My Baseball Career

Or Accepting My Mediocrity

NOTE: I've decided to abandon my Substack account because of that platform's decision to create a partnership with right-winger Bari Weiss's organization. I will migrate what few posts I've published there to this site. This post was originally published on 13 July 2024. I've since done some minor editing

Me on deck, July 1967, Ravine Park

There was a time when baseball meant everything to me. I think that if ever I had a dream in life, it was to play in the Major Leagues. And actually, I don't know that I would even call it a dream so much as I figured it was an inevitability.

And I say that not so much because I had a massive ego (I've never had one), but because I felt that it was simply the logical course my life would take. When springtime rolled around each year, playing baseball—in whatever form—was what I and my brothers and our friends would do. There was a field across Yondota Street just behind our house that we called "the big field." There was no official baseball diamond there, but one had been worn into the earth from the many games that had been played there. The block on which the field was situated was triangular in shape, with a factory at the north end that took up maybe a third of the total area. (I recall looking through the dirty windows of the factory, hoping to see pin-up calendars at the work stations.) The rest of the space was weeds and high grass, home for many a grasshopper. With "home plate" (usually whatever piece of paper we might find lying around) situated towards the south corner of the field, hitting the ball over Miami Street was a home run, although not many of us accomplished that feat. I'm pretty sure I didn't. Now there is no field. No base paths. No home runs. No grasshoppers.

"The big field"

Up Utah Street from our house, just past where I attended elementary school, was another vacant lot: Bower's Field. Or maybe it was Bauer's Field. Maybe there was no apostrophe. I don't know how that name came to be, although someone mentioned to me recently that he thought the old woman who lived immediately south of the lot was named Bower. Or Bauer. Like "the big field," it had a well-worn baseball diamond that seemed always to have been there. It was another regular "field of dreams" where four or five guys per team was typical. In such cases, right field would be closed to right-handed hitters; left field would be closed to lefty swingers. The Fischer family house at the north of the field served as our own Green Monster à la Boston's Fenway Park, except that it was white as I recall. Hitting the ball on the roof of the house was a home run; a ball hit over their back yard fence was a double. That field is now occupied by three or four houses.

If we had but two or three or four players in total, Strikeout was the name of the game. It merely required a rubber ball, a wall with a strike zone drawn on it (usually scratched in with a stone as we typically didn't have chalk on hand), and modified ground rules as to what constituted hits and outs. Most often these games were played at Franklin Elementary school or under the Anthony Wayne ("Hi-Level") Bridge, both of which were a few blocks from home. The fence at Franklin which separated the school playground from Oak Street was reachable, especially with a brand new ball. Some guys, like the much-older Bobby Meyers, could clear Oak Street.

Franklin Elementary Strikeout Wall (photo courtesy of John Nickoloff)

I could probably sit here for hours describing all the ways we played baseball (whiffle ball, Rundown, etc.) and the various places we played, but I won't. I hope you get the picture. We had baseball fever long before Major League Baseball based a marketing campaign on it.

My first attempt at organized baseball was the year I turned 9. Like all my friends in the neighbourhood with whom I played pick-up games, I tried out for my school's PeeWee team of nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-olds. Because even at 9, you pretty much know where you fit in skill-wise amongst your peers, I expected to be a shoe-in for the team. But for reasons I will never know, I was cut from the team and it was a such a shock to my system that I teared up. The head coach was Ray Vining's grandfather, Charles Abernathy¹, which, since Ray lived just behind me on Yondota Street, and we spent a lot of time together—whether playing ball or just hanging out—the cut felt especially deep.

The following year, I made the team. Mr. Abernathy was still the head coach and Jim Werner was his assistant. We played Oakdale Elementary at Navarre Park for our first game, and lefty Neal Gust was their pitcher. (Also, my dad's sister's brother-in-law, Harry Krzsczowski, was an Oakdale coach.) I sat the bench for the game, but with Oakdale winning something like 10-1 in the 7th (last) inning, I was told to grab a bat. The count got to three balls and two strikes, then I hit a line drive down the third-base line for a triple. I started every game from then on. Mid-season, Coach Abernathy recruited an over-aged² player, Tony Ruiz, to join the team, and we had to forfeit all the games we'd won in which he'd played. Abernathy was forced to resign (or so I recall) and Jim Werner, who was the best coach I've ever had, took over. Despite the drama, I had a great year, with something like four home runs and four triples, and at the end of the season was awarded the Most Valuable Player trophy, which sat atop our piano amongst my mom's bowling trophies for years.

My MVP year, 1966

The following season, our team went 14-0 in league play. We scored over a hundred runs in those fourteen games as I recall, and I had an even better year at the plate than the previous season. In a double-header we played against St. Thomas, I got seven hits in eight at bats, including a grand slam home run. I fully expected another MVP trophy, but I think it went to ten-year-old Ron Harris instead. The disappointment didn't last all that long—I was probably more surprised, really, than disappointed, but I really, really, really thought I deserved it. The true disappointment that year came in the city tournament against St. Catherine's. We were defeated by a run and it was my error while attempting to field a ground ball single hit to me in left field that allowed the winning run to score. The transition from hero to goat is lightning quick. My dad surprisingly didn't say a word about the game afterwards.

