On Memorial Day, Heros, and Larry Maxam

"Corporal Maxam was one of us. He had been a corporal, a fire team leader, a veteran of December 6, 1967. Until the day before, he too had been at the Washout, digging pissers, burning shitters, filling sand bags, and going on endless perimeter patrols. He was now the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, as surely as if he'd been Audie Murphy himself."

Loon: A Marine Story 

Larry Maxam was born on January 9, 1948 in Glendale, California. He attended Emerson Primary School, and Burbank Junior and Senior High Schools. He left school on March 8, 1965 at the age of 17 to enlist in the United States Marine Corps. He arrived in Vietnam in July, 1967 as a lance corporal rifleman with Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, 3rd Marine Division.

On February 1,1968, amid rumors of a pending assault, his squad and several others were sent down from Con Thien, where we were all standing lines, to defend the village of Cam Lo, several miles to the south. As was our nightly routine, they strung concertina wire, set claymore nines and trip flares, and established lines of fire around a tight perimeter.


One day later, they faced the full force of what became known as the Tet Offensive - thousands of North Vietnamese troops pouring off of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in neighboring Laos into the major cities of South Vietnam.


Larry was killed on the evening of February 2, 1968, less than one month after his 20th birthday. His remains are interred in section J grave 388 at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Oahu, Hawaii. His name is inscribed in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC on panel 36E, row 78.


The morning after the attack, my sergeant and I visited Cam Lo. We rode down on a "mule" or what would now be called an ATV. We had no idea of what had occurred the night before.

"Coming into the tiny village, we spotted six U.S. Army trucks on the side of the road, still smoking from the rockets that had leveled them the previous afternoon.  Their frames were twisted.  Several were on their sides.  Blackened bodies lay in the cabs, burnt into the seats, all but irremovable.  

We paused for a brief moment, and then moved on.  There was nothing there for us to see and nothing there for us to do. As we drove around the corner, another horrific sight came into view. There before us was a pile of dozens upon dozens of dead bodies stacked as high as they could be thrown.  

Gooks?  

Yes, thank God.   

The Marines from the two squads of Delta Company that had come down from the Washout the day before to provide security were now methodically grabbing body after body off the barbed wire that encircled the small perimeter that they had established. The only sound was that of our idling motor.  The only smell was the omnipresent stench of cordite – the detritus of modern battle. The bodies had only been dead for short hours.  It was a remarkably surreal scene - indescribable and instantly etched into my permanent memory.  

Years later I was sure that it had only been a dream.  The previous evening, those two squads from Delta Company had held off a vastly superior force of NVA that had targeted the previously defenseless Cam Lo village as part of the Tet Offensive.  In one night, these thirty-five boys confirmed 160 N.V.A. dead (with dozens of others certainly carried away.)  Enemy body counts in Vietnam were routinely inflated by the higher ups.  In this case, however, you could walk over and count them one by one.  Thirty five other NVA were captured along with several enemy trucks and a flag signed by all of the troops that was to have been raised over the village after their anticipated victory.  Delta Company lost one Marine killed. Nearby, the Army lost several more in the passing convoy that had been ambushed to begin the attack.  

The entire scene was so far beyond anything that my sane mind could comprehend that, after a time, I forgot the incident but for recurring nightmares that continued for decades. Like many grunts, I had dozens of such memories that hung between the real and the surreal. They became part of our DNA.  Therapy could bring some out over time. Most however were destined to remain right there, deep inside, as surely as if they inhabited a bone. They would not depart my body before I did." 

Loon: A Marine Story

Last Thursday, I traveled to Quantico, VA at the invitation of the Marine Corps, to be present for the dedication of Maxam Hall. It was one of the great honors of my life.


Following is the transcript, in its entirely, of Larry's Medal of Honor citation.

“For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a fire team leader with Company D, First Battalion, Fourth Marines, Third Marine Division in the Republic of Vietnam. 

