Please Stop Improving Things

When the Coke machine where I work broke down, I was delighted.

We live in an amazing age of consumer products with new ones entering the marketplace every day. There does not seem to be any new product that cannot be “improved” within a few months.

I recently fixed a friend’s laptop. It had a virus too tenacious for normal software to screen and then eliminate. Normally, cleaning a computer is easy but I had to contend with Windows 8. You know, an improved Windows 7, an improvement of Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows ME, Windows 98, Windows 95, Windows (1.0, 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 3.1).

When I first worked on a computer, I word processed in an IBM program called DisplayWrite, version 1.0. I enjoyed it because it was simple and straightforward. IBM improved it but by the time DisplayWrite 4 came out, the program was, for me, unusable. IBM improved it so much they killed it.

But what does this have to do with a Coke machine?

When I was a laboratory gopher the summer of my sophomore year in high school, I had a slew of duties at the lab in between getting to do some really exciting projects, one which was for the Apollo Program related to the Moon rocks we were to bring back from the five lunar landings. As they say, “that’s a story for another day.”

 Among my mundane duties was acting as the projectionist for slide shows when graduate students were required to make a presentation. Another one was walking around the earth station’s campus retrieving articles left behind by my absent minded professor boss, Dr. Paul Gast. He was a brilliant scientist but when it rained he’d leave his raincoat in one building, his umbrella in another and his galoshes in a third. My job was to go on a scavenger hunt to find these droppings, and of course, there were more droppings on rainy days.

[Dr. Gast was so absent-minded that he always ate the lunch his wife packed as soon as he arrived at work so he wouldn’t forget to eat at lunch time. I often wonder how he remembered to do that first thing in the morning.]

And then there was the job refilling the Coke machine. One key opened the small compartment on the front of the machine. Just below the mechanism that recorded the coin total was a small metal box usually filled with mostly dimes and nickels. I would take the money and give it to Dr. Gast’s secretary. The compartment was then closed and locked and the entire front of the machine hinged open where I would reload the Cokes. The inside of the machine had a metal conveyor belt that ran all around the cold refrigerator section, which was at the center.

The machine I filled at the lab.

Each belt of the conveyor held a Coke, the glass bottle neck stuck out through metal leaves that resembled a camera lense. After the machine decided you paid the correct amount, it relaxed the leaves so you could manually pull the bottle out. A silver crank lever, prominently centered on the machine would push down, advancing the conveyor belt, moving the next bottle into position, behind a silver door.

The whole idea of the machine was so simple that Coca-Cola could not resist improving. Now, 48 years later, we have the model in our pantry that has broken down. This is the machine with about 5 rows of soda or canned drinks and when you deposit your money you will be treated to a stupendous display of unnecessary machine maneuvers which will take several seconds before you receive your order. First you have to feed money into the machine but woe unto thee if thou selectith your Coke too quickly.

The improved machine

 The computer will not spit product unless it takes a moment to count up what you shoved in and then displays it on the digital readout. If you punch a selection too fast, the machine is too slow and confused to do anything about it. The machine, mind you, has enough electronics, which if rearranged, could perform a lunar docking procedure and bring men back successfully from the Moon. But as assembled and configured here, data entry at too fast a pace just confuses poor HAL.

Apollo 11 Command Capsule

at the Smithsonian

But let’s assume you had a momentary pause of patience, you put the correct amount of money for the purchase down its metal throat, and now like a stick thrown to a dog, the machine hurriedly goes off on a jaunt for your bottle of Coke. It reminds me of when you have a stick or ball and the anxious dog gets so excited he doesn’t know where to go. He follows your hand as you feign a throw in several different directions before releasing the stick or ball.

The machine goes berserk, this plastic cupping holder races up and down the rows, searching for the selection. Then it excitedly brings it proudly back to the tiny side door but not after almost missing the level of the door. It jerks up and down zeroing in on the exact level to equal the door’s opening. The Coke drops with a clank-thud on the floor of a plastic teeter-totter which then angles out, presenting you with your purchase. All in a mechanical expression of “look what I just did—how cool is this?”

I stand in awe of how much energy I just burned to get a Coke in 2014 compared to almost negligible energy when I bought that same Coke in 1967 (Oh, remember, they tried to improve on that Coke in 1985 but then gave up). I realize I just witnessed enough energy being burned to make a Prius owner blush. Moreover, this improved machine made me wait about ten times as long to get my Coke as the Coke 1.0 version.

