Memorial Day is for honoring those killed in action, as it should be. But this also seems like a good time to pay respect to those who have carried lifelong war wounds, both physical and mental. So here’s the story of one wounded veteran.
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I got my appreciation for baseball from my grandfather on my dad’s side; no one else in my family cared about baseball at all. And I didn’t even know my grandfather all that well, because I was still young when he died.
In fact, along with not caring about baseball, most of the family didn’t really care for my grandfather either. Years later, all I heard from distant relatives was what a mean old bastard he was. I’ve heard enough of their stories to know they were probably true, but I never saw that side of him.
I remember my mom and dad commenting several times that it was curious that the old man was so nice to me, compared to how he treated everyone else. And not only that, they were amazed that I asked to go see him every week; no one ever went to see him voluntarily. Somehow the cranky old war veteran and this scrawny, sickly kid had something in common.
The reason I went to visit him every Saturday was to watch the Game of the Week. It was the only time I could see baseball on TV, because nobody else in my house wanted to watch it. We’d get either an NL or AL game of the week; I always hoped for the NL game because Johnny Bench was my favorite player, but the Rangers had also just come into being and my grandfather had lived in Arlington for a long time, so he always wanted to see if they were any good. They weren’t, but we still enjoyed watching.
I would spread out my baseball cards on my grandfather’s coffee table and tell him about all the players we were watching. He’d just grin and nod, because he couldn’t really hear me. He was practically stone deaf, most likely from his time in World War I.
He’d have his easy-chair pulled up right beside the old black-and-white TV so he could hear it, but by the third inning he’d usually be snoring anyway. Just before he’d doze off, he’d always perk up for a second, and remind me that there was ice-cold Coke (in glass bottles) and a bag of Chips-Ahoy cookies in the kitchen. Like I didn’t know that already; my mom did all his grocery shopping and those two things were always at the top of his list. He’d usually wake up before the end of the game, and I’d give him a detailed recap, and then he’d call my mom or dad to come pick me up.
When I was 8 I joined a pee-wee league baseball team, but I wasn’t very good. I didn’t have anyone to practice with, and my grandfather was too feeble by then. But he still managed to come to all my games and sit right in the front row, and he’d grin and clap, even when I was striking out.
Soon after that he moved back to the Dallas area, and he died when I was 12. So the only clear memories I have of him revolve around baseball, but as I learned later, there was so much more to him.
I’ll tell you about that after the series preview …
Astros at Cubs – A Rookie and a Veteran
Wrigley Field
Monday, May 30, 1:20 p.m. CDT
Tuesday, May 31, 7:05 p.m. CDT
Wednesday, June 1, 1:20 p.m. CDT
I guess I don’t get games on My20pixels anymore. Dish Network used to carry them, but I guess they got dropped. Maybe the coverage will be better on FSN after the damn basketball season is over.
Not so notable giveaways
Extra absorbent for comfort where you need it most
Monday – A free piece of wearable asswipe for the first 10,000 fans. It looks like a T-shirt, but you can tell by the logo that it’s really for wiping your ass. Though maybe this is just a sneaky way to trick the dumbass Bleacher Bums into putting on a fucking shirt to cover up their man-teats.
Wednesday – Cubs Promotional Item to the first 10,000 fans. Really, that’s all their website says, just “promotional item.” I guess it’s just whatever shitty merchandise they have lying around that even Cub fans won’t buy.
Projected Matchups from Astros.com
Monday
Aneury Rodriguez (0-2, 4.98) v. Rodrigo Lopez (no record)
Aneury has only allowed three runs in his last 11+ innings, but he still doesn’t have a win. When he was in the bullpen earlier in the season he pitched a couple of innings against the Cubs, and gave up two hits and one run.
Lopez has been in the Majors for nine years, but has been at AAA this season and is trying to nail down the last spot in the Cubs’ rotation. Good luck with that. Several Astros have batted against him but the only one who’s done any good is Hunter Pence – he’s 5-for-9 with a double and a homer.
Tuesday
Jordan Lyles (no record) v. Carlos Zambrano (5-2, 4.59)
Lyles was 3-3 in Oklahoma City and got the call-up after Wandy went on the DL. He’s going right to the front lines because his mound opponent is …
Assmunch Zambrano. No current Astros have done much against Zambrano, with the exception of Carlos Lee. He’s 23-for-61 (.377) with six doubles and five homers. On the other hand, Bill Hall has 18 strikeouts in 44 at-bats against Zambrano.
Wednesday
Brett Myers (1-4, 5.11) v. Doug Davis (0-3, 6.75)
Myers is 11-3 in 14 career appearances against the Cubs, with one of those wins coming earlier this year. ErrorMiss has two homers off him and Soriano has three, but they both have a ton of strikeouts too.
