Nothing to do (and all day to do it)

The 12:02 pulled out of the station just as my traveling companion and I stepped on to the platform. I wouldn’t have noticed the train heading toward a horizon where the sky seemed to be resting right on top of miles and miles of a treeless green valley until my partner – from the vantage point of my shoulders – pointed and shouted.

“Look! Tommy! Choo-choo!”

Every train to a two-year-old boy is named Tommy or Thomas, but unlike the diesel and electric fueled Amtrak that rockets from city to city, these Tommy trains sound a hard-to-ignore “choo-choo!” To anyone who has ever seen a modern, 21st Century train it is hard to think if they make any noise at all. The only noise is a whoosh of speed as it quickly turns to a blur.

But here in Strasburg, Pa., just 45 miles from Center City, anachronisms reign. Not only do the trains go “choo-choo!” but also they run on coal-powered steam engines along a countryside devoid of strip malls and tacky suburban sprawl. They don’t need a Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s here because it’s just as easy to go out in the backyard and dig up all of the organic produce desired.

Nevertheless, we would have to come up with Plan B because we missed that 12:02. Then again, Plan B was the easy part. On the way to the railroad station we had stopped at an Amish roadside stand where we bought a few apples, a bag of pretzels and a couple of drinks. Instead of the ride we parked it on a circular bench under a shady birch tree where we watched the train disappear beneath the inky plume of black smoke on a day so sunny and warm it was almost cartoonish. There, we shared the fruit and the pretzels while he sipped from a small plastic container of juice.

Plan B was perfect. We had nothing to do and all day to do it. There was no ballgame to rush off to watch and write about because the Phillies didn’t make the playoffs again. The Eagles had played the night before, but my companion was in bed long before kickoff. Besides, “Blues Clues” holds much more appeal to him than Andy Reid’s game plan. So instead of talking about sports or work we were going to sit there on that bench, eat those pretzels and feel the sun on a rare quiet day.

There would be time for games later. There always is. That’s the great thing about sports – a game is always there if you need one. Flip through the dial on the TV, or better yet, head out to the field nearby and there is sure to be a game going on. Sometimes the games that are played on those tiny fields in the middle of nowhere are the best ones. After all, it’s not the result that is remembered in the end – it’s the company you kept. No one says, “Remember the score of that game we went to five years ago?” Instead it’s, “Remember when we went to that game five years ago and how much fun we had.”

You know, just being there with your people. That’s what the games are about, right?

My companion pointed out the water tower blooming over a row of old dining cars and cabooses as he scraped the salt off his pretzel. He also pointed out the engineers in their overalls and funny, short-brimmed caps preparing for the next engine to barrel down those tracks. Mostly, though, we just enjoyed the quiet and the company.

It’s hard to imagine anything other than tranquility from our perch on that bench. Miles removed from the tourist traps where folks from New York and Philadelphia came to see the Amish (“are the Amish open on Sunday?”) and the farms while shopping for brand-name fashions in the outlet malls, the fields surrounding the train tracks barely quaked in the gentle breeze that seemed to spread the sunshine as if it were spores from a dandelion.

Yet even then there is quiet tenacity in that energy. To us it’s nothing more than a Rockwellian backdrop to a perfect scene.

Kind of like we are on that bench.

So it’s hard to imagine that just hours before chaos was in command. How could the roads that can barely handle the traffic at roadside stand or a country fair provide access for the fleet of ambulances and emergency vehicles? Forget about the teeming TV satellite trucks rushing to yet another tragedy like flies to manure or the helicopters circling overhead, how are these vehicles going to get where they desperately need to go?

It was a brisk, 20-minute jog from where we were sitting to where the ambulances, helicopters and satellite trucks had rushed. Three miles, tops, which, out here is like a couple of city blocks. Out here miles melt into the horizon like the clouds of smoke into the cloudless sky from that old train.

