Does everyone cheat? What about Squeaky? (Read on for the dirty details at the end.)

The Houston Astros cheated so the team's General Manager and Manager were barred from baseball for one year and subsequently fired. Also barred and fired were three who had moved to other teams but were involved in the cheating scandal.

While baseball does allow base stealing and 'reading' the other teams signs by individual human observance, this effort used barred high tech components to exploit sign stealing of every pitch with great accuracy.., then ironically, using a technique that probably goes back millions of years-- a cave man banging on a resonating surface (i.e. trash can)-- to send a signal to the batter.

Every member, it would seem, of the Houston team was complicit, even if not in agreement. So the team cheated and won the World Series in 2019 with five taking the fall. How do you think all involved had to explain this to their families, their children, their fans when everyone knew.

In Atlanta, the Georgia Department of Public Safety fired 30 state troopers because they all cheated in an on-line exam for the speed detection component required to graduate from trooper school. The class officially became Troopers last August. Of the 33 total number in that class, one quit, one was fired and one is on military leave.

"Every single one of them ended up admitting to cheating and the means by which they cheated," said Public Safety Commissioner Col. Mark McDonough. "It's a punch in the gut. This goes to our very core values."

Subsequently, every traffic ticket issued by any of these individuals was cancelled as an action that demonstrated the value of trust that was broken.

Here is my personal heartbreak of a hero fallen. And yes, I took it very hard.

Lucky Number

Squeaky #23

It all started when I was five. Dad had season basketball tickets and I got to see my all-time favorite player, Number 23, of course, known to everyone as ‘Squeaky.’ He was only 5’8” but he moved through all those bigger bodies on the court like a mouse running through a tea party. “Squeaky”… get it?

Loved him to death but he broke my heart, that bastard! Shaved points… for fifty bucks! Of course, in those days, $50 was like, uh, $60… the schmuck!

So I lived through it… wasn’t easy, but I did. Despite knowing how I should

#23 in action

feel about a fallen star, Squeaky stayed in my heart. Now this was before steroids and performance enhancing drugs. If Squeaky did that today on such a small scale, it might even get lost amidst all this other crap. In fact maybe he would be carried off the court on fans’ shoulders… “Hey, look at that… an 80-year-old that dribbles.”

Heros die hard to a kid.
“Say it ain’t so, Squeaky.

PS: He really was incredible. At 5'8 Eugene 'Squeaky' Melchoirre was an All American for two years and the first overall draft choice of  the NBA Baltimore Bullets. With him, Bradley was the No. 1 rated team in the nation off and on over two years and in 1950-51, lead the Braves to both the NIT and NCAA basketball tournament finals, (playing in both was allowed then and the biggest tournament was the NIT. Both finals were in Madison Square Garden where visiting teams rarely won when playing local favorites) finishing 2nd both times to City College of New York (CCNY). That was where the big time gamblers were busy coercing poorer players that "point shaving wasn't trowing a game and hey, you ain't getting nothing for your efforts and the school is getting rich' took place, banning him and 5 other CCNY players from organized basketball for life. 

Squeaky was so good that when Bradley, then ranked #2 nationally, went to play Adolph Rupp's #1 Kentucky team that year, he fouled out the Blue Demon's famous front line, 6'7, 6'8 and 6'10 players, to win the game of the year.

Sadly, cheating spelled the end of Squeaky's basketball career, but he went forward, accepting his very bad decision, to be a beloved and outstanding citizen, father and grandfather. He died in his home near Chicago this past year at age 92.

I confess, his fire still burns within me for all that he was when I was watching and all that he ultimately turned out to be in redemption.

Nobody likes a cheater... but sometimes, thank goodness, the soul plays a good trick and mends the heart, Some cheaters can redeem and regain trust over time. Life isn't lived in a day, thank goodness.

How many is 6 million?

In honor and remembrance on Holocaust Day, Monday, January 27, 2020: Lest we forget..

If you wrote one 3-letter word in type so small that it takes a good magnifying glass to read it... and you printed that word, again and again, in a book large enough to fill a coffee-table, with each word butted against the other, border to border, six-million times, the book would be 1,250 pages thick and almost illegible.

That book is titled And Every Single One was Someone. Its only word is "Jew."

Each word represents one Jew killed during the Holocaust... one human being who breathed, worked, loved and lived. It's new, available at Amazon and elsewhere.

There is a much larger book at the Holocaust memorial and museum in Washington D.C. simply titled Book of Names. It is 6 1/2 feet tall, 46 feet in circumference. In it are the documented identities of 4.3 million of the those victims. 