On 2 February 1968, the Cam Lo District Headquarters came under extremely heavy rocket, artillery, mortar, and recoilless rifle fire from a numerically superior enemy force, destroying a portion of the defensive perimeter.  Corporal Maxam, observing the enemy massing for an assault into the compound across the remaining defensive wire, instructed his Assistant Fire Team Leader to take charge of the fire team, and unhesitatingly proceeded to the weakened section of the perimeter. Completely exposed to the concentrated enemy fire, he sustained multiple fragmentation wounds from exploding grenades as he ran to an abandoned machine gun position. 

Reaching the emplacements, he grasped the machine gun and commenced to deliver effective fire on the advancing enemy. As the enemy directed maximum fire power against the determined Marine, Corporal Maxam s position received a direct hit from a rocket propelled grenade, knocking him backwards and inflicting severe fragmentation wounds to his face and right eye. 

Although momentarily stunned and in intense pain, Corporal Maxam courageously resumed his firing position and subsequently was struck again by small arms fire. With resolute determination, he gallantly continued to deliver intense machine gun fire, causing the enemy to retreat through the defensive wire to positions of cover. 

In a desperate attempt to silence his weapon, the North Vietnamese threw hand grenades and directed recoilless rifle fire against him, inflicting two additional wounds. Too weak to reload his machine gun, Corporal Maxam fell to a prone position and valiantly continued to deliver effective fire with his rifle. After one and a half hours, during which he was hit repeatedly by fragments from exploding grenades, and concentrated small arms fire, he succumbed to his wounds, having successfully defended nearly one-half of the perimeter single-handedly. 

Corporal Maxam's aggressive fighting spirit, inspiring valor and selfless devotion to duty reflected great credit upon himself and the Marine Corps and upheld the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.” 

With thanks to LtCol Michael Samarov, Commanding Officer Instructor Battalion, The Basic School and my host for the day.

Semper Fidelis.

On Madam Nhu

News item: Madame Nhu, who as the glamorous official hostess in South Vietnam’s presidential palace became a politically powerful and often harshly outspoken figure in the early years of the Vietnam War, died on Sunday in Rome, where she had been living. She was believed to be 87.  

New York Times, April 26, 2010

"The Dragon Lady".

History can be fickle. Despite what may be written, we tend to remember that which is convenient. 

In the case of the Vietnam War, most recall only that it was a bad idea for the U.S to become involved. Given the war's unpopularity and near universal denouncement since, we may tend to forget that our  leaders were sent down the slippery slope with well-intentioned reasons that seemed to make sense to most people at the time.

Iraq had its alleged WMDs. Vietnam had the alleged Tonkin Gulf attack on the USS Maddox. In each case, there was a President at the ready to pull the trigger. We all recall the details of what lead up to the former, but the details of what led up to the latter remains largely unknown or forgotten to most.

The Dragon Lady, although a largely forgotten part of our Vietnam buildup in the early 1960's, was a key player in a swirling Cold War world of nuclear brinksmanship and complex international relationships. Perhaps from her, we might have learned early on at what masters the Vietnamese were at playing the Americans.

Lest we forget, following is her obituary written for the New York Times by Joseph R. Gregory:

As the official hostess to the unmarried president of South Vietnam, her brother-in-law, she was formally known as Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu. But to the American journalists, diplomats and soldiers caught up in the intrigues of Saigon in the early 1960s, she was “the Dragon Lady,” a symbol of everything that was wrong with the American effort to save her country from Communism.

In those years, before the United States deepened its military involvement in the war, Madame Nhu thrived in the eye of her country’s gathering storm as the wife of Ngo Dinh Nhu, the younger brother and chief political adviser to Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of South Vietnam from 1955 until 1963.

While her husband controlled the secret police and special forces, Madame Nhu acted as a forceful counterweight to the diffident president, badgering Diem’s aides, allies and critics with unwelcome advice, public threats and subtle manipulations. Then, after both men were killed in a military coup mounted with the tacit support of the United States, she slipped into obscurity.