WALL-E

When the machine broke the last time, the plastic arm sat in frozen animation for about 10 days before people in the mother ship got the message that this particular machine wasn’t burning enough electricity to light up an Iraq village. Sometime during my vacation last week they fixed WALL-E and now we can watch a dazzling mechanical show as we wait for our Coke to  be delivered, making a journey of about 10 feet instead of moving 5 inches in under a half second.

I sure hope they stop improving things.

Rocky Colavito and the Gods of Baseball

 Like many kids, I went to my first baseball game with my father and grandfather. I was young—seven or eight years old—and most of that day was forgotten. More than a half a century later, some memories still remain. Connie Mach Stadium still had poles in the stands, much like Yankee Stadium did before several renovations. Yankee Stadium they renovate, Connie Mack, with a much more elegant, classic entrance, they tear down.

Note the poles in both Connie Mack's decks

                     An elegant entrance - originally Shibe Park

 

Pennsylvania was a national league state, Phillies and Pirates. The Yankees were in the other league, the “Junior Circuit,” not around as long as the National League. Now not much separates the leagues except the notion that when your career as a fielder is over you go to the old age farm of designated hitters in the AL, banished forever from the league where pitchers know how to bat.

National Leaguers rarely paid close attention to the other league except when they intersected (the years before inter-league play started in 1997) at the annual All-Star Game and the World Series. My family moved from Pennsylvania to a New Jersey battleground fought over by Mets and Yankees fans. The Mets were the new kids on the block. The Yankees establishment was pushing back. I was quite happy to be neutral in that war.

The “Big Men on Campus” in my old neighborhood were a doctor, a dentist and a disabled WWII veteran who had an injury that required crutches. He sat on his front porch every day and taught neighborhood kids how to play chess. Doctors and dentists weren’t the most exciting people and as a kid, people you wanted to avoid—think polio booster shots and tooth fillings.

Everything in the New York metro area seemed larger than life and more exciting. My new neighborhood had scientists, professional musicians, a ski jumper from Norway, entertainers, international businessmen, and Yankees first baseman Moose Skowron. Our moving vans nearly clipped each other because he was moving out at nearly the same time as we were moving in and if you had told me we were neighbors of Moose Skowron then, I would probably have thought you were talking about hunting and fishing. Remember, I was from the National League.

Moose made a visit to my eight grade class one day when he was running his morning errands. He spoke about 20 minutes and fielded questions. I remember him as being very gracious and modest, amazing as one of the gods of baseball.  His son, Greg, was a fifth-grade classmate of my younger brother, Dennis. If I turned around in my seat, I could talk to John Lopat, the son of Yankee legend, Eddie Lopat, “The Junk Man” (called that because he threw a lot of off-speed pitches). John introduced himself to me within a few days of my arrival at the new school. He made no mention to me that his father was a Yankee pitcher and none of my synapses connected the name “Lopat” to the Yankees. He eventually invited me to go as his guest to a baseball game with two other classmates. It was 1964 and his father at that time was a scout for the White Sox. His 12-year major league career included being part of the "Big Three" Yankee pitching rotation from 1951-53. When his playing career ended, he managed the Kansas City A’s and later left that organization when the A’s moved to LA in 1967. How many kids can say they went to their first Yankee game with a guy who pitched in seven World Series games with the Yankees?

                              Mickey Mantle and Rocky Colavito

 The Yankees just weren’t on my radar. When we lived in Reading, after a business trip, my well-intentioned uncle gave my older brother, Phil, a Yankees tee shirt. He stopped wearing it around classmates under threats of being beat up. The bubble gum we bought in Pennsylvania had few American League baseball cards, usually duplicates of bench players for the Minnesota Twins. What do you do with three or four copies of  Zoilo Versalles? The odds of getting Mickey Mantle were astronomical. To trade Zoilo Versalles, who played for the highly-devalued Twins, for one Mickey Mantle would be like those photos taken during the Great Depression with Germans toting wheelbarrows full of German marks.

 

The Zoilo Versalles for one Mantle deal

When my son, Matt, was still in high school, I received an invitation for a group outing to Yankee Stadium so we went. My grad school alumni association put together a wonderful event, especially for a Yankees fan like my son. We drove to Jersey City and parked in St. Peter’s Alumni House lot just off Kennedy Boulevard. There was a cocktail party in full swing and we mingled with alumni of all ages. Two hours before the first pitch,  we boarded a luxury bus with individual video screens playing Field of Dreams. Lunch was served in the “Legends Club” and Matt was impressed. White-gloved chefs with tall linen hats used tongs to place huge hamburgers into perfect buns. I had never seen that done to a hamburger—it reminded me of Seinfeld’s episode eating Snickers bars with a knife and fork. On the walls, the gods of baseball were captured in massive, life-sized oil paintings. It struck me that one of these was Eddie Lopat on the mound. I don’t remember much else about the game that afternoon except seeing that magnificent oil painting of John’s father.