The next two years were in the next league up, Colts, but we had a new coach, Russ Menchaca, who had been Jim Werner's assistant the year before, and was our second baseman Rusty's dad. This is a sort of weird memory, but Russ was the only one who attempted to "fix" my batting approach. I had a hitch in my swing in which I shifted my weight to my back foot as the ball was about to leave the pitcher's hand, and just as the ball came onto the hitting zone, I'd shift my weight forward into the pitch as I swung. My two PeeWee seasons were proof enough that I didn't have a problem hitting that way, but Russ decided he needed to fix it. My two Colt seasons were less than spectacular. I don't recall much about our win-loss records for either year, although we probably had a .500 or maybe better winning percentage. I don't recall being in the starting lineup every game. For some reason, Russ started Steve Tscherne, who hadn't played on the PeeWee teams, instead of me in left field for a good part of the first season—maybe both. It might have been because Steve was a faster runner (he was the fastest sprinter in our class), but I'm pretty sure that Russ had something against me.

Everything else from those two seasons is a blank except for a time I stole second base while someone else was on third base. My older brother Mike was playing in the next level league, Junior Knothole, and I would go to his practices to watch and ingratiate myself with his teammates, many of whom I knew from the neighbourhood. In fact, his coach was Dick Simon, who was my friend/classmate/teammate Bill Simon's brother, and was married to my godparent's daughter. One of his practices involved the first-and-third situation, that is, baserunners at first and third with fewer than two outs, and Dick instructed the person on first base to take off for second base in an attempt to steal as soon as the pitcher began his stretch.³ I understood this to be a ploy to confuse the pitcher into balking,⁴ which would allow the runner on third base to score immediately. Anyway, during one of my games, I was given the signal to steal second with a runner on third base and I did exactly what Dick had told his team to do. It worked to perfection. The pitcher got confused and failed to step off the rubber⁵ before making a move towards me, thereby balking, and a run scored.

When it came time for the Knothole League for me, Dick Simon's team, Home Federal Savings and Loan, was my next logical step. Mike had played for Home Federal for a couple of years, and because I knew Dick so well, I expected to make the team. My cousin Jeff also played for Home Federal the year before and he was there. I naturally tried out for the outfield because that's all I'd really known, but Dick had me practice one day at third base, a position for which I had no legitimate training. Maybe he thought he could use me, even as a back-up player, if I could handle the position, but I don't recall much beyond that other than that I didn't shine during the practice. When final cuts were made, I learned I didn't make the team. While crestfallen, I didn't feel quite the sting I felt as a nine-year-old. There were no tears this time. Although there was a different sort of disappointment in me this time. Mickey Archer, a standout football player from Waite High School—who I'd heard had once crushed a baseball all the way from the ball diamond in the Waite Bowl into the football stadium across East Broadway—had made the team, and he hadn't shown up to even one of the tryout sessions. I recall going home and watching the first episode of M*A*S*H on television, my baseball career entirely in ruins.

But the thing about baseball is that the dream never dies. Well, maybe the dream of playing in the Big Leagues does, but the love of the game doesn't. As a Senior in high school, I decided to try out for the baseball team. Like so many high school kids, I had picked up smoking as a habit, and I wanted an activity that would help me to quit. The winter before baseball tryouts, I worked out with the wrestling team (I had wrestled my Freshman year so I was well-acquainted with what kind of workout I could get) in order to get some conditioning for the spring.

When spring rolled around, and I showed up for tryouts, I was told by more than one person that I was wasting my time, that as a Senior, if I didn't make the starting line-up on the team, I'd be cut in favour of a Junior or Sophomore. During tryouts, I did some working out as a pitcher, although I don't recall if I had actually intended to try out for that position, I think it just sort of presented itself, and when the final roster was announced, I'd made the team. Coach Bob Agoston must have liked something he'd seen (probably my sweeping curve ball!) and decided to keep me.

I mostly sat the bench, but was usually the first person to come in to relieve the starting pitcher if things got out of hand, or as in one instance, to replace a starter (Ron Harris, wouldn't you know!) who'd been kicked out of a game for arguing with the umpire. We lost to Bowsher High School that game, and I think I pitched an inning or two of scoreless baseball, even striking out one of the best hitters in the city, Jeff Kneisley. The sweeping curve ball!

My playing time was so limited that season that I can almost recall every game I played in and how I performed. I had four hits in sixteen at bats for a .250 batting average, although the only one that stands out came against a friend, Bob Utter, whom I'd played against in PeeWees (Oakdale), and who now played for St. Francis High School. As did Bill Simon. (Both Bob and Bill were named First Team All-City that year, as was the aforementioned Kneisley.) I started that game in left field, and came in to pitch in relief of Dale Hanley, who'd relieved Ted Hill, who'd been slapped around for at least seven runs. I didn't fare so well against another First Team All-City player, Rick Staccone, who blasted one of my pitches over the left fielder's head for a two-run triple. The sweeping curve ball!

And of course, my name was spelled wrong in the paper the next day, thanks to Coach Agoston.⁶ At least I only had an S added to my name, Bob Utter became someone named Otto.

The Blade, Toledo, Ohio, 28 April 1973

A few other games come into my head when I think of that year:

• I came in to pitch in relief in a game that we were winning by two or three runs. I inherited a bases-loaded situation and for whatever reason, Coach Agoston played the infield in instead of at their regular positions. All we needed was a double-play to get out of the inning, and in fact, I got a ground ball from the first hitter I faced, but since the shortstop wasn't at his regular position, it got through the infield scoring a couple of runs. I think that the runner on first eventually scored the winning run. It might have been later that same game that I got a chance to hit, and Coach Agoston gave me the take sign (read: "don't swing!") for the first five pitches, and when I finally got the swing-away sign, I took a pitch that was a couple of baseball diameters off the plate, but got called a strike by the umpire, my former coach, Russ Menchaca. Further evidence that Russ had something against me.


• I similarly got to bat late in a game against Woodmore, whose pitcher was big, hard throwing left-hander, Jeff Large, who went on to pitch briefly in the Major Leagues. The scenario was the same: Agoston gave me the take sign for the first five pitches and then let me swing at the sixth. There was no way I was going to catch up to Large's fastball without having swung the bat even once. Of course, I didn't.


