SO LONG ONCE AGAIN, LOUIS — TOO FEW OF US WILL MISS YOU!

By Edwin Cooney

Last Friday, the Cleveland Indians of the American Baseball League announced that after much consideration, they will become the Cleveland Guardians at the close of the 2021 baseball season. Many will be pleased to know that Cleveland, Ohio is choosing a name that's inclusive and protective of the entire community that is symbolized in the structure of the bridge just across the street from their new stadium, Progressive Field.  Many are pleased that baseball will abandon the too long habit of sports teams naming themselves derisively after Native Americans when so many Americans of past eras have feared and loathed and even admired them for their bravery under great odds. 

It all began back in 1897 when the then Cleveland Spiders were in the National League. Suddenly there appeared, seemingly from out of the proverbial blue, an unbelievable rookie outfielder of amazing talent.  

His name was Louis Francis Sockalexis. Louis was a member of the Penobscot Tribe from Old Town, Maine. He was fast, often running the 100 yard dash in 10 seconds. Additionally, he was unusually strong. One story has it that Louis Sockalexis once hit a 600 foot home run during the dead ball era when baseballs were often squishy rather than hard and tightly wound as they are today. It was said that he once threw a baseball from the top of Oak Hill on the Old Town Indian Reservation that struck the smokestack of the Jordan Lumber Mill three quarters of a mile away. Louis Sockalexis was 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighed 185 pounds. He batted left-handed and threw right-handed. His baseball fame lasted almost four months between April 22nd, 1897 into the July Fourth weekend of that year. During that all too short time, "the Chief" (as he was naturally called), 

hit .338, 9 doubles, 8 triples and 3 home runs. It was eventually observed by some of his teammates that Louis simply became too popular too fast for, without warning, it was suddenly all over.

Sunday, July 4th, 1897, Louis, along with many teammates, began celebrating Independence Day accompanied by an old nemesis — the bottle. Three years earlier, he'd been expelled from Notre Dame for drunkenness despite being a star football player. After the weekend, he couldn't or wouldn't stop drinking even after hurting an ankle while trying to sneak out of a third story hotel window which was being guarded by teammates who were determined to protect him against himself.

Louis's injured ankle slowed him down and he began making fielding errors to the extent that he only played two or three more games in 1897. He would only play 21 games in 1898 and a mere 7 in 1899, finally being released by the Spiders. The Spiders would themselves be banished from the National League at the close of 1899 following a season of 20 wins and 134 losses.But there's more!

Also expelled by the National League along with the Spiders at the close of 1899 were the Washington Nationals. Both teams joined the new American League in 1901. The Washington Nationals or “Nats “became the Washington Senators who would be remembered as "first in war, first in peace, and last in the American League.” Meanwhile, the Cleveland Spiders originally became the “Cleveland Naps” after their newly acquired Hall of Fame star second baseman Napoleon Lajoie. By 1914, Nap Lajoie had retired and Cleveland needed a new name. Hence, a local newspaper ran a contest for  Cleveland fans to suggest a new name. The winning entry came from a fan who suggested that the new name be the “Cleveland Indians” after their wonderful 1897 Penobscot Indian star, Louis Francis Sockalexis. Therefore, for the last 106 years, the former Spiders and Naps have been known as the Cleveland Indians. Just five years after becoming the Indians in Louis's name, they won the 1920 World Series and the name “Bill Wambsganss” outshone the name Sockalexis when he made the first and only unassisted triple play in World Series history against the Dodgers. Thirty-three years after 1915, the names of two Black players, Larry Doby and Satchel Paige, became household words in Cleveland, Ohio and all over America as the Indians won the 1948 World Series over the Boston Braves. (Note: Is it significant or merely ironic that the Indians defeated the Braves in a World Series?) 

Things continued downhill for Sockalexis once he was back at home in Old Town, Maine following his 1899 release by the Spiders. His body inevitably thickened and his dress was continuously shabby. He was in and out of jail for vagrancy. He became a regular panhandler rather than a laborer. Finally and inevitably, his body wore out on Christmas Eve of 1913. Born on Tuesday, October 24th, 1871, he was 42 years and exactly two months old when he passed away on Wednesday, December 24th 1913.

Alcoholism, we've finally come to realize, is not a measurement of poor character but a physical reaction to alcohol. Louis's natural gift was brilliant  athletic ability. He is the only player I know of that, 14 or 15 years following his unconditional release, would have a team named after him, however ironically and indirectly!

As the Indians become the Guardians, the irony is that for the second and final time they are saying: Louis, for all eternity farewell!

It has already been observed that by becoming the Cleveland Guardians (inspired by giant Art Deco statues on the city's Hope Memorial Bridge), the final five letters of their new name continue to be “nians.”

Might the spirit of Louis Sockalexis have something to do with that?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

RAW RHUBARB —THAT'S TRUMPIAN THROUGH AND THROUGH!

By Edwin Cooney

Yes, indeed, raw rhubarb is an acquired taste and I've acquired it. However, unlike 73 million Americans, I refuse to pick my rhubarb from Donald Trump's rhubarb patch.

The beauty of rhubarb is that, in addition to being a fruit, it is often described as a quarrel: "I had a real rhubarb with my lady last night and she beat the hell out of me! POOR ME!”

It was essential that in 2017 I started out giving the newly minted president the benefit of some doubt. True, he was a different sort of man. First, he came from a business rather than from a political background. Second, he came from privilege thus having little taste or even regard for the less than privileged. Third, for millions of Americans he was an anathema to other politicians. Too many Americans, to suit this observer, were ready to "throw the baby out with the bath water!” Thus, as he entered the White House, President Trump, with majorities in both houses of Congress, had a pretty clean slate on which to write. So, the obvious question is: what did he write on that clean slate?

Not all of what he wrote was negative. After all, he had his party's conservative agenda to fulfill and he did that within months by introducing tax cuts to stimulate a rather sluggish economy. Even his proposal to do away with Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act was well within the domain of his presidential and political prerogative. The same was true of his proposal to build a wall that he swore Mexico would pay for. However, the tone of his administration was “rhubarbish” from the very outset. His insistence that foreigners, Muslims and, certainly, socialists and most communists (Vladimir Putin excepted) were an anathema to the future well being  of the American people.

President Trump's obvious enjoyment of confrontation came from his earliest experiences in business and finance. For too long, as the president and his closest advisors believed, government was too much about politics and, although he avoided Calvin Coolidge’s assertion that "the business of America is business," there was little doubt that he believed exactly that. (Note: many Americans since FDR's day had hoped and prayed for a strictly business oriented administration.) He demanded from Congress precisely what he wanted.

There was no such thing as there once was, the existence of a "loyal opposition.” It's true that some Democrats between election day of 2016 and 2017 Inauguration Day questioned the validity of Mr. Trump's election, but there was nothing new in that. After all, following the 1876 election of Rutherford B. Hayes, the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy, and most certainly the contested 2000 election of George W. Bush, there had been widely based wonderment of the legitimacy of those elections. It has even been speculated that had Hillary Clinton been elected over Mr. Trump, the Trump people were ready to proclaim the election results "a hoax" and immediately proceed with the help of Fox News and other sources to establish an election bid in 2020.

As uncomfortable as it is to assert, Mr. Trump's ongoing rhubarb (or, if you prefer, quarrelsomeness) prospers because we've become a quarrelsome people. We seek our own facts on topics we're barely educated enough to understand. People's religious or nonreligious orientations are dismissed as secular, socialist, and fundamentally both suspect and evil. This all became apparent even before the occurrence of January 6th.

Politicians, from FDR through Joe Biden, in one way or another, have used fear to advance their respective causes because a free peoples' hopes and dreams are inevitably the stuff of alternatives and choices at the ballot box. This natural reality, however, has always been accompanied by an expectation that the wishes of the voting majority ought to prevail until the next election.

As we approach 2022, what seems to matter to most Republicans is the ultimate return of Donald Trump to the White House. This seems to be taking place despite the legitimate ambitions of other possible Republican candidates named Pence, Pompeo, and, perhaps, even Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. (When was the last time a former vice president and a former secretary of state were available for either party’s preference?)  This observation is by no means anti-conservative because Pence, Pompeo and DeSantis all regard themselves as rock-ribbed conservatives.

The reality, however, is that we're currently embedded in a national rhubarb which is flavoring our future — largely due to the courtesy of Donald Trump. It's hard not to worry that we're headed for a government of, by and for Donald Trump.

Taste for that outcome is in too many American mouths to suit me! The former president's rhetoric is clearly more divisive than uniting. Saddest of all, Mr. Trump's rhubarb sourness appears to be deliberately designed toward disunity and political domination, more than has anyone's rhetoric since that of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. No nation's peace and prosperity has ever thrived on disunity — and that includes the The United States of America! 

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

PAST PRESIDENTIAL FLAVORS

By Edwin Cooney

The public watches every administration at least temporarily haunted by an impression of what I'm calling a “flavor.” (Someone somewhere might substitute the word “stink” for “flavor” but I'm too genteel to use a word like stink. I wonder if anyone will actually buy my gentility!)

Andrew Jackson left office on Saturday, March 4th, 1837 and for the better part of the next 25 years Old Hickory and what he would do or not do was anticipated by the Democratic Party. It helped to elect Martin Van Buren, James K. Polk, Franklin Pierce and, finally, James Buchanan. When President Abraham Lincoln took his final breath at 7:22 a.m. on April 15th, 1865, the era during which almost anything really significant happened was in his name whether he would have approved of it or not. Following the dreadful term of Lincoln's vice president Andrew Johnson, Grover Cleveland would be the only Democrat to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue between 1869 and 1913, but even Cleveland had to run twice to get a second term. As for Woodrow Wilson who took office in 1913, although he was more highly polished and much better educated than Andrew Johnson, Wilson was every bit as racist and an unreconstructed southerner.

Teddy Roosevelt's flavor was one of expectation of progressive politics when he left the presidency and headed for Africa to do some big game hunting in 1909. William Howard Taft had some anti-trust success that was soured by a lack of anticipated progressivism. Woodrow Wilson left the presidency on March 4th, 1921 an internationalist rather than merely an unreconstructed racist southerner. It wasn't until that future war that Wilson had warned against that American voters realized that he was right and they were wrong. However, for twelve long years after "Woody Wilson,” everything from Democrats and progressive Republicans had the Wilson “odor” and was doomed for failure at the pens of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover. Warren Harding was simply incompetent by his own admission. Calvin Coolidge left office well regarded, but he was steeped in the government flavor which brought about the Great Depression. Herbert Hoover could never grasp the people's genuine need for government assistance. Thus his administration left a hungry and dry taste in most people's mouths.

When FDR, a sick, crippled and spent old man at age 63 who seemed to have been president forever died on Thursday, April 12th, 1945, the difference he'd made in so many lives flavored the Democratic Party and even the government as useful tools of and for the people. It lasted to the end of LBJ's turbulent administration on January 20th, 1969.

Truman's flavor was political cronyism and military stalemate in Korea. After all, America was used to winning its wars. Harry Truman's flavor changed only with the gradual realization of the stability of his foreign policy ventures.

Ike's flavor was government despite Republican dogma. Supported largely by Eastern progressives named Tom Dewey, Henry Cabot Lodge and Hugh  Scott, he spent billions of taxpayer dollars on his highway system and was open to limited civil rights proposals as passed in Congress by LBJ and supported by the up-and-coming Kennedys. JFK's flavor was "what could have been and seemingly nearly was” when he was assassinated on Friday, November 22nd, 1963 in Dallas, Texas. LBJ's intention was to leave a "Great Society" energized by liberty for all and regulated by a benevolent government in the FDR tradition, but failure in Vietnam and the turbulence of civil rights issues left his administration stale in taste and emotionally exhausted by its "credibility gap."

President Nixon's flavor, despite our arrival on the moon, the birth of the Environmental Protection Agency, the opening of Communist China, and the close of our involvement in Vietnam, was the flavor of Watergate and all it implied. Thus Gerald Ford's administration ended with a reputation of cronyism because Ford had pardoned his friend Richard Nixon.

Jimmy Carter's real flavor is just now coming into fashion. When he was defeated, his failure was flavored by an economy in full free-fall, a foreign policy seemingly indecisive and defeatist. Carter was a well-intentioned president above his head to the extent that, at least during the 1984 and 1988 Democratic conventions, delegates more than less muted their genuine affection for him. President George H. W. Bush's flavor, despite some solid achievements, was that he wasn't really “one of us” because he couldn't appreciate the significance of a grocery store barcode. Additionally, his vice president, Dan Quayle spelled the word “potato” with an “e” --so, back they went to the ranch and the golf course where they functioned better for all of us!

"Slick Willie" was William Jefferson Clinton’s ultimate flavor and it sticks to him this very day despite his obvious smarts and crowd appeal. George W. Bush hung on tight to the politically potent coattail of Evangelical Christianity, free market economic dogma, but his lies about Iraq's expanding weapons of mass destruction and the less than successful Iraq war caught up with him when the economy collapsed.

President Barack Obama was personally more popular than the performance of his administration when it constitutionally gave way to Donald Trump on Friday, January 20th, 2017. Warm and genuine, his rhetoric, like his Affordable Care Act, couldn’t quite overcome his lack of pure political skills. Thus, he was forced to rule more by executive order than by domination of Congress.

I've given you all of these presidential administration flavors and will present you with my taste of Donald Trump's flavor when we meet again next week.