                      Yankee Legend Eddie Lopat

Baseball is a family tradition, a generational bonding between father and son. I remember one of my son’s little league practices and shagging balls in the outfield. The other coach hit a long fly to left center and somehow with an extended outstretched swat, I caught the ball on the dead run, not even sure it was in my glove and then wind milled my arms to keep from falling. I recovered my stride and then threw it in like it was something I did every day as a matter of routine. I can remember my son’s excited voice carrying all the way out there, “That was my Dad.” Some things you file away in your heart’s memory bank.

Going to baseball games is all about the tradition of father, son, and grandfather attending together, passing the baseball torch. People who know me chuckle when I mention memories and food because they know how I enjoy simple fare and lots of it. I don’t remember much about that day at Connie Mack but I remember stopping at a classic diner on the way home and sitting on a stool at the counter having a hamburger with my dad and grand-pop. I like to think it was the 5^th Street Diner in Temple or maybe the Queen Diner on Morgantown Road, two logical places on the route to Philly from Reading, but it was probably just a quick stop at any one of those millions of shiny aluminum Pullman car style diners all over America.

 I remember going to Reading Indians games with my father and one game in particular when a foul ball came straight back and cleared the backstop. We all stood up and my father, who was quite tall, reached up and the ball missed his hand by a few inches, pretty much a metaphor for the type of luck my family usually had. 

     Pop-pop umpiring a softball game in "the Grove."

My maternal grandfather, Clarence P. Bowers, was a lot of things—an industrialist, an innovator, a politician, a racing horse owner, an aviator, a neighbor of Al Capone in Fort Lauderdale, and a catalyst in Reading for the grand things that needed doing. He sponsored industrial league baseball teams. He was a pioneer in the manufacture of car batteries, known worldwide for his innovations. He chaired the board that developed the municipal airport—he had a company pilot on call for his twin-engine corporate plane. He was instrumental in bringing professional baseball to Reading, a city of about 110,000 people at the time. 

Heavy cotton jersey from one of Pop-pop's Industrial teams.

 

Snazzy air holes for ventilation.

Pop-pop, as we called him, was way out ahead of Kevin Costner. Professional baseball was gone from Reading for several years and the outlook of getting a team back was bleak. He felt that if Reading built a major league caliber ballpark, some franchise could be enticed to make Reading a member of their farm system. On spec, he and others on a board (called “The Old Timers”) started a movement to build Reading’s stadium. It worked. The Cleveland Indians took the bait deciding to take a ride on the Reading. That enabled the planets to align creating another one of my encounters with the gods of baseball. Reading became Cleveland’s Single-A team halfway through the 1952 season.

       My grandfather's name is fourth from the top.

 The plaque is on the wall just left of the ticket window

In 1954, the Indians were in the World Series and there were local, Reading stars, in the series. One, Vic Wertz, never played for Reading. He graduated from Reading High, but his path to the Cleveland Indians took another path because the Reading Indians didn’t exist at the time he came out of the minor leagues. Vic Wertz will always be paired with the catch Willie Mays made in Game 1 which might have decided that World Series. The bigger local hero* at that time was Carl Furillo, the "Reading Rifle," known for his laser throws from right field. One season he threw out seven runners who rounded first too wide. The Dodgers, channeling an inner Yankees’ greed, bought the entire Reading franchise so they could acquire his rights in 1940. Baseball disappeared from Reading for a few years after that until my grandfather helped bring it back.

Rocky Colavito did play for one season for Reading, on his way to stardom in the major leagues. During that season he met a local girl, Carmen Perroti, from Temple (about 4 miles from the center of Reading) They met in 1953 and were married in 54 and the couple makes their home in the Reading area today. When I lived in Laureldale, my parish was Holy Guardian Angels. Laureldale was a suburb was about 3 miles from Reading and Temple was the next town north. After that, there were cornfields until you reached Kutztown. Philly was 58 miles to the south.

 

Rocky with his wife, Carmen

         My parish was predominantly Irish and Italians. The Germans in the area were generally Lutheran, so being a Pennsylvania  German, I was in a minority at my Catholic grade school. During the off season, Rocky sometimes attended my church. He was the original Italian Stallion—tall, dark, handsome, muscular and a famous baseball player. In the late 50’s, during my baseball formative years, he was a god of baseball—for me—the original. Just watching him out of uniform, I felt that he stood out among the lesser mortals. Actually he did—so tall, so young and handsome. He could have been an iceman like his father and he still would have stood out. But to a little boy, a baseball player… was a god.

