On Deck with Commissioner Bud Selig

Onward/Upward Bud

Warming Up for July 10 MLB All-Star Game in Kansas City!

In 1982, as a wandering neophyte lost in a fascinating and not-too-unfriendly world, I did research for consulting firm CTM to develop something wild called "SSN, the SuperSportsNetwork."

In those days of proliferating cable networks, SSN was to be a confederated joint venture of MLB team owners that would satellite-deliver a program of out-of-market baseball games to cable subscribers: you'd see your home team all season long except on nights when they played at home and had not sold out the park; on those nights you'd tap the exchange and receive the best game from around the league.

We got 23 of the 26 owner groups to convene at the O'Hare Hilton for a huge confab - two or three folks from each team.  The Cubs (WGN), Braves (WTBS) and Mets (WOR) had already cast their lot with new "cable superstations" and would not/could not participate.

Why HIM?  Why not ME ???

2008 MLB All-Star Game - Bud and SJP at Yankee Stadium (4-3 A.L.)

Well, I've worked in finance and television, and had unhealthy immersion in politics and academia - all rife with big, needy, overblown egos - but never have I been in a room with more blustering, braying, domineering jackasses at one time (well, I attended a U.N. General Assembly proceeding once, but that's another story).  Many of the club owners were also very charming in a back-slapping way, but every single one of these grand-standers was cruelly suspicious of his confreres.

The meeting was a riot.  My glamorous job?  Running laps of the giant horseshoe table where the 65 primo donno participants were seated, and handing out papers.

Beer Keg Swings Bat - COOL!

Oy!  One character who was well-behaved, and lingered late to chew the fat with my boss Bob Schmidt, was Milwaukee Brewers owner (later to become MLB Commissioner) Bud Selig. He was genuinely interested in the proposition, and would visit us in McLean VA later that year following the Brewers' heroic October appearance in the "Suds Series" (Brewers lost in seven).

As we swept up the room and prepared to vacate for a late plane back east, I spotted Bud pull a bright white baseball from the pocket of his brown corduroy suit jacket, take a Bic pen right out of Bob's shirt pocket, and scribble his autograph: "Good luck, Bob! Bud Selig"

The ball occupied a place of honor on Bob's desk and I admired it until something else happened to it...

to be continued.

Grabbing Lunch with Sam Donaldson

Unabashed Texan Sam Donaldson

When I visited Washington DC to tour Georgetown Univesity and GWU with my father in 1975, we stayed at the grand and stately Mayflower Hotel.  As a rube in the big city, I was amazed at the size of this hotel - a full city block long: one could enter on Connecticut Ave. and exit on 17th street.

The northern edge of the hotel was bounded by DeSales Street, NW, a one block long mid-block connector between the two avenues.  And opposite the Mayflower (just outside our window), across DeSales Street at mid-block, was ABC News' Washington DC bureau.  How cool - people making television, right there!

Ten years later, I was working 1/2 block away on 17th Street at the National Geographic Society, and we usd to graze around the neighborhood, picking off a number of researchers from NPR and ABC News when we were staffing up NG EXPLORER.

ABC sits chock-a-block with a parking garage and there was a small, greasy spoon lunch counter there in the mid-80's.  I don't remember the name of it but one day we were all piled in there, jockeying at the counter, when a loud, bold and insistently-recognizable voice cut through the din: "Ham and Swiss!  Right Here!! - That's Mine!!!"  He reached above and across the throng, grabbed the bag, threw a $5 bill at the counter guy who laughed, and he bolted.

"People ask me about my relationship with President Reagan. I say it was a case of two 'hams' discovering each other. Only I played the 'straight man' and he always had the last word."

One of his most widely remembered questions during his tenure at the White House came during the Reagan administration: "Mr. President, in talking about the continuing recession tonight, you have blamed Congress and mistakes in the past. Does any of the blame belong to you?" To which Reagan retorted: "Yes, for many years I was a Democrat!"

On a Wild Nantucket Sleighride with Roy Bailey

Time to dream, and dream, and daydream again about Nantucket Island summers.

Happy Father's Day to my Dad, and here's a Nantucket reprise in honor of my parents spending the week now in Wauwinet...

In the Bailey Studio...

In the 1960's, one of Nantucket's great artists-in-residence was Roy Bailey, whose upstairs gallery above Miltimore's Dress Shop was on the corner of Orange Street and South Main Street, just up from where Mitchell's Bookshop now sits, and below Murray's Toggery.

Gorgeous

My parents knew Roy through some good mutual friends - natives, I'm obliged to point out - and collected a few of his pieces.

James Dean-esque and seductively dashing, Bailey was active in the art and performing arts community, and a regular in the Opera House, where a good martini could always be had, and a Coke at the bar would cost you $1 in 1968 (at the time, it was $.10 or .15 everywhere else on the island!).

Sixties island hoi-polloi would congregate in the Opera House after sailing, for evenings of tale-telling and tail-chasing.  It was a swinging scene among the yacht club set, up-and-comers, and Snopeses of all stripes.

Porters' Quarters, 59 Fair

At the time, we had a place on Fair Street, a short stroll away.

Now, if you read your Melville, you know that a Nantucket Sleighride is local (early 19th century) slang for the ride you and your (possibly doomed) friends took once the leashed harpoon you'd hurled found its mark in the whale's flesh and he took you for a long and rough ride, sometimes for hours... sometimes to the bottom of the sea.  Reference Captain Ahab.

Gentlemen of a certain age know well, also, that "Nantucket Sleighride" refers to a 5:50 rock classic (blended ballad/dirge and riff-rock roarer) from the 1971 album of the same name by monumental heavy/dinosaur band Mountain (alternately, to its 32-minute cousin from the live "Twin Peaks" album, much and painfully inferior).  As Mountain were preparing to release the great (I think their best) album Nantucket Sleighride, the band either selected - or commissioned anew - an etching by Bailey to illustrate the inner album spread.

I'd stared at this illustration ['Drawing of a Nantucket Sleighride'] many times - but only years later, after college, did I notice the attribution and realize it was ol' Roy who'd 'drawn' it.

"Three years sailing on bended knee ..."

So when in 1998 while biking into town now on Vestal Street I spotted Bailey's shingle, I hustled in to find him, aging and a bit brittle.

We introduced ourselves and chatted about the 'golden age' of Nantucket for ten minutes or so.  Then I revealed my real interest - to buy a print of the Nantucket Sleighride key art.

"Wow!" he shouted - "it's been years and years since anyone has even mentioned that piece to me!  I didn't think anyone remembered.  I barely remember it myself!"

Visit the Nantucket Whaling Museum

He did not have the print to sell - for all he knew, it had gone ages ago to Davy Jones' locker.  We reminisced and he let me know the connection had come about through a Nantucket fellow - "young man, don't remember his name now, but might have been a Coffin descendant" - who was friendly with the band and knew of their fascination with Nantucket, whaling, and the story of the whaleship Essex, all inspirations for the album.

Here is a nice Father's Day themed article about Roy Bailey.

Roy passed away in 2002 but he lives on in the memory of many a Nantucket "Golden-Ager' . . . as does this particular work of his in the hearts and minds of many I'd venture utterly unwitting rock fans of 40 years ago!!