Sometimes it’s weird how lives intersect – a chance encounter here or there brought about by the ambiguity of geography. Weirder yet is how dreams and hopes haunt each of us. For some of us, all we want is a day in the sun, free from work and responsibility or a respite from the cares that can weigh us down. I’m lucky that I get to live a dream. All my hopes and desires are right here in the country alongside a railroad track. We have pretzels, some apples, a cool drink, great company and nothing else to do.

This could be the greatest day ever.

But for Charles Roberts – who lived just down the road from where we sat – dreams are nightmares. Worse, those little Amish girls who did nothing other than show up at the one-room schoolhouse on the wrong day, dreams go unrealized and unformed.

All we can say is that it isn’t fair.

It’s a shame that Charles Roberts could not find joy in playing soccer with his kids, or inviting his people over to watch a game on television. Why couldn’t he find joy simplicity and the nuance that makes the world spin a create smiles so big that they turn to tears of pure happiness?

Why couldn’t Charles Roberts take a trip up Route 896 to the Strasburg Railroad and sit with his boy at the side of the tracks?

Why?

Almost too fast, the food has been eaten and the drinks sipped dry. We’re starting to get restless from staring out into the miles and miles of fields that just won’t end until they reach the clear, blue sky. The platform is starting to fill up with tourists ready to board the 1 p.m. for a trip through the countryside to Paradise and back.

“Hey Michael,” I said. “Let’s get a couple of tickets and go for a ride.”

Primeau makes the smart decision

The hardest thing for an athlete to do is to be smart. No, that’s not an insult, nor is it any type of indictment of certain scholastic records. After all, it takes a top-flight engineer to be able to memorize and decipher all of the variables in an NFL playbook. Besides, those things are thicker than phone books and like Rain Man, guys like Peyton Manning and Donovan McNabb know the whole thing by heart.

What is meant by smart is that oftentimes for athletes the easiest and most logical decision is usually the hardest thing to come to terms with. Some athletes have no trouble going out and running 20 miles a day without fail, but when it comes time to take a day off to rest the mind and muscles most guys would prefer root canal surgery.

Take Flyers’ captain Keith Primeau, for example. After battling the effects of post-concussion syndrome for nearly a full calendar year with no foreseeable end to his rehabilitation, the erstwhile 34-year old was forced into retirement on Thursday morning. Certainly, after at least four or five concussions during his 14-season NHL career, Primeau made the “smart” decision. At home he has his wife, Lisa, and four children, whom will be around and will need their dad longer than the Flyers will need a captain and a center. In fact, in one of those “get-to-know-the-players” questionnaires that teams like to publish for the fans, Primeau lists becoming a father as his greatest accomplishment to date.

“This decision will allow me to live a normal life and hopefully, with time, few reminders of my injuries,” Primeau said on Thursday.

“My biggest fear is that I’d have regrets and at this point I don’t have regrets.”

But even something as big as being a dad rarely extinguishes what burns inside of a person. For someone like Primeau, a hockey player personified, that flame burns with a lot more intensity. Need an example? Try this out:

It was the second period of Game 2 of the 2000 Eastern Conference Finals where the New Jersey Devils are skating circles around the Flyers and are on the verge of taking a 2-0 lead in the series. Even though he missed parts of two games after he was carted off the ice on a stretcher and rushed to the hospital after taking a big hit from Pittsburgh’s Bob Boughner and suffering the first of a series of concussions, Primeau called out the Devils’ Randy McKay for a little tête-à-tête.

Now it wasn’t necessarily important whether or not Primeau beat McKay in the fight. The message was loud and clear.

“I thought our team needed a spark,” Primeau said at the time, noting that he envisioned Lisa sitting in the stands with her head in her hands as he brawled with McKay.

“I realize it may not have been the best thing to do,” Primeau said before telling me that he had three prior concussions that he knew of before the one in Pittsburgh, and noting that he probably had others as a kid growing up in Toronto, but nothing so serious that his dad didn’t pick him up, brush him off, and send him back out onto the ice. “I’m a father and a husband, but at the same time I’m a hockey player… ”

Sometimes hockey players don’t always make the smart decision. But in retiring, Primeau did make the smart decision because the term concussion softens what medical folks call the affliction – traumatic brain injuries.