  

I wonder what the going price was for Rocky's card?

I had other close encounters with the gods of baseball in New Jersey. One night during the summer before my senior year in college, my parents were hosting a couple in their church bridge group. They belonged to a small group that circulated at a different home each month. That night they were hosting the Kucks. My bedroom was downstairs. I was going out for the night but before leaving I did the polite thing and came up and introduced myself and exchanged small talk before heading out. The next day, my dad remarked that I seemed almost nonchalant when we had a former star pitcher for the Yankees in our living room. The American League was the other league so I had no idea that Johnny Kucks had played seven seasons for the Yankees and was the winning pitcher of Game 7 in the 1955 World Series. In my living room, he didn’t look like one of the gods of baseball. Years later, in 1980 when I was covering the New Jersey State high school basketball finals, I watched his daughter, Rebecca, win that championship. Small world.

 

Johnny Kucks with Yogi Berra

 As an adult I’d like to think that my next encounter with one of these gods, would not turn me into a nervous, stuttering worshiper. I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t. The years reporting for the newspaper might have taken an edge off that but I do remember getting anxious when I interviewed people like Bill Bradley (as a US Senator, not as a New York Knick) Mario Andretti, Virginia Wade, and movie director Jon Landis (Animal House, The Blues Brothers). And I do remember being fascinated by getting up close with stars like Nancy Lopez, Peggy Flemming and Dorothy Hamill but I was in my late 20’s and they were still gods to me. Now I recognize that we idolize these people for their exceptional physical skills when they are just like you and me except exceptionally good at what they do. What matters in one realm is inconsequential in another and when you are young, they are gods, like Rocky Colavito.

                                   Tall, dark and handsome

________________________________________

NOTE: Scores of major leaguers played for Reading over the years, too many to treat fairly in this space. Among them: Whitey Kurowski, Roger Maris, Pat Burrell, Brett Myers,  Mike Schmidt, Greg Luzinski, Larry Bowa, Bob Boone, John Kruk and Robin Roberts. Also Note that the American League's Philadelphia A's shared the same park up until 1954 when they moved to Kansas City, so Philly was essentially a National League and American League City. By the time I reached the age of reason, Philly was solely a National League city.

The Little Rink Around the Corner

Every four years, the Olympics turn me into a couch potato.  Of course, I look forward to the skiing but I live for the ice hockey. In my odd sports path to the mountains of New Jersey, I've take the strangest of routes. Hockey is my favorite sport to play and the Olympics, my favorite showcase for the sport. I have a weird, connected history there.

I sometimes imagine how different my life would have been if my parents had raised me rebuilding car engines or sailing or cycling. But they chose to drag me out on the ice, on a pond in Dauberville, Pennsylvania, sometimes kicking and screaming, but always freezing in the cold. The given with skating is to have ice thick enough for skating it has to be bone-chilling cold. I remember the attempts, well-intended I’m sure, when my parents tried to get us to take a sip of brandy because it would “keep us warm”—that was like forcing castor oil on us.  But I also remember that we always refused the stuff and wound up on the ice anyway—chilled to the bone.

The building that housed the rink—2008 photo

 

Where we played hockey in Reading was just a few blocks from the original Boscov’s store. Now it’s a giant chain but then it was a short turn from the corner diner. Turn right you’re at Boscovs. Turn left and just before you hit Albright College, you had to pass McKellen’s rink. The McKellen’s were interesting people. Leila and Gorden, Sr.—nobody called him Gordon—opened the rink in the 50s. I was stunned to find a 1955 photo on the internet of Tuffy standing in front  of the “ice skating studio.” There was no truth to the rumor that he was a Munchkin in the Wizard of Oz but then you couldn't help wondering when you saw his underwhelming, less-than-five-feet-of-him-stature. But he was called “Tuffy” for a reason. Devilishly handsome—and you never saw him not smiling—you knew, deep down, that you didn't want to meet him in a dark alley. He seemed to be one, huge, muscle and he gave off the aura that packed in that smallish frame was immense stored power.

Tuffy met Leila, his beautiful wife, when she was skating in the Ice Follies and he was an acrobat act with his brother, Gil. They could do a hand-to-hand handstand on ice. Let’s think about that a moment. Picture Gil on skates, his hands strait up in the air. Now picture Tuffy upside down his hands straight down, “standing” on top of Gil’s hands. On ice, moving. Whaaaaaat?

In this photo they are not doing their handstand, but that trick is listed in Ripley's "Believe It or Not."

