Baseball Legends that maybe ought to be in the Hall of Fame? : KONG

Sometimes it's not things you see, or things you have happen to you, but an anecdote passed on.

Back in 1984, my friend Jon's parents took me to my first major league baseball game.  It was my Milwaukee Brewers against a weak Oakland Athletics team.  You'll read later on in the future about how the Swingin' A's were among my favorite Non-Home teams.

   

But while sitting in the glory of Milwaukee County Stadium, Jon's dad (Not the Crayon Death album, but boy, do I recommend it) regaled me with the legend of baseball's Kong.  Apparently on a road trip out west, Jon and his family attended an A's game in Oakland.   I guess the area where your feet rested in that former home stadium of the Athletics, is of a metallic design.  When Dave Kingman (nicknamed Kong due to his home run prowess and the word KING being present in his last name) approached the plate, the fans would pound their shoes against the metal floor in rhythm causing a resonant banging sound, to which they'd follow with "KONG!, KONG!"

I'd become somewhat fascinated by Kingman at this point.  He wasn't the prototype home run hitter, definitely not physically.  He was 6'6 and lanky as hell.  He wasn't a compact guy with quick wrists like your Henry Aarons and Mickey Mantles. He wasn't your "big strong dude" like George Scott or Richie Allen,  and he definitely wasn't your steroid infused versions that came later like Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Jose Canseco, Ken Caminiti, and Sammy Sooser. ( I mean Sosa ).

Jon's dad's "KONG" description drew chills and goosebumps from me as the 1976 King Kong was among my favorite films, and the sound Jon's dad was describing was more than a little reminiscent of the chants and stomping roared out by the natives upon the approach of the great beast to attend to the sacrifices they had laid out for him.  Oakland wanted their powerful beast to approach home plate, and launch a sacrifice into the seats.  

I often wondered if Kingman was touched by this mass-fan gesture.  Looking at the history of the man, it'd be doubtful.  After all, he is known for social issues.  Like dislike of female reporters and sending a purchased dead rat to Susan Fornoff of the Sacramento Bee in the mail to protest appearances in the clubhouse (this led to his dismissal from the A's).  And a general disdain for talking to the press overall.

However, he is among the first noticeable practitioners of 3TO, or the "three true outcomes; you walk, you strike out, or you jack one over the fence."  Read more about that here.

The first handful of years of his career consisted of him shifting.  He had injuries, he was traded, and in 1977, he was traded and waived 3 times in the same season, and released at the end of it.  (Sports Illustrated: More Sports: Joe Posnaski). There had to be some attitude issues for management to give up that bat repeatedly.

In the Summer of 1978 however, with his arrival in Chicago's Wrigley Field, the proverbial bandbox, anticipation was that he would break the seasonal home run record. (Baseball Quarterly, 1978, Summer).

This did not happen. But Kingman did crush a ton of dingers while he was playing in the North Shore.

After some serious baseball mashing around that time in Chicago, it appears, for a while, his career went back to the inconsistency it happened to be previously. 

When it comes to the end of Dave's career, I have a conspiracy theory. Despite the dead rat issue.  Bear with me here.

The final year of his career, he hit 35 bombs and drove in 94.  No one has ever hit that many homers in the final year of their career.  Kong's roar was still as powerful as ever.

Why did no one want to pick him up after that season??

He had reached 442 home runs.  Most (myself included) feel that 500 home runs is automatic entry into 

 

the Hall of Fame.  To me, it goes without saying.  As I had mentioned, Kingman had a pretty bad relationship with the press in his career and those folks are responsible for voting people into the Hall...

Kingman was a mere 58 home runs away from that vaunted 500 number.  And the way he was raking, (He had hit 100 in his previous 3 seasons), 500 was pretty good odds.  Was there something among the baseball writers and management doing a bit of collusion to keep Kong out of the Hall??  I'm not being an apologist for his issues with the postal service dirty tricks, but I'm ready to argue there are folks in the Hall who have done worse.

Well.  If it's about personality, and I know there is no comparison between the long-time all time hits leader, Ty Cobb (before Pete Rose came along, broke the record, then kept himself out of the hall by getting caught gambling on baseball) and a guy who's career average is .236 in Kingman.  It's well known that Ty Cobb was a racist, misogynist, asshole whose character traits were probably infinitely worse than a guy who was seemingly just known as a chronic crab-ass.   

