The Owner

 By Gregory Crawford @wchoops

Today the New York Metropolitans have a new owner. His name is Steve Cohen and he paid $2.5 billion to own his team.

I do think about this often in sports. How important is the owner of any team. Who is best owner in sports and why? Who is worst owner and why? 

As Craw’s Corner comes back, we want more interaction here. It will take awhile, but we have brilliant readers and your comments are welcome. 

Spurs vs Blazers, Something to Ponder

 By Gregory Crawford @wchoops

Just how tough is it to win an NBA title?

The San Antonio Spurs have been in the NBA for 47 years and Portland Trail Blazers 50 years. 

The Blazers have won one NBA title and Spurs five. It is safe to say that Portland has a better arena and a much better practice facility than San Antonio.

So why the difference in titles? Have the Spurs been way beyond expectation or have Blazers been woefully inept?

The answer is a great sports argument. Not to change the flow, but just to throw in for the unknown, Portland has never hosted an NBA all star game. I am not sure what that has to do with conversation, but now you know.

Thanks for reading. 

Some Thoughts, Sports to Pandemic

 By Gregory Crawford @wchoops

Craw’s Corner has had more comebacks by far than Richard Nixon, if you don’t understand, Google Richard Nixon.

We are back again with sports and news. Stick with us it will be fun, quick and easy to read. So thoughts for today.

1. I see an NBA final of Miami vs Lakers, which will have many underlying issues.

2. When baseball resumed I thought Cleveland Indians would win the World Series, cause they have best pitching in baseball. Pitching can be the greatest, but Indians can’t manufacture many runs. My prediction could be wrong.

3. The pandemic has lasted longer than I thought. No disputing this, listen to experts and no one else. Too much misinformation out there.

4. Who would have guessed the hottest sport on planet right now is golf. Hard to get a tee time on public courses. 

5. My iconic friend Jon Spoelstra has new book out on Amazon, “Get Your Ideas Approved”. No shock here, it is #1 on many Amazon categories. Get a copy for $2.99 and let me know what you think.

Thanks for reading and always looking for great writers, crawscorner@gmail.com

Craw’s Corner Making Comeback

 By Gregory Crawford @wchoops

This weekend, we will be back to our roots with Craw’s Corner. Strictly news and sports, please enjoy always.

Gregory Crawford,

Founder and Creator

The Boys of Summer

By Harry Cummins

      On the wings of this week's west wind, the neighborhood boys of summer are gone from the backyard.

     In their place, the water in the swimming pool is now coated with dead leaves and a darkened layer of ash, reminders of our combustible year 2020.

     Just last week I watched the parade of neighborhood kids line up for their turn on the diving board.  Each ready to plunge fearlessly into the clear blue waters.  I stood on the lawn, holding giant flash cards from 1-10, judging each dive with a circumscribed scoring system all my own.

     With so many injustices happening all over the world right now, I think about justice, and judging, a lot these days. I think,too, about diving boards and other higher ground from which we can stand unafraid to face unseen depths.

     Mostly, I think about where God might reveal His big 'flash cards'....in this summer like no other. 

     Another west wind comes and goes... and Fall, with its urgent sense of risk, is here. 

     "Jump"!

   

     

     

The Swimming Lesson

The author, standing second from the left, remembers a real-life Wendy Peffercorn and J.Edgar Hoover while growing up in the seaside Shangri-La of La Jolla

By Harry Cummins

     In the early 1950's, I spent my summers learning how to swim at a bewitching local hotel pool. In the winter I would wait wide-eyed for Christmas and a personal visit from America's top crime fighter, Mr. J. Edgar Hoover.  In short, I was just another disadvantaged kid living a lucky life of  intrigue and romance under the umbrella of palm trees and adolescent innocence.

     In those days, my mother worked the night shift as a nurse at the original Scripps Hospital on Prospect Avenue. As a result, I  took up residence among a motley gang of youngsters at the Gillispie Cottage, a way station for underprivileged children of single mothers and working parents, serving the posh California community of La Jolla.  Its founders, pediatrician Samuel Gillispie and his wife, Ada, were on the leading edge of early childhood learning long before nursery schools became the norm.

     Today, Gillespie Cottage has evolved into The Gillispie School, a prestigious K-6 institution of high learning and even higher tuition. Now sporting rigorous curriculum development to include arts,music,and physical education,the Gillispie School has received national awards from Apple and the National Association of Independent Schools.  All this was a long way off for us "ground-floor"groupies of the 1950's.

     Every summer,  the original 'Cottage Kids" were treated to swimming lessons and poolside lunches every week by the benevolent ladies of the Gillispie Foundation. A couple of times a week, we were transported to the nearby Del Charro Hotel, it's kidney-shaped swimming pool and secluded lanais a magnet for it's hush-hush guest list of the famous and infamous.

     The Del Charro Hotel was NOT an ordinary hotel and certainly not an ordinary guest list.  I only came to understand this many years later. Originally the area was a riding school for girls on the outskirts of town. In 1951, the La Jolla Stables were purchased by Texas oil multimillionaire Clint Murchison, who converted the stables into bugalows and built a Spanish style, tile roofed luxury hotel on the site. Room rates started at $100 a night at the new playground on Torrey Pines near Ardeth Road.  It became my playground as well.

     The Del Charro's  proximity to the Del Mar racetrack drew a checkered summer crowd of Mafia figures, Hollywood celebrities, and politicians.  John Wayne, Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Senator Joseph McCarthy, Joan Crawford, and Richard Nixon were among the frequent  guests.

     So was J. Edgar Hoover and his companion, FBI deputy Clyde Tolson, the pair spending every summer at the Del Charro.  In the winter, at Christmas, Hoover and Tolson would visit Gillispie Cottage and present each child with a Christmas present along with a personally signed greeting card from the FBI.

   

   

   
                                     

The author on the far right, with coveted Christmas card in hand from "pal" J. Edgar.

   

         Little did I know at the time what significant events in American history might have taken shape in those secluded Del Charro bugalows occupied by leading political figures, the super rich, Texas oilmen, and organized crime members.  There is sufficient information available today to satisfy the most ardent conspiracy theorists and those wishing to journey down the rabbit hole of fact and fiction.  I didn't have time for any of that then, or now, for that matter.

        I do remember seeing a lot of important looking and beautiful people pool side in those impressionable days, but I only had eyes for Nancy Kindall, our Del Charro swimming instructor for the summer.  I was 'Squints' and Nancy was 'Wendy Peffercorn', forerunners personified of that unforgettable 1993 movie classic The Sandlot.

     I never faked drowning that summer, but I did feign learning how to swim to earn extra attention from Nancy.  If mermaids existed, surely Nancy Kindall was one. When I found out that she lived just down the alley from my mom and I, I would often hide out behind a nearby garage to get a glimpse of her ascending or descending a large stairway leading to her small apartment behind La Jolla Elementary School. My hormones were on perpetual watch, eagerly awaiting our next close encounter under the guise of a swimming lesson.

     Developmental experts tell us that important life lessons can be learned early.  From the still shimmering remains of a nearly forgotten childhood, I now surmise this much to be true: 

    ...that pubescent passion can be a precursor to a more textured love....that prominent people are capable of unsettling things..that tough and tender get inexplicably mixed up in people and places...and a hidden, deeper life, still swirls all around us.

     A wading pool can become an ocean once you learn how to swim.






Harry Cummins is a free-lance writer now living in Portland, Oregon.

Once Upon A Time On The 4th of July.....

By Harry Cummins



     Thirty-seven years ago today, I was in the grip of the greatest summer of my life.

     I was house sitting a brownstone on West 83rd street in New York City, my days
unencumbered by traditional employment.  It was 1983 and I was as free and easy that summer as a Dwight Gooden fastball.

     On a sweltering July 4, I found myself part of a holiday throng of 41,000 at Yankee Stadium to celebrate a Yankees clash with their rival, the Boston Red Sox.  Boston had taken two of the first three games of the series, collecting nine home runs and 38 hits in the process.  They were as hot as the 94 degree temperature that baked the storied stadium.

     Dave Righetti was on the mound for the Yankees with a 9-3 record and just two years removed from being named the American League rookie of the year.  It was apparent early, that 'Rags' had it going on.  He struck out seven of the first nine batters he faced.

     Righetti took a 4-0 lead and a no hitter into the 9th inning that day, and the Stadium was alive.  We were on our feet as he walked to the mound to throw the final inning.  Yankee manager Billy Martin said that he prayed for the first time in his baseball career. Home plate umpire Steve Palermo said he didn't even know Righetti was just 3 outs away from baseball immortality. The Yankee southpaw had been snubbed in the voting for the upcoming All-Star game and Palermo thought the applause was intended as a sendoff in recognition of his great first half of the year.

     After walking the first batter, Righetti retired the next two hitters and came face to face with Wade Boggs, the last man standing between him and the first regular season no hitter at Yankee Stadium in 32 years.  Boggs hit .361 that season, and was the toughest hitter in the league to strike out. He was leading the major leagues in hits as he stepped into the batters box.

     Righetti ran the count to 2-and-2.  He has already thrown 131 pitches in the game.  On pitch 132, Boggs swung...and missed.  Righetti thus joined Satchel Paige (1949), George Mullin (1912), and George Wiltse (1908) as the only 4 pitchers to ever unfurl Independence Day no-no's.

     Later that night, I sat on the banks of the East River and reveled in the spectacular fireworks display that ended a most memorable American holiday.

     The next morning, I walked to the corner news stand to snare a copy of the Post.  "Yankee Doodle Dandy" the perfect headline proclaimed.

     That was once upon a time when we were still allowed to gather for fireworks and baseball.....a time when a serendipitous headline maker topped a summer of  uncloistered imaginings.



Happy Fourth of July, 2020.






hcummins@aol.com