Tuffy and Leila settled down in Reading (for God knows what reason) and they opened a small rink. Their son, Gordie, became our Men’s National Champion figure skater and represented the US at the 1972 Sapporo Olympics where he came in fourth.

The rink in 1955- that's Tuffy in front

Sometime in 1962, the McKellens decided to start a youth hockey program and put an ad in the Reading Eagle which my mother saw and immediately signed up my older brother. He was three years older at 14 and, for a winter, my younger brother and I ate our hearts out watching Phil play hockey. The following year, Dennis and I were primed for the “world’s fastest game” (I laugh when I hear lacrosse called that—my apologies to my lacrosse friends). In the rink there was a large, framed photo, of Gordie with blades on his baby shoes. He must have been 11 months. He was being held up between his mother and father as they squatted on the ice. I think that photo put ideas in my mom's head. We were all on skates by our third birthday.

In 1976, the sign read "future home" and we were thrilled.

We played from October to April, every Sunday (except holidays) There were four teams, each with six players. Every sixth week you had to play goal, which I hated and proved myself to be worthless. I once gave up 14 goals, most on breakaways by John Dillingham, a 3-year older and very skilled player. If I hadn't given up 14 goals to John, I believe the most goals I would have yielded would have been 8-10. The goal had yellow tape 15 inches up each post. Shots above the imaginary line were disallowed. John didn't need to go high on me—I had enough holes already close to the ice.

During the winter of 1963, we played every Sunday—figure about 28 Sunday games and we also played on a road team that went 15-1-2. If you don’t count road team practices, we played 46 games and traveled all around southeast Pennsylvania. My favorite games were the ones played in Hershey Arena and at the private prep school in Pottstown, The Hill School (think Choate and Exeter).

 Our team, with 16-year-olds and 13-year-olds trashed their high school prep team.

Then we moved to hockey’s wasteland—New Jersey. I left a system where we played about 50 times a year to a place that had two ice rinks in all of northern New Jersey and no hockey programs. To boot, nobody seemed to know how to skate. That was obvious the first winter we found the local ponds filled with kids who could just barely stand up, let alone play hockey. To us, it was a joke. Kids had heard of hockey and they owned sticks purchased at the local hardware store but they were clueless how to dribble or carry the puck.

In this waste land, taking your skates to a hardware for sharpening was making a death wish for your blades. Skates not sharpened at a rink were doomed to the ignorance of whomever wasn't busy selling snow shovels and nails to waiting customers. My first sharpening at the hardware store in Hillsdale was my last and it almost cost my high school a victory. I spent two periods scrapping the edge off my blades on the wooden boards until I could dull them enough to get on the ice to tie and then score the winning goal, both in the last two minutes of the game.

My hockey-rabid family moved to a hockey wasteland and had to wait three years for hockey to catch on. The New York Rangers were on television every Saturday night so the locals had no excuse of not knowing the game. In Pennsylvania we did not have hockey on TV but were lucky that the McKellens came to town. There were lots of hockey programs in Pennsylvania in places like Hershey, Philadelphia, Lancaster, Palmyra, Middletown, Pottstown, Wyomissing, Conshohocken and Wissahickon - that was our road schedule. Northern New Jersey had a rink in Westwood (small and square) and another in South Orange. The next closest rinks were Morristown (an hour to the west), Brick Township, down the Shore, and at Low Tor, near Haverstraw, a 45-minute drive to the north.

We became big fish in a very small pond. It was like we were playing basketball, seven-footers against midgets. My younger brother and I would go on a pond with at least 40 kids playing hockey, and he and I could play keep away. Nobody could take the puck from us. It was weird. This was our sport. Hockey was year-around for us. During the summer we varnished and waxed wooden boards so we could practice “lifting” the puck and honing our shot. A friend of ours, a very good lacrosse player, moved to Colorado. One of his first days at high school, the football coach asked him in the hall what sport he played and he answered “lacrosse” and the coach said, “what’s that?” We understood that and empathized.

The McKellens moved to Lake Placid the year after we moved from Reading. Their son outgrew the Reading rink and commuted to Philadelphia every day to practice his figures. The McKellens opened a lodge where they boarded skaters and other training Olympians since Lake Placid had all of the facilities from the 1932 Olympic games still in use. We traveled there every year for the days after Christmas until New Year’s skiing, tobogganing, X-country skiing, and bobsledding.

My brother, Phil, survived his ride in 1967.

 My brother Phil was the lone bobsledder, deciding to take a chance and put his life in the hands of a brakeman and a steer man, who agreed to take two passengers for ten dollars. Phil said that was better than any roller coaster ride he had ever taken before and I imagine that has held up to this day.

