A Challenge To Be Conquered

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May 31st, 2018

Off we go! (Click on any image to enlarge)

Here is the challenge before me, and it’s one I look forward to taking on. At around 7:30 tonight, I’ll be all snug in seat 5A on a big Delta A-330 getting ready for an 8-hour and 20-minute overnight flight. If we’re on time, we will land in Amsterdam just before 11:00 on Friday morning, local time. The challenge is my history of being unable to sleep on a plane when I really need to. It goes back a long way, and was also a problem in college and the minor leagues when it came to bus rides. Put me on a 2-hour morning flight and I can be snoozing before we push back. Put me on a red-eye, where sleep is kinda sorta really (like REALLY) important, and I’m generally hopeless.

I don’t take any prescription sleep aids, because I’ve tried them and they didn’t really work for me. Plus, I hear stories from other people that range from horrifying to hilarious, and I don’t want to really be either of those things. Especially on a plane. I’ve seen a few dazed passengers get up and walk around in the middle of the night and it always looks like they’re trying to figure out where the hell they are.

I do have a “lay flat” seat in the front cabin, thanks to my enormously large bank of Delta miles, so that helps. I also downloaded a “White Noise” app onto my phone. It has sounds ranging from ocean waves to gentle rain showers and a lot of other things in between. Maybe that will be of some benefit. Plus, I will take a melatonin tablet right after dinner, because it’s a natural thing and sometimes it does let me ease into sleep. However it works out, my plan is to power through the jet lag because we’re only going to be in Amsterdam for a couple of days. Our flight back to MSP leaves around noon on Sunday. That’s not much time to adjust to the big time difference.

I heard from Barbara this morning, and due to that very same time difference I may not hear from here until we meet up at Schiphol airport tomorrow. She’s been in London and Edinburgh for a few days and we both land at Schiphol at basically the same time. That little challenge will be finding each other after coming in on different flights and different airlines, most likely into different parts of a very big airport I’ve never been to. How did we do stuff like this before cell phones? If I get some good sleep, fantastic. If I don’t, I’m going to pretend I did.

We have a guided tour of the Rijksmuseum scheduled for Saturday afternoon, and then a wine and cheese cruise on the canals that evening. Should be amazing! I’ll try to take some photos if I’m awake.

And now for some pre-trip Thursday Blog Day rambling…

The other day I connected with yet another former teammate. This time it was Eddie Gates, from the Paintsville Hilanders. Eddie was a great teammate and a fantastic guy. He was also a pretty darn good ballplayer, who could play just about any position while also hitting just above .300 that summer. When I saw that one of my other facebook friends was also friends with a guy named Eddie Gates, I thought “No way that’s him” because the third person had nothing to do with Paintsville or the Appalachian League. When I looked at Eddie’s profile page it was like “Oh yeah, that’s him for sure.” What a small world.

Jose (always smiling) and Eddie, in Johnson City on a road trip.

If you’ve read “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” you may remember a funny story about Eddie in the chapter about Paintsville. It was the story of him being stranded on base after the third out was made, so teammate Stan Loy took him his glove and hat, except for the part where Stan didn’t actually take him his hat. Instead, he picked up an empty popcorn box out of the grandstand and took that out to Eddie. We didn’t call him Eddie “Boxhead” Gates for nothing. Stan Loy was a funny guy. Maybe I’ll find him one day, on Facebook.

In this photo, that’s Eddie on the right talking to Jose Rodriguez. I described Jose in the book as being a reed-thin shortstop who always had a smile on his face. He was such a good guy and the fans adored him so much they voted him “Most Popular Hilander” on Fan Appreciation Night at the end of the season. From top to bottom, that Paintsville team was full of great guys. The camaraderie within that group was something very special.

On a different baseball subject, my oldest brother Del Jr. introduced me to a fantastic website a while back, and he warned me that you can quickly fall down the rabbit hole and keep digging for hours there. It’s newspapers.com, and they have archives that go back a long way with a large number of papers. I’ve found tons of clippings about my dad, playing for the Cardinals, Phillies, and Red Sox in the 40s and 50s, and those help me connect a little more with his playing days, since I wasn’t born until after he was done playing in the big leagues.

You can search for just about anything you’re after, and yesterday I was wondering if there were any clippings from back when I was an SIUE Cougar in college. I figured they wouldn’t have our school paper (and I was right) but I was surprised to see that they had archives from the Edwardsville Intelligencer, and that paper covered a lot of our games.

Marty Dailey through absolute heat

What a surprise to find this clipping, not from any regular season games, the NCAA Regionals, or the NCAA Div. II World Series. Nope, this one is coverage of our summer league team, which I played on after my freshman and sophomore years.

If you recall this chapter in the book, you know this summer league team was an important part of my development during college. Being asked to be on it after my freshman year was an honor, and a real chance to take my game and my confidence to a new level, playing with guys who were veteran players. It was “the next level” in every way, considering I’d only played on the JV as a freshman. Just a few weeks after our real season was over we transitioned into our summer schedule, in the Missouri-Illinois Collegiate Baseball Instructional League. There’s a name that trips right off the tongue!

Greenville college had a pitcher I hadn’t thought of since the late 70s, but as soon as I saw Marty Dailey’s name in this clipping I remembered him vividly. He threw the ball VERY hard, and under their sketchy lights at Greenville he was enormously difficult to hit. I hadn’t thought of that humid and dark night game for 40 years, but as soon as I saw this I was back there again. I even remember the hit. I don’t remember what I had for dinner last night, but I remember driving this run in off Marty.

Here at home, I’m pretty sure Buster knows I’m leaving despite the fact I haven’t gotten a suitcase out yet. He can just sense it, and I can see it in his eyes. He also follows me around from room to room. As soon as I post this I’m going to go ahead and get packed, utilizing all the tips Barbara Doyle has shown me when traveling internationally with just a carry-on bag. It’s a puzzle, and there’s much more “rolling” than “folding” involved in solving it.

And speaking of that, I think I need to wrap this up and get to all the stuff that needs to be done. Erica Moon will be staying with the boyz for the weekend, and this time I’ll even get the chance to see her for an hour before I head to MSP. She gets off work in the early afternoon, so she’ll arrive here before I leave. Maybe that will help my fuzzy guys get acclimated more quickly.

I’ll also be keeping track of the NHRA goings-on in Chicago this weekend, although the time difference won’t make it easy. Del is there, but he “gave me the weekend off” so I can go on this trip. I appreciate that!

See you next week, with tales from Amsterdam. Hopefully, those tales will feature some sleep. Not being too overly jet-lagged will be important when we come back, because my friend Terry Blake and I are going to Target Field on Tuesday for a really rare baseball treat, in the form of an old-school traditional doubleheader, starting at 3:00 pm. Gotta stay awake for that!

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Bob Wilber, at your service and headed for Holland!

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