In her years in the spotlight, when she was in her 30s, she was beautiful, well coiffed and petite. She made the form-fitting ao dai her signature outfit, modifying the national dress with a deep neckline. Whether giving a speech, receiving diplomats or reviewing members of her paramilitary force of 25,000 women, she drew photographers like a magnet. But it was her impolitic penchant for saying exactly what she thought that drew world attention.

When, during Diem’s early days in power, she heard that the head of the army, Gen. Nguyen Van Hinh, was bragging that he would overthrow the president and make her his mistress, she confronted him at a Saigon party. “You are never going to overthrow this government because you don’t have the guts,” Time Magazine quoted her as telling the startled general. “And if you do overthrow it, you will never have me because I will claw your throat out first.”

Her “capacity for intrigue was boundless,” William Prochnau wrote in “Once Upon a Distant War: Young War Correspondents and the Early Vietnam Battles” (1995). So was her hatred of the American press. “Madame Nhu looked and acted like the diabolical femme fatale in the popular comic strip of the day, ‘Terry and the Pirates,’ ” Mr. Prochnau wrote. “Americans gave her the comic-strip character’s name: the Dragon Lady.”

In the pivotal year of 1963, as the war with the North worsened, discontent among the South’s Buddhist majority over official corruption and failed land reform efforts fueled protests that culminated in the public self-immolations of several Buddhist monks. Shocking images of the fiery suicides raised the pressure on Diem, as did Madame Nhu’s well-publicized reaction. She referred to the suicides as “barbecues” and told reporters, “Let them burn and we shall clap our hands.”

Tran Le Xuan was the younger daughter of Nam Tran Chuong, herself the daughter of an imperial Vietnamese princess, and Tran Van Chuong, a patrician lawyer who later became Diem’s ambassador to Washington. As a willful girl, she bullied her younger brother, Khiem Van Tran, and was more devoted to the piano and the ballet than to her studies.

She later resisted any arranged marriage, choosing in 1943 to wed one of her mother’s friends, Ngo Dinh Nhu. Fifteen years her senior, he was from a prominent Hue family of Roman Catholics who opposed both French colonial rule and the Communist rebels. Tran Le Xuan, raised a Buddhist, embraced her new family’s faith as well as its politics.

As World War II ended, Vietnam’s battle for independence intensified. In 1946, Communist troops overran Hue, taking Madame Nhu, her infant daughter and aging mother-in-law prisoner. They were held for four months in a remote village with little food and no comforts before being freed by the advancing French. After she was reunited with her husband, the family lived quietly for the next few years, an interlude that Madame Nhu would later refer to as her “happy time.” She and her husband would eventually have four children, two boys and two girls.

My parents dining with President Diem 

in Saigon in 1957. Madame Nhu does not 

appear to have been present.

In 1955, Diem became president of the newly independent South Vietnam, his authority menaced by private armies, gangsters and disloyal officers like General Hinh. Madame Nhu publicly urged Diem to act. This only embarrassed him, and he exiled her to a convent in Hong Kong. Then he reconsidered, took her advice, smashed his opponents and forced Hinh into exile.

Madame Nhu returned, complaining that life in the convent had been “just like the Middle Ages.” But then, so was the lot of most Vietnamese women. After winning a seat in the National Assembly in 1956, Madame Nhu pushed through measures that increased women’s rights. She also orchestrated government moves to ban contraceptives and abortion, outlaw adultery, forbid divorce and close opium dens and brothels. “Society,” she declared, “cannot sacrifice morality and legality for a few wild couples.”

Meanwhile, she kept a tight emotional hold on the president. According to a C.I.A. report, Diem came to think of his sister-in-law like a spouse. She “relieves his tension, argues with him, needles him, and, like a Vietnamese wife, is dominant in the household,” the report said. It also said that their relationship was definitely not sexual. When Diem, who was notoriously prudish, once questioned the modesty of Madame Nhu’s low-cut dress, she was said to have snapped back: “It’s not your neck that sticks out, it’s mine. So shut up.”