Cobb's in the Hall.

But who am I to say?

The Swingin' A's

As readers know, I grew up a baseball nut. And a dedicated, homery fan of the local Milwaukee Brewers.

It's been pointed out here on Last Will than when my teams fail, be it the Brew Crew or the Packers, I was self-allowed to pick up a team outside their conferences, (The Cubs for the former, the Chargers for the latter) to root for. 

For some reason I was also interested in the Oakland A's as far as baseball was concerned. I'm pretty sure it began in my card collecting days as I was fond the of the coloration and design of the 1980 Topps Baseball Oakland A's set. See Above, the 1980 players I selected for the photo were Tony Armas, Mitchell Page, and Dwayne Murphy.  (There's a Green Bay Packers aesthetic there as well).  I loved the history of the A's 70's dynasty as depicted in Jason Turow's book, and even more recently with Billy Beane's dip into building teams with analytics as described in the book and even more interesting film Moneyball.

Besides their colors, the 70's A's always had cool uniforms, renegade players (first team to have ownership demand facial hair) and eventually hugely public wage battles.  The best and worst of that team came from it's ownership, Charles Finley.  It all fell apart sooner that it had to, as that team was stacked with the likes of Reggie Jackson, Joe Rudi, Gene Tenace, "Catfish" Hunter, Rollie Fingers and on and on.  They could have won more than 3 World Series, in my opinion.

But Finley was cheap.  And it all dissolved.  Dynamic, Bombastic, Fantastic is a great documenting of the rise and fall of the 70's Oakland A's.  

Why does everything have to have a rise and a fall anyways?

The A's had a connection with my Brewers too, as Sal Bando went on to play third base for the Brewers for several seasons and became a controversial and unsuccessful GM for the team.  Rollie Fingers became a hero relief pitcher for the World Series team of 1982, Cy Young Winner, as well as MVP, and the locals loved him and his handlebar moustache.  I became fascinated with a future A's power hitter named Dave Kingman as you can see here.  (I'm uncertain of why that is, despite my written self-exploration).

The first and last Milwaukee Brewers games I saw at old County Stadium were against the Oakland A's.  I got to see Reggie on his farewell tour when my brother took me to see a game in the final year of his career. 

But I still think it came down to the color and design of those 1980 Topps cards.  I'd go out of my way in the 6th grade to trade for their players from my classmates (most of them, commons, in the nomenclature of card collecting) and that would draw weird looks from my friends and co-traders who were more than glad to trade these no-names for better players from me. 

1980 Topps is my favorite card year design-wise, in general anyway.  I often told my friends (and still tell people) that the 1980 Topps Sixto Lezcano, due to the photo selection and the colors is my favorite card of all time.  The "flag" portions containing the team name and player position as well as the simple border just cry out to me: baseball imagery.  Add those Green Bay Packer colors in regards to the A's, and I was just drawn to the damn things.

1980 was also the year of the Rickey Henderson rookie.  A card craved by all card collectors in my childhood.  I had one once, but it would have been worth nothing in terms of cash values as the corners were rounded like wheels and there was a staticky wear to the colors that made the photograph look like a fading television image.  This was Mostly from being carried around in my back pocket, held together with other cards by a rubber band.  We were kids, not prospectors.  We loved the game and the cards before prospecting adults came along to ruin the hobby like they would eventually also do with record collecting. 

So did I ever actually root for the A's?  No, not really. Until recently when I see how hard Beane has to work to build playoff teams with no money.  But not even Oakland seems to root for them, as evidenced by the fact that their attendance has never been fantastic, even in those glory years.  And now, circa 2023, it looks like they may soon be removed from their home city due to that attendance fact.  It's probably long overdue, as they've been saying for years that Oakland isn't a baseball city. 

But in today's sports economics, which may soon apply to my Brewers, being a "baseball city" may not even matter.

Fascinated with Goofy Stuff: Cartrivision

For some reason, vintage electronics fascinate me.  

There's a lot of hobbyists who collect antique radios, including ones that date back to the 40's.  I have an RCA Victor, this is the one, but mine looks nowhere near this good:

 

It belonged to my Dad, and still picks up a signal, is loud as hell, but the dial window is busted up.  It's going nowhere due to its sentimental value, and is kind of an arguably attainable dream to get the window area renovated.

