No Heavy Lifting

by Rob Simpson

  I grabbed the top of the fence, jumped, and pulled my head and shoulders up enough to get my right elbow on top of the barrier. I pushed off with my feet, shuffled them up, and lunged until half of my body was over and inside the fence and the other half was outside. I looked like a human teeter-totter. With the wood digging into my gut and my hands in an awkward and painful position, I instantly spun right, brought both feet around so I was parallel with the top, and then awkwardly swung both feet over and let go. I landed on the warning track in foul territory.

  At that point, I wished I had brought one of the beers over the wall with me. It was a baseball paradise. I sat down, rested briefly, and stared out at the ball field, the evergreen trees that encircled part of it, the press box, and the stars above. I savoured the peacefulness of the diamond.

  After a quick scan for car lights and people in the distance, I turned my attention to the sign. Surprisingly, I wasn’t nervous. It was dark, there was obviously no one at or around the ballpark, and I was hidden in the extreme corner where the outfield fence met the barrier I had

  just scaled.

  I stood face to face with the metal sign on a wooden fence, a maroon 325 on a gold background, with a maroon outline. And God Bless America, there were only two bolts. They were big, intimidating bolts, but instead of four, one in each corner, there were only two, one above and one below the middle digit.

  Yank up, or yank down? I asked myself. I’d get more strength pulling down. And do it quickly. I grabbed the top of the sign with one hand on either side of the bolt and yanked. Nothing. “Shit!” This sucker was on the wall. I’d have to give it everything I had.

  One, two, three, PULL! I yelled in my mind. The

  sign-bolt-and-fence made a hideous sound of metal on metal, metal on wood. But it moved. In fact, it moved enough so that the nut at the back end of the bolt had partially wedged into the fence. With the nut held in place, I was able to manoeuver the sign and unscrew the bolt by hand the rest of the way.

  The sign spun down and around until it was upside down, with the lower bolt now at the top of the dangling sign. Using the leverage of the sign itself against the fence, I was able to pry the second bolt out of the wall.

  Success on one hand, doubt on the other. What the hell am I doing? I thought. I was at the point of no return. Leave it or take it?

  I decided to go for it. I walked twenty feet along the fence towards home plate and with two hands, tossed the piece of sheet metal over the wall like a Frisbee. The six-pound sign, one-sixteenth of an inch thick, thirty inches long and two feet wide, landed without a clang. It landed upright on one of its corners with a thud, digging into the ground, and then fell over. I then walked back to the corner, thinking somehow I was distancing myself from the goods, before climbing up and out.

  After a quick Belushi, I walked to the sign, picked it up, and began a nerve-racking mile-long walk home.

  At times I jogged. Other times I walked very slowly. When a car came, I dropped the sign, walked away, only to return a few moments later. When another car came, as I crossed the western edge of campus, I pointed the sign at the vehicle lengthwise and followed the car’s movement. I thought this way, if they looked at me, they’d have only a sixteenth of an inch of sign to notice. I proceeded cautiously across a well-lit parking lot and then through an open area along Crawford Road, behind CMU’s largest dorm complex, the Towers.

  I knew I was home free for the most part when I arrived at the woods that separated campus from a cluster of apartment complexes on the other side. I ran through the trail in the dark for an eighth of a mile. I hurried around and through a couple of complexes, scurried to Chip’ Village, came along the empty courtyard, entered my dark apartment, and rushed upstairs. No one was awake. I zipped to the third floor, hopped into my room, and slid the sign between my mattress and my box spring. Mission accomplished.

  You, I thought, are an idiot. But I was really happy I got the sign.

  The now infamous sign.

  ~

  It wasn’t long after this that I learned karma can be a bear. Cue John Lachance.

  The same age as me, I believe, he was a big dude, almost as tall, six-foot-five or so and, I’d guess, about twenty or thirty pounds heavier. He was somewhat loud and extremely assertive, especially when it came to developing and solidifying his position as a student journalist in the CMU Broadcast and Cinematic Arts Department.

