Magical Moments
Just Like You, Los Amigos, Rosanne Cash, Jim Brown, Backwards Birdseye
Welcome to my weekly newsletter. This week’s issue features magical moments (in music and sports), another great book by Nick Hornby (Just Like You), a place to get street tacos on Tuesday, Johnny Cash’s incredibly talented daughter, an athlete who became an actor and activist, and an orthinological observer. I hope you enjoy the picks and pics.
Fave Five 34: Magical Moments. May-December (Just Like You), Tuesday-Tacos (Los Amigos), Father-Daughter (Rosanne Cash), Athlete-Actor (Jim Brown), and a Backwards Birdseye.
Fave Five List: Magical Musical Moments
Top 5 recent concerts I attended in Ann Arbor (5 in 16 days: clockwise from the top left in the image above)
Oshima Brothers on May 6 at The Ark
Rosanne Cash on May 13 at The Michigan Theater
Natalie Merchant on May 17 at The Michigan Theater
The Mavericks on May 19 at The Michigan Theater
Chamber Soloists of Detroit (pianist Pauline Martin and cellist/composer Jeremy Crosmer) on May 21 at The Kerrytown Concert House
Magical Moments in Sports: Rick Hummel, 1946-2023
Rick worked as a beat writer for the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team, the St. Louis Stars of the North American Soccer League, the Spirits of St. Louis of the American Basketball Association, and Saint Louis University hockey. I worked with Rick when he covered the Spirits from 1974 to 1976. After completing my duties as stats keeper or shot clock operator, I was paid an extra $5 each game to stay late and help the reporters for the Post-Dispatch (Rick) and Globe-Democrat (Myron Holtzman) file their game stories. I liked Rick and enjoyed helping him.
Hall of Fame baseball writer Rick ‘The Commish’ Hummel dies at 77
Beloved baseball writer Rick Hummel, who captured timeless highlights and countless historic feats with precise, vivid words that will echo alongside those moments forever, died in his sleep early Saturday morning after a short, aggressive illness. He was 77.
In St. Louis sports circles, and is major league baseball press boxes, Hummel is known as the “Commish.” Makes sense, right, what with all that baseball residue. But the nickname has nothing to do with balls and strikes. He was given the nickname when he ran a league among friends for a football board game. The label was cemented by the many years he has organized softball teams and NCAA basketball brackets.
And in Hummel’s career, which includes so many magical moments around baseball bylines, his most memorable experience isn’t cloaked in late-inning drama or a champaign celebration. The highlight of his career came while he was writing about boxing.
He was in Las Vegas in 1977, providing correspondence to the rising fortunes of St. Louis heavyweight, Leon Spinks. He spotted Muhammad Ali in the hotel casino. No thoughts about Spinks could be more meaningful than those coming from Ali, so the Commish worked his way through a long entourage to secure an audience.
He was invited into the penthouse suite, where Ali filled his notebook with his usual bombast and hyperbole. When the private interview concluded, Ali had a favor to ask of his guest.
He explained he had commencement presentations to deliver at two of the world’s most distinguished universities – Harvard and Oxford and he needed an analytical ear to give him some feedback. “Would you listen to this?” he asked Hummel.
Ali then opened a briefcase and pulled out his speeches, “The Intoxications of Life” and “The Tragedy of Life.” For the next hour or more, he delivered the orations, mesmerizing Hummel as he floated eloquently through various topics – politics, religion, charity and governance. Each point was profound, each concept compelling. When Ali was done, there wasn’t single nit to be picked by an ink-stained sportswriter.
“I was spellbound,” Hummel said. “It was nothing like you’d expect to come out of his mouth. It was wonderful.”
The night Freddie Lewis of the Spirits made the shot heard 'round the world by Rick Hummel
(On April 15, 1975, the Spirits pulled off one of the biggest upsets in basketball history. Here's how Rick Hummel covered the game.)