• At Ottawa Hills, I was put into run for somebody late in the game and was given the steal sign. The pitcher was a left-hander and I was promptly picked off for the third out of the inning. (We at least won the game.)


• We beat the best team in our division, St. John's, on their home field, and I sat the bench for most of that game as well. I got a chance to hit late in the game and on the first pitch, which was a sweeping curve ball that looked like it was coming at my head made me fall back out of the way only to get called a strike. Mr. Wise-ass Pitcher thought he had my number and threw the same pitch again, only this time I stood my ground and sent the ball screaming over third base for a double. Later that game, though, I had a flashback to the St. Catherine's game when a ground ball single went through my legs for an error. The teammate who chased that ball down all those many years before, Bob Gladieux, was the same teammate who chased this ball down.

The last game that year and of my baseball career (softball is a whole other story) came against Rogers High School. It was memorable for a couple of reasons: 1. I was the starting pitcher; and 2. My dad and mom attended. Dad had hardly ever come to my games as a kid—the embarrassing loss to St. Catherine's is the only other one that I actually recall. Coach Agoston must have told me in advance I'd be starting, and I let them know and they'd decided to come.

What also stands out to me as I think about that game is how badly coached I was. And I say that realizing that given the seasonal aspects of high school baseball in Northwest Ohio, there is limited ability to practice outdoors before the season begins. But as I think back on our pre-season practices, there was not one in which I'd worked on my move to first base as a matter of trying to keep a runner from trying to steal second base. Neither had there been discussions about signs from the catcher in those situations. So fast forward to the Rogers game, at one point in the game, I either walked a batter or he got a base hit. He stole second base because I made no attempt to keep him close at first base, but all these years later, the memory lingers of our catcher, Rick Harris (Ron's brother), giving me the sign to throw to first base and me not recognizing that it was a sign to throw to first base because no one had ever told me it was the sign to throw to first base! I thought he was signaling for a fastball (or #1, in typical baseball signs) on the outside part of the plate. (All these years later, I imagine my dad in the stands tsk-tsking me for not throwing over to first.) After the stolen base, you'd think Rick or Coach Agoston would have come to the mound and said, "Hey, you've got to throw over to first base once in a while." or "Why the hell didn't you throw over to first base when I gave you the sign?!?" But no. None of that happened.

Anyway... I must have pitched a halfway decent game otherwise since they'd only scored two runs off me.

I batted a couple of times in the game. I recall that the opposing pitcher threw a knuckleball. It floated up to the plate my first time up and with a swing, I thought I'd tagged him for a double or a triple, but the centerfielder made a good running catch in right-center. Weirdly, in that moment, I was conscious of my dad's presence when the ball came off my bat and looking as though it was going to split the outfielders. I thought would please him. Maybe I'd heard him say "C'mon, Pat!" or something as I stepped to the plate. I walked my second time and scored the tying run at the time. We went on to win 3-2, but I was taken out with an inning or two to go; Dale Hanley replaced me and got credit for the win. Dad didn't say a word about the game afterwards.

When the season was over, and after I'd graduated, I talked to someone about playing ball that summer. Maybe it was Coach Agoston who got me in touch with someone who let me know that there were tryouts for a Senior Knothole team on the south end of town. I went once and got the impression that I wouldn't be given much of a chance. The only two things I recall about the tryout was that my opposing pitcher in the Rogers game, Al Leininger, was trying out as well, and that I was chided for hitting the cut-off man on a throw from the outfield. I had always been taught to aim for the cut-off man's head, which is what I did (I didn't overthrow the cut-off), but apparently, that was too high for the coach's likes. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I read his attitude and decided to stay home the following week and for the rest of my life.

*       *       *

¹Later that year or the next, Ray moved from Yondota Street to a beautiful Victorian house on the corner of Starr Avenue and Potter Street, just a few blocks east of me, and one day, while I was hanging out at his place, his grandfather (who either stopped by or possibly lived there as well) came down the stairs and saw me. He balled his hands up rubbed his eyes and said, "Boo-hoo-hoo!" making fun of my reaction to his having cut me from the team. [back]

²PeeWee baseball was for 9- through 11-year-olds, and while Tony might have been 11 at the time he joined the team, he turned 12 that year. [back]

³Unless you’re familiar with baseball this might not make sense to you. [back]

⁴Ibid. [back]

⁵Ibid. [back]

⁶As I recall, the coach of the winning team had the responsibility of calling in the results of a game to The Blade, our local paper. No doubt, St. Francis’s coach had merely reported the name given to him by Coach Agoston. I’m guessing that Otto versus Utter was the reporter’s mistake. [back]

Homecoming

Waller Street [ 1 | 365 ]

I posted my last photographs on Instagram the other day, and included some text regarding that decision. So far, only a few people have commented (two of whom I know in real life thanks to Flickr), which doesn't surprise me in the least. It's indicative of the site's soul, I guess, or perhaps more accurately, its lack of soul. Scrolling and tapping the heart button (or not) is the norm, which I wouldn't really consider interaction. I rarely have gotten comments there in the ten years or more I've used the site. As I've complained before, Instagram has never come close to replicating the "social" media site Flickr was in its heyday, although I suspect it never was intended to be, and it most certainly was not after Facebook purchased it.

This morning, I decided to scroll through my contacts' photos with the plan of commenting on some in order to get back in the habit of doing so, rather than merely clicking on the star-favourite button à la Instagram. The very first image in my feed was a beautiful photograph taken of a church on a foggy, snowy morning with a quadcopter, so I clicked on it to comment. What I found, however, was pretty much what took a lot of joy out of Flickr many years ago. Nearly all of the comments appear to be bot-like, and include links to groups where the commenters either saw the image or were promoting. To the right are all the groups (twenty-six as I write this) to which the photographer had added the photograph. I typed out a comment that I wanted to leave, but chose not to.

