Road Trip: Meeting Archer

        The schedule for the next few days was going to be very Omaha-centric, and that's going to be understandable as the post moves along.

We spent much of the morning lounging around the hotel, waiting to hear when to go to the hospital. 

Yes, I said hospital.

Cherie and I were in Nebraska to welcome our first grandchild and it was a surprise a few months back when we received the news.

You see, we were young parents when we had our first child, and it was unexpected through the years that we would be older than most to have our first grandchild.

We received the call that we could go to the Omaha Women's Hospital a little before lunch and we maneuvered our way across town to reach the hospital and a very modern facility.

Being modern wasn't a surprise, but the large amount of parking close to the building certainly was!

We waited inside a very modern and spacious waiting room and there were only two other people in the room.

Of course, this being life, we were trapped with this older fellow who "regaled" his companion (and sadly, we heard it all) with stories about his farm life, including gems such as his use of animal waste to increase yield and gelding his animals.

Fortunately, he was gone after thirty long minutes, and between Ryan's occasional appearances to keep us updated and talking to Cherie, I survived the king of neutering.

The time moved by quickly, and eventually, we received word of our first grandchild's arrival.

We had some time to spend before going to see Archie and had a surprisingly good meal at the hospital cafeteria while we waited.

The meal at the cafeteria wasn't only good, but it was one of the highlights of the trip as Cherie and I reflected on our life together with thoughts and memories of both of our children as kids and adults.

I felt really good about Cherie and I's life together, with so many wonderful memories from our family.

Once we moved to the maternity ward, our lives were going to be different.

After hanging with Archie for an hour or so, we returned to the hotel and when we were starting to get hungry, we walked next door to King Kong, a Greek restaurant with huge and tremendous hamburgers.

We got our meals to go and returned to the hotel with these massive sandwiches!

King Kong has four locations, three in Omaha and one in Lincoln, and with several statues of giant gorillas outside is exactly what you would think a King Kong restaurant would look like!

The burgers come in four sizes, ranging from a half-pound up to a two-pound burger!

I ordered the second (one pound) and it was so huge that I ate it in two meals!

We would return again to King Kong before we left Omaha, and I couldn't speak more of our food there!

The day started as so many had and ended with Cherie and me as grandparents.

I can't lie and say I wasn't surprised when we were told Archer was on his way, but even though we live so far away, it's a different feeling now.

It's hard to believe that he's two months old now and it's easier to handle the distance for now, realizing he wouldn't know us anyway but I do wonder how easy it will be in the years to come.

I grew up seeing my grandparents in Ohio once a year, and the results were mixed.

I was close to my grandfather and more distant from my grandmother, but when you see people seldom, it's a big deal when you can see them, but you lack the everyday familiarity that comes with living closer.

It'll be interesting to see how everything plays out, and I'm looking forward to the ride.

I'm continuing the Omaha series when I have time, but my writing time has lessened recently, so not sure when I'll have another installment.

Cleaning out the inbox: Passings

Our tributes to the recently deceased returns as the cycle of life never stop revolving.

Goodbye to Denny O'Neill at the age of 81.
O'Neill wrote for both DC and Marvel Comics from the 60s to the 90s and is remembered for top-notch work for both companies.
However, to me, O'Neill's DC stint was his calling card with his run with Batman in the seventies being the beginning of the turn away from the campiness of the Batman television show and towards the brooding, dark character that Batman is known for today.
O'Neill is the creator of Batman villain Ra's Al Ghul during that run and Ghul is a villain with a fan base to this day.
O'Neill's most celebrated work though was his two-year turn with Green Lantern and Green Arrow where O'Neill used the characters with Green Arrow as the liberal/countercultural person with Green Lantern as the more establishment oriented character and their travels around the country dealing with "real" issues of the time.
Racism, pollution, corruption, and cults were all written about by O'Neill in the series, which wasn't exactly standard material for comic books of the era.
The most famous was the two-part comic with Green Arrow's sidekick Speedy being found addicted to heroin and his road to recovery.
The comic won several awards for the writing, but didn't sell well on the overall and was the reason that the series met cancellation after only two years.
O'Neill would continue to write over the decades, but he also edited several series for both DC and Marvel as his main job from 1980 forward.
O'Neill did one other book that I read but never owned despite my groaning for it- 1978's Superman vs Muhammad Ali.
Both comic companies would occasionally release these monstrous, oversized comic book versions that were expensive for the time, but did give plenty of value for the dollar.
Superman vs Ali was in that format, but I never owned it.
Darn, the luck.

Goodbye to Jim Kiick at the age of 73.
Kiick was part of the three-pronged backfield for the 1972 and 1973 World Champion Dolphins and was part of the highly-publicized leap to the WFL with Larry Csonka and Paul Warfield, which could have cost the Dolphins another Super Bowl trip or victory.
Had the Dolphins made that trip (they lost in the final seconds at Oakland in the famous "Sea of Hands" game), it would have been four trips in a row and a win would have been three of four titles.
If that happens, it's the Dolphins that grab the "team of the seventies" title, not the Steelers.
Larry Csonka was the hard-driving workhorse fullback, Mercury Morris was the speed back that could break a long run at any time and Kiick was the pass-catching, change of pace back.
The varied skills of the trio are what made the Dolphins so tough to defeat at that time and I think Miami wouldn't have been nearly as good with only two of the backs.
Miami owner Joe Robbie was noted as a cheaper owner in the league and when the WFL's Memphis Southmen offered Kiick, Larry Csonka, and Paul Warfield far superior contracts, the three leaped to the WFL.
The WFL didn't even complete their second year (The only year there for the Miami Three) and everyone seemed to suffer.
The three played well for the Southmen, but they didn't dominate, none of the three players played as well as they did with the Dolphins when they returned to the NFL in 1976 and Miami didn't even make the playoffs in 1975 ( they finished 10-4, tied for first with the Colts, but lost the tiebreaker and the wild card was 11-3 Cincinnati) or in the following two seasons as well.
Kiick's return to the NFL didn't go well as he was a seldom-used back for Denver in 1976, played three games for the Broncos in 1977, along with one for Washington in the final season of his career.

Goodbye to Adrian Devine at the age of 68.
Devine was a journeyman pitcher for the Braves and Rangers in the late 1970s and was part of three trades between the teams that saw Devine move from Atlanta to Texas back to Atlanta and then back to Texas to end his career.
Devine was mostly a reliever in his career with his best season occurring in his first stint as a Ranger in 1977 with 15 saves.
Devine survived two battles with tongue cancer that left him unable to speak, another with brain cancer until finally succumbing to lung cancer- one tough man.
Devine may be the subject of an upcoming post on the joy of liking and collecting "common" players and their baseball cards coming soon.

Goodbye to Ernesto Marcel at the age of 72.
Panama's Marcel came within an eyelash of winning both the WBA and WBC featherweight titles in nine months in 1971-72.
The smooth-boxing Marcel drew with WBC champion Kuniaki Shibata in Japan in November 1971 and then took away the WBA title from Antonio Gomez via a majority decision in August 1972.
Marcel would defend the title three times and defeat two future champions in Sammy Serrano (non-title ten rounder) and all-time great Alexis Arguello in Marcel's final fight as Marcel retired following his unanimous decision win in February 1974.
Before winning his title, Marcel fought another future great in 1970 against fellow Panamanian Roberto Duran in the first major test of Duran's career.
Duran would stop Marcel in the final round of the ten-round fight and Marcel is one of only two fighters along with Vilomar Fernandez to have fought both Duran and Arguello.

Podcast:DC Comics

We talk DC Comics from the 70's,80's and early 90's with Chris And Reggie from the Cosmic Treadmill and Weird Comic History Podcasts!!

Cleaning Out the inbox

Time to clean out the inbox before we hit a big football and boxing weekend!

We start with an interview with Mike Grell on his 1980's run with the DC Comics character Green Arrow.
Grell revamped GA with a gritty,urban feel that took away super-powered villains and the trick arrows that were such a huge part of the character previously.
The Longbow Hunters mini-series that Grell wrote and re-introduced the "new" Arrow was received well and I quite enjoyed it,despite missing the Arrow that I grew up with...

The first computer in space on the unmanned Apollo-Saturn mission in 1966 has not only been found in a scrap auction in Houston,but a self-described "perpetual hacker" from South Africa has verified and restored the computer.
Atlas Obscura has more here with the computer now being displayed on USS Hornet and its museum ship....

Now that Ohio State's game with Bowling Green is over and the Buckeyes will have no further games against MAC opponents on the schedule,Urban Meyer can go back to rooting for the Falcons,which was his first head coaching position in 2001.
Meyer turned the Falcons from 2-9 to 8-3 as he "changed the culture" (don't we hear that phrase a lot anymore?) and not only began his road to the top,but began the run that moved Bowling Green as a consistent MAC powerhouse.
Scout.com writes of Meyer's first season at Bowling Green and his attachment to the first team that he coached...

I stumbled upon a neat site at NFLUniforms that discusses the flamboyant uniforms of the World Football League.
It's a really interesting post on the league that must have taken a lot of work to have such detail...

We wrap with two local notes-the first of which is a thanks for the nice comments on the Danny Taylor post.
I wonder sometimes how much of "me" people really want to read and when I get words on those types of posts,I feel quite gratified...

The other is this SABR article on former big leaguer and Williamsport MD native Dave Cole,who pitched parts of six seasons in the 1950's.
Dave Cole was always a name that you heard locally when baseball came up and even though I never met him,playing (and announcing) in Williamsport,it was pretty tough to avoid the name of Dave Cole.
The article by Austin Gisriel is incredibly detailed and I highly recommend giving it a read...