; I never take being an American -- naturalized -- lightly. I can't be President, so I don't have to worry about showing you my birth certificate.
           -- That birth certificate is written in Dutch. I also was blessed to be part of that little country seven hours to the east. I think it's at least the second-greatest country in the world.
           -- It's a year later, but my third trip back to The Netherlands -- but the first trip back with Bea -- is something for which I will always be grateful. That was a memorable two weeks.
           -- Speaking of trips, going back to Knoxville once or twice a year, to beautiful East Tennessee and to our girls up there, is a blessing. Plus, we go other places such as a wonderful (and long) journey to Savannah, Ga., recently.
           -- Being in Fort Worth has so many advantages. This is one of the best places to live in America -- a big place that's not overwhelming. Museums, the library, the symphony orchestra, Bass Hall, the zoo, Colonial Country Club, TCU, Stockyards, the libraries ... I could keep going. Everyday life here is good.
           -- My daily walks, whether it's hot or cold or windy (don't like it). I love the warm/hot weather, but I've gone in the snow or rain, too. Lately, at the physician's suggestion, I've added a little work (very little) in the gym several times a week. Plus, in the summer, there's some laps in the pool. I'm not terribly fit, but I'm not unfit.
           -- Facebook, Twitter. They're fun ... most days.
           -- The blog. It's fun to do and I've tried to do at least two pieces a week. Don't know how much longer I can do that, or want to. I'm trying to recap my career, but I also want to stay current. Some things I write will appeal to a wider audience; some things won't. Main goal is I want to stay mostly positive; no use being too critical of anybody or anything. (Don't bring up the Cowboys' owner, OK.)        
            I could go on and on, but I'll save some for my 68th birthday. But one more gratitude ...
           -- My parents. The blog has become a place to honor their lives, to recap their stories. I want the kids and grandkids to have these stories on record, so I hope the readers understand that. And the lessons of their lives, and of the Holocaust, should not be forgotten.  
           
                                 
        

 

The Oranje: Hup, Holland, Hup

Robin Van Persie: The Netherlands' world-class scorer ...
our biggest World Cup hope (photo from www.sbnation.com)

      It is my ultimate sports dream: The Netherlands as the world champion of soccer.
   It could happen in the next month. Not likely to, but when the Oranje plays, you never know. We've been so close before ... three times.
   The 2014 World Cup begins Thursday in Brazil, Friday for my team. And it will be a heckuva opening challenge: A rematch with mighty Spain, a rematch of the 2010 championship game that Spain -- deservedly but also luckily -- won 1-0 in overtime, with the goal in the 114th of 120 minutes of play.
     Another heartbreak for the Dutch. We've been there before.
     Anyone who knows me well knows that I am a passionate fan of the Yankees, LSU, Louisiana Tech, the Cowboys (when I can stand it), but above all, The Netherlands' national soccer team.
     That's my first love, that's the team I've rooted for since I was 5 years old in my native Amsterdam. That's my home country team.
     I love the traditional uniform -- bright orange shirts, white shorts, orange socks. I love the fight song, Hup Holland Hup; I've known the words since I first heard them, repeatedly, listening to games on the radio; I know the national anthem, Wilhelmus.
     I know that my dad loved all this, too. He learned to love American sports, but like me, soccer is what he knew first and knew best.
     If you know anything about soccer -- or care -- you know that The Netherlands, despite being one of the smallest countries geographically and population-wise in the soccer world, has been one of the great powers for 40 years. The Dutch teams are always respected.
---
     Don't mistake this: I certainly will be pulling for the United States team in this World Cup because I am proud American citizen. But in soccer, in voetbal, Holland has a much greater chance to succeed than the U.S. History tells us that.
     The Americans, to be frank, will be challenged to win one game in the "group of death." The Netherlands' draw, aside from Spain, appears easier. 
    But  this Dutch team doesn't appear to be nearly as strong as four years ago. The 2010 team was a bit of a surprise, but it kept improving and kept fighting, and kept thrilling the millions of fans back home.
    And thrilling one Fort Worth resident who could not have been prouder. I am still as big a fan of Dutch teams and athletes as I was 60 years ago.
    I figure that if our soccer team can perform as well as the Dutch speed skaters did in this year's Winter Olympics, we will be world champions.
    Those who saw my Facebook posts -- those who cared -- on the Olympics early this year saw the repeated photos and celebratory notes. Holland dominated long-track speed skating -- it won 23 of the 36 total medals, eight of the 12 gold medals.
    It meant something to me because my first sports hero was a Dutch speed skater, Kees Broekman, winner of two silver medals in the 1952 Winter Olympics.
     As proud as we were of those speed skaters, as I told several friends during the Winter Olympics, I'd still rather see Holland win the world championship of soccer.
---         
     The rise of the Dutch soccer empire is remarkable, really, considering how weak the country's status in the sport was when I was a little boy there. Until 1954, there were no professional clubs there; the top clubs were semipro at best.
     But the evolution of the pro clubs there, the amount of money spent on player development and eventually the money paid to players, paid off with the kids born in my generation, the baby boomers.
      By the early 1970s they made up the famed "Clockwork Orange" teams, known for their "total football" approach, players who could attack and defend and play with discipline all over the field, known for their precision short-passing game, a quick-striking offense and rugged defensive style.  
      (Soccer, many American friends have told me, is boring. It can be. It also can be ugly with shoddy officiating, too much complaining, too many intentional fouls, and no sports' players are better at "flopping," faking spills or exaggerating the extent of injuries. That's a disgusting part of the game. Holland's teams and games, though, aren't often boring.)
      In 1974 and 1978, the Dutch -- never before a factor in World Cup play -- reached the championship games, only to lose to the host country -- West Germany (2-1) and then Argentina (3-1 in overtime).
      Look, I'm not into alibis. But we had the best team in 1974 -- no one will convince me otherwise -- and we dominated most of the final game, but the West Germans held tough. The Dutch effort in the final at Argentina, before a totally crazy partisan crowd, was just as great. There are times when it's not meant to be.
        Like the Yankees' World Series champions of 1977-78, those Dutch players were my guys, all about my age, Johan Cruyff, considered the greatest Dutch soccer player ever (although Abe Lenstra was the hero of my boyhood and is a legend), was born 1 1/2 months before I was in Amsterdam.
        Holland's greatest soccer success was the 1988 European Championship -- a wonderful team led by the exciting Ruud Gullit, Marco Van Basten, Ronald Koeman, Frank Rijkaard and goalie Hans van Breukelen.
        That team should have fared better in the 1990 World Cup, but lost to the eventual champion West Germans; the 1994 team lost to eventual champion Brazil in a thrilling game in Dallas -- Dad and I got to see two group-stage games in Orlando, with Dad thrilled to have a seat right behind the Dutch bench for one game. The 1998 team, led by the brilliant Dennis Bergkamp, reached the semifinals and lost a penalty-kick shootout to Brazil.
        So close so many times, so many difficult losses.
---
        The Dutch teams, good as they have been at times, always have had a reputation for in-fighting, dissension, difficulty with coaches and management, and at times, rough play.
        But the 2010 team was a wonderfully tight-knit team that made big plays, scored big goals game after game. The 2-1 quarterfinal victory over old nemesis Brazil, a comeback from a 1-0 halftime deficit, was one of the greatest Dutch victories.
         Yes, the final against a skilled, superb Spanish team was a brutal, at times violent, outing. It was hard to watch our players resort to that, but they figured that was the only way it could stay in the game.   