Part of the fun of staying with the McKellens was meeting the Olympians-in-training. We could extract all sorts of trade secrets from ski jumpers and bobsledders. We also met several nationally-ranked skaters. By Sapporo, we knew or met most of the national team. The TV room of the lodge had an entire wall of glass casement displaying all of Gordie’s trophies. Of course, the best one was the huge cup he received as National Senior Champion.

When Lake Placid placed the successful bid for the 1980 games, we were ecstatic. Lake Placid was (and is) the perfect place to stage the games. Our favorite Olympic sport to be played in our favorite place. Hockey and Lake Placid, to that point, was our family’s guilty little secret. Our friends had no idea of the special meaning for us of  having the games in Lake Placid. When you consider the Miracle on Ice occurred during that Olympics, our enjoyment was taken to  a whole new level.

This is how we all felt about the Russians in 1980

Every four years, all these memories get dredged up. When memories are so deep-rooted, how could they not surface? I don’t care now about the hockey games  as deeply as I did when Russia dominated North American hockey with their skewed rules and unfair competitive advantages. True. I do prefer gold medals to silver or bronze, or in this year, no medal at all.

Back then, during the 70s, it was sweet to triumph despite all odds. It was great when the Philadelphia Fliers crushed the Soviet Union after they were having their way with the rest of the NHL. Only the Canadians and the Buffalo Sabers put up any kind of fight—the rest of the NHL got outright embarrassed. Being from the Philly area, you can imagine our chests being puffed out when the Fliers won. When the Fliers seemed assured of victory,  a fan held up a sign I’ll never forget. It read “Bring on the Martians.”

 But Lake Placid, our winter home away from home, and our favorite sport—that was the absolute best. Of course we believed in miracles; where else could the greatest upset in sports history occur?

__________________________________

Author’s note: Lake Placid has an interest in the 2026 Olympics. Cross your fingers.

The Loyola Legend—A Man Among Greyhounds

Before there was Cousy, before Pistol, Magic and Michael Jordan, there was Jim Lacy.

I have little doubt that most people have never heard his name and most underclassmen at Loyola University Maryland have no idea who he was or of his importance to their basketball program.

My first brush with the name came my freshman year at Loyola. My best friend, John Davis, pointed out Lacy’s son, then a sophomore.  John, or “the Dude” as we all called him, told me that when Lacy’s son played on the freshman team the prior year, the gym would pack out to see him just because his name was “Lacy.” That made an impression on me. Without knowing any details, by osmosis I understood the importance and impact of his father. I could try to understand how hard it was for that sophomore to live up to a famous father, but I had no true idea then that the senior Lacy was a once-in-a-lifetime talent. I know his history now.

Scoring 1,000 points is an arbitrary benchmark schools give their best basketball players. But if you've scored 950 points and don’t make a list of 1,000-point scorers, you've still had a great basketball career. While I was in college, in the 1972-73 season, the NCAA changed the rules to allow freshmen to compete on the varsity. Until then, a player had to reach that 1,000-point threshold in three years, so that achievement has been watered down since that rule was enacted. Further eroding the benchmark has been the addition in 1986-87 of the of the 3-point shot from 19’9” and extended by a foot in 2008-09.

If scoring is a major part of the makeup of a great player, largely because it can be measured, then the other facets, durability, playing time, scoring in the clutch, drawing the foul, have to be also considered in determining greatness. Jim Lacy would be a legend for scoring alone. Consider that he scored 2,199 points in his career, that his career was only three years, and that he played before the 3-point shot rule. Lacy was not a scoring hog; he didn't call for the ball. His teammates knew, when the game was on the line, whose hands they wanted the ball to be in and Lacy didn't disappoint. In 1949, Lacy was the highest scorer in the country and is said, in one game, to have scored the highest amount of points ever scored by one player in a game. His 44 points is still a school record. He was the first player in NCAA history to score 2,000 points.

                                   The Loyola Legend

         For people who like nice round numbers, and 2,199 is bothersome because he didn't reach 2,200 points, there is this notion: In several games, Lacy had points taken off the scoreboard. One of the memorable ones was a buzzer shot that the refs claim was taken too late. Back then, there were no replays to get the call right, so normally you gave the refs the benefit of the doubt. I would, too,  except that it occurred at the Mt. St. Mary’s in “The Hangar,” a facility with known electric lighting and scoreboard issues. I remember one game while I was at Loyola when the Mount hit a buzzer shot to beat us and the clock at one end of the court read 00:00 and the other 00:01. The refs pointed to the 00:01 and said “that’s the official clock.” Really? Why was  I not surprised?