Davis is in his 12th season, and his record against Houston is the opposite of Myers at 3-11. Hall, Barmes, and Keppinger each have a homer against him, and Carlos Lee bats .538 (7-for-13).
Injury Report
Houston – The usual suspects, plus now Wandy and Quintero are on the DL until sometime in June. Jason Bourgeois starts a rehab assignment later this week.
Chicago – Marlon Byrd is out with a broken grill after getting plunked by the Red Sox; I’m guessing the irony of being beaned in Boston was lost on him.
Also, Brian Schlitter is on the DL; you may remember that name from my Opening Day preview with the Phillies, where he was also on the DL. The Phillies had claimed him on waivers, but then realized he was a Cub, and therefore damaged goods, so they sent him back to Chicago.
Carlos Zambrano has a pain in the neck but will probably pitch Wednesday.
And there’s some other Cubs on the DL, but who gives a shit.
*****
Anyway, the rest of my grandfather’s story has only come to me second-hand, at best, so I’ve probably got some details wrong. I heard bits and pieces from my dad and other family members, plus there’s even an old Texas history book from the 1930s that has biographies of notable Texans, and there are a couple of paragraphs about him.
But it’s been a long damn time since his war, and if I’ve gotten some of my grandfather’s details wrong, well, I don’t think anyone will know. There’s just no one left who would remember. But this is his story, as best I can piece together.
From what I can tell, he was working on a ship that was ferrying troops to England just as the U.S. was entering World War I. His ship was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-Boat, but he survived and still made it to England somehow. He joined the Army and was assigned to an ambulance company, and he participated in five major battles. According to this old history book I’ve got, that’s the most battles any American could have been in. I don’t know what rank he achieved, or what honors he may have earned; I tried to get his military records from the government, but they were lost when the archives burned decades ago.
He would have been in his early twenties then, and I can’t even imagine what horrors he must have seen as a front-line medic in the muddy trenches of France. He didn’t escape unharmed either; at some point he was gassed by the Germans, probably with mustard gas. He survived because he was wearing a gas mask, but he carried scars from the blisters for the rest of his life. Until the day he died, his head was the only place on his body where he could grow hair, because it had been protected by the gas mask.
So after being torpedoed, sunk, shot at, and gassed, I guess it’s understandable that he came home with a burning hatred for all things German. Today I’m sure we would call it PTSD. I don’t know how that hatred played out over the next 50 years, but I do know some hazy details about how it affected him near the end.
As he grew old his body and mind began to fail, and he was in and out of VA facilities. At some point, I guess in the early 70s, he was in a regular civilian hospital for some reason or another. My dad got a frantic call to come to the hospital, because the old war veteran was out of control. He had attacked another old man with his walking cane and nearly beaten him to death. He thought the other man was a German.
My dad convinced the hospital to keep treating him, but they insisted that the old man had to be strapped to his bed. After a few days my dad got them to take off the restraints, at least while he was visiting. But one day he left the room for a few minutes, and when he came back the bed was empty. And then he saw his dad cowering behind the bed, peeking over the top. “Shhh, be quiet!” he said, pointing out to the hallway. “There’s Germans out there.”
My dad was a pretty tough old veteran himself; he’d served in the Pacific in World War II. One of the few times I ever saw him cry was when he explained why he’d had the hospital strap his dad back to the bed.
My grandfather lived a couple more years, and then whatever horrors he’d seen and done went with him to his grave. He didn’t leave much behind, but in his will he singled out one item – the beat-up old black-and-white TV. No one else in the family understood why he specifically left it to me, but I did.
On second thought, maybe my dad did understand. At my grandfather’s funeral, the honor guard fired their volleys, folded the flag from his casket, and a soldier marched over to my father and intoned the solemn “grateful nation” speech:
“Sir, on behalf of the President of the United States and the people of a grateful nation, may I present this flag as a token of appreciation for the honorable and faithful service your loved one rendered this nation.”
And then he presented the flag … but my dad wouldn’t take it. Instead, he put his hand on my shoulder and told the soldier, “That flag belongs to this young man.” So the soldier took one step sideways, repeated the speech, and gave me the flag. And I still have it, alongside the one I got 20 years later at my dad’s funeral.
And there’s one last detail that makes all this a little more poignant to me. That cranky old war veteran wasn’t my biological grandfather. My mom and dad adopted me when I was born, into a family where the men had black hair and brown eyes. I have blond hair and blue eyes … and a biological line that goes straight back to Germany.
It was never a secret, so surely my grandfather knew. But he managed to put all that history aside and teach me a love of baseball and ice-cold Cokes.
He’s been dead for nearly 40 years now, but baseball lives on, and whenever I watch a game on Memorial Day it takes me back to a time when I could only watch the games on a black-and-white TV.
*****
Thank a veteran today, and then discuss today’s game in the Gamezone.