“You never know how strong you can be, until being strong is the only choice you have left.”
~ Tupac Shakur
The June 2015 meeting of the Larry Dierker SABR Chapter in Houston last night, 6/22/15, at the Spaghetti Western Restaurant on Shepherd was both cozy and cool. Tony Cavender delivered an excellent book reviews of Charles Leehrsen’s new work, “Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty”, as a serious attempt to extract the true great baseball star from some of the most prejudicial things that have been written previously about him, and Bob Dorrill and Mike McCroskey both spoke about the upcoming award of $3,500 in college scholarship assistance that has been made possible by the sale of our 2014 chapter publication, “Houston Baseball: The Early Years, 1861-1961.”
Mike McCroskey presented a clever July 4th themed trivia quiz, one that eventually was won by one of “the usual suspects” in baseball trivia wonder, Greg Lucas.
Mike McCroskey also related a tale (I think) of his 1992 trip to the induction of Roger Clemens into the Texas Baseball Hall of Fame., a year which also included the induction of Houston Buff 1951 slugger, Jerry Witte. (My apologies, Mike, if memory mis-serves here, but like many of the stories you tell, I walked away with the same old “second-guess” question: “Did Mike say he did that – or did he say someone else did that?” Please forgive me, Mike, and feel free to write a corrective comment., as you wish.
We also learned by photo distribution from meeting program chairman Jim Kruez that SABR member Tom White was once a “star pitcher” for Vanderbilt University back in the day. Like the fabled Clark Kent of comic book fame, mild-mannered Tom White looked quite a bit like “Superman” in those photos. He was quite fit in appearance and all dressed out in killer baseball duds from back in the day.
The highlight of the evening was our lead-off man speaker, former Houston 2005-06 Astros outfielder, Charlton Maxwell Jimerson.
The 35-year old Jimerson’s story is about the obstacles he had to overcome with the help of life’s healing forces (sometimes referenced by others as “The Grace of God”) working through other to achieve the success in life he has attained “against all odds.” Jimerson credits his older only sister Lanette as the real parent of his childhood, the one who helped him master the waters of living, first with two drug-involved parents on the streets of Oakland, California and then with a helter-skelter single mom who was still drugging and moving out of necessity from one crummy lace to the next. Sister Lanette was Charlton’s guiding light to the fire that lived within him for something better in life than his two older brothers were reaching from the chaotic “take it, if you can get your hands on it” lifestyle that awaited so many “parent-less” young black males on the inner city streets of America.
A talent for baseball was Jimerson’s vehicle to a destiny that goes far beyond the game itself. Had he not had this baseball this talent, he may have found a way to make it anyway, but that is an unanswerable question. It’s not what happened.
“Against All Odds”, the book, is about that struggle, challenge and victory in the life of Charlton Maxwell Jimerson, a still young man with great eloquence as someone who speaks deeply from his soul about the gifts that have become his road of life feast in ways that go far beyond the fact that he used his baseball talent to almost earn the college degree from Miami University that he now is completing at the University of Houston; that he wrote his name into the MLB record books when he homered in his first MLB time at bat as a pinch hitter for Roger Clemens; that he now faces a strong corporate future for his talent with numbers; that everything good for him is unfolding in Houston, the place that has grown into his home town since his days with the Astros; and that he will always have his memories of those two national collegiate baseball championships as a player for Miami, and the brief, however limited service time he spent as a one-inning defensive player for the 2005 only Astros pennant winner. And pile on the Clemens-pinch-homer in his first MLB time at bat the next season, and all of the great learning time he sent in the company of mentors like Jackie Moore, Phil Garner, and Tony Gwynn – just to name a few. – How much help does one guy need to get the key to the biggest city that life has to offer – the one that serves up self-respect in the truest meaning of that phrase?
http://www.baseball-almanac.com/box-scores/boxscore.php?boxid=200609040PHI
Former Astro outfielder Charlton Jimerson and former Astro President Tal Smith shared a happy reunion at the Spaghetti Western Restaurant June 22, 2015 meeting of SABR in Houston.
In our view, SABR member Chris Chestnut asked Charlton Jimerson the question of the evening that opened the most light on this likeable young man’s character and basis for succeeding “against all odds”.
Chris Chestnut asked: “Charlton, when you are talking to young people today, what do you tell them you think is important for them to know?”
“I just tell them to remember that every decision they make and act upon is going to have consequences in their lives,” Jimerson answered, as he went on weaving his own mental trail of explaining what he meant.
We’ll have to put it in our own words: “Nothing we decide to do, or not do, comes free. In time, short time or long, everything we act upon. or fail to act upon, results in either a “ticket” to more choices – or a “ticket” to some place in which our choices are reduced to few, if any – to none. In the end game, we get as much freedom in life as we are willing to take responsibility for having because, like the two sides of the same coin, freedom and responsibility are the inseparable partners of the same entity. “
At the still tender age of 35, we get the impression from his own words that Charlton Maxwell Jimerson understands everything we just expressed in our italicized expression of this ancient wisdom .
That impression is sustained by Jimerson’s decision to again quote Tupac Shakur at the conclusion of his last page book acknowledgements as a way of taking responsibility for the freedom he had given himself to write and name his memoir:
“This is the realest shit I ever wrote, against all odds.” – Tupac Shakur
God Bless Charlton! – God Bless Tupac! – And may God Bless us all!
