Looking Through The Tunnel

If you know who Cody Dial is, you know the ending to this story. But, you probably don’t know who he is, and, even if you do, this story isn’t about the ending but the journey and the dangers of tunnel vision.

If you know anything about the criminal justice system, you’ll know that the police are often, sometimes unfairly, accused of tunnel vision by defense attorneys who feel that the best defense for their particular client is proffering another theory of the case. (Tunnel vision, by the way, is a real thing and is also known as “confirmation bias”, the tendency to assign weight to evidence that backs up the opinions and beliefs one already has and reject as unimportant any evidence that might contradict it.) And, every time I hear of a defense attorney using this tactic, I think back to the first time I saw it used in court.

The defendant was Roland Steele of McKees Rocks, who was accused of killing three elderly East Washington widows on June 21, 1985. The three women, Lucille Horner, Minnie Warrick, and Sarah Knutz, all in their 80s, attended a charity luncheon that day at the Millcraft Center in Washington. Prosecutors claimed that Steele approached the women in a parking lot, convinced them they were having car trouble, and offered to drive them to a nearby garage. Instead, according to police and prosecutors, Steele drove the women into a wooded area and beat them to death. The victim’s bodies were found the following day, beneath some old tires at an abandoned Cecil Township coal mine. The women’s jewelry and cash and credit cards from their purses, which were found along the side of a nearby dirt road, were missing.

During the trial, three prosecution witnesses testified that they saw Steele with the women on June 21^st and testimony even indicated that Steele was seen driving Horner’s car with the women inside. The defendant denied the charges from the stand, claiming he’d been in Pittsburgh at the time, but that alibi witnesses who could put him there would not come forward because they were wanted by the police. More germane to our subject, though, was another witness defense attorneys put on the stand, a witness who claimed to have seen a suspicious man, one who looked similar to Steele but was not Steele, in the area near the time of the kidnapping. And, there it was. The alternate theory of the crime. This man, the one seen by the defense witness, was responsible, not Steele, and the prosecution witnesses were mistaken. (Steele himself also offered the theory that prosecutors may have had the state police tell the witnesses to deliberately lie.)

One thing I always did when covering a trial was keep an open mind. It wasn’t my job to determine whether guilt had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt, so I didn’t engage in that kind of thinking. I wrote stories about what was happening in the court room, and, when the trial was over, simply waited for the jury, the folks whose job was to determine whether prosecutors had met their burden of proof, to return with its verdict. In Steele’s case, it wasn’t a particularly long wait. He was convicted of three counts of first degree murder. The same jury later took only 45 minutes to sentence him to death.

Steele is currently living at the Bucks County Department of Corrections in Doylestown. He was scheduled to be executed in 2009, but the execution was stayed and a resentencing later ordered. He’s well into his 70s now and the chances that he’ll actually be put to death are miniscule. But, I digress. Cody Dial. And tunnel vision.

Cody Dial was a 27-year-old Alaska native who, like his father, Roman Dial, enjoyed adventuring outdoors. The younger Dial had been hiking through Central American jungles that year in 2004 when he informed his father that he was going to hike into the jungle of Corcovado National Park in Costa Rica. Cody Dial did, indeed, walk into that park. And, he never walked out.

Cody Dial was ten days overdue before his father realized he was missing. Roman Dial immediately went to Costa Rica to search for his son, but found that the authorities were not searching the area where Cody, in messages to his father, said he’d planned to go. Instead, they were following a different path. There’d been a report that a local drug dealer named Jose had been seen with a white backpacker on a trail outside the park. But, while Roman Dial discounted the possibility that said backpacker was his son, since Cody tried never to use guides and would be highly unlikely to be found alongside a local on a tourist trail, local authorities dismissed his objections.

After various search efforts failed, Roman Dial was convinced to agree to a television documentary about the case. The production company hired former DEA investigator Carson Ulrich and parajumper Ken Fournier to investigate the case, and, like local authorities, Ulrich and Fournier concentrated on the local drug dealer, Jose. Now, initially, Jose denied that the backpacker he’d been seen with was Cody Dial. But, when other continued to insist it had been the younger Dial, Jose changed his story…and not for the last time.

Eventually, Jose’s story evolved into a convoluted one that involved Cody Dial running across some illegal miners, who, after a standoff, abducted and eventually killed him. The ever-changing story pointed the finger at various members of this mining family at various times, and Jose eventually settled on claiming to have run away and not being certain of exactly what happened. But, Ulrich and Fournier absolutely were.

In a meeting recorded for the documentary cameras, Ulrich and Fournier told Roman Dial that they’d “solved” the case. According to Ulrich, Jose and Cody had been confronted by the illegal miners, and they’d murdered Cody. Now, to understand the next part, understand that you cannot be prosecuted for murder in Costa Rica without a body. And, per Ulrich, to make sure there was no body to be found, the illegal miners dismembered the younger Dial and fed him to the sharks in the ocean.