Flickr screenshot

When Flickr was probably at its height (for me, anyway), someone got the great idea—and by great, I mean NOT great—of creating awards for "outstanding" photography or some such on the site. I don't recall now how exactly what went down, but I believe a group was created and others could nominate your photo(s) for what was called the Flicky awards. In the discussion section of the group, a template was posted which you could copy and paste into the comments of photos you wanted to nominate, and the template included HTML code which added flashy, obnoxious animated GIFs (pronounced JIFFs, by the way... hahaha!) to the comments, and soon these ugly things were all over the place. It SO diminished the Flickr experience. I recall, though, that the person who created the "awards" disappeared from the site, along with the stupid-ass Flickys. Nonetheless, the posting of templated comments to photographs continued unabated.

Also at about the same time, Flickr had been sold to Yahoo! and in what was probably an effort to monetize the site for that company, a feature known as Explore, was created to highlight photographs that had become popular. Many people (including yours truly) gamed the system in order to get our photographs into Explore, although for me and a handful of friends, it was the satisfaction of gaming of the algorithm we were after. Regardless, as people's photos began appearing on the Explore page, comments were flooded yet again with templated comments that were accompanied either by an obnoxious glittery GIF or some other sort of unrelated image as a matter of giving congratulations for having appeared on the Explore pages.

And so, my first attempt to dive back into Flickr hasn't yielded much joy, but I will persist.

Aquatic Cove [ 3 | 365 ]

*       *       *

Note: Most of what I've claimed here is based on my memory from close to twenty years ago, as well as after a rather lengthy hiatus from Flickr.

A Complete Unknown

Movie poster for A Complete Unknown

I was not planning on going to see A Complete Unknown, James Mangold's biopic of Bob Dylan, but Sophie wanted to treat me so I relented and saw it Sunday night.

Now, anyone who has known me for a long time has known that I spent a lot of years collecting rare and/or unreleased Dylan recordings, and before I share my thoughts on the film, I thought I'd also share some of that backstory because I think it's important to know the basis for my thoughts.

My infatuation with Dylan's music began after borrowing Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits from a friend in 1969 or so, so about two years after it had been released. I probably wasn't yet 15. By then, of course, Dylan had already become huge—"Like A Rolling Stone", "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35", "Positively 4th Street", "Subterranean Homesick Blues", and even "Lay, Lady, Lay" had all been radio hits for him—and I recall well hearing those songs on AM radio—most likely WOHO in Toledo, or CKLW out of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. A grade school classmate, George Liebherr, had been pretty fluent in Dylan and Arlo Guthrie as I recall, often half-singing/half-speaking their lyrics for no other reason, I guess, than that he could. But I'd not yet caught on.

In addition to those radio hits that Dylan performed, his songs performed by other artists—"Blowin' In The Wind" by Peter, Paul & Mary; "Mr. Tambourine Man", "All I Really Want to Do", and "My Back Pages" by The Byrds; and "It Ain't Me, Babe" by The Turtles—had also gotten considerable airplay, so while Dylan's music was certainly a part of my musical landscape, he was—until I borrowed that LP—just one of many artists that came into my ears on a regular basis by way of the AM airwaves, and therefore didn't take up much of my consiousness. He was not—like The Beatles—a media sensation, at least not in Toledo, Ohio.

Backing up slightly, at this time in my life, my older brother Mike was the record collector in the house, and he had Columbia Record Club membership. The records I recall that he'd bought were The Beatles' Meet The Beatles, Rubber Soul, and Revolver, The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, a Dave Clark Five LP, and maybe a Righteous Brothers record or two. I was still in my Monkees phase.¹

But because The Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man" had reached #1 on the Billboard Charts in July and August of 1965, I heard it a LOT. At that time in my life, though, I didn't memorize many lyrics (I'm often surprised at how few songs from my younger days that I know the lyrics to), but when I heard Dylan's version of the song on Greatest Hits, I had an epiphany of sorts. I was surprised that the song had two more verses than The Byrds' version, and my impression at the time (it still is, actually) was that The Byrds left off the most important verse:  

And take me disappearing
Through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time
Far past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees
Out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Make me forget about today until tomorrow

Even at 14 or 15 or however old I was at the time, I was able to recognize the poetry of those words—the impressionism, the alliteration, the internal rhymes. The power of this original studio version far surpassed that of the jingly-jangly Top 40 hit by The Byrds. I still consider it one of Dylan's most personal songs.

Not long after this eye-and-ear-opening moment, I bought my first Dylan record, which regrettably—at the time, anyway—was Self-Portrait, then his most recent release. It's a double-LP collection of mostly throw-away² covers, recorded during various sessions as a matter of warming up his voice, along with a few live tracks from his recent (and rare) appearance at the Isle of Wight festival in England. It's an album I've come to appreciate more over the years, but this particular Dylan was not the creative genius I'd heard up until that point.

Fast-forwarding to after having made a few more Dylan purchases, the Concert for Bangla Desh was held in New York's Madison Square Garden in August of 1971. We happened to be in Manhattan that night visiting my mom's father and I distinctly recall the rumors reported  (and confirmed) on the local news that Dylan would be a surprise performer. Naturally, I purchased the eventual three-LP record of the event which came out barely four months later, and went to see the film of the event three months after that. The audience's response to Dylan's appearance was thunderous.³ His performance of "Mr. Tambourine Man", while lacking its third verse, had me spellbound.

Possibly, had that appearance not been so well-received, Dylan might not have decided to tour in 1974 for the first time in eight years (tickets for which I was unable to get). By this time, I had purchased all of his available records, but one night, while at a Disc Records at Toledo's Franklin Park Mall, I came across what I learned to be a "bootleg" LP of rare and unreleased recordings of his which, if memory serves, was called The Unkindest Cut. I had stumbled onto the underbelly, of sorts, of the record industry. Upon making this inadvertent discovery, and buying a few more available bootlegs via mail order, I placed an ad in Rolling Stone looking for more rare recordings, whether studio outtakes or concert recordings. I purchased a cache of tapes from a fellow in Connecticut, then made trades with people across the country and around the world. I was invested—in more ways than one—in the music and myth of Bob Dylan. And, of course, I read everything available in print about him. Despite that I've not kept up with all of the many books that have been published since the 1990s, when my trading activity waned and eventually ceased, I consider myself pretty well-acquainted with most aspects of his public life.

So, I wasn't actually looking forward to seeing A Complete Unknown because I've seen many a lame film depiction of musicians' lives; I expected departures from historical reality, but I honestly didn't expect the film would be one fictional event after another.

In a post to her Facebook page, Joan Osborne spoke to the film's many detours from historical fact, but also stated that what's ultimately important is that Dylan's music gets exposed to a new, younger generation, and I guess I support that attitude, but it didn't make watching the film any less cringe-worthy for me when so many scenes played out that I know never occurred. And yes, I get that the film isn't a documentary, and that fiction can be a tool in telling a greater truth, but many of the distortions in the film had to do with significant moments of Dylan's life and career, and there will be those who come away from the film believing that what they've seen is factual.

I could tick off so many, but the three that annoyed me the most, I suppose, were these: Timothée Chalomet's overly mumbly voice (Dylan spoke quite clearly in recordings I've heard of him from that time); the representation of Sylvie Russo (fictional name for Suze Rotolo) as a jealous girlfriend storming away from an event she didn't even attend; and the quasi-climactic scene at Newport when Dylan kicked off his new electric sound. People did not pelt the stage with cans and bottles and other trash. Also, booing was not as loud and boisterous as depicted, and it still remains unclear as to whether people booed Dylan (no doubt some did) or the poor sound delivered by an unprepared crew.

As for the positives, bravo to Chalomet for choosing to learn the guitar and to not lip synch to Dylan recordings. As Osborne said in her post, nobody does Dylan like Dylan, but Chalomet's performance was about as good as one could expect, and except for the mumbling I've already noted, he did well to recreate a lot of Dylan's mannerisms. So, I give Chalomet a 9 out of 10... maybe even a 9.5. (I think the mumbling was based more on myth than reality.)

I was also pleased with the production quality of the film, and Mangold's ability to recreate a 1960s feel. I also liked the songs that were selected for the film, and was especially pleased to hear the snippet of "I'll Keep It With Mine", one of my all-time favourites and one of those unreleased outtakes I'd first heard on a bootleg so long ago. I was happy that Phil Ochs was given a hat tip—albeit not with a name-check—with the inclusion of his song (performed by Barbaro/Baez) "There But For Fortune". It appeard to me that Chalomet/Dylan shot a glare at someone during the performance of the song, and I wondered if that was supposed to be Ochs. I wish that "House Of The Rising Sun" had not been performed by Barbaro/Baez (early in the film) because even though she probably sang the song in those days, Dylan had lifted his arrangement of the song from Dave Van Ronk (played by Joe Tippett), who I didn't even recognize in the film. I was quite pleased with Ed Norton's portrayal of Pete Seeger, although his role in Dylan's career was not as pivotal as the film made it out to be, at least not as directly as depicted, and there's no record of a practically crazed Pete Seeger at Newport in 1965. Ditto for Alan Lomax.

Elle Fanning's portrayal of Russo/Rotolo was as good as could be expected, too, considering that there's very little public knowledge about Rotolo's relationship with Dylan, beyond what little those within their circle have been willing to share over the years, or what Rotolo herself shared in her very fine memoire, A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties. I wish her depth and cultural influences on Dylan would have been explored more—that she brought him to a civil rights protest barely scratched the surface—instead of the rather uncritical and somewhat trite look at their crumbling relationship. I admit, though, that I was quite moved by the fictional scene in which she sees Dylan and Baez singing "The Times They Are A-Changin'" together. I'm not sure what to read into that scene, but it ties back to an earlier one in the film in which she finds a scrap of paper with a few lines of the song on it and reads it out loud to him before he snatches it from her hand:

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast

Upon hearing the song, did her eyes tear up because she'd originally thought the song was written about her only to discover it was something else? Did she tear up because she was witnessing genius bubbling to the top? Was she recognizing the influences she'd had on his politics? I suppose that it's this vagueness and the possibility of interpreting it in several ways that made it powerful to me.

Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez was also quite good, particularly since she was never going to fully replicate the power of Baez's iconic soprano voice, and she did well to portray Baez's tone in her speaking scenes. I didn't like the phony argument with Dylan at the microphones about which song to sing next. I can't recall now what scene it was, but there was a moment between Baez and Dylan similar to the one with Sylvie mentioned above that moved me.

There is a scene in which Chalomet is filmed walking down the street (as I recall, in a bit of a huff) passing by many of the clubs that were the mainstay venues for the folksingers of that time: Café Wha?, The Gaslight, Gerde's Folk City, maybe a few others... I found it to be an extremely effective technique of trying to rope in the many places in Greenwich Village where Dylan and his fellow musicians would gather.