The Dutch fans are known for their passion, and
their zaniness (photo from worldblog.nbcnews.com)

        We had one great chance to win it. Arjen Robben -- our speedy dribbling demon and longtime threat -- had a breakaway and the Spanish goalie got lucky, stuck out a foot and barely deflected the ball away before Robben could lift it over and past him.
         Robben is one of only six players from that squad on this year's Netherlands team. Louis Van Gaal, in his two years, as the team's coach -- he's headed to the world's most famous team, Manchester United, after this tournament -- has upended the roster and has a young, internationally inexperienced nucleus.
       Two other returning stars are Robin Van Persie, a world-class scorer and our biggest hope, and Wesley Sneijder, a little midfielder who was a giant in 2010. But both of them, I read, are dealing with leg issues. (We're without three would-be starters who are injured.)
          A memorable aspect of the 2010 journey was the aftermath. The Dutch team flew home from South Africa to heroes' welcome -- a meeting and photo op with the queen, a boat parade through the canals of Amsterdam and then a joyous celebration at the city's museum plaza with hundreds of thousands of fans, almost all wearing orange.
          The team was welcomed like champions, and deservedly so.
         And the fans ... Holland's fans, for most any sport, are known for their passion, their orange, and their fun-loving, zany ways. Frankly, collectively, they're nuts. I think LSU fans have the same type reputation. Throw in arrogance, and you have the Yankees' fans.
          As the Dutch players, and the fans, sang and danced in 2010, an announcer asked Robben -- the would-be hero -- how he felt.
           "This is unbelievable," he told the crowd. "... Spain might be the world champions, but we have the best fans in the whole world."
         I agree, and I am one of them, and proud of it.  
                 
 

D-Day: the day of a lifetime

          (23rd in a series)
          It was the most monumental day in the modern world's history, and the reason I say that is because that's what my Dad always told me.
         If not for the events of June 6, 1944 -- a day of great heroism and great tragedy -- Dad likely would not have been a Holocaust survivor. Same for my mother.
         Because they survived, because of the unprecedented surge of military force on a foreign shore, my life became a reality three years and 10 days later.

