dual personalities

Tag: baseball

Back to the salt mine

by chuckofish

Another weekend gone with the wind. I finished the Alexander McCall Smith book I have been reading–the 13th installment of the #1 Ladies Detective Agency series, The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection.

It was another slow, easy read about Precious Ramotswe and her sometimes often irritating friends.

In the end, however, McCall Smith teaches us the same lesson we have been waiting for: “The human heart, you see…is pretty much the same wherever one goes.” It is a lesson worth repeating.

I also finally watched Joss Whedon’s The Avengers. Daughter #2 had liked it very much when she saw it last summer, so I thought I would check it out. I am also an old Joss Whedon fan from the old Buffy days and also like all things Serenity. But I have to say, I wasn’t all that impressed. They are, after all, super heroes, so you don’t get a lot of character development and/or good dialogue. Yes, there was lots of CG pyrotechnics etc. Yes, the final fight in NYC was pretty darn swell. But not really my thing, you know?

The best line in the movie was from Captain America

who was responding to Scarlett Johansson’s character who had referred to Iron Man, Thor and Loki as gods:

There’s only one God, Ma’am, and I’m pretty sure He doesn’t dress like that.

The highlight of the weekend, even for this self-admittedly fair-weather fan, was definitely the Cardinals beating the Washington Nationals to advance to the National League Championship Series against the Giants. Go, Cards!

And we won game #1 against the Giants. That’s the way I like it. Uh Huh.

The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light

by chuckofish

Well, it’s baseball season again. The Cardinals are off to a good start, managing somehow without Albert Pujols. Growing up in Cardinal-town, I have been a fan for many a year. My first baseball memory is in 1964 watching the final game of the World Series on a little black and white TV in my third grade classroom. I hardly knew what baseball was then, but I knew we were doing something special. I hit my peak in 1967 when we won the World Series with the help of my hero Tim McCarver. I even had a scrapbook. I have fond memories of 1982 and 2006 as well.

My grandfather, Daniel Herbert Hilton Cameron III, was a big baseball fan as well–of the Boston Red Sox! I forgave him for that. He loved the game and played it as a boy.

Bunker Cameron at Camp Abnaki in Vermont around 1911. He's the one on the far right with his elbow out.

"The baseball crowd" at the Feller Institute in Quebec 1916--Bunker is in the middle with the x written on his chest.

The Feller Institute was the French-speaking Baptist boarding school in Saint Blaise Sur Richelieu, Quebec that his father sent Bunker to after he was asked to leave Tilton Academy. I suppose he thought it would be strict enough to handle Bunker, but he was asked to leave that school too. Apparently it didn’t take much to get thrown out of a prep school in those days. (Bunker was thrown out of three.)

Ultimately, Bunker ended up at the University of Vermont back in Burlington without having actually graduated from high school. He would have played baseball there, I’m sure, but he left with a friend to go to Boston to enlist in the army during WWI. The war ended before they could sort out their options.

But we were talking baseball. Go Cards!

#11 in 2011

by chuckofish

The St. Louis Cardinals did it (much to the media’s surprise, as usual) again! And our hometown boy was the hero and MVP. Way to go, David Freese and the Cardinals–World Series winners for the eleventh time! And to quote daughter #1: “Thumbs up flyover states!”