If Primeau takes one more hard shot to the head while skating up the ice at break-neck speed, the result could be dire.

And we aren’t talking about something as easy as retirement, either.

Yet despite Thursday’s announcement and the lingering symptoms from all of those traumatic brain injuries, something tells us the fire still smolders inside of Primeau. Maybe that comes from watching Primeau run up and down the area steps after games at the Wachovia Center. Besides, doing what is smart is one thing, but the human brain is no match for the heart or guts. Worse, that little voice saying, “What if… ” will always nag even if the brain says, “This is correct.”

“He's always going to feel like he didn't get to finish on his own terms,” coach Ken Hitchcock said.

The operative word is that Primeau was “forced” into retirement because trainer Jim McCrossin tried every mind trick he could to get the captain’s head to drill some logic into his heart and guts. The trainer told Primeau he could skate with the minor leaguers on the Phantoms, or he could practice wearing a white jersey with a red cross so that other players would know not to touch him.

What self-respecting hockey player shies away from the contact?

When McCrossin finally told Primeau what he really felt – that he didn’t want to live with the consequences if the hockey player took another shot to the head – it was like getting run over by a truck.

“It was the first real time I'd been in touch with reality the last few months,” Primeau said Thursday. “I didn't want to become a distraction again.”

Primeau was thinking about the team. That’s just what a captain does. But in time, Primeau won’t be a captain anymore, and maybe he’ll start to feel better and get the itch to put those skates on again to see what he can do.

“If they let me go I’d keep pushing through. I’d keep going until they dragged me away,” Primeau said.

Hopefully, making the smart decision will be a lot easier if that itch needs to be scratched.

The greatest of all time?

I don't know if this is a trend or simple marketing of sports so that people will not only stay tuned to the game (or whatever), but also will think they are watching something historically significant, but often it appears as if I have tuned in to watch an "all-time greatest of the game."

It seems like such a debatable hyperbole, yet often there is no debate. It just so happens that I, luckily, have tuned in to something historic.

Mostly this occurs with individual sports like golf and tennis, but lately the G.O.A.T./history trend has morphed into mainstream team sports as well. Take Ryan Howard for instance -- last week in Washington I was sitting in the press box for a supposed historical occasion when the slugger tied and passed Mike Schmidt's franchise record for home runs in a season. It was something to see because the shots Howard hit were magnificent and I remember watching Schmidt hit a lot of those 48 homers during the 1980 season. So to be there when the record changed hands was pretty cool.

But it wasn't historical despite how it was being billed by certain media types. Not even close. If I had been outside of the Appomattox Court House on Palm Sunday of 1865 when Lee surrendered his army to Grant, now that would have been historic. Had I been alive to watch Neil Armstrong hop off the Apollo and onto the moon, that would have been historic. Waking up five years ago to desperate phone calls from my wife to, "TURN ON THE TV! NOW!" That was historic. This is just baseball. A nice milestone and definitely something very cool, but not anything I can brag about seeing. Not when half the people I know don't care.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I'm just being one of those uptight guys who likes to toss a wet blanket over everyone's fun. Well... yeah. Sometimes I enjoy being iconoclastic and "brutally honest." But mostly I just don't appreciate being misled. Even in the insular world of baseball, Howard passing Schmidt was barely a blip in its history. Maybe for the Phillies Howard's homers are significant since the franchise's history is pock-marked by losing season after losing season and overt racism during the game's "Golden Era" in which the team failed to integrate its roster long after nearly every other team.

Along those lines, Howard is already being referred to as potentially the greatest Phillie ever. Hell, he ought to just retire now. He almost has one full season in the books; he ought to hang 'em up. What else does he have to prove?

Certainly those who call Howard the G.Ph.O.A.T. acknowledge their silliness. Let the man have a career first. But that didn't stop anyone from waxing exaggeration in regard to Roger Federer during the finals of Sunday’s U.S. Open.