Before he passed away in 2007, Father “Wish” Galvin, who played with and against Lacy, would always speak with such reverence when he discussed Lacy, his life and his legacy. And when he referred to Lacy’s scoring record, he would pronounce it “2…1…9…9,” emphasizing each numeral. Father Galvin also attested to Lacy’s character, saying that the pre-game warm-up for the Loyola Legend started in the chapel. Lacy was a Christian gentleman.
I was privileged to meet Mr. Lacy at the pre-game Basketball Alumni luncheon in 2012 before he was presented at the halftime with induction into the MAAC Honor Roll. The night before I traveled to Baltimore, I called the Dude and told him that Lacy was being honored at the half and that I'd finally get to see him. John reminded me that his father, Bill, had played with Lacy at Loyola High School and then with him on Loyola’s 1943-44 wartime team. I had forgotten that John had mentioned that on several occasions.

              
                  The crowd on it's feet honoring Lacy in 2012

           At the luncheon, I was surprised that I was actually going to be introduced. The school’s media staff was walking Lacy from table to table introducing him. When my turn came, I told him how honored I was to be able to finally meet “The Loyola Legend.” He grinned when I called him that. And then I told him about the Dude’s father playing with him and a warm smile spread across his face. ‘I remember Bill well,” he said and the look was of the fondness only a teammate has for one another.

                

Middle row (l to r) Jim Lacy third, and Bill Davis, fifth

The passing of Jim Lacy this week at age 87, does not end an era in Loyola basketball because Jim Lacy was a once-in-a-school’s-history type of player and transcends eras. Someday, Loyola could have a player who’ll score many points and win some championships, but Loyola will never again see someone as gifted and well-rounded as Jim Lacy, a man among boys, a Greyhound among pups.

NOTE: During my senior year at Loyola I enjoyed being the sports editor of the Greyhound (February through May, 1973). Freshman and sophomore years, I was a manager for the JV basketball team and worked the scoreboard for varsity basketball games. Links to my book website:  www.amishandbaseball.com       and my writing website:  http://gregbmiller.webs.com has links to my other sports and science-related articles.

Falling With Style

Like many people riveted to the broadcasts of the Olympic downhill runs, I am amazed at how these skiers perform, all the time perched on the edge of disaster. Bode Miller, for one, is almost too exciting to watch, especially if I want to relax and randomly view what event NBC was dishing up that particular night. When I watch him carve into those icy turns, the sense of disaster is heightened by the sound of steel grinding an edge-hold into an icy slope.

I enjoy watching the Olympics because these exciting images bring back memories of the thrilling moments of the past. In 1976, I was working at my first job in Manhattan and the Olympic coverage was expanded for the Innsbruck games in Austria. Comparing notes with fellow workers around the proverbial water cooler, I was shocked to learn that for many, this was the first time, they had ever seen a downhill race. They were city dwellers who lived their entire life in the self-proclaimed paradise of Brooklyn, as flat as stretches of Kansas and Oklahoma. Scheming every week just where and how I’d get to which New England ski slope was something I did as a matter of routine. They couldn't imagine that at all. They had no idea how a ski attached to your feet or how you might dress. To them, the competitors were “sliding down the hill,” or as Woody put it to Buzz Lightyear, “falling with style.”

Life at the top of a ski lift, especially at Stowe, Killington and Whiteface is a completely different world. I liken it to when Dorothy opens that farmhouse door and steps into Oz and provides commentary to Toto along the lines of not being in Kansas anymore.

After skiing all the major eastern slopes in the East, I arrived at the conclusion that there is no slope that comes close to Whiteface, the scene of the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics. I traveled there with my family for years before the 1980 Olympics, when the original 1932 Olympic facilities were still being used. The tiny little town and surrounding venues was probably the best kept secret of winter sports.

Every year, the first question we asked when we arrived in Lake Placid was “Is Chair 2 open?” There was a lift, used only when snow conditions were perfect, that took skiers to the peak, to a run that was left natural, where they hadn't ventured with machine grooming equipment, and tree stumps, rocks and other hidden goodies were disguised by 30-40 inches of snow. After a stretch of being shut out for several years, our patient wait was finally rewarded and my older brother and I could not believe our good fortune one year: Chair 2 was open for business.

Eagerly we took the two lift rides to be able to get to Chair 2. We noticed that no other people were going up in Chair 2 and there was no lift line. We were to find out why in a few moments. At the top, at the end of the lift, there was a sign that read something to the effect of “if you are not an expert skier, please go back down.” Naturally, my brother and I laughed that off. We didn't need no steenkin’ sign to tell us we were probably in “over our heads," figuratively and literally.