The Albert Grossman character was a bit too cartoonish for my likes, which is not so much a criticism of the actor, Dan Fogler, but the script. From all accounts, Grossman was a larger-than-life figure that didn't suffer fools, and I didn't really get that sense of him in the film at all. Also, while maybe there's documentary or anecdotal evidence of him sharing a bed with Dylan at Newport, I've never heard of it, and I don't think there's a chance in hell that he wouldn't have secured himself a private room if indeed he attended the festival. I just found that scene weird.

Now, I understand the task of trying to compress five years or so of history into a two-hour film, but I think that for all the inaccurate narratives that were created, more historically accurate narratives could have been written into the script in their stead. For example, the scene involving the angry janitor in Woody Guthrie's hospital room was totally unnecessary, playing no real significant role in the film. Was it merely to show Dylan's snipey wit? I've read that Dylan himself gave blessing to the script (in addition to requesting the Suze Rotolo name change) but that doesn't surprise me. I've long known that Dylan has had an eye on his legacy, and since the film shows him in a pretty good light, by and large, of course, he approved of it.

If you've read this far, thanks for bearing with me. I'm not—nor have I ever claimed to be—the foremost Dylan scholar. I've derived great satisfaction listening to his music and marveling at what he has done with music and words and wordplay over the course of his lifetime. His real, true story is a fascinating one. I finally got to see him a in person a couple of times on back-to-back nights in 1978 (Toledo and Dayton) and, I think two other times. I was thoroughly disappointed with the last show I saw, in November of 1990 in East Lansing, Michigan, and vowed to never see him again. I haven't. I don't think writing songs has been that important for him in a long time, and I didn't even think all that much of his Grammy-winning Time Out Of Mind. In fact, I've only listened to it once or twice. I've barely listened to any of his records since. Go figure.

So, while there are many, many aspects of the film I don't like, I'd give it a 6 or 7 out of 10, and as a film in and of itself—without the baggage of depicting a meteoric rise of someone who would become the icon he became—it was enjoyable... it had good acting, and undeniably great music. Just don't take it all that seriously as a historical document.

*       *       *

¹An episode of the Monkees television show had a scene which took place on an old Cowboy Western-type set, and involved a character that resembled the television show Gunsmoke's Chester, played by Dennis Weaver. To understand the gag, however, you had to be familiar with Gunsmoke and its main character, Sheriff Matt Dillon. I can't recall the scenario exactly, but the Monkees came up to this Chester character for help and he said he'd go get Mr. Dylan (sounds like Dillon... get it?), and when they asked him if he meant the Sheriff, he said something like, "No, Bob Dylan... he can write a song about your problems."[back]

²By throwaway, I mean not intended to be released, not that it's a bad or unusable performance, although certainly that could apply in some cases.[back]

³I've long posited that George Harrison very slyly played "Here Comes The Sun" prior to introducing Dylan.[back]

Un petit poème

Comme un livre ouvert ©2024 Patrick T. Power. All rights reserved.

I was going through my old blog posts here, deleting most of the political rants that I had written back during the Bush administration, when I came across this post, which at the end mentioned Montréal and linked to the website of the North American Folk Alliance. I discovered that the link no longer worked, so I found the organization's current URL and fixed it.

In 2005, I attended the International Folk Alliance Conference in Montréal, so I was rather delightfully surprised to find, upon visiting the website, that the annual conference will once again be held this coming February in Montréal. That brought back memories not only of my early days of Flickr activity, but of a woman in Canada with whom I had become quite smitten. I suggested she make the long trip from where she lived in the western provinces to Montréal to meet me, and to spend four days with me immersed in music. As those memories came back to me, so did I recall that I'd written a poem for the occasion that would not come to pass.

Je désire ton amitié
by Patrick T. Power

je désire te rencontrer à Montréal
si la neige commence à tomber
si le vent du nord souffle
on trouvera la chaleur et le confort
on utilisera des mots pour allumer un feu

mes yeux
tes yeux
ma main
ta main
mon cœur
ton cœur

tout allumer pour le feu
et continuer la chaleur

je désire ton amitié
je ne désire rien jusqu'à ce que j'aie ton amitié
dans mes mains
dans mon coeur

je désire ton amitié

*   *   *

moins de 46

Photo copyright 2024 by Patrick T. Power. All rights reserved.

you didn’t make it to 46.

often i wondered
what you might think of me
once i was no longer of this earth,
or if you would even
think of me at all.
i never would have guessed
that you
would go first.


NOTE: I've decided to abandon my Substack account because of that platform's decision to create a partnership with right-winger Bari Weiss's organization. I will migrate what few posts I've published there to this site. This post was originally published on 27 May 2024. I wish I'd re-published it on the 19th of December, the second anniversary of her death.

That Summer of '78

or A Whole Lot of Temporary

Me and Sandy Harley ©2024 Patrick T. Power

NOTE: I've decided to abandon my Substack account because of that platform's decision to create a partnership with right-winger Bari Weiss's organization. I will migrate what few posts I've published there to this site. This post was originally published on 9 November 2024. I've since done some minor editing

My former mother-in-law died a little less than two weeks ago, and as is my wont, I started ripping up my apartment trying to find photographs I’d taken almost thirty years ago on film to see what I might have of her. I didn’t take near as many photographs in my film days as I have since going digital, but I tended to have my camera at all the family get-togethers so that there would be some kind of record of the events. Somewhere along the line, though, I stopped putting the prints into photo albums and stashed them and the negatives away for I don’t know what. Typically, I would get double prints, so I could share the extras with others if they wanted something so I still have two copies of a lot of them. When Kodak began offering Picture Discs with low-resolution scans of the negatives, I cared even less about keeping an accessible archive of the prints.

All that to say that I found a handful of photographs that I knew I had around here somewhere, but had no clue where I might have stashed them. But I guess as the saying goes, the minute you stop looking for something, you find it. So along with the photographs that I was looking for, I found the ones I’d been wondering about, as well as something to write about.