For anyone who saw it, Federer was often brilliant and mostly dominant in cruising to a four-set victory over Andy Roddick for his ninth Grand Slam victory. That's within the range of Tiger Woods, Federer's Nike brethren, who was sitting courtside with the Swooshes blazing for all of the close-up shots that stopped being about a celebrity watching a tennis match and more about selling over-priced athletic gear and shoes. Hey, if you're going to be a corporate shill, go all out... right Tiger?

So as Federer cruised, the debate started. Actually, it wasn't a debate, it was history.

It also got me thinking, which is probably not what CBS, the USTA, or Nike wanted anyone to do. But the idea was out there -- was Federer the greatest tennis player of all time?

Certainly the way he pushed around Roddick on Sunday made the debate easy for that day. Federer is easily the greatest tennis player out there now, but whom is he playing? Andy Roddick? Rafael Nadal? Lleyton Hewit?

Please.

But when I saw Federer blast balls from the baseline, daring anyone to approach the net against him, I thought, "this kid watched tapes of Borg play."

Who can forget Bjorn Borg? For as great as the "Super Swede" was -- and he is on the short list for G.O.A.T. -- he was even more of an enigma. But perhaps that's the way Borg had to be since he had John McEnroe always buzzing around and trying to knock him off. When it wasn't McEnroe, it was Jimmy Connors -- a guy who was No. 1 in the world for 160 straight weeks -- gunning for him.

Then came Ivan Lendl. Then Boris Becker. Then Pete Sampras, who re-wrote the record books.

Beneath the top layer guys like Andre Agassi, Jim Courier, Stefan Edberg, Mats Wilander, Pat Cash and Michael Stich always seemed to be hovering around the top ranks for decades.

These days Federer isn't the king of the hill; he's a man on an island.

That's not Federer's fault, of course. Since you can't pick your parents, you can't really pick when you are born, either. Blaming Federer for being dominant in a weak era is a lot like judging Wilt Chamberlain for being bigger than everyone else during the infancy of the NBA. Any competitor like Federer wants to measure himself against the very best.

Eventually, Wilt had Bill Russell as his nemesis, which often brought out historical performances from both men. It remains to be seen whether or not Federer will develop a big-time rivalry with Nadal or Roddick, just like it's still up in the air whether or not the slugging Phillie will ever fall to mere mortal status against a tough lefty pitcher.

Then again mere mortality never seemed to happen for the golf-swatting Nike billboard sitting courtside for the tennis clinic on Sunday.

Schmidt ready to step aside for Howard

WASHINGTON – If one were looking for someone to talk baseball with, it’s definitely hard to top Mike Schmidt. Introspective and opinionated, there isn’t too much regarding the game that Schmidt won’t wax philosophical about. He’ll offer his thoughts on the game during his era, these modern times, the new ballparks, and, of course, the never-ending steroid issue.

There’s a joke amongst the media types that if anyone really wants to know how good the Hall-of-Fame third baseman was all you have to do is ask him.

“I wrote a book about it,” Schmidt joked during a phone call on Tuesday afternoon.

But if one really wants to engage Schmidt and listen to him talk, just ask him about hitting. Schmidt wrote a book about that, too, but that came when baseball’s statistics had a totally different meaning, and when Ryan Howard was two-years old.

The “old statistics,” as Schmidt calls them, are the power numbers. Back when he was playing, Schmidt led the National League in home runs six different times without reaching the 40-homer plateau. In fact, Schmidt hit 40 or more homers in a season just three times during his 18-season career. Compare that to someone like Albert Pujols, who is working in his fourth consecutive 40-homer season in just his sixth season in the league and it’s plain to see what Schmidt means by the old numbers.

“I was seventh (on the all-time home run list) when I retired and now I’m 14th,” he said.

Despite the dwindling status in the record books, Schmidt will always be remembered as one of the classic all-time home run hitters. His distinctive batting stance along with the eight home-run crowns, 548 long balls, and, of course, the three MVP Awards, has more than solidified his legacy.

These days Schmidt is something of a baseball watchdog, chiming in on the big issues of the game. He was an advocate for Pete Rose's reinstatement into the game for a while until it became a little too politically incorrect to be so vociferous regarding the self-proclaimed “Hit King,” and has weighed in on everything from the Hall of Fame’s standards, to the modern game, which includes performance-enhancing drugs.

Now it appears as Schmidt’s 26-season reign atop the Phillies’ single-season home run list is about to become an old number, too. With 32 games remaining in the season, second-year slugging first baseman Ryan Howard needs to hit just one more homer to pass Schmidt’s record of 48 bashed in 1980. Even by throwing in the two homers that Schmidt hit during the World Series that season shouldn’t daunt Howard rewriting of the club’s record books.

Actually, at the rate Howard is going he should have 50 by the weekend and the once-magic number of 60 isn’t out of the realm of possibility either.

Regardless, becoming just another name in the record books doesn’t upset Schmidt despite his opinions in the publishing world and on several television programs, including Bob Costas’ HBO show where Schmidt said if he had played in an era where steroids or performance-enhancing drugs were more prevalent that he just may have dabbled a bit.

“I’m happy for Ryan and content with what I did,” Schmidt said.

“I'm happy for Ryan. I think everyone would agree with me that eventually that record of 48 would be surpassed. It should have been passed a few years ago by Jim Thome (who hit 47 homers in 2003). (Howard) may take it, eventually, so far that nobody will catch it.”

That’s not out of the realm of possibility, either. Currently, Howard is on pace to smash 58 homers, which is more than impressive. But considering that Howard hit 11 homers after Sept. 1 last season – his rookie year, no less – it’s very reasonable to believe that the slugger can duplicate that feat to get to the 60-homer plateau.

In baseball history, only five different men have hit 60 or more home runs in a season, and of that group, only two players – Babe Ruth and Roger Maris – have not been tied to baseball’s ugly steroid scandal.

Steroids and performance-enhancing drugs don’t even enter into the same equation when it comes to Howard. Actually, based on conversations around the cage during his work as a hitting instructor at spring training as well as watching Phillies games on DirecTV at home in Jupiter, Fla., Schmidt says Howard’s success comes from nothing more than ability. In fact, says Schmidt, there isn’t really much of a comparison between the two hitters at the similar points of their careers – Howard is just that much better.

“Howard’s in a see-the-ball-hit-the-ball mode,” Schmidt said. “It will be a lot easier for him when he has a track record against these pitchers. He’s not a pull hitter and he has a lot of great qualities.

“If he has any hole in his swing it’s high and inside or breaking balls away out of the zone and let him get himself out. He’s a different type hitter in that he uses the whole field and that will keep him out of prolonged slumps.”

Howard is just the type of hitter that will not only be talked about for his prodigiously long blasts, but also his unique style that conjures remembrances of a certain Hall-of-Famer.

“He might be the modern-day Willie Stargell,” Schmidt said. “He’s a left-handed hitter with a distinct approach to hitting that I'm sure guys will be imitating for years. Making that extension with the bat just like [Stargell] used to windmill that bat as the pitcher was winding up. Both can hit the ball in the upper deck. Willie used to hit some of the longest balls in the history of the league and they talked about them, just like they're talking about some of Ryan's home runs.”

Schmidt says he was easily fooled by sliders off the plate, but one pitch that did not fool him was the one Stan Bahnsen chucked up there on the next-to-last day of the 1980 season in Montreal’s Olympic Stadium. It was that 10th inning blast that sealed that NL East for the Phillies and propelled them into the NLCS and the only World Series title in the franchise’s 123-season history.

“It was a crucial home run,” Schmidt remembered. “It was the last home run of the year and it had a tremendous impact on the history of the Phillies.”

What's left to be seen is whether Howard's final homer of 2006 has an equally as important impact on the history of the Phillies.

Excuses not making the grade

My days as a science cheat were very short lived. Actually, unlike Floyd Landis, Justin Gatlin and now Marian Jones, and the host of athletes nabbed in failed drug tests and a blanket of bad excuses, my dabbling in cheating ended quickly after it began.

Lucky me.

No, this tale has nothing to do with altering my body chemistry to become bigger, stronger and faster, but in the end, cheating is cheating. Right?