  Lachance could be an intimidating figure, but he was as sweet as molasses when he approached me that spring and asked if he could join me for a couple of baseball broadcasts. I agreed, figuring it was no big deal, and rationalized that although I was the student “Voice of Chippewa Baseball,” I had no right to deny another kid an opportunity, albeit a brief one.

  We did a couple of games together with Central hosting the Bowling Green Falcons. I recall doing play-by-play for the first three innings and the final three, with him as my color commentator, and allowing him to do play-by-play for the middle three innings.

  I still have the air-check tapes. At one point, I announced, “. . . checks the base runners and delivers . . . hit harrrd, base hit to right field past the first baseman . . . this should be two runs, Fisher rounds third, here comes the throw to the plate, he is safe at home! A two-run single for Bob Podschlne [pronounced Po-chell-knee] as he does the job, and the Chippewa lead is five to one.” The cheers subsided a bit.

  John’s color: “Once again, Rob, let’s go back, they got the first man . . . up, got him on the base.” That was pretty much it. I then reviewed the rally hitter by hitter.

  Shortly thereafter I said, “Kevin working with a four-run margin, his Chippewas have done a good job offensively today . . . the next onnnnne, just on the outside corner. The umpire seemed to take about ten seconds to make the call, but it’s a two-two count now.”

  John: “That would be par for the day for him, wouldn’t it be?”

  The cool part for both of us was that we were watching a future major-leaguer pitch a complete-game victory for CMU. Chippewa ace Kevin Tapani blew through the Falcons line-up and racked up ten strikeouts with his ninety-four-mile-per-hour fastball.

  Three years after his senior-year no-hitter against Eastern Michigan in 1986, “Tap” made his major-league debut on July 4, 1989, for the Mets against the Astros. After a trade to Minnesota a year later, he went on to help win a World Series for Minnesota in 1991 and was a workhorse starter in the bigs for thirteen seasons. In 1999, he was elected to the CMU Athletics Hall of Fame, joining other baseball honorees like Tom Tresh, Chris Knapp, and Curt Young.

  When the weekend was all said and done, I thought, Well, that’s one less competitor for any future play-by-play gigs, that’s for sure.

  Au contraire.

  Lachance moved along, and I did the rest of the season on my own or with my eventual regular sidekick Rick Maklebust. He was a nice kid, with a good set of pipes, and it was a delightful spring. We had the opportunity to improve our craft and hang around the ballpark and talk baseball.

  As the season slipped toward summer, there was only one date remaining on the calendar that meant anything to any of the kids in the broadcast department: the spring meeting for the fall football telecasts.

  CMU football games were handled top-to-bottom by an all-student crew on the campus television station, which at that time was a rare opportunity. Central was a top-notch regional broadcasting school and one of the best in the nation for actual hands-on vocational opportunities. Longtime NBC Sportscaster Dick Enberg, who attended CMU as an undergrad before getting his masters at Indiana, was our poster boy.

  A couple of weeks later, the football meeting arrived. Two or three dozen students eagerly took their seats in a large lecture auditorium in Anspach Hall. It had shaped up to be an exciting time for each and every young broadcast student, whether one planned on being a camera-person, a runner, a tape guy or gal, a p
roducer, or, in my case, the clear choice to handle play-by-play. But it was at that meeting that a bombshell fell into my young broadcasting life, and I learned a hard lesson about how things would eventually work in the real world.

  Filling talent positions sometimes has very little to do with talent.

  When the meeting began, the instructor who ran the television side of the broadcast department, Greydon Hyde, took the stage as expected. The appearance of Lachance close alongside was a shock to all of us.

  They distributed handouts, including an outline of production plans and a list of jobs. Students could rank, one through three, what they were interested in, with “most interested in” being number one and “less interested in” being number two and then three. Producer was a popular one, as was camera operator for those more interested in the technical side. Oddly, “play-by-play” wasn’t listed, just color commentator.

  Then the announcement: John Lachance was the student executive producer or coordinating producer AND play-by-play guy. He had essentially named himself to the crème-de-la-crème position. Hyde made the announcement.

