The Phighting Phillies

October 1, 2001

Mary and I own a farm in Macon County, Tennessee. Four hundred plus acres right on the Kentucky / Tennessee line. In fact, the state line runs right through our log home. One can sleep in either state, depending upon which bedroom you occupy. Many times when the Oaks are off the road for a few days, we head out of Hendersonville to the country, where we work and play hard, and try to clear our minds a bit. Kind of like mini-vacations.

It was a beautiful day at the farm, somewhere around 76 degrees and sunny. Mary spent the day watering trees, picking tomatoes, planting some shrubs, and sanding and painting two rocking chairs. I spent the whole day perched upon my John Deere 5410 tractor, pulling a ten-foot cutter around the back pastures.

We had Gypsy, one of our kitties, with us on this trip. She has not been well lately and is on several medications. Three pills twice a day. I have to rely on all of my old veterinarian assistant skills from my early teen years to accomplish this almost impossible feat. However, with the help of Mother Mary, and literally no cooperation at all from Gypsy, we seemed to enjoy about an 85 percent success rate, and that is relatively good.

In my Molly The Cat book series, I made Gypsy out to be quite the grouch, but as she has gotten older with her health failing, she has mellowed quite a bit. I refer to her now by her Gladiator name, GYPSIUS. She doesn’t seem to mind.

After a wonderful dinner, the full moon began to rise up above the cool evening and light up the countryside all around us. Our home is in a valley – or holler – and there are two and one half miles of Salt Lick Creek that winds its way all around our pastures and woods. On most evenings, a spooky fog rises off the creek and enshrouds us. The full moon reflecting off of the impending fog is a real sight to see, and for a while we just sat on the porch and watched – as we listened for coyotes and Kildee birds (who seem to make a lot of noise when the moon is full).

Sometimes we will cruise the grounds late at night in our little all-terrain John Deere Gator. We call it the “midnight Gator ride,” although it can happen as early as nine. The kids and grandkids especially enjoy this tradition because we always see deer and lots of stars shinning on these trips.

Another tradition is the one-mile walk after dinner. It is a half of a mile to our front gate. We walk up to the gate, touch it, and walk back to the house. We learned this tradition from President George and Barbara Bush while visiting their home in Kennebunkport, Maine, on several occasions.

On this night, Mary and Gypsy went to bed early and fell asleep while watching an auction on the Home and Garden Network, and I stretched out on the couch and tuned in Monday Night Football on the dish. The Jets were playing the Niners in the first home game in the Meadowlands of New Jersey since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. There was a moving ceremony during the pre-game, complete with New York City firemen and policemen carrying huge American flags, while choking back tears. Huge NFL Football players were also weeping openly, as was I.

I said a prayer and thanked God for the blessings of living in the USA and asked Him to help and guide our young president, George W. Bush in the days, weeks, and months ahead. I thought of my mother, fighting Diabetes with every fiber of her being in Pennsylvania, and of my Daddy, Joseph S. Bonsall, Sr., whose body rests beneath the hallowed ground of Arlington Cemetery. He, as well as those resting all around him, paid an enormous price for the freedoms we enjoy today. Regular, hardworking guys who gathered up and fought their guts out for you and me and our families.

Now the focus in our country has returned to regular guys again. Hardworking, everyday, real men, who became our heroes once again on September 11th. God bless them all!

The football game began but it was hard to focus on touchdowns and yardage gained at this point. Besides, it wasn't the Eagles or the Tennessee Titans who were playing. I thought about going on to bed with Mary and Gypsy, but first an American male ritual. A quick surf around and through a couple of hundred stations to make sure that I wasn’t missing anything of relevance! Mary was in bed, so I could do this freely without hearing, “GIVE ME THAT. You are DRIVING ME CRAZY!”

Ah, the fun parts of marriage. The way I figure it, being the master of the remote control unit is a vital part of my job as a husband.

FLIP. CNN, Fox News. FLIP. Weather Channel, infomercial, all three networks (football on ABC of course, but I already knew that!). FLIP. Snake Channel (all snakes all the time). FLIP. The Food Channel (all food all the time). FLIP. ESPN, baseball scores and highlights. Cool! Six games to play and the Phillies are just two behind the Braves. Barry Bonds has 69 home runs and could eclipse Mark Maguire, who eclipsed Roger Maris, who eclipsed Babe Ruth. (I just love saying the word eclipsed!) Then something wonderful happened. FLIP. ESPN Classic.

ESPN Classic was re-broadcasting Game Four of the World Series from Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from October 20, 1993! The Phillies were playing the Toronto Blue Jays in a game that would set several World Series records. The most runs ever scored in a post-season game and the longest nine-inning game in history. The Jays would win 15 to 14 and take a commanding three-games-to-one lead over the Phils in the ‘93 series. But that was not important now.

I was actually AT that game on that cold and rainy night! Sitting in the left field stands just to the fair side of the foul pole, Mary and I sat and cheered along with both of my parents, Joe and Lillie!

Mary, Mommy and I sat right together – and Daddy sat directly behind us in his wheelchair in the handicapped section. Mommy booed Ricky Henderson, who was playing right below us in left field. Ricky shot an obscene gesture at the fans from behind his back, and we all rode him pretty hard throughout the whole game, especially my mother.

“Hey, this is Philly. If you can’t take the heat, get your wise butt on back to the dugout!”

