How does a kid get cancer?

We've surely had our share of scares with childhood illness here. But nothing like the tale of Christina from Buffalo Grove. No, I don't know these folks personally. I was asked to cover some bowling for that talented team. And then heard this girl's story.

Both father and daughter were very forthcoming in this miserable but inspiring tale. Christina hinted that a drug might have caused a football-sized tumor in her chest. What the hell kind of a side effect is that?

Eileen and I used to ride bikes to raise money for kids with childhood cancer. But we really didn't know anyone with such a disease. Put it this way, I had not interviewed a person hit with cancer. It makes you think.

http://buffalogrove.patch.com/articles/from-wheelchair-to-state-bowling-finals

Something cold on a very cold day

Tvan,now resting comfortably in the Arizona heat, sent me this photo of my favorite dessert spot. It's now part of history. My ex-sister in-law Patty, took me to Leon's for the first time after a trip to the Milwaukee zoo in the early 90s.
I even wrote about this custard place in a column. President Clinton visited once. It's a great place.
It's now part of tradition. Pack the car with fine brews. Head for Milwaukee, usually on a Wednesday night. We drink in the lot. And then the ball game. And then off to Leon's. It's a must.

So here's a quick list from over the years in no particular order.
1. Johnny, a sportswriter, orders and then goes around the corner to consume his ice cream. He once asked me if we just wanted to drive to Leon's and forget baseball.
2. Marty M, a sportswriter, breaks with tradition, and orders a 3-dip cone. I took that as a challenge and did that, too. I'm guessing that's just an extra 400 calories.
3. Poor TJ. He got caught up in nasty and hot wind. It melted the chocolate in a blink of an eye. It was quite a sight as much of his custard was on the ground.
4. Dave was disappointed not to see any restrooms at Leon's. So, he excused himself and found a spot in the back of the establishment. He says that's not a crime in Milwaukee.
5. Duffy punishes me for vomiting at the park and does not allow me to eat Leon's. Granted it was my fault. It was back in my no beer drinking days. I guess I had too many margaritas. He was right of course, that would be too much sugar.
6. Butter peken anyone? They speak funny up there. But the chocolate is wonderful. Even the vanilla screams with flavor. I don't care for nuts in my ice cream so I don't order the butter pecan.
7. It's cheap. Granted it's gone up the last few years. But we are still talking less than a buck for a scoop of perfect cream and eggs.
8. How many times have we headed back to car because it's too cold to eat outside. It is Wisconsin.
Let's do a few Brewers outings this summer. I will blog all the great stories from those trips. Like Captain Bob's great stories and the story of how Dave and I tricked a cop. And that crazy car wreck with the racing dog.

Instead of a warm bed, I chose to die

All this snow reminds me of the time I made a poor choice. It was back in the Orioles days. We had taken a trip to Pennsylvania for an Orioles caravan. I was just there as a sales rep but it might have been the time the late Cal Ripken Sr. drove us around. It was winter and it began to snow. Once we got back to the Maryland suburbs, the weather had turned for the worse.
So fellow sales rep, Mike, volunteered to have to me stay at his house rather than drive that night back to DC. Personally, I didn't like the guy. So, I politely turned down his kind offer. I reached the Baltimore city limit and then the lightning began. I was in a major storm. Next up was a complete white-out. I could not see a thing. Think of a blind man driving. I slowed down to 5 miles per hour on a major highway and creeped forward thinking I could hit or be hit at any moment. After a minute or so I could see again.
By all rights, I should have died that night. All because I didn't want to sleep over someone's house who I didn't respect. Well, at least I held on to my principles.

Look at his leg; Look at his leg

No. 3 is snakes. Creepy, creepy snakes. No. 2 is death. Oh, death isn't so scary. It's kind of peaceful. And the No. 1 thing that scares people the most is speaking in front of a crowd.
Not to my Riley. He doesn't blink an eye when it's time to speak in front of folks. Yesterday, he took on all the 4th and 5th graders and had no problem with it. He even got a standing ovation at the Jump Rope for Heart assembly.
But all this does is bring back bad memories. It was time for my seventh-grade speech in front of the class. STAGE FRIGHT!
My voice was a little shaky but not too bad. And then my leg started to move. And it picked up speed.
A kid listening (well, sort of), exclaimed out loud, "Look at his leg, look at his leg!"
By this time my leg was dancing. I reached down to try and tie it down but by this time, the class was not listening at all but watching the freak show.
My friend Mark told me the tale that he witnessed another kid's speech. This person's hands were shaking so badly that the speech got loose and flew under a piano. Mark recalled what a sad situation it was to see this person flat on her stomach reaching under the piano for the fallen speech.
Hell, it's not that easy. But for Riley it is.

