The Pecan Park Eagle

In that article I wrote last week on the print artifacts from 1965 that my friend Paul Sofka recently gave me, one item was a column written by Houston Post reporter Doug Freelander in early April 1965 on the problem that outfielders, especially, were having seeing fly balls in time to catch them in the menacing glare of day games. Freelander attempts in print what he hopes is a funny route, taking off on a fictional discussion between two scientists near an Astrodome concession stand at game time on best solutions to the new problem of glare upon fly balls in the daytime at the domed stadium.

In a column entitled “The Eyeful Tower: More Light on the Elusive Flyballs”, Freelander covers  these bantered solutions in his dialogue between his two alter ego scientific characters, as they casually watch a game at the brand new Eighth Wonder of the World:

(1) Use orange baseballs.

(2) Install a fogging device in the Astrodome roof that would silhouette fly balls and make them more catchable.

(3) Use the advertising plane from old Colt Stadium to simply fly above the dome during games with a device that would create a dense external fog that blocked the glare of the sun.

(4) Build a giant panoply about a half mile above the dome to block the sun. In other words, build the world’s largest beach umbrella for the Astrodome.

(5) Change the Rules for the Astrodome I: No batter is allowed to run to first until a fly ball hits the ground.

(6) Change the Rules for the Astrodome II: Do away with gloves. Allow fielders to use large nets.

(7) Change the Rules for the Astrodome III: Either double the size for each team, or else, allow each team in the field to use six extra fielders to catch fly balls.

(8) Change the Rules for the Astrodome IV: Double the size of the baseball. (Isn’t that called softball?)

(9) Change the Rules for the Astrodome V: Use balls that flash blinking lights when they are hit in the air.

(10) Change the Rules for the Astrodome VI: Use balls that whistle as they begin to fall. (Wasn’t that the same principle the Germans used in World War II with their buzz-bombs? And buzz-bombs already had taught people to duck.)

(11) Change the Rules for the Astrodome VII: Reenforce the baseballs with steel and allow the fielders to wear magnetic gloves.

(12) Alter the Dome Structure: “Coat the dome with black paint so no light can get in and then, with the lights on, every game will be a night game.” (Freelander)

Freelander probably didn’t know it at the time, but his frolic through the ridiculous finally brought him top-side again with the solution that would cure the visual problem, even if it did kill the grass and open the barn door for the new artificial grass athletic turf industry. And, who knows? Maybe the Astros even got their idea for painting over the Dome’s clear roof from reading this silly little piece by a Houston Post special topic writer?

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Production Note: My seven-year old Epson printer has abruptly informed me this morning that certain of its parts have now outlived their predicted date of effectiveness and that it will no longer service my further requests for access to my photos library until its own needs for restoration are handled.

Epson, you selfish, impersonal machine, you! Just for doing that to me, you are headed for the recycling bin. My guess is, that by the time a printer reaches age seven years, it probably will be cheaper to buy a new one than fix the old one. – Man! Are you old enough to remember when we actually fixed things that broke down?

Where are the landfills of tomorrow? Are we going to use this incredibly never-ending supply of digital age products to build barrier reef islands in the Gulf of Mexico to protective us from storms as we work hard at home to work our way through new items for the next level of barrier reenforcement? And isn’t there a lot of toxic stuff inside something like a printer or a flat screen TV that probably wouldn’t be too good for the ecology of Gulf life forms?

I should have a new or fixed printer soon. Til then, my stories alone are going to have to produce whatever pictures you need to see. (Update: The printer suddenly allowed me to add a photo that appeared with the original Freelander article. Maybe, it read my words about sending it off to the printer graveyard.) 🙂

Have a nice weekend.