I also have a couple 1960's solid state radios that still work, including a Telefunken that blasts major tube volume, and a solid state Panasonic that's on the cover of a certain Wilco album.

But that's it.  I'm not really a hobbyist in that department.  I tried some repair work in the 90's but was unsuccessful in making it all work.  Pretty hard to be an electronics hobbyist without some knowledge of repair and schematics.  I tried, read several books, took some units apart, but as simple as the old ones are in theory, to the layman, monkeying around in that wiring isn't necessarily as easy as all that.

But old radios are gorgeous and I guess that matters for something.  They don't make them like that anymore unless they're style replicas, and those are an inexpensive way for people dipping their toes into vinyl to get started listening to the records.  Most of the others besides the ones mentioned that I myself had are now gone. 

I'm off subject a bit, though. 

Antique radios are a popular hobby and examples of them litter the internet, and often refurbished ones are available for purchase at mercantiles all over the country.  

It's the stuff that's forgotten, lost to time, and maybe even out of place that fascinates me.  Like this Polish auto shop using an old Commodore computer that probably has next to no storage.

Check it out.

But what about Cartrivision?  For some reason this dinosaur fascinates me. It's even the focus of a documentary about the 1973 NBA finals where the only footage of game 5 was found on one of these cartridges, which actually popped into the back of your television. 

Lost & Found '73 Knicks Championship Tape Excerpt: Intro from chris fiore on Vimeo.

Fascinating right?  Some guy put himself through the wringer attempting to free the images of Game 5 from the clutches of this ancient media format.  Oddly, this documentary doesn't appear to exist on the internet.  I would love to see the whole thing. Maybe one day, as I'll keep trying streaming.  

Isn't it ironic that a documentary about technological wizard trying to get a basketball game off of a dinosaur tape becomes somehow lost in the ether?

At one time, somewhere in Wisconsin, an intact television with a Cartrivision unit was sold on eBay in Wisconsin:

Click.

Wisconsin Computer Club.

You could also get pre-recorded movies on Cartrivision, but I have no idea what they would cost, especially in relevance to today's dollar, but I've read they weren't cheap.  They were big clunky tapes that had two levels inside that the tape rolled on, but it looked like a singular unit.  If you want to go deep, check this out.  I warn you, though. There's 3 lengthy parts, and it goes into several deep directions, so you'd have to spend some time with it.

To summarize, though, I didn't even know this format existed until I read about the basketball game's documentary.  A 2013 New York Times article (April 5) brought it to my attention.  Cartrivision has a cult following now, but it's really fringe on the edge of vintage electronic buffs and for good reason.  The players are big and clunky, they're not necessarily inexpensive, and require some handiwork and elbow grease to reach functionality.

But, I guess my point is still that I'm just fascinated by what gets left in the dust of time as the clock ticks along.

Here's a link to a very informative and detailed Cartrivision site that looks pretty vintage itself, after all, it's host is Angelfire.    Cartrivision.

And another site steeped in technological information: Cartrivision Info.

I'm not the only one interested, I just don't have the know-how or the access, but I can still be fascinated.

Alan Arkin, and what he meant to me

Yesterday,  Alan Arkin passed away. 

He's always been there, since my childhood.  One of the great character actors. I have clear memories of my mom telling me who he was, how good he was. One of my earliest film memories was his pairing with the late great James Caan (who he shared a birthday with incidentally) Freebie & The Bean, a film Arkin disliked.  It was an early 70's action film often considered racist in certain circles, but has a cult following to this day that seems to be growing in increments, probably due to the lightning-quick dialogue and ahead of their time vehicular shenanigans.  It was also probably the first buddy-cop-action comedy.

In recent years, he appeared in a remake of Going in Style with Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, the criminally underrated Stand up Guys with Al Pacino and Christopher Walken, and two seasons of tour de force support in Michael Douglas' series The Kominsky Method.  He's brilliant in all of it.  He drew belly laughs and poignant heartfelt reactions all the way through.