There was no trail, just a wooden sign with an arrow pointing the logical way along a deceivingly flat cut through evergreen trees, so laden with heavy snow they must look deformed in the summer. We followed the break in the forest until we came to a huge, wide-open area the size of a football field, but one stood on its edge at an angle that made us wonder how snow stayed on the slope.

Offering the adage “age goes before beauty” I told my older brother “you first.” What he did next was both surprising and hilarious. He  moved about 10 feet ahead on the slope, tripped over the first rock or stump, and disappeared down a rabbit hole, out of sight. Even though I knew that was a preview to what I’d be doing in a few moments, it cracked me up when he popped out, like a gopher, about 10 yards down the slope. Then I followed him and duplicated his accident completely. Traversing that slope, the elusive one that we lusted after for years, took us at least two hours. And it was work. It was a brilliantly sunny day but I am pretty sure that after we finally made it down, we must have either selected a very relaxing intermediate slope or called it a day, exhilarated but exhausted.

During the 1980 Olympics, I was too busy working at the newspaper to get to Lake Placid. My sister, Tina, and my mother went and experienced the mad electricity of the moment known as the “Miracle on Ice.” Towards the end of the games, I had one of the best ideas I ever had, and I can count mine on one hand. I called my best friend, Harold, and suggested that when the Olympic Village was emptied out after the Friday closing ceremonies that we would go to Lake Placid to ski. Like swimming upstream.

Our reward was empty slopes, no lift lines, Olympic–standard groomed surfaces and, something I completely forgot about: Chair 2.

The downside of winning the 1980 Olympic bid was a forever-changed Lake Placid. The cute, sleepy, character-drenched village was transformed into a glitzy ski resort. Real hotels instead of the kitschy bed and breakfasts, tiny stores on Main Street gone forever, and Olympic venues upgraded from the 1932 state they were still in during the 60s and 70s.

Chair 2 was no different. It had become the 1980 Women’s downhill course, which was regarded as much faster, steeper and more dangerous than the men’s course.

Harold and I arrived at the top of a Chair 2 that I didn't recognize. It was like returning to my Model T and finding a Lamborghini. But it was magical. Not a bump in sight. Groomed like a golf fairway at an exclusive course. We didn't see another human being until we got to the bottom. The course was lined with that orange plastic stretch fencing. The hay bales were placed here and there in case of a crash. The markers were there—in fact everything was still there; the whole scene lacked only the cheering crowds.

It was the ski run of my life. Usually on expert slopes (The Mt. Snow trail called “The Jaws of Death” comes to mind), I have to pick out three or four moguls ahead and plan my turns, my escape routes, my emergency stops, in case I miss a turn or get hurled ahead by an unexpected bump and get out of control at a high speed. But there on Whiteface, there were no bumps and as soon as you put your skis into the fall line, the direct straight line down a slope, the acceleration was shocking. The thrill of staying with that speed was exhilarating and the only limiting factor was the heat of the burn in your thighs and quads. At a certain point, when you thought your leg was going to burst into flames, you would turn sideways and slide a hundred feet to a stop and then lean on your poles until you recover, both your breath, your stamina, and your nerve.

After that, skiing was never the same. All my runs would forever be compared to that one Saturday. When I see the downhill on TV now, I am immediately taken back to that day, those runs. I remember; I appreciate.

Just like there can never truly be another “Miracle on Ice” because the circumstances were so unique, personally, I’ll never see another run quite like Franz Klammer in the 1976 Olympics. He was the favorite to win the men’s downhill those Olympics. As an Austrian, skiing on home snow, the pressure was enormous. For Austrians, the downhill is like batting with the bases loaded in a tied seventh game of the World Series, the final putt on the 18^th hole in the Masters, the field goal attempt in overtime at the Super Bowl, and the half court buzzer-beater attempt in the final game of March Madness. Klammer was the last skier to compete and had to beat a terrific time. He skied on the edge of disaster and for the two minutes he blistered down the slope, I think everyone watching held their breath. I remember one turn and leap when he went airborne and just barely recovered in the air and the announcer was screaming. He won by .33 seconds. I watched Jean Claude Killy, Bill Johnson, Jean Saubert, and now Bode Miller and Julia Mancuso and admired them all but, for me, Franz Klammer’s 1976 Innsbruck downhill will always be my favorite. As much fun as an un-groomed Chair 2 run with my brother was, streaking down the 1980 women’s downhill was my favorite ski experience.

          Like all great events, I can only experience it once but when I watch the downhill every four years, I get to relive my own “Olympic” moment. In my case, Woody was right—I was “falling with style.”