As the school year was wrapping up in Bowling Green, Ohio in the spring of 1978, my older brother Mike suggested that I come out to Minnesota to work for the summer. He’d been living in the Minneapolis area for a couple of years with his then-wife Carol, and son Christopher, and they’d just had a newborn daughter, Angela, in February. If memory serves, he was the Operations Manager at the Big A Auto Parts’ distribution center in Edina.

It’s weird now in this age of internet and text immediacy to think about that conversation because we didn’t really talk all that often. Long-distance charges were a thing back then, and it tended to keep calls few and relatively short. Did he call me to suggest it? Did I call him just to chat and he presented the idea to me? Had I mentioned that I didn’t have a job lined up for the summer and it just popped into his head? I’m coming around to the likelihood that I answered the phone and after a few niceties, he asked “What are you doing this summer?”

I worked at the campus media center during the school year, processing film and doing copy photography, and again if memory serves, I had worked the previous summer at Commercial Aluminum Cookware (later known as Calphalon) about halfway between home in Toledo and school. After working full-time there for over two years, I decided I wasn’t going to work fifty hours a week the rest of my life in a polishing powder-filled factory—despite the relatively good money—and off I went to school. I stayed on in a part-time capacity for a little while, but I became a persona non grata with the newish, buttoned-up manager when I drew a life-sized comic-caricature of him. He decided the company no longer needed a part-time employee.

Anyway, however the offer came to pass, I agreed to go to Minnesota. Before heading out, I recorded a bunch of my albums onto cassettes for the ten- to twelve-hour drive. Dylan had just released Street Legal, so that was at the top of the list; I also no doubt included most of his discography in the mix. At about the same time, Springsteen released Darkness On The Edge Of Town, so I recorded that along with his first three records. I had only become a fan of his after Born To Run had come out so I was still kind of getting to know his stuff—I had to bring all of it. The Allman Brothers’ Brothers and Sisters also made the cut—the record was five years old at the time, but still a goodie. There are two songs from amongst all the tapes I brought with me that I can’t not associate with the trip: the Allman Brothers’ “Jessica” and Springsteen’s “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” from The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle—both for very different reasons.

Within a week or two, I packed up my 1974 Volkswagen Super Beetle and was on my way. I stopped in the Chicago area to see my mom’s brother, Skip, and his family, and I spent a night there to break up the travel. At that time in my life, I could drive for hours with nary a break, but aside from that overnight pit stop, I tried to get there in as little time as possible. I took I-94 through the heart of Wisconsin, and as I made my way into the greater Minneapolis area, Brothers and Sisters was playing. It was raining a bit, and as traffic was getting thicker, I had to keep pace with it. It was then that I discovered that there might not be a greater driving song than “Jessica” (and, I might add, for dancing in your chair).

I took I-35W south from I-94 to where Mike lived in Burnsville. The highway would become more and more familiar to me over the course of the coming weeks as it was my way to and from work each day. (35W crossed the Minnesota River near Bloomington by way of a bridge that twenty-nine years later suffered a catastrophic collapse.) Traffic was backed up as I approached Burnsville and because I abhor sitting in a non-moving vehicle, I got off the highway and followed a route that took me west of Burnsville, near Shakopee, where I would cross another stretch of the river. It probably didn’t save me a bit of time but I was at least in motion.

I started work the following Monday. I stocked car parts for the other workers—assemblers—to pull for orders. I learned later that I was getting paid a dollar more per hour than my peers, which ruffled a few feathers—something I didn’t know when I was hired. I don’t know how my co-workers found out. I enjoyed the people I worked with, though. Too many years have passed so names elude me, although I’m pretty sure one of the four or five guy assemblers I regularly cavorted with was named Steve Gilford. There were a couple of women assemblers, too… one a quiet blonde who seemed suspicious of me, and Sandy Harley, with whom I'd become smitten.


Sandy Harley, July of 1978 ©2024 Patrick T. Power

At first, I didn’t know what to make of things with her, whether she was seeing someone or not. My social clumsiness meant not asking, I guess, and I wasn’t about to ask my new co-workers, but eventually we started going out. I think one of our first dates was to go to a blues show at The Cabooze, but when we got there, it wasn’t happening. I never figured out why. We drove around for a bit and eventually found another place with live music. The band played Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money” during their set, which I thought was pretty cool as I was a big fan of his, and I drank my first St. Pauli Girl. I also attended my first classical concert with Sandy—French flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal was the guest conductor with the Minneapolis Philharmonic. I bought his Suite For Flute And Jazz Piano that night. Sandy also turned me on to the Lamont Cranston Band, a local boogie-blues group that had—it was rumoured—caught the ear of John Belushi and was going to appear on Saturday Night Live that fall. We saw them at a place in Shakopee… Doc Holliday’s maybe?

The Minnesota Kicks, Minneapolis’s team in the now-defunct North American Soccer League, was a pretty big deal at the time, as was something new to me, tailgating, so a few of the guys and I met up at Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington to party on a couple of occasions. It was at my first tailgate that a couple of young women approached me seemingly out of nowhere. Had I been eyeing them up? They me? We chatted for a bit and one of them gave me her phone number and maybe even her address. It was the first time something like that had ever happened to me. Her name was… Sandy. In the weeks that followed, I picked up the phone and dialed six of the seven numbers a couple of times, but things seemed to be moving ever-so-slightly forward with Sandy number one, so I stopped and put the phone down.

Sandy, the first one, lived upstairs in a beautiful old Victorian house near Lake Of The Isles, an area made famous in the opening credits of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. We hung out there on occasion, and went canoeing on the lake once. We also picnic’d and sunbathed (mostly) at a couple of other downtown lakes, Harriet and Nokomis. The above photograph was likely taken at one of the two. I seem to recall that Lake Calhoun (which I just learned is now known by its original Dakota name Bde Maka Ska was the least of Sandy’s favourites for reasons that escape me now.

It’s interesting to me how as I write this, more details from those twelve weeks or so come to my memory’s surface. I had been a pretty major collector of rare Bob Dylan recordings for several years, so I was immersed in reading Larry Sloman’s On The Road With Bob Dylan: Rolling With The Thunder, reading it in the car during my lunch breaks. Dylan’s film Renaldo & Clara had been released in January and I’d obtained a recording of just the audio earlier in the year, so I was pretty thrilled to get a chance to actually see it in Dylan’s home state when the cut version was released.

On the 9th of August, Springsteen performed a show at The Agora Ballroom in Cleveland and it was broadcast live across the country—all three hours!—and I listened in the solitude of my room. It cinched my Bruce fandom. And wouldn’t you know it… “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” was his first encore.

As the summer wound down, Sandy and I made a trip to the north shore of Lake Superior for a camping weekend. We stopped at her parents’ place (in Anoka, I think) and I met her mom and one of her brothers.


Sandy and my Super Beetle ©2024 Patrick T. Power

On the way up—actually a bit out of the way—we passed through Hibbing Minnesota, where Dylan had grown up. We didn’t tool around town looking for his boyhood home or anything, we just drove through on the main drag, stopping to get gas, then passing by the high school. I guess I wanted to say I’d been there since I was so close. We also made a brief stop at the Hull-Rust-Mahoning Open Pit Iron Mine, one of the other three things for which Hibbing is famous… the other two being that it’s the hometown of Roger Maris and Greyhound bus lines. The magnitude of the open pit mine is both breathtaking and heartbreaking.


Me, somewhere along the way

We camped at a totally rustic site and the only vivid memory etched in my brain is that when I washed my hair in the lake, it was so cold—despite being near the end of August—it felt like by scalp was on fire. And yet somehow, others were diving in and swimming as if it were a reasonable thing to do. I just couldn’t imagine doing to my whole self what I’d done to my scalp.

On the way back to the city, we stopped in Duluth. Sandy had gone to the University of Minnesota-Duluth so she showed me a little of the campus and told me that most—if not all—of the buildings were connected so that people wouldn’t have to deal with the sub-zero temperatures during the winter. Much of the city is built on hills, and although I had never been to the city in which I now live, I told her Duluth looked kind of like a mini-San Francisco. We went out to the North Pier Lighthouse and I snapped a series of photographs with her 110-cartridge-film camera that I later mounted as a panorama in a photography class.


Duluth panorama — Photo by Patrick T. Power. All rights reserved.

Possibly the worst moment of my summer came shortly after returning from the camping trip. I was working one day when out of the blue, Scott, a guy who worked in the office and was best buds with Sandy confronted me. He wanted to know why I had written on one of the walls of a bathroom stall that I’d had sex with Sandy during the camping trip. Of course, more vulgar terminology had been used. First of all, we hadn’t had sex, so it wouldn’t have occurred to me to write such a thing, and two, I’ve never in my life told another person—must less publicly boasted—about my private moments with a woman. It’s just not my nature. Scott seemed convinced of my innocence, that someone else had done the deed in my name. I can’t recall if I confronted anyone about it. I think the guys I hung out with liked and respected Sandy, so I didn’t really suspect any of them, but you never know. Sandy never knew until I brought it up with her many years later. I’m so glad she didn’t know about it then as it would have crushed her to know that her work mates talked about her like that.

There are a few other details I recall about the trip, such as learning that just before I’d arrived, Mike had quit smoking when his toddler son, Chris, decided he wanted to eat something from one of the ashtrays. I helped Mike with some decorative landscaping around the house, which mostly meant shoveling white stone around the patio area. Also, Mike rented a copy of the brilliant Das Boot and I somehow managed to fall asleep. I think I babysat the kids once so that Mike and Carol could have a night out. Pope Paul VI died while I was in Minneapolis, and I recall watching Wimbledon during that time and playing pool on the table just outside my room. Big A had a company picnic and we played softball. I recall one of the bosses, Dennis was his name, I think, blasted a ball over my head in center field. I got the last laugh, though, as I threw him out at third base. Also, I won a digital watch in the raffle. The battery wore out within a year or so and I never replaced it. It was the last watch I’ve owned. It had an alarm setting that played a classical piece that I can’t at the moment recall.

So much, of course, is a blur these forty-six years later.

Sandy and I remained in touch briefly after my departure. I made a surprise trip to see her on Hallowe’en that year. It didn’t go well. Scott had moved to Madison, Wisconsin by that time, so I stopped to see him on the way home seeking solace. I think she and I exchanged a couple of letters after that, and after I’d gotten married four years later, my wife and I visited her. As I think about it now, both she and Penny probably thought it was a stupid idea but neither said so. Sandy moved to the San Diego area at some point. After Big A, she went to nursing school. I don’t know if she ever got married (I guess it’s weird that I never asked), but she had a daughter twenty-some years ago. Despite that I’ve been to San Diego a couple of times for work since I moved to California, my trips were short and getting together wouldn’t have been practical. Sandy died four years ago on my son’s thirty-third birthday, 16 February 2020. In a weird kind of synchronicity, in just three days from now, on the 12th of November, she would have turned 68.

I also maintained a connection with the second Sandy for a little while. We exchanged a few letters, I sent her mix tapes (one of which I recall opened with Dylan’s “Girl Of The North Country”), we talked several times on the phone. Despite that it all seemed pretty great, it just sort of ended because sometimes distance makes decisions for us.