Roman Dial wasn’t exactly convinced, but Ulrich, a professional investigator, absolutely was. Because, he’d bought Jose’s story hook, line, and sinker. He’d followed exactly where a person not exactly known for his honesty, one whose story changed more often than his underwear, led. He and Fournier had looked right down the tunnel and were convinced that anything outside it was insignificant.

There are lots of ways to come to grief in the wilderness alone, and the vast majority of those ways don’t involve action by another human. Walk alone in a remote area anywhere and you can fall and break a leg. A serious fracture that doesn’t allow you to move can quickly become infected (especially in the tropics) and, unless you’re found, well. Now, add in non-human things that are plenty dangerous, like, say, venomous snakes. In Central America, you have the fer-de-lance, which causes more human deaths than any other American reptile. And, you also have, among other venomous vipers, the bushmaster, which can grow up to 13 feet long and is the longest venomous snake in the entire hemisphere. Few humans are ever bitten by a bushmaster because it lives in heavily forested areas and is rarely encountered by humans. But, walk through the jungles of Costa Rica, and, well. The bushmaster is there, capable of multiple strikes and injecting large amounts of venom.

And, there are more than just snakes in that jungle. There are crocodiles, jaguars, and spiders (including the black widow and the Brazilian wandering spider). Even the frogs can be dangerous, as Costa Rica is home to the three-striped poison dart frog, which can kill you even if you just inadvertently brush against it.

But, Ulrich and Fournier discounted any of these possibilities in favor of Jose’s story, even when efforts to support that story, including expeditions along the path Jose claimed to walked with Cody, failed to produce a trace of anything related to the Alaskan.

And, so it was that a six-part documentary called “Missing Dial” was made. And aired on the National Geographic cable network. And, to be fair, said documentary was extremely well-made. It told a gripping story, even if, as it went on, it was the thin story Ulrich had convinced himself was true. Even if many viewers absolutely had to be thinking the same thing I was as the film went on, “How can you be convinced of any of this with only this clown’s word for it?” And, it turned out that we skeptical viewers were about to be proven right.

Another danger of tropical jungles is one you wouldn’t put up there with snakes and crocodiles…unless you know about tropical jungles, where there are big, tall trees with shallow root systems…and frequent heavy rain storms with high winds. There are no statistics kept on deaths by falling trees or limbs, but such deaths do occur, especially among hikers and campers, and not just in the tropics, but in wooded areas all over the globe. And, yeah, we’re going somewhere with this.

A few days before the first episode of the documentary was to air, Cody Dial’s remains were found in the Costa Rican jungle…underneath a tree. Roman Dial identified his son’s equipment, which was all still there. Also still there were Dial’s money and passport, meaning he had not been robbed. Forensic examinations of the remains revealed no signs of foul play. Cody Dial had been killed, not by illegal miners, but by a falling tree. His body had not been dismembered and fed to the sharks. It had lain right where Dial died for nearly two years. Jose had been full of it. No surprise there. But, so had Ulrich and Fournier, though neither was exactly willing to admit it…even in the face of concrete evidence.

And, that’s the point here. Tunnel vision and the dangers of same…the dangers of, at some point, not just starting to believe your theory is correct, but of ignoring any evidence that doesn’t support that theory, all of which leads to grief even more often than the bite of the fer-de-lance.

Lazy Hazy

I’ve never been a warm weather guy. To quote the great Anna Nalick, “summer just wasn’t my season”. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve learned over the years to enjoy all the seasons, but some I enjoy more than others and summer doesn’t rank near the top of the list. And, the crazy thing is, it never did…even back in the day…when summers meant nearly three months off.

Now, for the second time, don’t get me wrong. I looked forward to summer, like all of us did. In fact, like the rest of those of us of the male persuasion, I could think of little else as the calendar turned to May, the weather warmed, and the days got longer. Part of that, of course, was the anticipation of those three months when we could do, pretty much, whatever we wanted. And another part had to do with our selective memories. Yeah. Time to digress.

As we mentioned in a previous missive about cookouts, our memories were selective, and in the right way (if, you know, there is one). The right way…in that, in anticipating something like summer, we remembered all the great things about it, and pretty much forgot about all the negatives. And, again, we were this way about everything to such a degree that Mom always felt it necessary to caution us that everything would not be, as the great Al McGuire sometimes said, “seashells and balloons”.

When we were anticipating one of our two annual Kennywood trips (another blog) so much so that it was all we talked about, Mom would remind us that there would be lines. And we’d ignore this reminder, imagining ourselves blissfully floating from ride to ride all day. Much like we’d ignore all cautions on a cookout day that we had to wait until the coals heated up or, prior to the Fourth of July, that the fireworks wouldn’t start until dark, so we’d have to wait.