  How the hell had Lachance pulled this off? Ass-kissing? Intimidation? Had they become drinking buddies? Had Lachance used, “I did some baseball games,” to convince Hyde to give him the gig? As Maklebust and I looked over at one another, our mouths agape from shock, the overwhelming sentiment was “What the fuck?”

  So there it was. Pissed off, sick to my stomach, in disbelief. What was I gonna do about it? That was the true, gigantic question.

  Option one: stand-up and say, “How the hell did this guy give himself the play-by-play job and why is there no audition? I want at least a fair crack at this thing. Are you freaking kidding me?” Or at least something along

  those lines.

  Option two: sit, squirm, stew, and say nothing.

  Sadly, I chose option two. I never complained and, soon after, it was case closed once summer break arrived.

  I actually ended up taking the color commentary job and sat with Lachance in the booth as he did play-by-play. He pretty much sounded exactly like a college student broadcaster doing college football play-by-play. Maybe that was the point of the whole thing. Maybe it was time to give someone else a shot. I just didn’t like the way I think he went about it.

  For the second game of the season, against Bowling Green, we actually shared the telecast with a professional regional broadcast group, with longtime Detroit sportscasting stalwart Dave Diles doing play-by-play on a separate broadcast feed. Lachance, being in on the planning, managed to get the lone student position, sideline reporter, for that regional telecast.

  With Lachance out of the box, I jumped over and did play-by-play for our local market. My one chance to do what I thought I deserved to do in the first place, and my one chance to hopefully get a decent demo tape.

  But that was pretty much it for me. I didn’t go

  passive-aggressive with the whole situation; I went passive-passive. After three games, I quit and handed off the color gig to Maklebust. My handling of the whole scenario showed just how immature, naïve, and unprepared I was for the real deal. In this case, just like in other businesses, personal politics (or ethnicity, or age, or gender, or aesthetics), often factor in more than knowledge and ability. It’s a fact a young broadcaster needs to prepare for. Never expect or assume anything.

  At that point, I turned the rest of my CMU career into a holiday. I was, as we used to say a lot back then, “over it.”

  That school year I had landed the operations manager job at the student radio station, 91-Rock-FM. It was essentially the top student executive position. I think I showed up for two of the twenty-six weekly board meetings. I bagged out of air shifts, I went to class when I had to, I caroused and chased coeds. I was a child. I had acute fifth-year senioritis. By the time June 1986 rolled around, I had a diploma, I had training, I had my talent and ability, I had a sense of what to expect in the real world, and I had one very large, metal memento.

  ~

  The outfield is still symmetrical at the new ballpark called Bill Theunissen Stadium in Mt. Pleasant, but it’s now 330 feet down the foul lines. So I guess they’re not missing the 325 marker. It’s been put to practical use only once, on the outfield fence of a Wiffle ball field on Nantucket.

  John Lachance persevered in another side of the business. He’s apparently been at ESPN since 2004 and he’s reached a senior executive operations position. He didn’t return my voice messages.

  THE FORBIDDEN ISLE

  “Um, Roger . . . you’re naked.”

  Me, to my golf pro, January 1996

  There are actually thousands of Hawaiian islands, referred to as the Northwest Hawaiian Islands, essentially made up of bird sanctuaries and volcanic pop-ups that stretch more than a thousand miles through the Pacific Ocean. At the bottom of this archipelago sit the eight largest islands that make up the state of Hawaii.

  Ask any American to name the eight main Hawaiian Islands and he or she would probably be able to name two: Hawaii and Maui. Okay, maybe one: Hawaii. And they’d think they were naming the island where the capital city of Honolulu is located (if they didn’t also incorrectly guess that Honolulu is an island itself).

  I point this out because Americans, unlike Canadians, are typically, dramatically, disturbingly, and sadly geographically challenged, even when it comes to their own country. Hey, can you name the capital of Oregon? Didn’t think so. How about the five Great Lakes?

  Not that Hawaii has anything to do with the rest of the country, thankfully, other than falling under the same legal and institutional umbrella. It’s a wondrous, intricate, naturally spiritual land that operates very much on its own. Until 120-odd years ago, it was its own sovereign kingdom, stolen by the United States and later made a territory and then a state for economic and military purposes.