In fact, both their lives were on the line. In 1962, renegade Vietnamese Air Force pilots bombed and strafed the presidential palace. Diem was not hurt. Madame Nhu fell through a bomb hole in her bedroom to the basement two floors below, suffering cuts and bruises.

Vietnamese officers were judged by their loyalty to Diem and Nhu, who kept their best troops close to Saigon, to the exasperation of the Americans. 

As Communist strength grew, the South’s internal stresses mounted. Diem sought compromise with dissidents, but he was undercut by the Nhus. In August 1963, thousands of Buddhists were arrested and interned. In Washington, Madame Nhu’s father declared that Diem’s government had done more damage than even the Communists and resigned as ambassador; her mother, South Vietnam’s observer at the United Nations, also quit. 

That fall, Madame Nhu went on an American speaking tour, criticizing Diem’s critics as soft on communism. She was in Los Angeles on Nov. 1 when news flashed that Diem and her husband had been shot to death in a coup. “The deaths were murders,” she told reporters, “either with the official or unofficial blessing of the American government.”

Refused permission to return to Vietnam, she and her children moved to Rome to be near her brother-in-law, Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc. In July 1966, in a vehemently anti-American interview with a French journalist, she expressed sympathy for the Vietnamese Communists and declared that America preaches “the liberty of the jungle.”

In 1967, her eldest daughter, Le Thuy, was killed in an automobile accident in France. In 1986, her parents were found strangled in their Washington home. Her brother, Khiem, was charged in the killings, motivated, according to the authorities, by the fact that he had been disinherited. In 1993, after seven years in a mental hospital, he was declared incompetent but harmless, and released.

As time passed, Madame Nhu declined to be interviewed, but in November 1986 she agreed to answer questions in an exchange of letters with The New York Times. In these statements she continued to blame the United States for the fall of South Vietnam and for her brother’s arrest. Asked to describe her daily life, she wrote, “Outer life such as writing and reading has never seemed interesting enough to be talked about, while inner life, more than a secret, is a mystery that cannot be so easily disclosed.”

On Elizabeth Taylor, AIDS, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial

News item: Elizabeth Taylor, the glamorous queen of American movie stardom, whose achievements as an actress were often overshadowed by her rapturous looks and real-life dramas, has died. She was 79.

Los Angeles Times, March 23, 2011

Before TMZ, before People Magazine, before Princess Diana and, well, even before television there was Elizabeth Taylor, who not only dominated the gossip press, but - some may say - may have actually created the entire industry all by herself.

From the time of her explosive film debut at age 12 in National Velvet, until the day of her death last week, she was the news.  Her early career overshadowed headlines of the European and Pacific campaigns of World War II. News of her death grabbed top billing over three wars, an earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown, government shutdown, March Madness, and baseball's Opening Day. 

When Elizabeth Taylor was in the news, she sucked the oxygen out of every other story right to the end.  

I, however, will remember her most for the two courageous stands that she took later in her career in which she used the full power of her enormous celebrity to achieve extraordinary good.  

The first was her powerful and unconditional advocacy for AIDS research and compassion. The second was her early support for the creation of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. 

Taylor was perhaps our last true starlet. Her film roles were often critically acclaimed (Butterfield 8, Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf) and her ability to generate publicity by either holding up production at enormous cost (Cleopatra) or by deciding to remarry and/or divorce in the midst of production, caused fits to producers. 

She was drop-dead gorgeous, had a weakness for enormous diamonds, and played the public role of an overly-pampered Hollywood  prima donna to a tee.

In 1985, as the AIDS epidemic was spreading globally, she watched in helpless horror as her dear Hollywood friend Rock Hudson died a long agonizing death from the disease. 

The outbreak had been widely ignored publicly since the primary victims were homosexual males. Victims (including Hudson) were shunned and shamed and governments turned their backs. 