 So, yeah. Selective. Very selective. And, when it came to summer, that meant remembering all the fun we were going to have and forgetting all about, you know, the heat…which we, basically, could not escape. Yeah. Time for a trip to the Wayback. The way Wayback…1896. (History, baby! Buckle up!)

In August 1896, New York and New England were hit with a ten-day heatwave that claimed the lives of 15-hundred people. The temperature was above 90 as was the humidity…with absolutely no wind at all. The result? A heat index of over 120 for all ten of those days. Oh, and as the actual temperatures were measured above street level in those days, the temperature on the street in a city like New York, an urban heat island, was likely 120 degrees. Worse, temperatures barely fell at night, and the humidity remained constant.

The worst of the death toll came in the New York city tenements. Those overcrowded buildings, with five and six folks to a room, offered no relief from the heat. And, as the city had a law against sleeping in public parks, residents, attempting to find enough comfort to sleep, were forced to do things like sleep outside on fire escapes (several children fell from same and were seriously injured or killed), on building roofs (people fell off those as well and were killed), and even down at the piers (more than one person rolled into the river and drowned).

There was absolutely no escape from the heat, for human or animal. So many horses died in New York during those ten days that their bodies couldn’t be removed from the streets and simply lay where they fell. No escape, except for those who decided to escape by committing suicide. And, there were several of those.

Now, why am I telling you this? Because, those folks had no air conditioning, much like none of us did back in our school days.  And I mean none of us. Not one member of the old gang had it, none of the adults in our family had it, and even most public buildings didn’t have it. So, again, we couldn’t escape the heat.

Now, obviously, none of us were in the kinds of straits in which so many of those folks in 1896 found themselves. We did have things we could do to make ourselves somewhat more comfortable, so none of us was going to die of heatstroke. But, while we might be more comfortable, there were days and more than a few of them where actually being comfortable wasn’t going to happen.

What did we do? Well, first, we spent as much time as possible outside. As the indoors weren’t air conditioned, it was always cooler outside, especially in the shade, where we tended to set up if we were doing something passive like playing a board game or cards. And, if we needed to be inside, there were always fans…which could help…or not.

I can still remember going to my paternal grandfather’s house during the summer months. Grandpap had a big chair he liked to sit in, and a few feet in front of that chair on a table sat a huge box fan he’d have blowing directly on him. But what that fan was mostly doing was blowing hot air around, and, absent any kind of air flow from the outside, actually making said air hotter by doing so.

Other fans worked better. We had window fans at our place, and those helped some. They were two sided, one designed to suck the hot air out of the house and the other to pull cooler air in from outside. They didn’t do much during the day, when there was plenty of heat both outdoors and in, but, at night? If it cooled off some, they could make it possible to sleep comfortably. Other nights? Yeah. Not so much.

That was always the worst part, for me at least. If we were outside playing ball or something and got hot, we just went to the hose, squirted some of the cold water over ourselves, had a drink, and got back to playing. If it got really bad, we’d walk down to the A&P, which did have air conditioning, go inside, and walk around until we cooled off a little. Mom always made sure to have plenty of cold drinks in the fridge, especially in the summer, and, if it got too uncomfortable inside, well, we could always go out, even after dark. Sit on the porch or the patio.

But, at bedtime, it was another story. If it were one of those nights, a night when it didn’t really cool off and when the humidity remained high? Well, the window fan wasn’t going to do much, and you were going to swelter in bed even if you tossed any and all covers off the bottom of the thing. Now, there was a kinda/sorta fix for that. You could stay up later…one of the benefits of summer vacation.

School night bedtimes were pretty inviolate in our house back in the day. Oh, on occasion, if something very special might be on TV, you might get a one-night pass to stay up an extra half an hour or even an hour. But, pretty much no other reason would suffice, because any of that other stuff you could do tomorrow. Tonight? Yeah. Bed.

But, on non-school nights? Things were liberalized. Now, during the school year, this liberalization was of limited utility. Our body clocks were set to “school”, so, while we might stay up an hour or so later on a Friday or Saturday night or if we were on a school vacation, that was it. In the summer? Different story. After a couple of weeks of sleeping in (a little) and staying up later, the clocks adjusted. Soon enough, we could stay up until 2am if we wanted…and that was the kinda/sorta fix. We’d stay out of bed until it was, pretty much, as cool as it was going to get. The problem was that strategy rebounded on us.

Now, as you may know if you’ve been here a few times before, I was more the “early bird” type, while La Soeur was a “night owl”. But. Neither of us was one of those folks who could get by on four hours sleep a night. Once in a while? Sure. But not regularly. So, the later we went to bed, the later we slept. And that meant that the heat of the day was hitting us at the other end of the sleep cycle.

But all of this, the heat, the nights it was too hot to sleep, the bugs, all the other things we didn’t like about summer? All of that was out of mind as we marched past Memorial Day into the last few days of the school year, which always ended sometime in early June in those days. All we could think about was that, soon, we’d have almost every day to ourselves and plenty of time to do all those things we never seemed to have enough time to do when school was in session.