  Hawaii’s capital city is on the island of Oahu, which in Hawaiian means “the gathering place.” It houses about three-quarters of the state’s population, a dynamic mixture of Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese, Samoan, Filipino, Korean, other non-native Hawaiians, and American Caucasians, the latter also known as mainland haole (how-lee).

  The weather is close to perfect more often than not, with the northeasterly trade winds blowing 80 percent of the time; the topography is absolutely gorgeous; and there is a disproportionately large number of excruciatingly beautiful female inhabitants. The term “paradise” likely has as much to do with this last feature as it does with the mountains, the cliffs, the flowers, the trees, the waterfalls, the beaches, and the weather.

  The island of Hawaii itself is indeed one of the eight main islands in the chain, but it’s known locally as “The Big Island,” as it’s the largest. It’s also the only one with an active volcano, Kilauea (Kill-ow-A-ah). Between the sometimes snow-capped, almost 14,000-foot peak of Mauna Kea to the north and the more rounded Mauna Loa to the south (shorter by 115 feet) lies the saddle, a ridge of land that eventually connects the town of Hilo on the windward side to Kona on the drier leeward side.

  East, west, north, and south are somewhat meaningless geographic labels in Hawaii, outside of South Point, the southernmost point of the Big Island and of the United States. The islands are generally round with mountainous interiors, so when one moves towards the ocean from inland, they travel makai (ma-kye), and when they head inland from the water they’re going mauka (mow-ka, rhymes with cow-ka), towards the mountains. Similarly, instead of west or east, one moves towards or away from a prominent landmark, as the circular nature of shoreline travel dictates. In Honolulu, for example, you move “Diamond Head” or “Koko Head,” in the direction of those extinct volcanoes along the shore; or you move in the opposite direction, Ewa (Eva), towards Ewa Beach.

  Maui is well known to many because it’s the second most visited island by tourists and is referred to more frequently in pop culture than the other islands, as in “Mau
i Wowee,” a reference to pot. Really good pot is known as da kine, as is anything else that’s accepted as local knowledge, very good, or right on. Don’t worry, I didn’t inhale. (I say that because I, along with a few hundred other people on Waikiki Beach in 1994, actually shook hands with President Clinton, the most famous “non-inhaler.”)

  Besides Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii, the other inhabited islands are Kauai, Lanai, and Molokai. Kauai, “The Garden Isle,” furthest north, is home to some places of startling beauty, including Waimea Canyon. Picture a smaller, logic-defyingly green version of the Grand Canyon. Lanai and Molokai sit in the middle of the island group and are polar opposites in terms of their development, despite both being lightly inhabited. Molokai, “The Friendly Isle,” is truly that — very local and goes to sleep when the sun goes down. Lanai, formerly a Dole Company–owned pineapple plantation before its operations and jobs went to Mexico, is now privately owned by an American media mogul. It has one delightful, high-end resort on the coast and another one up in the misty mountains. In the early 1990s, Bill Gates rented the entire island for his wedding.

  Which leaves us with the two islands no mainland American can name, practically or literally, Kahoolawe (Ka-ho-oh-la-vay) and Niihau (Nee-ee-how). Kahoolawe is uninhabited because it’s believed there is still un-exploded military ordnance on it, as in navy bombs that were dropped and didn’t blow up. For decades, the U.S. military used this island just a few miles off the south coast of Maui as a bombing range. It’s the only island of the group I never visited.

  I made it to seven of the eight because I was blessed to visit Niihau, “The Forbidden Isle,” as part of a January 1996 experience I could never have dreamed up. My then-wife, Nora, bought me the unexpected trip as a Christmas present for about $250. That was a very expensive gift for us in those days and, ultimately, it proved to be a priceless one. I had moved to Hawaii to work at the CBS affiliate in 1991, and I would be leaving for good in less than two weeks. At that point in history, very few non-Niihauans or non-ancient Hawaiian warriors had ever set foot on the island. Our opportunity to go there arose because the island’s owners were looking for a way to help pay their hefty federal estate taxes.