Into this vacuum stepped Elizabeth Taylor to become the first public figure to openly advocate for  research, compassionate care, and an end to discrimination against people with HIV and AIDS. Her stand was powerful, unconditional, and did much to raise public support and, thereby much needed resources, for the cause. Craig Thompson, executive director of AIDS Project Los Angeles later said of Taylor, "There have been a lot of incredible warriors in the fight, but she will stand for history on a podium above everyone else."

Her vital role in support of the initial funding for the then fledgling Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC is less well known. 

Late in 1979 Jan Scruggs, the driving force behind the building of the Memorial Wall in Washington, DC, was desperately seeking financial support to keep the project alive.

He had gained an early ally in freshman Virginia Senator John Warner, himself a combat Veteran and former Secretary of the Navy. Warner offered to hold a  fundraising breakfast at his home. The 25 attendees were largely defense contractors.

Although, as the napkins were folded, the breakfast had been a success in raising the minimum funds needed, there was still a long way to go. Then, as described later by Scruggs, "Out of nowhere, Elizabeth Taylor appeared, walked down the stairs, and the person next to me actually dropped his cup of coffee. She said, 'All right, you've already contributed what you were asked, but not one of you is going to leave this room until you double it.'

That happened." 

Momentum was regained and, two years later, the Wall as we know it today was dedicated.

So, thank you, Elizabeth, forever our Maggie the Cat. You are now among the countless AIDS victims and the 58,196 Vietnam War dead whose theretofore widely shunned and ignored existence you honored with selfless compassion.

May you rest in the very peace that you gave to each of them.

Semper Fideles.

On Harvard, ROTC, General George Marshall, and Emily Litella

News item: The Reserve Officers’ Training Corps will be formally recognized by Harvard Friday after an almost 40-year hiatus, the University announced Thursday. 
Harvard Crimson, March 3, 2011

I returned to Cambridge in the Spring of 1997 to attend my 25th college reunion. I'd known few classmates, having lived off-campus from the time that I entered  as a freshman in the Fall of 1968 -  weeks back from my Marine Corps service in Vietnam.


Although I'd had little contact with Harvard since graduation, I felt that this would be a good time to renew my ties. The institution had, after all, provided me with an excellent education after taking some risk in admitting me as their first Vietnam Veteran.

The opening class meeting was held in the venerable Sanders Theater which occupies about half of the equally venerable Memorial Hall - known to readers of Loon: A Marine Story, as the site of my freshman registration.


Harvard takes the 25th reunion seriously, so there was a large turnout of classmates. We were to recieve royal treatment over the subsequent several days.


The morning meeting was led by University President Neil Rudenstein and College Faculty Dean Jeremy Knowles. I have little doubt that they were well prepared for the session, particularly given that our class was the first to have spent the full four years immersed in the turmoil and uprisings fostered by America's involvement in the Vietnam War. As with our counterparts at other elite schools of that era, we were an active and politically engaged class. Also typical of the era, the engagement was almost entirely from the left.


During our undergraduate years, exams were cancelled (1970), the college administration building was taken over by students, the Massacre at Kent State occurred, President Nixon secretly attacked Cambodia, and - not surprisingly given the climate of the times - ROTC was thrown off campus.

Now, 25 years later, the campus was calm, the grass was green, the elms were tall, the student politics somewhat more conservative, but ROTC was still not permitted on campus.

I'd had no particular feeling about ROTC one way or the other. If Harvard felt that the sanctity of the university campus was not an appropriate place to teach the business of war, so be it.

I did, however, have strong feelings about hypocrisy and having my own service used to serve their political ends. It is here, consequently, that our story begins.

Coincident with our reunion, was the 50th anniversary of the announcement, at the Harvard Commencement exercises in 1947, by General of the Army George C. Marshall of the post WW II European Recovery Program (later called the Marshall Plan). Consequently, 1997 commencement/reunion week was all-Marshall-all-the-time. There were banners, newspaper and magazine articles, and all manner of university events tied to the fact that Harvard had been the site of this momentous event.

Harvard had draped itself in the life and glory Gen. George Marshall and, I should quickly add, few of this country's former military leaders were more worthy of the honor. He was an extraordinary citizen/soldier who represented the very best of what this country could produce. As Roosevelt's Chief of Staff from 1939-1945, he had charge of running two enormous trans-ocean wars while marshaling a home front that was ill equipped to enter either.

At WW II's conclusion, he was named Secretary of State by President Truman in which capacity he set out to rebuild a world that had been destroyed by these same wars. Into this context was birthed the Marshall Plan for which he would be recognized with a Nobel Peace Price several years later. It was certainly one of the great economic and diplomatic successes in American History as demonstrated by the rapid recovery by, and long term stability of, the European continent.

Not surprisingly, consequently, Harvard President Rubenstein opened his comments to our class that June morning by extolling the virtues of George Marshall. He also went on to praise ours as one of Harvard's great classes (we weren't, of course, we had nearly burned the place to the ground.) He did this by reading excerpts from the essays of three admissions applications to our class. 

The first had been an oboe player of some considerable note, the second had won the Westinghouse National Science Search, the third - well - as it turned out the third was mine. There in the hallowed halls of Sanders Theater, I heard the very words from my own college application being read back to me. They had been written in a fox hole in Con Thien, Vietnam in December 1967 shortly after my first horrific experience in combat.

I normally would have been proud to have been so recognized, but I felt myself immediately filled with anger - indeed rage. It was O.K to celebrate the service of a VMI graduate (Marshall) and a class member (me) who had already served prior to matriculation, but it was not O.K. to train, on campus, the prospective outstanding military officers that our country has always so desperately needed.

I found this to be hypocrisy at its highest so, when the microphones on the floor were open for questions, I found myself standing at one with absolutely no recollection of how I got there.

"President Rudenstein and Dean Knowles," I began, "The last application that you read was mine. I was the kid in the foxhole."

There were nervous chuckles throughout the room, perhaps at the coincidence that one of the applicants was actually in the room. Rudenstein balked slightly as he had no idea where this was going to go.

"Might you explain to me," I continued, "How it is that, in a week when Harvard is rightfully celebrating of this country's greatest military leaders and his association with Harvard, that the university still does not find it appropriate to become involved in creating the ROTC graduates that this country so desperately needs? Does it feel that this is the responsibility of only the military academies such as VMI and West Point? Harvard graduates now participate with distinction in every area of professional endeavor for which they are here well educated, but for the military which represents an enormous piece of the American economy."

Rudenstein stammered briefly, turned to Dean Knowles who wanted no part of the question, then answered by talking about a recent initiative at the John F. Kennedy School of Government to bring in mid-career military officers for some kind of training or another. The response was really feeble and he couldn't get to the next question - something more in his wheelhouse about weather Harvard was continuing to produce top research scientists - fast enough.


So now, after another 14 years, Harvard has announced that it is welcoming Naval ROTC back on campus for the first time since 1969.

In making the announcement in the presence of Joint Chief's Chairman Mike Mullen, current Harvard President Drew Faust said that ROTC, "Broadens the pathways for students to participate in an honorable and admirable calling and in so doing advances our commitment to both learning and service." 


The Crimson also reported that previously, University officials said that they would not recognize the program until “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”—the military policy which banned gays and lesbians from openly serving the military—was lifted. Congress repealed the ban in December.


So, as it turns out, the whole time is was about gays in the military, not the Vietnam War. 


Who knew??!!

In the words of the late Gilda Radner's iconic SNL news commentator Emily Litella, after completing a long diatribe about the issue of "Making Puerto Rico a Steak" (next thing you know they'll want a baked potato) and being informed by Jane Curtan that, in fact, the issue was "Making Puerto Rico a State..."

"Never Mind."

Opening Day!

I was earlier awakened from a brief nap  by two fighter jets accelerating skyward to the North in front of my window. As with all loud noises, the sound still takes me right back to Vietnam, not in a good way.

It's Opening Day of the baseball season and the jets had just completed the ceremonial pre-game fly-over of Yankee Stadium. 

Opening Day? 

It's still March, 35 degrees, sleeting, stiff wind out of the Northeast, and March Madness Basketball isn't even over.

Early in my career, I was the assistant ticket manager of the New York Mets. Opening Day was always special. Prior to my first in 1974, the office was abuzz with preparations. 

The Judge, a New York baseball old timer in the office, would announce that the ice was breaking up-Hudson and could now be seen flowing outside his window. Could Spring be far behind??!! That the Polo Grounds had been razed nearly twenty years before and we were in Shea Stadium in Queens seemed of little matter.  It was all part of the lore. 

During my frazzled moments of Opening Day preparation, The Judge would calmly assure me that they would, in fact, play ball whether the Mayor or owner's best friend had their tickets or not. I have many fond memories of my time with the Mets, particularly Opening Day. 

The Mets became progressively worse during my tenure, but, on Opening Day there was alway hope. After a win, the Judge would say, "You know, we may not ever lose this year" and who were we to disagree with the sage. Yogi Berra was the manager. There was rarely a dull moment. 

In 1975 they acquired the bigger-than-life 6'6" Dave (Kong) Kingman from the Giants.  Kingman hit absolutely ginoumous home runs that would set the place on fire with excitement. Before each of his at bats, I would slide out of my office and stand in the alley behind home plate to watch the spectacle. He would either hit a towering towering! fly ball, a 500 foot home run, or absolutely suck the air out of the place with a swing and a miss. I don't recall him ever just routinely grounding to third. 

Other than homers, he couldn't hit a lick and brought a new level of ineptitude to third base and the outfield - even by Met's standards. On Opening Day each year, however, the word was that he had really worked on his fielding during the off season and had a new stance that would result in more consistency at the plate. Such is the fan-glory of Opening Day.

As a kid growing up in the New York suburbs, I was a Yankee fan and had shoeboxes of baseball cards that I traded with friends and stick in the spokes of by bicycle with clothes pins. I also ate all of the bubble gum, an unfortunate circumstance that enriched dentists for generations to come. 

I'd like to say that, like many boys of my generation, my Mother threw out my card collection when I went to college, thus depriving me of the untold riches they may have garnered. In fact it was my Cub Scout Pack leader, Mrs. Thomas (Russ's Mom) who encouraged us all to make albums out of them for posterity. I, thereby, still have a priceless Mickey rookie card (among others) layered with yellowed Scotch tape, perforated with countless staples, and embedded in pounds of glue. 

During a recent move, I discovered the one card that had escaped my youth without a scratch - a 1953 Harry Perkowski gem that I note is currently available on EBay for $20 ($3 shipping not included).

Harry was pitching for the Cincinnati Reds at the time, having been with them (on and off) since the 1947 season. He was traded to the Cubs two years later with Jim Bolger and Ted Tappe in exchange for Johnny Kippstein and Jim Willis. He made 25 appearances prior to being returned to the minors where he played for Los Angeles, Tulsa, Memphis, Fort Worth, and Denver before retiring from the game in 1960. 

In his eight big league seasons, Perkowski went 33-40 with a 4.37 ERA in 184 appearances, including 76 starts, 24 complete games, 4 shutouts, 5 saves and 698⅔ innings of work. Google also notes that Harry was a "good-hitting pitcher, eventually was used in pinch hitting  duties. In 197 games, he posted a .180 average (43-for-239) with 13 RBI and 9 extra base hits, including one home run. A fine fielder as well, he committed only two errors in 169 chances for a .988 fielding percentage."

A native of Dante, VA, Harry currently lives in Beckley, WV and is 88 years old.

Happy Opening Day, Harry! 

I know you're watching!