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All Star Game, 1978

I got a ticket to the All Star game. My seat was near homeplate, 2 rows from the top of the stadium. I didn't care.

The guy who had the seat next to me was an old black man from Chicago. He'd been coming to All Star games since 1940 in St. Louis and hadn't missed one since. He said his name was Houston. His eyes were soft, yellowed, and veined and the creases in his hands were deep. He moved slowly and deliberately. I was mesmerized. He leaned forward and untied his shoes, taking them off one at a time and sliding them under his seat. Leaning forward a bit more, he took some old leather slippers out of his pocket, one stuffed inside the other and folded in half. He dropped them on the ground, and slipped his feet in. Then he took his cap off, folded it precisely and set it on his knee while he replaced it with an old White Sox cap he'd pulled from another pocket.

He saw them All.

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Flying to Cabo

Somewhere in the early 80s, I managed to convince our General Manager that the San Diego hotel where we worked was doing so well, his executive committee deserved a weekend south of the border. It’d be almost free if we used the friend-of-the-hotel’s boat that was wintering in Cabo, for sleeping as well as fishing. (HINDSIGHT: I underestimated the variety of gastroenterological interactions my fellow less Mexico-versed execs would cycle through during the course of the weekend and completely failed to consider the lack of circulation in the pointy end of a boat. Not to mix stories, but a favorite quote from the first America’s Cup San Diego hosted begs to be mentioned here. There had been a gaping rip in a sewage pipeline a few miles out in the ocean, smack dab in the middle of the race course and it was pouring out raw sewage at a horrific rate, making San Diego’s America’s Cup “where the effluent meets the affluent.” Maybe the quote wasn’t worth it after all.)

Leg One: Tijuana to La Paz on an Aeromexico DC 10. Passing the open door cockpit, I wondered about those colorful icon figures standing on the dash. The plane fired up, and just before the door to the cockpit closed, I saw the pilot and the copilot (both very young, yes) cross themselves and then take those figures down.

“Stewardess, can I get a shot and a Tecate?”

Landing in La Paz, all I could see was desert. The plane banked hard, smashing my cheek to the window where I swear I saw small rodents and reptiles scurrying as the plane’s wing tip threatened to slice them. We hit the very short runway and those pilots slammed on the breaks so hard the whole cabin was thrust forward hard against their seatbelts. Pretty sure it left some marks. When the plane came to a stop, all of us in the cabin broke into spontaneous and sincere applause.

Once we were in the tiny La Paz airport, an official informed us that the little prop job that would eventually take us and a couple of live chickens to Cabo had just had “a new engine attached” and they wanted to take it for a test flight to which we enthusiastically all replied, “Dos mas tequilas por favore!”

By now our HR director, an Eagle Scout of a fellow who, fully in the spirit of the weekend and against his usual habit, had downed his 5th shot and was doing some mighty fine cartwheels in the waiting room. We watched as he head-over-heels’d his way through the rows of molded plastic chairs, having the time of his life. A couple of us noticed our plane land and waited to be advised. The HR guy was now sitting, eyes at half-mast, with a 3” line of viscous drool connecting the center of his lower lip to the logo on his company t-shirt. And that was it for the weekend. Eagle Scout out.

An official informed us they hadn’t liked that first test flight and were going to try again which was A-OK with us. I wondered briefly where the other group of Americans on their way to Cabo had got to but couldn’t blame anyone for getting out of the way of our cirque de Sauza HR director. We were stuck at the La Paz airport for another few hours but eventually made it to Cabo. At dinner we happened to see the other American party who confessed that they had no tickets or reservations but had bribed the airline who gave them our plane which, when you think about it, is preferable to traveling on a plane with live chickens AND a sketchy engine.

After that, the best thing that happened was wearing that hot leather vest that clips to the reel with matching bellybutton, and the 50 pound dorado I caught. (The chickens were lovely.)

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