Stan Musial and Bill McCurdy, St. Louis, 2003.
Ron Necciai, 1952.
Sometimes the serendipity that flows from an almost random contact with someone we’ve never previously met leads to a nice wave coming back to the home beach from which it began.
A couple of months ago, I got involved in some wonderful long distance communication with Ron Necciai, the fellow who struck out 27 men in one minor league no-hitter he pitched for Bristol (TN) back on May 5, 1952. We really hit it off as we talked, I felt, and I learned that he was set to being honored for his accomplishment up in the Monongahela Valley region of Stan Musial’s and Ken Griffey’s western Pennsylvania this coming June with his induction into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.
And that led me to contact with Ron Paglia, a writer for the Monongahela Valley Independent, who was already covering the event with all the proverbial adhesion of fly paper.
This morning I received the following link from Mr. Paglia on one of the stories he has written. This one was about the contact that happened between Ron Necciai and yours truly.
Thank you, Ron Paglia! And please give my regards to the celebrated guy of your same first name. He is both a deserving and very genuine human being – and deserving of all you Valley people can do for him.
Here’s the link to the article by Ron Paglia.
Have a nice day!
The Pecan Park Eagle 
May 22, 2014 at 3:55 pm |
Congratulations, Bill, on being referenced by Ron Paglia in an article about your boyhood heroes, Stan Musial, Larry Miggins, and Ron Necciai. You wrote about the synchronicity of events and suggested “the possibility that God was working overtime on May 13, 1952.” Interestingly, May 13 was the date of the appearance of the Our Lady of Fatima in 1917 and the failed assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in Rome in 1981. Just sayin’.
May 22, 2014 at 4:28 pm |
Excellent article, most enjoyable to read. One of those exceptional days pulled from the old trunk of an interesting life.