I’ve often said that I had thirteen “last days of school”, and my memory of each of those days is unsullied by a single cloud in the sky. I remember each and every one as having featured bright sunshine pouring through the big windows of the school, beckoning us to come out and start our summer. And, of course, we couldn’t wait to do just that.

Now, here’s the part we didn’t get. Those first few weeks, early and mid-June? They were the best part of summer vacation. Oh, July and August were great, but they featured a lot of that heat we had to deal with. June? The weather was cooler, especially at night and in the early part of the day. I can still remember going out to play as a little kid and running through the dewy grass, our shoes and socks soaked. Mom might have even made us wear light jackets. But, soon enough, the jackets were discarded, and the shoes and socks had dried and, often, we were treated to one of those June days, one of the most beautiful of the year. Warm, but not hot. No clouds. No rain. No humidity. Just. Gorgeous.

Yeah, the June weather was usually the best of the summer and there was another factor, too. The newness of it all. We had stuff we wanted to do, all that stuff we didn’t have time for during the school year, stuff Mom had been telling us for weeks we’d have “plenty of time to do” once school was out. Well, school was out, and we did have plenty of time. So, we got stuff done.

We never ran out of stuff, mind. Not once in all those years. We could always find something fun to do. Sure, there were moments of boredom, but never any days of boredom. So, July and August contained plenty of fun. But, not as much as June had. No, not quite as much as that.

And, it was those days, at least in my case, that I thought about every year as May arrived and the end of the school year loomed. Those perfect, early June days when the weather was gorgeous, and the entire summer lay before us. And, on those days, even fall, my favorite season of all, wasn’t something I was much worried about. Yeah, I looked forward to the cooler weather and the holidays and football and all of that, but, even at six or seven, I got the fact that this, this, what we had right now, was pretty great, something to be enjoyed. Because, before we knew it, it would be over for another year. And, soon enough, for a lifetime.

The Storm

At any given moment, there are about 2,000 thunderstorms occurring on planet Earth. Now, if you’re worried we’re going to talk a lot of science about thunderstorms here, don’t. No, I want to do what we usually do around here, tell stories. Only, these will involve thunderstorms.

Every little kid, I suspect, is, at some point in their lives, afraid of thunderstorms. We, as in, La Soeur and I, were no exception to that rule. And, for, frankly, good reason. Let’s think about what happens in a thunderstorm. First, it gets dark in the middle of the freaking day. The wind starts blowing very hard, and then it starts raining, very hard. And, all of a sudden flashes of light and a ton of loud noise. Yeah. That’s going to scare a kid.

And, trust me, the adults in our lives were very, very little help when it came to reassuring us, despite their efforts. Notice, I don’t say “best” efforts, because, it says here, they could have done better. One of my grandmothers, the Italian Catholic one, “reassured” us by saying that the loud noises we were hearing was only “the angels bowling”. Yeah. That doesn’t help, Gran, but, thanks. Other adults pooh-poohed our fears by explaining that “the thunder can’t hurt you”. To their credit, they neglected to tell us that the lightning absolutely could, but the whole “can’t hurt you” thing was very, very cold comfort, considering that the adults in our lives were always telling us that stuff we were afraid of couldn’t hurt us.

Ironically, the adult who actually did the most to reassure us about thunderstorms was probably the one most afraid of them. My French grandmother was terrified of lightning. How terrified? Someone told her that a car was a safe place to be during a thunderstorm. (That someone was both right and wrong. They were right about the car being safe, but wrong about the reason. Said person claimed it had to do with the rubber tires. It actually has to do with the metal cage that surrounds passengers in a car. The metal conducts the electricity around the passengers and into the ground. But, I digress and I promised not to get into too much science here.) So, Grandma was known, during a thunderstorm, to head to her attached garage and sit in the car until the storm was over.

But, despite her own fears, Grandma could always reassure us. For some reason, when she told us something couldn’t hurt us or she wouldn’t let it hurt us, we believed her, despite the fact that she was less than five feet tall and maybe 100 pounds. There was just something in her manner that told us she was no one to be trifled with. When we were adults, we learned more about her and what she’d gone through in her life and realized we had not been wrong. But, again, I digress.

Grandma could always reassure us about thunderstorms, and I’ll never forget this classic example. By this time, we were still in kindergarten or first grade, but we’d learned a little about the storms. The adults had been right about the thunder, but lightning was very dangerous, and we were now afraid of it and not thunder. We’d also learned, from a helpful adult, that there were two types of lightning, cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground. Of course, we didn’t understand much of that nor did we know the exact terms. All we knew was some lightning stayed in the sky and the other kind hit the ground. So, often, when we saw lightning, an adult would reassure us by saying, “Don’t worry. That’s the kind that stays in the sky.” Grandma went a step further. One day, at her house, a storm was brewing and the sky began lighting up. As we headed inside to avoid the rain, one of us (and, the mists of time obscure which one) asked if this was “the kind of lightning that stays in the sky or the kind that hits the ground”. Grandma said, “It’s the kind that stays in the sky. And, if it tries to come down here, I’ll grab it and throw it back up there.” That’s the kind of grandmother I had. She was one of a kind in many, many ways. Yeah. I’m digressing. But, I don’t regret this one.