My wife and I recently watched the 1967 tension machine Wait Until Dark, one of his earliest film appearances.  As nice as Arkin is noted for being, he was the personification of evil in this film. When you consider the beauty of his performance as "Unca Lou" in Mike Binder's hellishly underappreciated Indian Summer, it's clear and apparent how he was the ultimate character actor.  He could run the gamut from awful to wonderful, and sell them both with just his eyes, if so required.

I can still hear him say, as he's bringing a spoonful of cereal to his mouth, "They're just a bunch of old cabins." in one of Indian Summer's most important lines.   It didn't seem like he was saying much.

But He was saying everything. 

His memoir, An Improvised Life, is a beautiful book that functions as an examination of his art, his skill.  He doesn't share stories of a long career in Hollywood, dishing out the humorous or salacious, instead he paints a picture of how he developed what he held such pride in.  Giving and taking with others on the stage first, and then the screen. 

Also, he was a striking image of my father.  From the physical to the aural.  When Alan Arkin laughed, I heard my dad.  His scoff and grin, so similar.  And that deep tone that his voice developed into as he aged was a sound mirror of dad's.  His commonalities with Pop are not what make me a member of the Arkin cult, (because I was a member decades before they grew towards each other in likeness) but just a nice addition. 

A warm one.

I wept this morning when I got the news, Alan.  I did.  I still have Freebie, Inspector Closeau, Thin Ice, Catch-22, The Russians are Coming, Glengarry Glenn Ross, Little Miss Sunshine, (for which he won an Oscar) those small but perfect parts in Grosse Pointe Blank, Argo, Grudge Match, and countless others.

But knowing more are not coming makes me sad.  And knowing both you and my dad are no longer here makes me even sadder.

Thank you, Alan.  For all of it.

Kicking Fears in the Asshole

As a kid I was terrified of two things.

Nuclear War

Tornados.  (No, not the delicious deep fried snack food).  Click on the photo to enjoy the awesomeness.

Truly, there was nothing I hated more than seeing this shit:

or this:

 

Sometimes it was really bad:

 

This was bad enough:  The Guyana Jonestown Massacre was bad enough. I remember this clearly, and the concept of one man being able to talk people into doing the most horrid of actions petrified me. Cult behavior still scares the shit out of me, but back then for the most part, when the National Network broke in, it meant two words in my mind:

They. Launched.

I battled these fears on the nightly quite often. I go deep into the nuclear end here.

I figured out a way to combat those fears and make them, at the least, tolerable.  That was knowledge.  I began watching documentaries and reading books about the subjects, and learning the roots and creations of these destructive forces, and that brought them down to my level.

Books like Gerard DeGroot's The Bomb: A Life, Stephen Walker's Shockwave, Richard Rhodes uber-thick Making of the Atomic Bomb, and Peter Kuran's genius film  Trinity & Beyond: The Atomic Bomb Movie, brought the humanity of the nightmare into the picture, and for some reason, made it less scary overall.  The Nuclear Weapon is a human conceit, and therefore under control of people.  I learned that no one wants to make Mutually Assured Destruction happen, and that launching one takes the involvement of more than one person with that goal in mind.  Highly unlikely. (I hope).

The tornado is not under any control.  As stated, a nuclear weapon is something only a human being can unleash upon the world.  The tornado, is the child of the supercell thunderstorm, but does not obey the orders of any parent. It obeys no road maps, is affected by no conditions, no construction, no landforms.

So I did the same research.  I did the reading and learned how the tornado formed, the history of its damage, and the odds.  I tried to relay this upon my kids.  The odds of a tornado forming, let alone forming above you are small.  Not impossible, but very small.  I don't know if this has helped my kids deal with their fears in any way.  However, as a kid myself, when I did the math in my head, and actually saw one in person, the fear became a subtle background issue, and not a walking nightmare.

There's a reason there are people called storm chasers.  Tornados don't come to you often enough to have that around the clock, gut-rot fear.

Now, I just have to get around to doing something for that fear of cults.  I'm halfway through the terrifying Raven,  (I had to take a break, the writers' cold unemotional description of vividly horrid events seemed a little too unnerving) and the way these people drifted to Jim Jones, and did what he wanted, seems all too familiar.

Some people can talk themselves into listening to and obeying anyone.