      What exactly was the difference? he wondered to himself. And who decided which people 
     wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?”
     ― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas 

In Peoria, Illinois, there is an outdoor Holocaust memorial of 18 Star of David shaped glass columns filled with 11-million buttons that represent six-million Jews and five-million  “enemies of the state” who were murdered--political and religious leaders, Roman gypsies, Serbians, Catholics, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the trade unionists, alcoholics and the handicapped. Each targeted group wore a different colored triangle to identify their “enemy” status. The columns, filled with buttons from different parts of the world, are wrapped in yellow ribbon labeled "No Hate Zone."
  
     Monsters exist, but they are too few in numbers to be truly dangerous. More dangerous 
     are… the functionaries ready to believe and act without asking questions. 
     ― Primo Levi

 I wrote this six years ago and it will always be relevant. 

Two galaxies collide! Earth is doomed!... oh, never mind.

That's the Andromeda Galaxy (left) colliding with us, The Milky Way galaxy (right)

This is a Hubble Space telescope depiction of our Milky Way galaxy--with some 300 billion stars--colliding with the 1 trillion star Andromeda Galaxy (galaxies not shown actual size) in just 4.5 years... er, I mean 4.5 BILLION years, moving towards each other at 68 miles per second!  So let this be a warning to all of us... WATCH OUT!

Yes, this will actually happen. But aside from the almost unbelievable numbers of stars and space, here's an even more incredible fact: As the 1 trillion-star galaxy passes through our 300 billion-star galaxy, the long odds are that not one star will even come close to a collision with any other. 

Space is so vast that if our sun was the size of a ping pong ball, the nearest solar object would be the size of a pea 689 miles distant. The pass-through speed of the galaxies would be a not too shabby 100 billion miles-per-hour.

In our observable universe, cosmologists are certain there are at least 2 trillion universes consisting of trillions and trillions of stars and our universe is expanding at an enormous rate beyond any known number. 

So how did all this happen. Was it always there, limitless and growing?  And who are we in the grand scheme? 

Our Milky Way galaxy is only average in size compared to the trillions of others. And we think WE are the intelligent life in our universe. What nerve!

This is an actual photo of our Earth and Moon, taken by a satellite we launched, from a mere 71 million miles away. NO, NOT THE BIG WHITE ROUND THING IN THE UPPER RIGHT CORNER, and not even that little teensy dot near the lower left... but the even tinier dot almost lost near the tiny dot, if you can see it. That's us. The bigger tiny dot (oxymoron alert) is our sun!

And if you want to read how really small we are in fiction, take a look at this Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss. It helps put things in perspective.

Will we ever learn that we control nothing but ourselves and often, not even that.

 

Just set another personal best!

Cute, record-setting me

I woke up this morning and realized that this is the oldest I have ever been, a personal best!

At the stroke of midnight January 1st, I entered my 10th decade of life. Count 'em... the '30s. '40s. 50's, 60's. 70's, 80's, 90's, '00s, 10's and '20s! Being born late in the decade helps but it is up to me to remember... breathe in, breath out, again and again. So far, so good.

That also puts me on track as I move one step closer to

116-year-old Tane Tanaka

infinity. For the record, today's oldest, Kane Tanaka in Japan, is 116 years, 6 months and still looking good.

To put that into perspective, She was born when the Wright brothers flew for the first time ever. So she has been around for the first and every moon landing, cell phones, indoor plumbing, television, twitter and beyond. Watch out Methuselah! 

The verified oldest lived is a French lady, Jeanne Calment, who exited in 1997 at 122 years, 164 days.

 I don't know how to rank Benjamin Button who died after a long life, at zero.

Then there is Henrietta Lacks whose cells will live forever. Really.

But that's not all... and I promise you, this is truly happening now... Silicon Valley billionaires believe they have, with the help of lots of money, science and "the God molecule," found a way to live into the 150s and more. 

And the reward for living forever... well, in an episode of Rod Serling's popular The Twilight Zone scifi TV series in the late '50s and early 60's, the main character, an average man, found a magic lamp which, when rubbed, gave him one wish. He wished for immortality. The very next day he was arrested and found guilty for a murder he did not commit. He was sentenced to life in prison.

History (and God) has a way of dealing with people who think they can beat the system.

It all kinda puts things into a different take on for ever and ever (Amen.) But is that much different than the bottomless cup of coffee some restaurants offer, or Olive Garden's endless bread sticks? Well, yes silly, it is.

In the end, the greatest satisfaction the oldest person must have is the complete absence of peer pressure.