Just for a cup of coffee?

At Pioneer Press, I covered the College of Lake County baseball team especially in the golden years of that newspaper. Those Lancers had some good clubs. One season, my neighbor Mark Ledinsky and teammates Brad Dodge and Tim Unroe starting clobbering home runs on a regular basis. Flash forward to the year 1995 and there is Unroe now wearing the jersey of the Milwaukee Brewers baseball team. How fun. So I took the trip up there and got my press pass. I had never interviewed Unroe but he knew I was a local reporter who knew about his past success. The talk went well but I knew full well that my boss wanted another source for the Unroe story.
So I wondered across the locker room and spied infielder Mark Loretta. He would go on to play more than 1,700 games in the Major Leagues. After eight seasons in Milwaukee he hit the road to Houston, San Diego, Boston and Los Angeles. He looked like a nice guy so I slipped over to his locker and told him I was from Pioneer Press and was doing a story on Unroe.
"Why don't you do a story on me,'' Loretta barked. "I went to Northwestern."
Ooops. Sure the Evanston Review was a big paper but I didn't work for that edition.
I told him that fact and he reluctantly gave me some quotes on Unroe.
Believe or not after I forget about Unroe, he went on to hit 3 Major League homers. His so-called cup of coffee saw him get 195 Major League at-bats. Take that Mark Loretta.

It hit the stupid wire up there

OK, I did write about this on that work blog before those yahoos shut me down. I was always about baseball, football and basketball. I don't think I even tried any other sports. But here I was living in Laurel, Maryland and bored out of my mind. I met a friend in the neighborhood, Roger White, and we began to experiment with golf. I think I must have gone to Zayre and purchased a five-iron. We also had some plastic balls. So we went around the neighborhood hitting shots through trees and bushes. Believe it or not, we got pretty good at it.
So what was next? Yes, a real golf course. It wasn't expensive but we had to rent clubs. I took my first tee shot of my life and the ball soared high and deep. And then it hit a wire and came straight down. What a disappointment. It began a very difficult day. Our scores vaulted over 100. Naturally, we ran out of golf balls quickly. But in better news there were plenty of balls on the driving range.
Our round finally concluded and so with it any dreams of a career in golf. And then the pro in the office asked his wife to come close to us. "Take a good look at these boys,'' he said. "They are never allowed to play here again. They have been taking balls off of our driving range."
Now that was adding further insult to our sad day. So, I said, "Come on Roger, we don't want to play here anyway. They don't have any greens. They only have browns."
I did rediscover golf later in life, hence the picture of some of my tournament players, and enjoy the game very much.

Terror at Mountain Lake Camp

Marie http://fromsuburbia.blogspot.com/ got me thinking back. She's sending her only children to far away Minnesota for French camp. She noted on her blog that she never went to camp.
Yeah, well that didn't happen with me. I went a few times. Now in my day, I was a very good fielder and a weak hitter in baseball. But at Mountain Lake Camp in West Virginia, I was a baseball star. The kids there were awful players and me the non-pitcher just blew them away.
That was the good news. Some of the guys in the camp decided to broadcast a fake game and we kept on taking turns. I took the fake microphone out a kid's hand and the sadistic camp counselor caught me. He said this kid and I would have a fist fight later in the day in front of the camp. That would be followed by the counselor fighting me.
Does that sound fair? Of course I was petrified. Later in the day, I found the kid I was supposed to fight. He wasn't mad at me. So we agreed not to hit each other when the fight came up. And then the creepy counselor said the camp wouldn't allow it.
Finally it was time for the camp picture. I posed like everyone. And then all hell broke loose. The woman who ran the camp screamed a curse word and came charging at me. Oh, my God. She grabbed the kid next to me and pulled him out of line. She then kicked him in the ass as hard as she could. I wondered if I was in some sort of a mental institution. I saw the photo later and the kid had made a crazy face.
Remember these stories Marie when its time to drop your kids at camp far, far away from home.