Well …

Nonetheless, this story was just as sordid and dirty for everyone (well, just me, actually) caught up in the tangled web of the controversy. Or something like that. Better yet, like one can deduce from following the cases of Landis, Gatlin, Jones and every other notorious drug case permeating sports during the past two decades, my case involves greed, pressure, arrogance and the desire to make oneself look better.

Sounds dramatic, right? It was. You see on the way home on the last day of school in eighth grade, I steamed open the envelope holding my report card, pulled out the red pen from my backpack I had secured just for the occasion, and changed my grade. Yeah, it still makes me queasy thinking about now. What was I thinking? A red pen? In the bushes near my house on the way home from Wheatland Junior High? Science? Cheating?

Geez.

The motive, honestly, was simple. I needed a C in eighth grade science to finish the year on the Honor Roll. Science was never (and still isn’t) my thing, so getting a C was a tall order. With the extra pressure of actually making it onto the Honor Roll thrown in, it was just too much to handle. When I opened my report card and not surprisingly saw that big, round D taunting me from the thin, official-looking piece of paper, I felt as if I had no other choice than to turn that D into a C.

Now I know exactly what you are thinking. Everyone thinks the same thing when hearing about Landis and is 11-to-1 testosterone ratio, or Marian Jones’ positive test for EPO, and every other cheater caught in the web of credibility. The question is why. Why do it and how did I think I could get away with it?

Honestly, with the aid of two decades of retrospect, I never thought it through that much. I saw the glory of the Honor Roll, which for a mediocre student like me, was major. You see, my academic record sounded a shrill, annoying alarm of a classic underachiever when examined. My sister, on the other hand, lacked the diversity of the alphabet sampler on my report cards. She was consistent and never had to worry about getting a B, let alone not making the Honor Roll. And because we are so close in age, the competition was fierce.

But, again with the aid of 22 years to ponder my cheating escapade, it never really made sense. Why did I desire to be on the Honor Roll so much? Isn’t it odd that people were rewarded for doing what they are supposed to do, which is get good grades? Worse, the pursuit of such accolades for doing work you were supposed to do just seemed so… tacky.

Needless to say, my ruse was quickly discovered. The C covering the D in red pen just looked too suspect and unprofessional even in those days before the proliferation of computer databases, e-mailed grades, and easy access to information via the Internet. We were still using pen and paper in those days, folks.

But unlike any other science cheat, I didn’t waste anyone’s time with a series of lame excuses. Unlike Landis, I didn’t use a late-night whiskey binge as an excuse for my poor grade. Nor did a masseuse rub in an illicit steroid like with Gatlin, or was I “framed” like Jones’ camp offered when she failed her drug test.

Framed? Yeah, because Jones’ running is just so vital to our national interests.

But there are many more excuses a science cheater like me could have used. Remember when Ben Johnson ran so fast in the 100-meters finals during the 1988 Seoul Olympics that it appeared as if he was either going to combust into flames or take off in flight? Yeah, well, that speed came from Winstrol, the same steroid reportedly favored by Rafael Palmeiro.

Ben’s excuse? Someone dosed his water bottle. Rafael’s? He thought it was a B-12 vitamin that teammate Miguel Tejada gave to him.

Still, those are better than the excuse Barry Bonds reportedly gave during his grand jury testimony in attempt for prosecutors to glean more information for the star-crossed slugger’s role in the BALCO case. In admitting to using “The Cream” or “The Clear,” two hardcore and ultra-scientific designer steroids, Bonds said he thought he was just rubbing flax seed oil onto his body.

Really?

Suffice it to say, my cheating days ended there. The effort, coupled with the guilt, made it not worth it. Besides, the time put into cheating could better be used for studying, or in other cases, for working out and getting stronger naturally. Honestly, it’s not too hard to do it that way. Then again, it seems as if the big thing for athletes these days is not winning or losing, but not getting caught.

Anyway, the real lesson came from my dad when he told me, “You know, a D turns into a B a lot easier than it turns into a C.”