My mother could be a real piece of work. Once, way back in 1978, I took my mom to an Eagles / Giants Wild Card playoff game and she almost got me killed. Our seats were way up at the top of The Vet just five rows beneath the famous Sunoco sign and we were surrounded by about one hundred New York Giant fans. After bantering back and forth for the entire first half, Lillie Bonsall told them all in no uncertain terms that they could just “get their kiesters back on the Jersey Turnpike and get on back to New York City where they came from!”

A few of these guys looked like button men from the Gambino crime family and I was sure that when they stopped laughing, I was going to be gutted and then thrown over the Sunoco sign, where I would splatter on a pretzel stand below. The last thing I would see would be a miniature Ron Jaworski throwing a long, incomplete pass to a miniature Harold Carmichael, and then… BOOM… mustard and salt. Thankfully, old Luca Brazzi kept laughing as I made myself smaller and smaller.

But on this night there were no enemy Toronto fans for my mother to jump on, so she just aimed her wrath at Ricky Henderson. My father laughed and laughed and booed the Phillies as well as the Blue Jays. He always loved to boo the Phils just to get on my nerves.

By the time this one was over though, everyone was booing the Phillies, including me. Reliever Mitch Williams was no Tug McGraw. He blew a huge lead and gave up five runs in the eighth inning. He was so hated in Philly after that debaucle, he ended up buying a gun. He never could hit anyone though. All of his shots were high and away. (Ba Boom!)

As the game went on longer and longer and we all began to get damper and colder, I turned around to check on Daddy and just ask if he was OK. He got defensive and teary-eyed because he thought I meant that we should leave and go home now – and he did NOT want to leave that ballgame. He was having such a wonderful time.

I will never forget him sitting there in his wheelchair wearing his Phillies jacket and red Phillies cap with rainwater dripping off the bill and onto his lap and into the one beer that we would let him have. I had just bought him the cap. It was very cool. It had the World Series ‘93 logo on the side. I still have it.

My father and I had a stormy relationship throughout most of my early years. He never seemed to understand me at all and, I must admit, a lot of years and bad feelings passed by before I ever made any effort at all to understand where he was coming from either. In fact, it was long after his debilitating stroke, which paralyzed him and took his speech at age thirty-nine, that I began to realize that the man was just doing the best that he could all of those years. And that the war had really made quite a mess out of a young nineteen-year-old from North Philly. That is no excuse for the drinking that took place from time to time. It is just a fact.

But in our worst times, the Philadelphia Phillies always seemed to bridge the gap and bring us closer together. I loved the Phillies. Most years they were not very good, but I loved them. The most glorious words that I could hear as a young boy were these.

“Hey, you want to go to a game tomorrow?”

“Sure Dad! Thanks!”

Whoa, no sleep that night. Connie Mack Stadium, hot dogs, green grass, brown infield, those wonderful red and white uniforms, the smell of cigars, the crack of the bat, the pop of the glove.

Hey, there’s Richie Ashburn son and there’s Johnny Callison. Wow, there’s the Pittsburgh Pirates. Boooooooo! Heaven was just seventy blocks away at 21st and Lehigh.

He usually took me to a game on a Sunday. If Dad were to have gotten called into work on Saturday night, the plan could be in trouble. He was a maintenance man and chief electrician, and if the plant called with a breakdown, he just might go to a bar after work and down enough beer and Seagrams (Boilermakers) that he would be tempted to stay away until Monday – or maybe Tuesday.

Mom always called these wondrous events binges. And a binge was always a real possibility. When that happened though, he always felt so badly about it that we would get along just wonderfully for a long time thereafter. However, I preferred a hungover father and old Shibe Park as compared to, “Sorry, Kiddo, I’ll make it up to ya next time.”

Mommy always made us go to church with her, meaning my sister Nancy and I – not Joseph Sr. Although Daddy went to church on a few Easters over the years. I would be singing a solo in church, so Mommy would kind of shame him into going. On a really rare Sunday, he would make lunch for us. It was really breakfast but he would have it on the table when we arrived home from church.

The word brunch never occurred to us on Jasper Street. He would prepare either pancakes (much better than Mom’s) or Shit-on-a-Shingle. a white gravy and dry beef concoction poured over toast. It was an Army thing and I loved it.

“You wouldn’t love it if you HAD to eat it,” he would laugh.

On a day like thar, after fidgeting around all morning at Sunday School and morning service at the Calvary Church of The Brethren, eating Dad’s SOS and heading for the game were some of the great moments of my life. How amazing it is that the man who, at times, could make me feel so absolutely awful, could also make me feel like the luckiest kid on earth by uttering these ten magic words: “Get in the car son, Curt Simmons is pitching today!”

This is where my writing stops. I am not sure where I am going with the entire project or even what direction it will take in the future, but for now this part works and even seems relevant at the moment. You see, Connie Mack Stadium, or Shibe Park as locals called it, is long gone, and now The Vet will be turned into a parking lot as well. Daddy and Mommy are also gone but the Phighting Phillies play on…

Next year they will begin to play in a brand new ball yard. Johnny Callison, Richie Ashburn, Robin Roberts, as well as Tug McGraw, Pete Rose, and Mike Schmidt are all just memories. New guys with name like Rollins, Byrd, Burrell, and Thome are the new Phillies who will begin to build new memories in a new park.

I can see a young nine-year-old boy with a Phillies hat sitting almost sideways on his head. His ball glove hangs off his left hand and he holds a hot dog in his right. He is sitting next to his father at the new Citizens Bank Ballpark. The green grass and the white lines are mesmerizing – and look at that...... there they are....... The Phillies...... red pin stripes on a snow white uniform....... and look, Dad......the Pittsburgh Pirates...... Booooooo.

Nothing really changes......... Thank God! (JSB)