Those Quiet Moments: The Debut of Van Damme and the concept of the movie theatre

 

 February 26, 1988. It was a cold night in central Wisconsin.  A friend of mine, Mark, and myself decided to go see what was the first mainstream martial arts film in America since Kill or Be Killed. or perhaps Best of the Best.    There was some bullshit marketing here of course, as Jean-Claude Van Damme was billed in the advertising as being a former competitive martial arts champion.  

Yes, we were there to see Bloodsport.

Now, I guess there's some truth to the championship pedigrees, but it was some off the fringes association that he was the champ of, not any well known international or even American conglomerate.  However, Mr. Van Damme was not only a snappy martial artist nonetheless, but had extensive ballet background as well, giving him flexibility that exceeded even many of the best martial arts purveyors. 

So.  Was he great?  Probably not.  

Did he make it look good?  Hell yeah, he did. That ballet really helped.

It's legendary lore that after JCVD came to America, he appeared in a couple things here and there, but didn't stick. He eventually hung out in the Cannon Films waiting area, trying to get Menachem Golem to give him an acting job by displaying kicks and punches in the lobby, sort of an impromptu audition.  (see the doc Electric Boogaloo or The Cannon Film Guide Vol. 1.). 

One half of the go-go boys was impressed enough to greenlight Bloodsport, but hated it and buried the flick.  Once Cannon began to struggle financially, it was resurrected and led to the brief stardom of JCVD, a guy I still have a soft spot for, not just for this film however. It was admittedly bad, and acted so awfully that it had to embarrass the legendary Roy Chiao.  OK, Donald Gibb and Bolo Yeung carry their weight. 

I was also a great admirer of Timecop, Universal Soldier, and the films he made as the first stateside actor (Yes, I know he's originally from Belgium) to work with the Hong Kong greats John Woo, Tsui Hark, and Ringo Lam.  He also practiced pretty damn solid script selection once he fell into direct-to-video purgatory, as many of those films are much better than those of his fallen 80's contemporaries, and his series on Amazon, Jean Claude Van Johnson is a goddamn hoot to boot.

Anyway, I remember snow falling lightly on that quiet Friday night as Mark and I got out of our shared cab at the Rogers Cinema near the Wausau Center Mall.  The snow-covered ground crunched on our approach, a bite of cold in the air stinging our cheeks as we entered the theatre, then descended to the basement screen, complete with a pole in the middle of the seating.  It's an old building, still there, but no longer a cinema.  I remember sitting there in the cheap upholstery, warming up in a seat not far from the pole. 

There's something fascinating about a theatre with ceilings that low.  There was barely enough clearance for the projected beam to reach the screen.  (This was before digital after all, nothing but good old 35 mm in 1988).   Being from the Milwaukee area originally, I was not unfamiliar with theaters like Kenosha's  Lake 1 and 2, where I saw Bambi with my mom as a child, Star Trek: The Motion Picture with my ailing father,  and Silent Rage with my Dad as teen. An old-ass building with ornate balconies, classy furnishings, and employees in full usher regalia.  It was, after all, a former opera house.

There was also the monolithic United Artists Cinema 5, Kenosha's first true Multiplex, where I saw E.T. the Extra Terrestrial in 1982 (on a second try, the first attempt was sold out, Thanks, Mom!!), and Die Hard 2 in 1990.  I was alone for that one.  But the Lakes were a special situation.

By the way, if you're looking for a great place to see a movie in Wisconsin in a house that's been around forever and still flickers a pic to this day, try the Plaza in Burlington.

The Rogers, however, was a mini-multi-plex.  An oxymoron if there ever was one. Mark and I sat there quietly waiting for the lights to dim for the trailers, hum of the heating system filling the air, me chewing my Dots as I was really taken aback by how just about any space can be turned into something else with creative engineering, elbow grease, and a lack of concern for aesthetics. If you click on the Rogers link a couple of paragraphs back, you can see its original intent was not as a movie theatre, let alone five of them.

I've mentioned this prior on this blog, but there was an even smaller screen in house upstairs, where I saw Good Morning Vietnam very late in its run, on a Rogers screen not much bigger than what's in most peoples living rooms these days.  Why was that screening room so bright, anyway?  Ridiculous experience, that one.

Anyhow, God rest the Rogers. 

And the resident spirit, Bob. If he still dwells there, rattling things.

And long live the Plaza. 

My family and Soda Pop

I'm a soda connoisseur. 

Trained.  Seriously. 

My favorite soda, hands down, is Mello Yello.  Now, Mountain Dew is a fine beverage, but Coca-Cola's answer to it? 

Far Superior, friends & family. 

I take a lot of grief from my editor and wife for being addicted to soda.  Addicted?  I'd say enthralled and educated.  However, as a kid, My Dad had established a two cans a day rule for me when I hit the age of 12.  Like that was the alcohol age for soda or something.   I held to that, as it wasn't hard.  This was the early 80's where you could turn in your empty glass bottle for a deposit.

Why does it feel like a million years ago?

Also, what happened to the language issue:  It was once called "Pop".  In the mid 80's, in Texas, they called it "Soda Water".  

Now everywhere it's soda.  I have no idea what happened there with the verbage.

Digressing.  Soda is a preference thing.  As evidenced above, citrus soda is my favorite, with Mello Yello getting harder and harder to find.  Not available in Texas anymore, I have to get it from a Wendy's or Arby's fountain, or those finer restaurants (because Firehouse and Pei Wei is CLASS) that have Coca- Cola Freestyle machines.  Otherwise,  I'm shit out of luck.  My siblings?  My family tends to lean toward Pepsi.  

I remember during the Cola Wars, my mentor and brother-in-law Don had to demonstrate his skills in knowing the difference.  At a minor league baseball game in Wausau, Wisconsin circa 1987, Coke had a taste testing table in the dirt path to the restroom.  He took a sip of each and blew the Coke in a spray of defiance across the walkway.  Overdramatic?  Sure, maybe.  

I call it loyalty, as he WAS a soldier in the Cola war.

My sister Linda prefers Pepsi, or as she calls it, ZI.  Like a fine wine student, she pairs it with her favorite food.  Pizza, or ZA. 

That's right.  Zi and Za on a Friday Night.

However, Ma is a Coke drinker from way back.  She still is.  On visits, there's always a cold 12 in the fridge.

Speaking of cola, one afternoon in 1989, I drank two Jolts and cleaned my brother-in-law's basement.  

Anyway.

Laurie isn't much of a soda drinker as I can remember, neither is my brother Dan.  Although everybody took part in imbibing Wisconsin's multi-flavor mix and match, Jolly Good at one time.  The taste was indeed cost effective on most of their flavors.

My connoseiurship probably began in early childhood with a company in Kenosha, Wisconsin called Sparco.  Also a mix and match outfit, they made their own, it wasn't carried in grocery stores.  This is probably where Laurie's love of Black Cherry Cola came from.  You walked in and filled a case of 24 glass bottles.   Dad brought this out with the popcorn on movie nights.

However, I've experimented a lot, despite my pickiness.  Next door to my sister Pam's Taco Bell that I worked at was Carl's Hardware.  Standing stoically out front was a really old Double Cola machine.  I often hit that on my way home from work.  It must be some astronomical anomaly as this has been the only time in my life I've encountered that machine.   The soda is regional to the northeast, (New Jersey, New York, and Philadelphia), but it's headquartered in Tennessee apparently.  

So, what that machine was doing in Schofield, WI is still a mystery to me.  

I mean, I've even done some research.  Like a carbonated beverage Fox Mulder.  Can you hear the theme from the X-Files?

I think Double Cola was briefly held at a warehouse in Schofield or Weston WI.  I remember picking up a 12 pack from there wholesale.  Somehow, my Dad found they were stocking it there, and that may be the link to Carl's vending machine. 

My Dad was always finding shit like that out?  How did he do that?

But stocking that machine seemed a lot of effort for a small return if upping sales was their goal.

Now here In Texas, everybody loves this funky Big Red stuff. I've tried it, and  I don't get it.  It's red cream soda.  Kinda tastes like bubble gum. 

But it's BIG apparently.  Like everything else in Texas.  (eye rolls here)  

My kid, Aidan using a shocking video brought me to the attention of Mountain Dew Voo-Dew.

For a breakdown of my flavor variant experimentation, especially seasonally, click here.

In the culture, I'm sure it raises questions, like what the hell is McFly asking for here:

 

 It's all about this:

And maybe this:   Voo-Dew

And if you need more reminding of the truth, turn to no other than the late, great Jim Varney, or Ernest P. Worrell: