Tag Archives: Thurman Munson

The Hana Chronicles: Month 5, Day 19

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Posted by on in children, collaborating, Community, Education, Entertainment, Fiction, Inspiration, Personal Values, Social, Striving

June 9, 2026- Hana enjoys my vocal impersonations of various animal characters in the stories I read her each day. More important, though, and thus a cause for measured repetition of some stories, is the ethic being conveyed in several of the tales: Cooperation, fairness, justice and equity, in particular.

In a story from a “Girl Power” series, Princess Jasmine, of the “Aladdin” series, captains a women’s polo team and decides to focus on the strengths of her three team members. Each of the players thus contributes mightily to the team’s holding a far more formidable opponent to a draw. Jasmine then notices that the opposing team’s captain is scoring all the goals herself, while the teammates have little to do. Jasmine decides to give each of the opposing players, except the captain, a chance to score a goal. This, of course, leads to the opposing team winning the match. Jasmine is given a Gold Medal for sportsmanship.

I can’t imagine any team in modern professional sports doing anything remotely like this. For that matter, I can’t imagine any youth sports encouraging such behaviour, though there is an innate sense of fair play among the kids themselves-but not among the adults coaching or watching the event. Still, the idea of encouraging even one’s opponents, in the name of everyone having a good experience, is well worthy of consideration.

A similar tone is struck in other stories I’ve read to Hana: The idea that even competitive sports can be grounded in fair play, and everyone having fun, is well worth getting back to. The handshakes at the end of many team sports ought to mean more than just a good look for the cameras.

This brings me to last night’s NBA Finals, Game 3. There should not be a situation where being from the visiting team’s city or wearing its paraphernalia is a reason to practically need an armed escort. Those whose sense of pride, or even sense of well-being, depends on the home team winning are barking up the wrong tree. I say this, having grown up in the Boston area, and having “loved to hate” New York or Montreal teams. We loved to “boo” the Yankees, the Knicks, the Canadiens or Rangers. Yet, when a plane carrying Yankees’ catcher Thurman Munson crashed, in August, 1979, Boston fans and players expressed grief and sorrow. None was more heartbroken than Munson’s alpha rival, Carlton Fisk, who paid tribute to Munson, when he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, in 2000.

My most cherished hope for my granddaughter is that she will be imbued with the spirit of fair play.

Eighteen and Counting

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Posted by on in Community, Historical, Social, Spiritual

September 11, 2019-

Growing up in the Boston area, I adopted a love/hate relationship with New York City.  It was largely the Red Sox/Yankees thing, then the Celtics/Knicks and, to a lesser extent, Patriots/Jets.  As a teen, my feelings towards the Big Apple became more nuanced.  No one with a pulse, in Red Sox Nation, was smug or indifferent, when the Yankees’ thirty-two year-old catcher, the great Thurman Munson, was killed whilst practicing piloting his small plane, in August, 1979.  Slightly more than ten years later, many felt bad at the accidental death of Billy Martin, a guy Bostonians loved to hate.  Martin had been the on-again, off-again manager of the Yankees and loved tormenting the Sox.  That did not lessen the pain of his dying on Christmas night, 1989.

My first visit to  New York was transitory, whilst traveling between Washington and Boston, at Christmas, 1969.  I went from Penn Station to La Guardia, then finally to Grand Central, before settling on a bus that got me, fairly cheaply, to Boston.  I remember being teased by a couple of prostitutes, in the subway, almost getting gouged by a ticket agent at La Guardia, and not a whole lot else.

Six years later, I drove a couple of friends from UMass-Amherst, down to Manhattan, and visited some former hotel restaurant customers of mine.  It was actually a very nice weekend,  Friday night and Saturday, in the Chelsea neighbourhood.  I visited Bronx Zoo, on that Sunday morning, and was delighted at how quiet the area was.   Yes, I also walked by Yankee Stadium afterward, because-Hey, why not?

Penny was a fan of all things NYC, so we spent a couple of days in Central Park and along the waterfront, when visiting her parents in nearby New jersey. I hung out in Central Park, solo, when attending an American Association of School Counselors convention, in 1984.  That was the last time, before 9/11/01, that I saw Manhattan intact.

I was getting some groceries, early that morning, in Phoenix.  As I got in the car to go home, and turned on the radio, the morning jock stated that someone had just flown a jumbo jet into the World Trade Center.  “Terrorist” hit my mind like a ton of bricks (no pun intended). Penny saw me walk in, crestfallen, i described what I’d heard, and we turned on the TV.  CNN had not picked up on the story, so it was business as usual from them and Penny got herself dressed for work, whilst Aram got ready for school.  I stayed glued to the screen, knowing that, eventually, a report would come on.  Ten minutes later, CNN caught on, and a Day of Infamy for our time played out in front of my eyes.

There were all manner of reports, mostly factual, with a fair amount of misinformation thrown in.   Reports came that the National Mall, the State Department, the Capitol, the White House, CIA Headquarters, the Sears Tower (Chicago) and downtown Los Angeles were being attacked. My mind pictured a latter day Orson Welles intoning “War of the Worlds”.  A French conspiracy theorist immediately began claiming this was all a hoax, using holograms, designed to instigate was with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.  He turned out to be partially right- Iraq, as well as the Taliban, became targets of the U.S. Military.  There were, however, no holograms.

The images coming out of lower Manhattan, and elsewhere in New York and New Jersey, were all too real, all too horrific.  I would later visit each of the sites impacted by the plane crashes of that eternal morning:  Shanksville, in 2009; Ground Zero, in 2013 and the Pentagon, in 2014.  What  I saw on that last visit convinced me that there was no hoax.  Metal fragments and burnt soil remain, here and there, at the Memorial Park.  Ground Zero has impacted thousands of people, many of whom are still suffering.  Shanksville’s residents, including the farmer on whose property the plane came down, bear uniform witness to the event that forever changed their lives.

Eighteen years later, there remain many questions, but no doubt as to the fact that  the innocence of two generations was shattered on that Latterday of Infamy.