July 1987 Guideposts

Before moving the cedar chest, we decided to open it up and look at all of Ossie’s treasure.  We found a lot of typical 92 year old grandmother items. Then, lying on top of old family pictures and McDonald’s sugar packets from 1981 was the July 1987 issue of the Christian magazine, Guideposts.

This would not normally be a very exciting discovery or all that surprising if the cover were donning anything other than the mug of Mike Schmidt in a 1980’s, maroon pin-striped, zip-up Phillies uniform.  I’m fairly certain I shrieked with excitement!

The title read, “Mike Schmidt: The Best and Worst Year of His Life.”

The discovery would get even better because the cover story was not an interview or something written by a lowly staff writer.  No, it was written by the Schmitter himself.

Mike Schmidt Guideposts article, July 1987

The next few pages describe his friendship with Andre Thornton, and his struggles of the 1978 season.

“My batting average was an anemic .251.  The press got on my back. The ‘boo-birds’ in the stands never let up. The harder I tried, the worse things got.”

Shmidt also expresses how success, fame and money were unfulfilling and left him searching for more. The rest of the story is about how he came to faith as a Christian and witnessed the birth of his daughter.  He articulates the things in life that truly matter most like faith and family.

“In that unforgettable moment I knew for certain that life wasn’t about money or status or cars, or even baseball stardom.”

To most of us, our sports heroes are just that, heroes.  They aren’t normal, they don’t struggle, and to us, life must be better on top.

Sports heroes can’t always be open and honest in the media for fear of backlash.  And let’s be honest, there are a lot things we don’t want to know. But in this case, it’s nice to know more about the person and character of my favorite baseball player, and the greatest 3^rd baseman of all time.

Thanks for saving this little treasure, Ossie.  And thanks to you Micheal Jack, for being honest with us about life, even if it was written 25 years ago.

Mike Schmidt Guideposts, July 1987

ICONS COLLIDE AND WE ALL BENEFIT Eric Hartline-US PRESSWIRE

You can stop trying to convince yourself that mid-October still counts as summer and that the Phillies mural will be unveiled any minute.  It’s not happening now until summer 2013, a summer that will be full magical rediscovery, as the Phillies take back the division after a series of strategic roster moves and long drives out to the country to abandon certain dead weight.

So what’s the hold-up?  ”It’s just paint on a wall,” you say?  Well, I’ll have you know, you ignorant rube, that art requires more than paint.  We are trying to install a cultural icon for this city; to embody decades of Phillies baseball so that dog-walkers and river folk can stop on their way, gaze upward at the majesty of dual World Series victories and say, “Yeah, I am a part of this.”  Heroes, frozen in time, will be there for us to recall on frigid winter morns the warmth of summer’s glory, whether through Ashburn, Schmidt, or Utley.  Any sort of delay is perfectly acceptable, as we are coloring a page of history, and if they need more time to get it right, then they shall have it.

What’s that?

“We are still involved in discussions concerning the process and scheduling of wall preparation with all the various parties involved.”

–Mural team director Michael Harris

…it really is just a “wall” thing?

Well, still, you’ve got to assume that whatever preparations go into a wall, they’ve got to be just right.  Again, history and legacy and winter morns and all that.  I wonder who the various parties are?  And what they’re discussing?

“We have this Phillies mural we’d like to display for all the world to enjoy on your wall.”

“Are you serious?  That is literally the achievement of my wildest, most erotic fantasies.  Let’s take some time to make sure my wall is wall enough to support such a dream.”

–How This is Probably Going Down

Regardless, it makes sense to not unveil a mural celebrating the Phillies during a season in which they celebrated very few times.  Maybe during that Brewers series.  But if they want to gamble and hope that 2013 will be a mural-worthy summer, then I am willing to walk past 24th and Walnut with my eyes forward like some sort of normal, unthrilled street-walker.

For now.

When I played Little League, the closest thing we had to scouts in the stands was that vocal, judgmental guy who sat as close to the bench as the coaches let him and it turns out wasn’t even anyone’s dad.  He was just an unbiased observer who didn’t have the disposable income to attend the professional games of the local unaffiliated Single-A club, where shouting things like “Yo HIT THE DAMN CUT-OFF,” was far less noticeable.

When Mike Schmidt played Little League, the closest thing he had to scouts in the stands was a scout in the stands named Tony Lucadello.  Years later, in 1971, after the Phillies watched Schmidt take the Ohio University Bobcats to the College World Series and drafted him in the second round, Lucadello was there to nod sagely in the background as Michael Jack Schmidt’s signature touched Philadelphia Phillies stationary.

And less than a week after that, he hit the game-winning home run in an exhibition game between the Phils and the Reading Phillies.

So it certainly seems like, in retroactive summation, that Mike Schmidt’s life was one explosive statement after another.  Of course, there weren’t always pretty times–the guy, by his own admittance, had “two bad knees,” any struggling at the plate early on in his Major League career was met with regrettable booing, and his tragic retirement speech was abbreviated by a deluge of tears.

But Mike Schmidt’s life was one that we can all look at and feel far, far worse about our own in comparison.  Nobody makes you feel more like a normal person than a guy who does the extraordinary so easily, and the power-hitting, slick-fielding, team-carrying Schmidt is enough to crush your spirits as a person while simultaneously raising them as a Phillies fan.

Today, he is 63, but there are several numbers that he will be remembered for far longer than any age.  The stoic number “20″ that will never be worn by another Phillie again; the iconic “500″ that will forever link Schmidt with Harry Kalas; the “96.5%” vote that got him inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1995, first ballot.

Often times, we pick our stars apart; we work hard to find out what’s wrong with them.  We love Ryan, and Chase, and Jimmy, but we also know why they drive us nuts–Ryan can’t hit lefties, Chase just hates us, and Jimmy’s a diva.  With the expansion of media commentary, there’s more places than ever to find out why you shouldn’t like a guy.

But as time goes on, legends retire, and slip into the fog of their post-baseball years, all we wind up remembering are the moments that set them apart; the records they broke, the games they saved, and the careers they inspired.  Mike Schmidt has more Phillies moments in his queue than anybody, and at 63 years old, this far removed from his 17 years in the game, it’s refreshing to look at one of our stars and have nothing to recall but his legend.

I never saw Schmidt play, but I hope some day we can look upon the icons from my era of Phillies baseball with the same glorious, well-deserved homerism.

Because I’m certainly not going to receive any.  I couldn’t even hit the damn cutoff.