Tags: Against All Odds, Author, Charlton Jimerson
The Pecan Park Eagle 
June 24, 2015 at 4:14 am |
Bill, I thank you for the invitation to clarify my comments from last night. I think I spent too much time looking for my Eddie Feigner autographed softball yesterday than preparing my talk. So I will recap here and include a couple of key points i forgot to stress.
My topic was unusual and/or unique fan experiences I have had. i related three. I began by talking about the first 2 major league games I attended. My Dad took me to Colt Stadium in 1962 and opening day 1963 to watch the .Houston Colt .45’s.
Both times the opponent was the Giants. They were full of stars. Willis Mays homered in each games, so did Orlando Cepeda. Felipe Alou hit 2 homes runs in the 2nd of the 2 games. Willie McCovey struck out his first 3 at bats in the second game then singled, then homered. His performance made an impression on me.
I spoke about Eddie Feigner of the King and His Court. He had by his count, 9,753 victories and 141,517 strikeouts, some pitching from second base. He struck out 8,698 batters while blindfolded. He pitched 238 perfect games. He knocked a cigar out of Johnny Carson mouth on the Tonight Show – blindfolded!
i went to see him pitch in Memorial Park in the 70’s. He threw a wild pitch that the catcher missed. It rolled through about an 8-10″ opening at the bottom of the backstop and under the stands where I was sitting. I picked it up and thus had captured a “wild pitch” by Eddie Feigner! Now odds are that as much as he pitched, I was not the only fan to ever garner an Eddie Feigner wild pitch; however, given his control was such that he struckout batters blind-folded from second base, I believe I would be a member of a very small club. I think getting the wild pitch qualifies as unique experience number one.
The second event was the 1992 Texas Hall of Fame dinner and celebration in Brenham. And yes, I was there. I passed around a picture with me in it of the group I played with in the golf tournament that was held that day, October 17, 1992. I , also, passed around a tee shirt I purchased commemorating the event. I spoke about our “celebrity” guest for our foursome, one Gene Main. Gene said his only claim to baseball fame was that he made it to spring training for your St Louis Browns in 1946, but never made the majors. He complained about having to wear a diaper because of recent Prostate surgery. Gene had lost his ride from the tournament and asked me for one. I took him back and let him clean up and change for the dinner at our hotel room. Then he, my wife and I went to the dinner which was held at the Budwieser Distributer’s warehouse, fancy digs. While there, rather than take off, he started introducing me to all the baseball people he knew there. I think he knew everyone. I got to meet Jo Jo Moore, the Gaust Ghost, who played left field in three World Series for the New York Giants. His opponent included the likes of Joe DiMaggio, Lou Gehrig, Goose Goslin, etc. He introduced me to Jerry Witte whose biography you co-authored. He introduced me to a score of people, all who autographed my picture I brought. I was happy to meet them, but I swear Gene seemed to be the most excited; just to speak with the ballplayers and introduce me to them.
I never saw Gene before or since. However, I was listening to an Astro broadcast a few years later when one of the announcers broke in with, “I’m sad to report that baseball has lost a great friend today, Gene Main has passed away.”
He seemed to know everybody, but I have no idea what he did. Maybe one of your readers can write a comment about Gene. The uniqueness of this event was this was the only one of its kind ever held in Brenham. They were rallying to move the Texas Hall of Fame to Blinn College permanently. It did not happen. Eddie Feigner pitched an exhibtion, but at 67 he was not the same I had seen 20 years earlier, but who could expect him to be. The real star of the day though was Gene Main, who with a random act of kindness towards me, on the only day of either of our lives we ever saw one another, he made enough of an impression that I would remember and want to share it with my friends over 20 years later. So, I suppose the moral is to never underestimate what effect a simple random act of kindness that one might perform can have on another person; just keep doing them.
Number 3, was attending the unveiling of the Willie McCovey statue at Bank One Ballpark in May of 2003 as a guest of my friend Frank Riccelli, who pitched briefly for the Giants at the end of the 1976 season. The story here was attending the cocktail party with all of the Giants invited from 1958 to 1998. I brought an autographed ball from the event to the meeting last night with signatures of 4 Hall of Famers on it. But as to the uniqueness of the event, what are the odds of a teenage boy going to his first major league games, and then 40 years later getting to shake hands, exchange stories, share cocktails, and mingle with members of that same team. Never crossed my mind that would happen as I watched those ball games in the sixties, that’s for sure.
I, also, got to relate the impression Willie McCovey made on me to Willie McCovey. He politely listened as I related the 3 stikeouts, the single and the final homerun. He said, “Is that right?” and that was it. Don’t think he cared. Still, I believe there’s a life metaphor in there about “if at first you don’t succeed” and/or putting your failures behind you. Or maybe I was just telling WIllie something he already knew.
It was a great feeling seeing my friend, Frank, down on the field later that day with all the other Giants and HOF”s, standing in the infield, 40,000+ fans cheering. A little sad seeing Willie with a metal leg brace on each leg, supporting himself on 2 metal crutches, somewhat akin to watching Eddie Feigner hobble around on 2 bad knees in Brenham in 1992. But I was there, I saw it, a unique event.
And that Mr. Bill was the sum of my topic last night. Again thanks for the invite, I think I may have written a column.
Mike
June 24, 2015 at 4:31 am |
Thanks for the clarification, Mike. Everything you said at SABR last night comes back to me now. And yes, at 1,133 words, you, indeed, have written at the column length spaxe level of production. – Editor Bill
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