Thunderstorms. Mom was concerned about the dangers of lightning, too, not so much for herself, but for us. She’d heard from someone that the safest place in a house to be was away from any windows. Except. Every room in the house had windows save a powder room you weren’t going to be able to spend the length of a storm in. But. We had a basement and there was a stairway leading down to it. All the rooms in the basement had windows, too, but there was a landing at the top of the stairway with a pair of doors. Close those, and, voila! A room with no windows! So, Mom got the bright idea to have us sit there, at the top of a flight of stairs, for the length of the storm. Yeah. That happened once. Afterward, she determined we’d risk the slight chance of a lightning strike to avoid the one hundred percent chance of long, loud complaining and recriminations, thank you.

As you might imagine, as we got older, thunderstorms became, instead of something to be feared, more of an inconvenience. We understood lightning was dangerous and we knew what not to do (stand under a tree or hold something metal in your hand) and, despite Mom’s constant reminders about our lack of common sense, we also knew enough to come in out of the rain, especially the kind of rain a thunderstorm brought. And, there was the rub.

When we were out playing, the last thing we wanted to do was come in. Because, we were having fun out there and there wasn’t much fun to do in here. Sure, there was TV, but, these were the days of four or five channels and afternoons filled with soap operas and talk shows that had as much appeal to us as another sentence to time spent at the top of the stairs. (Mom never used that as a punishment, but she could have and it would have been as effective as anything else.) Now, sometimes we had to come in, because Mom would make us, but, other times, we used one of two lesser options. The first was the back porch (which, as we discussed in a previous missive, was actually in the front…yeah, this was us). The other was the garage. Each had their advantages.

The “back porch” was small and narrow. But. It was attached to the house. This meant two things. One, you were probably going to get wet on the porch, as the blowing rain could reach you despite the roof and the sides, the latter of which were higher than we were, since we always sat on the floor of the porch to avoid the worst of the moisture. But, it also meant if you needed to use the restroom or get a drink or something, you could do that without getting soaked, because, again, the porch was attached to the house and you could access the latter via the front door. (Yes, we called it the back porch and the front door. It, again, was us.)

In the garage, we had the opposite problem. The garage was plenty roomy. After all, there was space for Dad’s car in there, plus various cabinets for outdoor tools at the like. And, you were not going to get wet. But. The garage was not attached to the house. So, if we went in there, the only way to get to the house would be to run across the back yard to the back door assuring you’d, 1. Get soaked and 2. Get yelled at by Mom for tracking water into the house. The garage also had a dirt floor. Now, that didn’t mean we wouldn’t sit on it. We would and we did. But, this also meant we’d hear it from Mom. “Ahhh! Look how filthy your clothes are!” (And, considering how dirty they were each and every time we played outside, just imagine how dirty they had to be for Mom to notice.)

So, yeah, each had their advantages and, the choice depended on how things were going or just our whim that particular day. But, I still well remember the results of those choices. Playing a game like “Clue” or “Monopoly” on the porch, and, whomever was unlucky enough to have his or her back to the street getting rain blown down it. Or, standing in the middle of the garage watching the rain pour down and wondering when we’d be able to go grab a drink.

As the years went on, our relationship with thunderstorms continued to change. Eventually, we were driving and had cars and that meant having a place to get in out of the storm if you happened to be someplace away from home and the clouds opened up. I still remember what looked like a beautiful afternoon for basketball one summer. We piled in the car and headed out to Cecil.

When we got there, the courts were empty. Perfect. Soon enough, we were playing and we’d gotten a couple of games in when the sky turned black. “Maybe it will blow over.” Now, I’ve got to digress again. And, we’re going to rewind all the way to where we started, early childhood.

At some point, as little kids, we put the whole “thunderstorm” thing together. First, it started to get dark. Then, the wind would pick up. And, after that, the rain and thunder and lightning we hated. And, so it was that, when the skies would start to darken, we’d immediately begin to worry. “Uh oh! It’s going to rain!” And, one of those non-helpful adults would always say, with a smile, “Oh, maybe it will blow over.” One time. Exactly one time in all of our childhood did it “blow over” when someone told us it might. Every time, black. Wind. Rain. Thunder. Lightning. Until, one day, when we were in third or fourth grade and storms had gone from something to fear to an inconvenience, all the familiar signs began.