The American cemetery at Normandy
(from commons.wikimedia.org)

         Without the D-Day invasion, without those American, Canadian and British troops storming the beaches in Normandy, France, and marking the turning point of World War II, what would have happened?
         Who knows how much longer they and the fellow concentration-camp prisoners at Auschwitz-Birkenau or, in Dad's case, the Janina mining camp, would have survived the Nazi hell.
          My Dad, and my mother, were forever grateful for D-Day. As soon as he thought I was old enough to understand, Dad explained how much June 6, 1944, meant to him and to us. And, of course, to the whole world.
          We talked about it over the years, especially on June 6, but I don't remember what, or if, he talked about the question that's on my mind now, one of those hundreds of questions I wish I could go back and ask.
           When did the people being held in the concentration camps, people like my parents for whom the outside world had been closed by the Nazis for almost two years and who had been under German control for more than four years, learn about D-Day?
           They must have, I am guessing, heard rumors in the camps or noticed the increased worry shown by the SS and other Nazi guards. Dad alluded to that in his 1996 USC Shoah Foundation interview on the Holocaust when he noted that in June 1944 the prisoners in his camp were forced to stand at attention for 24 hours.
           It took another half year, with the prisoners' physical and mental conditions deteriorating even more than they already had and the Germans becoming more desperate -- it was obvious by then they were not going to "win" the war -- before the Allied forces, the Russians from the right and the (mostly) Americans from the left -- discovered the camps.
           They found the harrowing barracks and heavily fenced-in enclosures and -- yes -- the gas chambers, with the smell of death, all around ... and the survivors, many of them devastated and clinging to life.
           Dad was one of those, probably in better condition than many. It was the Russian Army that came into the camp hospital at Janina where he and 27 others remained when the Nazis bolted in January 1945.
           My mother also was rescued by the Russians after she and a dozen other women from Auschwitz's infamous Block 10 -- the medical-experiment block -- had been forced to walk through the southern Poland woods for a couple of weeks. 
            In both my parents' cases, the Russian Army provided some basic necessities but not much comfort. My Dad began a circuitous route back home -- Antwerp, Belgium -- where he'd been living with his first wife before the German occupation.
            My mother and her buddies were told by the Russians that an American Army camp was nearby, and they went there to receive -- as my mother always told it -- royal treatment. There, she decided, America was a place she wanted to live.
            They would not have been there without the D-Day invasion. I think it's natural to assume that.   
---
              I am no student of wars and, frankly, don't relish reading about their history. I read enough about World War II and the concentration camps because I've heard about them almost all my life and because I needed background for writing the chapters in my Dad's Holocaust story.
             In preparing to write about D-Day, I read some Internet stories and watched a few minutes of a couple of YouTube videos. It was difficult.
             I have always thought of the nearly impossible mission the Allied forces had storming those beaches, with the German machine guns set up to mow them down.
             It took wave after wave of men jumping from the boats into water deep enough to drown many with their packs of equipment sending them to the bottom and, if they surfaced, making their way to the sand, somehow dodging bullets hitting rapid-fire all around, and then fighting through obstacles such as hedgehogs and stakes and a sea wall and rows of barbed wire ... and land mines.
             How the heck did they do that?
             I could go on and give you the facts and figures, the details, but there are a hundred thousand sources for that. I just marvel at how it all happened.
---
             When the movie The Longest Day came out in 1962, it was billed as the story of D-Day. My Mom and Dad wanted to see it; for some reason -- I guess because they thought we could handle it -- they took (my sister) Elsa and me along. We saw it, as I recall, at the old Sunset (Acres) Drive-In in Shreveport.
             Tell you now, I couldn't handle it. I've not forgotten how uncomfortable it made me. Never wanted to see it again.
             I looked this up online to recall the movie. This was a helluva production, the story told from the Allied and German perspectives, with a spectacular cast. The billed stars, from imdb.com, were John Wayne, Robert Ryan, Richard Burton and Henry Fonda. Some of the other notables in the cast (alphabetically): Eddie Albert, Paul Anka, Red Buttons, Sean Connery (he wasn't yet Mr. Bond), Richard Dawson, Fabian, Mel Ferrer, Peter Lawford, Roddy McDowell, Sal Mineo, Robert Mitchum, Tommy Sands, George Segal, Rod Steiger, Robert Wagner.         
             Here's what I remember most: The scenes of the men crossing the beach, stepping on the land mines and being blown away. Too graphic for me then. Six years later, that scene would play out in real life, in Vietnam, to Trey Prather, a good friend and one of the greatest athletes I've known.
             The Longest Day and the "greatest generation" (thank you, Tom Brokaw, who helped made that term for those World War II veterans a common expression). That was D-Day.    
---
            On June 6, 1944, Dad was exactly one month short of 25 years old. My mother was 22. Dad lived another 64 years; Mom lived another 66. Without D-Day, who knows?
             It strikes me today -- on the 70th anniversary of D-Day and as some of the world leaders and the veterans of the invasion gathered on the beaches at Normandy to honor the day -- that most of the Holocaust survivors and most of the men in the armed forces have left us.
              Even the veterans who might've fudged their age and enrolled in the military before they were 18 are nearly 90 now. But as they leave us, it is up to the generations who followed to honor their memory -- and we will.
              God bless those people, the leaders' vision and the courage of the men who carried it out and ended the insanity of World War II. God bless those who were lost on D-Day and those who survived ... including the two people who gave me life.
              Greatest generation indeed. Monumental day. My Dad told me that.
              Next: Finding the way back (but heartbreak, too)