UNIONDALE, N.Y., As far as shots heard 'round the world go, the Freddie Lewis happening here last night probably ranks somewhere behind Fort Sumter and Bobby Thomson. But considered in its bailiwick, the American Basketball Association, the 18-foot jumper Lewis tossed in with three seconds to play over the testy defense of the New York Nets' Brian Taylor gave the Spirits of St. Louis their own place in history.
Never before had a team with a losing record won an ABA playoff series, and the Spirits were not just a losing team but one that finished a full 20 games under .500. That the victims of a 108-107 Spirits victory were the defending champion- Nets and that they fell by the wayside in four straight games after winning the first game in the best-of-seven playoff series only heightened the significance of the act.
That it was the first time the Spirits had won four games in a row made it seem all the more incredible. In the process, still another chapter was penned in the Freddie Lewis story, a tale that took place in Indianapolis, Ind., for the last seven years, a period in which the muscular, 6-foot-1 guard came to be known as one of the best pressure players in pro basketball.
Book Best Bet
Just Like You by Nick Hornby
This is the third book I have featured by Nick Hornby (Dickens and Prince and State of the Union, and there will be more in the future. It’s such a pleasure reading a new book by a favorite author, and each time I open a new one from Nick, I know I will savor every moment of reading it. This novel was no exception.
From Amazon:
Charming, funny, touching, and relevant comedy. —The Boston Globe
A provocative yet sweet romantic comedy. —People, Best of Fall 2020
From the beloved author of Dickens and Prince, About A Boy, and High Fidelity, this warm, wise, highly entertaining twenty-first century love story is about what happens when the person who makes you happiest is someone you never expected.
Lucy used to handle her adult romantic life according to the script she’d been handed. She met a guy just like herself: same age, same background, same hopes and dreams; they got married and started a family. Too bad he made her miserable. Now, two decades later, she’s a nearly divorced, forty-one-year-old schoolteacher with two school-aged sons, and there is no script anymore. So when she meets Joseph, she isn’t exactly looking for love—she’s more in the market for a babysitter. Joseph is twenty-two, living at home with his mother, and working several jobs, including the butcher counter where he and Lucy meet. It’s not a match anyone one could have predicted. He’s of a different class, a different culture, and a different generation. But sometimes it turns out that the person who can make you happiest is the one you least expect, though it can take some maneuvering to see it through.
Just Like You is a brilliantly observed, tender, but also brutally funny new novel that gets to the heart of what it means to fall surprisingly and headlong in love with the best possible person—someone you didn’t see coming.
Restaurant Recommendation
Los Amigos & Don Juan 19333 Victor Pkwy, Livonia, MI 48152
Our Book Club Counterprogramming group met for dinner again last night. We took advantage of the Taco Tuesday specials here. This restaurant looks like a typical American Mexican restaurant with a big glossy menu with lots of expensive items and tacos limited to ground beef or chicken in hard shells. But on Tuesday you can get street tacos and I was surprised at how authentic they were. The al pastor tacos had pineapple, and along with the steak taco and the shrimp taco, they were all really good.
The chile relleno was supposed to come in a red relleno sauce, but it arrived covered in mole sauce. I like a good mole sauce, but this was not the best I’ve had. I did like the fact that they tried this combination; it was a pleasant surprise.
Marvelous Musician
Today is Rosanne’s 68th birthday. I first heard her cover of "Man Smart, Woman Smarter" in Streetside Records in Webster Groves, Missouri and asked the clerk who it was. I bought her album Right or Wrong, loved her later hit "Seven Year Ache," and have been a fan ever since. I saw her perform on May 13, 2023 at The Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, and it was a wonderful show.
From Wikipedia: Rosanne Cash (born May 24, 1955 in Memphis) is an American singer-songwriter and author. She is the eldest daughter of country musician Johnny Cash and Vivian Liberto Cash Distin, Johnny Cash's first wife. Although Cash is often classified as a country artist, her music draws on many genres, including folk, pop, rock, blues, and most notably Americana. In the 1980s, she had a string of chart-topping singles, which crossed musical genres and landed on both the country and pop charts, the most commercially successful being her 1981 breakthrough hit "Seven Year Ache," which topped the U.S. country singles charts and reached the Top 30 on the U.S. pop singles charts.
Her parents divorced in 1966; her father married June Carter in 1968. Cash's stepsisters are country singers Carlene Carter (from June's marriage to singer Carl Smith) and the late Rosie Nix Adams, aka Rosie Carter (from June's marriage to Edwin "Rip" Nix). Cash's stepmother and father died in 2003, and her mother in 2005. Cash married country music singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell in 1979. Cash and Crowell divorced in 1992. She married her second husband, John Leventhal, in 1995, and they live in Chelsea, Manhattan, New York City.
Video from the May 13, 2023 Concert
Seven Year Ache
My Playlist
Sports Star
Jim Brown, Football Great and Civil Rights Champion, Dies at 87 (on May 18, 2023)
I remember watching Jim Brown play for the Cleveland Browns when I was young and thinking, along with almost everyone else, that he was the greatest football player. His life included great accomplishments in football, lacrosse, acting, activism, and peacemaking. It also included incidents of violence and a questionable political stance.
From Wikipedia: James Nathaniel Brown (born February 17, 1936 in St. Simons Island, Georgia; died May 18, 2023 in Los Angeles) was an American football fullback, civil rights activist, and actor. He played for the Cleveland Browns of the National Football League (NFL) from 1957 through 1965. Considered to be one of the greatest running backs of all time, as well as one of the greatest players in NFL history, Brown was a Pro Bowl invitee every season he was in the league, was recognized as the AP NFL Most Valuable Player three times, and won an NFL championship with the Browns in 1964. He led the league in rushing yards in eight out of his nine seasons, and by the time he retired, he held most major rushing records. In 2002, he was named by The Sporting News as the greatest professional football player ever.
Brown earned unanimous All-America honors playing college football at Syracuse University, where he was an all-around player for the Syracuse Orangemen football team. The team later retired his number 44 jersey, and he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1995. He is also widely considered one of the greatest lacrosse players of all time, and the Premier Lacrosse League MVP Award is named in his honor. Brown also excelled in basketball and track and field.
In his professional career, Brown carried the ball 2,359 times for 12,312 rushing yards and 106 touchdowns, which were all records when he retired. He averaged 104.3 rushing yards per game, and is the only player in NFL history to average over 100 rushing yards per game for his career. Brown was enshrined in the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971. He was named to the NFL's 50th, 75th, and 100th Anniversary All-Time Teams, comprising the best players in NFL history. Brown was honored at the 2020 College Football Playoff National Championship as the greatest college football player of all time. His number 32 jersey is retired by the Browns.
Shortly before the end of his football career, Brown became an actor. He retired at the peak of his football career to pursue an acting career. He obtained 53 acting credits and several leading roles throughout the 1970s. He has been described as Hollywood's first black action hero and his role in the 1969 film 100 Rifles made cinematic history for featuring interracial love scenes.
Brown was one of the few athletes, and among the most prominent African Americans, to speak out on racial issues as the civil rights movement was growing in the 1950s. He participated in the Cleveland Summit after Muhammad Ali faced imprisonment for refusing to enter the draft for the Vietnam War, and he founded the Black Economic Union to help promote economic opportunities for minority-owned businesses. Brown later launched a foundation focused on diverting at-risk youth from violence through teaching them life skills, through which he facilitated the Watts truce between rival street gangs in Los Angeles.
Was Jim Brown a great man? To me, yes. Was he a flawed man? Without question by Jim Trotter
A look at Jim Brown’s life and legacy as a football great and activist - Amna Nawaz with Kevin Blackistone
Jim Brown & Me by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Remembering Jim Brown
Picture Pun
Bird's-eye view in reverse.