We were playing whiffle ball (more on that in another blog) when the darkness started to creep in. The guys all looked up at the sky and realized what was coming. “Better hurry. Let’s try to get this inning in before it starts.” And, someone fired off the line, “Maybe it will blow over.” Whoever was holding the bat, to his credit, did not beat that guy with it, because, every single time this happened, some member of the gang would channel one of those adults and hopefully break out the “blow over” thing, even though, by then, we all knew the storm was coming.

We hurried and got the inning in. Things were looking worse, but, as it hadn’t started raining yet, we decided to start the next inning. The wind was freshening up and “blowing out” toward the outfield, leading one of our number to state, as one of the weaker hitters stepped to the plate, “With the wind blowing like this, even you might hit a homer!” And, the pitcher to retort, “He’s not going to hit it at all.” He didn’t. (“Feel the breeze” is what guys always said when someone struck out. But we didn’t need him swinging to feel the breeze at that moment.) And, soon enough, another inning had ended. And, without our notice, the skies had begun to lighten and the wind had died down. The storm had blown over. For the first and only time. Now, fast forward.

Back to Cecil. We were still playing when the first drops of rain began to hit. It wasn’t blowing over. So, we grabbed our stuff and headed for the car. We hadn’t even gotten the doors shut when it opened up. We sat watching as the rain poured down and the lightning flashed and the thunder roared. We sat and sat. And, finally, one of our number said, “You know, it doesn’t look like it’s letting up, maybe we should head home.” Others pooh-poohed this naysayer, but, a few minutes later, when it looked like the only thing we’d be able to play on the court was water polo, we bowed to the inevitable and headed back to Guntown. We’d almost made it back when the rain stopped, leading one of the group, the diehard who still wanted to wait when all the rest of us had decided to leave to say, “See, if we’d have waited…” There wasn’t a lot of room in the car, so we didn’t beat him as thoroughly as we’d have liked to. But, we did beat him as thoroughly as possible.

At some point, my relationship with the thunderstorm changed once again. Now, it wasn’t something to be feared, nor was it an inconvenience. It became something to be enjoyed. These days, if I get a chance to sit on a porch and watch a thunderstorm, I’m all over it. Even if, like in those old days of the narrow “back porch”, the rain is blowing and I’m getting a little wet as a result. And, as I watch the lightning flash and listen to the boom of the thunder, I think back to those days on the porch or in the garage or with Grandma promising to grab the lightning and throw it back in the sky. And, for some reason, it’s all good.

Steve

When you’re a kid, if you’re lucky anyway, you have lots of heroes. And I was lucky. One of those heroes I lived with, and others I saw regularly, making me even luckier. But, like most kids, I had other heroes, people I saw only at a distance. For me, an avid sports fan, many of those heroes wore the uniforms of my favorite teams.

I’ve been interested in sports for as long as I can remember. I was five when Super Bowl III was played. It wasn’t the first game I’d ever watched, but it was the first one I’d ever watched all the way through. Yes, I’ll explain. Most little kids don’t have much of an attention span. So, here’s what would happen. The game would come on and Dad would call me into the living room. Now, time for a digression.

Dad was the one who cultivated my love of sports. He taught me football. He taught me baseball. He knew a lot about both, especially the latter, as he’d been a very good player in his day. So, we’d watch the games together, something we did from the days before I entered school until the day Dad passed away, well over five decades. Digression over.

Dad would call me into the living room. The game is starting! So, I’d sit down and watch for a while. Then, being a typical little kid, I’d run off to my room or outside and start playing, usually something sports related. Then, after a while, I’d come back into the living room and start watching again. Dad would catch me up on what happened. Later, rinse, repeat until the game was over. But, not Super Bowl III.

I couldn’t look away from Super Bowl III because everything everyone had said was going to happen was not happening! The mighty Baltimore Colts were not destroying and humiliating the New York Jets and their brash QB Joe Namath. They were not “teaching Namath a lesson” after Broadway Joe not only predicted a Jets win but guaranteed it. Oh, lessons were being taught, but number 12 was doing the teaching.

Joe. Namath. Who, like me, was from a small Western Pennsylvania steel town. Joe Namath. Who, like me, was the ethnic son of a steel worker. Joe Namath was doing that. Joe Namath was proving that guys like us could do things…in fact, he was proving that guys like us could do anything. Joe became my hero that day. And he’s been exactly that ever since.

But, while football was my favorite sport then and remains so to this day, most of my sports heroes didn’t wear shoulder pads, they wore the uniform of the home baseball team, the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Why? Well, let’s keep in mind that football, which is front of mind all year these days, as the NFL has, ingeniously, set itself up as a year-round endeavor where something’s always going on even when games aren’t being played, was, pretty much, dark most of the year back then. The NFL season, which ran much longer than either the high school or college seasons, started in mid-September and wrapped up the week before Christmas. There and gone in about three months. Then, there were two weeks of playoffs, a week off, and the Super Bowl. By mid-January, it was over for another year. About four months. That was it. And, of course, the teams played only once a week, almost always on a Sunday.

Baseball, however, was another matter. The season began in early April and ran into early October. Then came the playoffs and World Series. Baseball was around for seven months of the year, and it wasn’t just a Sunday thing. It was an everyday thing.

Now, we’ve talked before in this space about how limited television coverage of sports was back in those days. Baseball had a Game of the Week on Saturdays (a game Dad and I watched religiously), and the Pirates televised thirty or so road games a year. That was it. But, in addition to the TV, we had radio.

Books have been written about baseball and radio and how the medium elevated the sport, and the sport elevated the medium, so I won’t get into that here, but baseball on the radio was pervasive around here during the season and especially in the summers. If Dad was home on a given evening, he’d have the Pirates on the radio. If we went to visit, say, Dad’s mother, my paternal grandfather would have the game on the radio. If we went to visit Dad’s aunt, she’d have the game on the radio. All around the neighborhood, folks would be sitting out on their porches in the evenings while we played. And on most of those porches? The game would be on the radio.

And all of this, again, not just on Sundays, but every day, all summer long. So, while football remained my favorite sport and I always greatly anticipated the new season, baseball and the Pirates were my everyday companions. Add in the fact that the Bucs had some very good teams and some very good players in those days, and, yes, the majority of my sports heroes wore the black and gold.

There was the Great Roberto, of course. I idolized the Great Roberto, as so many local kids did. I got to see him play many times, a few in person, most on television, and every one of those games was a treat. The man was regal on the baseball field. The way he ran the bases, the way he played the field, gliding, it seemed, under fly balls, the way he hit, bad balls, balls you should never swing at but he could, because he could get them and he could hit them. (His 3000^th hit, which Dad and I saw live at Three Rivers, came on just such a bad ball…which he drove to the wall for a double.)

Of course, I imitated the Great Roberto when I played whiffle ball, and it drove Dad nuts. I swung at bad pitches and used the basket catch. And Dad would patiently explain that I needed to do things the right way, not the way the Great Roberto did…because Roberto was one of a kind, so good that he could do those things and (and Dad never used the term, but he clearly meant exactly that) we mere mortals could not. Eventually, Dad got it through my thick skull, but it took a while.

The Great Roberto. One thing I never tried to imitate was his throwing. Because that was otherworldly. I’ve never seen an arm like his before or since.  Clemente’s arm was so strong that the Pirates actually used a specific play to take advantage of it…and a newly acquired Nelson Briles got very upset about it. Briles was pitching in the top of the ninth with the Bucs up a run and a runner at second. He got ready to throw a pitch, checked the runner and found Bill Mazeroski, the second baseman, standing directly behind second base, giving the batter the whole right side of the infield to hit into. Briles motioned Maz back to his normal position. Maz moved back. Briles got set, checked again, and found Maz behind second. Again, he waved him back to his normal spot. Briles pitched. The ball was hit right to where Maz should have been, but he wasn’t there. He’d moved back behind second base and the ball went into the outfield for a base hit.

An angry Briles put his head down and charged to home plate to back up the play. He never saw what happened next, just heard the roar of the crowd. The runner at second, having gone on contact with two out, had been thrown out at the plate…by the Great Roberto.

Later, in the locker room, Maz and Clemente approached Briles, who expressed his frustration. “He hit it right where you were supposed to be…” Maz cut him off and explained that it was “The Roberto Play”. Roberto picked it up from there. “Can Maz make the play on a grounder up the middle?” Briles: “As good as anybody.” Roberto: “Can the Great Roberto make the throw to the plate?” Briles: “Better than anybody.” Maz then explained that he played behind second because a grounder there would have gone into centerfield. The centerfielder had an average arm and would not have been able to throw the runner out at the plate. But the Great Roberto could. His arm was so strong that the Bucs were inviting a single through the right side of the infield. Maz: “How’d it work out?” Briles: “You SOBs can play anywhere you want to.”

Then, there was Willie. If Roberto was about grace, Willie was about power, and did he ever have it. Nobody ever hit the ball harder than Willie Stargell. You didn’t need to see a Stargell home run, you could hear it. I was fortunate enough to watch Willie play in person several times, and when he hit a home run, the sound it made, the crack of the bat…the question wasn’t if the ball was going to leave the park, it was how far it was going to go. He reached the upper deck at Three Rivers several times…and, having stood in front of those seats and looked down at home plate, I still can’t believe it was possible. In the over five decades I’ve watched baseball, I’ve never seen a player hit a greater percentage of “no doubt” home runs than Willie, even the juiced-up cheaters of the Steroids Era. And, yes, we imitated Willie, too. We. Plural. Because about half of the old gang went into the bat windmill in our whiffle ball games.

I didn’t cry when the Great Roberto died, even though I was only nine years old at the time. I didn’t really get it, especially as initial reports that horrible New Year’s Day indicated that he was “missing”. When it eventually became clear, I was sad, of course, but that was all it was. I cried like a baby when Willie passed. I was driving to work when I heard it on the radio, and I could barely see through the windshield. I got it then; how hard it was to lose your heroes. And, it hasn’t gotten any easier. But I digress.

The Pirates weren’t just the Great Roberto and Willie. There were other guys who became heroes, too. Al Oliver was my favorite, a pure hitter who was just magic at the plate. Manny Sanguillen, Dave Cash, Richie Hebner, power hitting first baseman Bob Robertson. That team had some guys who could play.

But, if the lineup was special, the pitchers were…not. The two guys who were, arguably, the most talented members of the staff had, shall we say, issues. There was lefty Luke Walker, who had terrific stuff, but never learned how to use it. Walker would get a start, pitch lights out, then get two or three more and be absolutely awful. The team would send him down to the bullpen, where he’d stay until they needed another start. And, the pattern would start again, a good start, two or three terrible ones. It became so common that a sage Pittsburgh baseball writer began calling a good Walker start a “three loss win”, because he knew the three awful starts were coming.

Then, there was Dock Ellis, who had, shall we say, issues with controlled substances…and other things. Dock, who was a very good pitcher, is, today, best known for giving up a mammoth home run to Reggie Jackson in the All-Star Game (for which my aforementioned great aunt never forgave him, fairly spitting every time his name was mentioned that the “dumb SOB lost the All-Star Game!”) and pitching a no-hitter while satellite high on acid. (Yeah, that one still resonates and even inspired a lyric in the song “Too Late to Fixate” by the excellent Conor Oberst.)

Neither Ellis nor Walker managed to get to “hero” status, though I always had a soft spot for “The Doctor”, as he called himself. No, it was a more modestly talented hurler who joined that pantheon, Steve Blass.

Blass, who didn’t have overpowering stuff, had been solid his entire career, until “breaking out” as they say these days, in 1971, the year the Pirates won their first World Series of my lifetime. Blass and his slider became the team’s best and most reliable pitcher that year, and, after getting absolutely blitzed by the San Francisco Giants in the NLCS, rallied back to win a pair of World Series games including the clinching seventh, 2-1. (The Pirates who scored the two runs? The Great Roberto on a solo home run and Willie who scored on a Jose Pagan double.)

Blass was even better in 1972, by far the best pitcher on a team that ended up with the best record in baseball. He was excellent in the NLCS, but the Pirates lost it 3-2 to the Cincinnati Reds, blowing a late lead. And, then it all fell apart.

The Great Roberto was lost in the plane crash (and it wasn’t until decades later that I found out the plane was a death trap and its owner a shady character who should never have been allowed to fly anything let alone a heavily laden aircraft carrying relief supplies). And Steve Blass was just…lost.

It’s now called “Steve Blass Disease”, a sudden and inexplicable ability of a pitcher to throw strikes. In 1973, the disease struck Blass. He went from the Pirates’ best and most consistent pitcher to a guy who often couldn’t last a couple of innings. He couldn’t get the ball over the plate. He walked batters. He hit batters. He threw wild pitches. He allowed tons of hits while he was trying, not to get outs, but just to throw strikes. It was a disaster. He was sent to the bullpen. He eventually was sent to the minors. Everything was tried. Nothing worked.

Blass struggled through 1973 and 1974. I saw him start a game in the latter season, at Three Rivers with Dad. The crowd cheered every strike he threw. He didn’t throw many of them. He was wild and he was quickly knocked out of the game. The next year, he was gone. He retired in March 1975, and that was it. To this day, no one knows what caused it. Many theories have been posited, including the death of the Great Roberto. Blass himself dismisses that one.

The most remarkable thing about Blass’ struggles is how quickly he made peace with all of it. Publicly, he never grumbled or sulked, never screamed or cursed the fates (though his wife, Karen, said he did so a few times in private with her). Instead, he simply moved on, stating again and again that he was happy with what he did in the Majors. He became a broadcaster and was wonderful providing color for the local teams. I enjoyed listening to him even more than I enjoyed watching him. Yeah. I love the guy.

In an interview with the great Roger Angell (who lived to be 101 and was still taken from us much too soon), Blass talked about playing solo games of baseball as a kid by throwing a ball on the oddly shaped roof of his childhood home and fielding the ball as it came off said roof. It was always a game, one of the teams being his beloved Indians. He kept score. And, while doing that, he dreamed of pitching in the seventh game of the World Series and winning it, which, of course, he eventually did.

I was an adult and Blass a color man for the Pirates when I read that Angell interview for the first time…and got a chill down the spine. Because I played solo games of baseball the exact same way as a kid, throwing a ball onto our roof again and again and fielding the resulting caroms. Only, one of the teams was always the Pirates and the pitcher was often Steve Blass. Steve is 82 now and hasn’t pitched in the Majors in five decades. And he’s still my hero.