Please stay tuned!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

HAPPY 245TH BIRTHDAY, UNCLE SAM!

By Edwin Cooney

Tell me, how many other people do you know who became 245 years old this weekend? Did you wish him a happy birthday, and if you did, was it a wish, or a thought? Now if you think this is mere trivia and therefore doesn't matter, I can take you back to a time when one of America's most powerful and  important men, J. Edgar Hoover, insisted that "a wish is a father to a thought.” 

It was March of 1972 and one of the raging issues aside from the Vietnam War and the bussing of school children, especially amongst hungry liberal Democrats, was how long J. Edgar Hoover would hold onto his mighty office of Director of the FBI. One day, a CBS news reporter actually was able to confront Director Hoover, microphone in hand. The conversation went something like this: "Mr. Hoover, is it possible that you'll soon retire as FBI Director?" Director Hoover: "The wish is father to the thought!” Reporter: “What's that again?” Mr. Hoover: "The wish is father to the thought!" Reporter: "What does that mean?" Mr. Hoover: "Just exactly what I just said!" The interview was over. A little less than two months later, on Tuesday, May 2nd, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, after 48 years as FBI Chief, was dead of a heart attack at age 77.

Ever since that March day, I've wondered if a wish really and truly is father to a thought! So, if I take time out of my day of beer swilling, hotdog munching, sweet corn gnawing, and baseball game absorbing to wish Uncle Sam a happy 245th birthday, is my wish a "father to a further thought” or can it stand on its own?

Even more to the point in this age of fading national unity, what do I have to think and believe in order for my "happy birthday" wish to Uncle Sam to ring true? Must I believe that Joe Biden was corruptly elected president last November? Must I be a conformist or am I free to be a dissident? 

Like individuals, nations have birthdays that range from so-so to happy to very memorable! America's birth on July 4th, 1776 which was a Thursday, actually occurred two days earlier on Tuesday, July 2nd in the wake of Delaware delegate Caesar Rodney’s frantic and dramatic ride from his farm in Delaware to cast Delaware's vote for independence. “Caesar Rodney's ride for freedom” became official the instant he cast his vote that Tuesday, July 2nd, 1776. However, the Declaration of Independence became official the day that historic document was published which was the fourth of July, two days later. Hence, one might label America's actual birthday as both struggling and happy. After all, during the years between 1776 and 1781 (when Lord Cornwallis surrendered to General George Washington at Yorktown, Maryland), its independence hung in the balance.

Metaphorically, most nations are given birth by the people who populate, nurture, defend and ultimately love them. Unlike those who give them birth, they only age when the generations who inherit their gifts fail to meet their ongoing needs or to the extent their people are unable to protect them from domination by their sister nations.

Just as individuals endure birthdays that are not always happy, the same is true of nations, even nations as great as the United States of America. Here are some examples: During the War of 1812, from Saturday, July 4th, 1812 through Monday, July, 4th, 1814, the United States saw much military humiliation. On Tuesday, July 2nd, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln suspended the privilege of habeas corpus throughout the Union due to the immediate threat of Confederate sympathizers during the Civil War. (Note: Habeas corpus is the right of those imprisoned to appear for a speedy trial following their arrest.) July 4ths during World War II were certainly less than happy American birthdays. I'm guessing that in view of the successful Normandy Invasion, Tuesday, July 4th, 1944 was a hopeful American birthday celebration. As for a few happy American birthdays, perhaps Saturday, July 4th, 1801, America's 25th anniversary, was happy since Thomas Jefferson, one of our major founders, was president. It's possible that Wednesday, July 4th, 1804 was a happy birthday because the Louisiana Purchase which vastly increased American territory as far west as the Pacific had been finalized and was about to be explored by Lewis and Clark. I'd guess that Monday, July 4th, 1921 was happy because by then women had the right to vote and, on that very day, President Warren Harding signed our peace treaty with Germany — between two golf games. (Note: since the Senate had rejected Woodrow Wilson's peace treaty containing the League of Nations, State Secretary Charles Evans Hughes negotiated a brand new treaty with Germany to officially end World War I for the American people. According to one Harding biographer, Harding signed the new treaty at New Jersey Senator Tom Freilinghuysen's dining room table while putting on fresh golfing clothes.)

Just as you and I are ultimately responsible for our happy birthdays, so are nations! People inevitably age, but nations only age when they won't agree to suspend some of their preconceptions which are necessary to bring about national unity and that ultimately spell domestic peace and equity.

Hence, happy 245th birthday Uncle Sam! It may not be easy this year to be happy, but we ought to at least be working on our national happiness to honor your birthday this weekend!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY