Certainly I appreciate the opportunities my hometown paper has afforded me over the last couple decades to write for you, and I’ve always welcomed reader reactions after a column posts. While those reactions generally come in email form, there are some of my old-school readers who take the time to write me as folks did in my younger years, by putting a stamp on an envelope and finding a nearby mailbox.
That’s how Mary Ann Crider contacts me when she has something on her mind. I should mention while the government prefer she use her full name on tax documents and census forms and such, she prefers Ann.
The first time I heard from Ann was in 2017. She wrote to thank me for a feature I did on former Lima Panda and St. Louis Brown Frank “Porky” Biscan, who not only gained some valuable minor-league experience while playing at Halloran Park, experience he would use to one day make it to the major leagues but also gained a wife when he married a young lady from Lima, 18-year-old Jane Pearson. The ceremony took place at Halloran’s home plate before a game he was scheduled to start. Then the 5-foot-11, 190-pounder celebrated by toeing the slab and tossing a shutout.
Ann, while growing up in the 1940s here in Lima before her 1952 graduation from St. John’s back when there were three Catholic high schools in our town, certainly knew some things about the role minor league baseball once played in Lima. After all, her sister Agnes married Bob Huddleston, who, after graduating from Toledo Scott, came to Lima to play for the Terriers, a Chicago White Sox farm club, located in Lima from 1946 through ‘48. Huddleson, who passed away this past February at the age of 94, after his five years of minor league ball that saw him accumulate more than 600 hits and produce a .300 lifetime batting average, made Lima home for himself and his beloved Agnes.
Ann shortly after her brother-in-law’s passing wrote me again to tell me that her late husband Frank had saved some Sports Illustrated issues from 1957 and ’58 and wanted to know if I wanted them.
You see, as a regular reader of my scribbles, Ann understands the high regard in which I hold the past, especially the sports-related past found in old books, newspapers and magazines. In the note, she told me she would drop them off on my doorstep if I wanted them.
Of course, I had pen to paper almost immediately so I could tell her I certainly would love to have the issues, but, of course, I had no intention of having her bring them to me. When someone gifts you something, especially something you really want, you certainly go to your benefactor or, in this case, benefactress.
My relationship with Sports Illustrated didn’t start with the magazine until 1961, when my parents got a subscription for me in my name as a means to encourage their hyperkinetic 10-year-old to slow down long enough to read more. And, boy, did I ever take the bait. I waited breathlessly for Thursday to roll around, so I could sprint to the mailbox for the next issue. I’ll have more to say about Sports Illustrated and its role in my life and its changing face as the years have unfolded next week.
When I arrived at Ann’s house, despite the brisk temperatures, she was standing in the drive smiling. Beside her was a green canvas bag full of the magazines. I was especially interested in the issues from the ‘50s in what were the formative years of the publication. In 1957, the magazine was only in its fourth year.
We chatted for a few minutes, and Ann thanked me for my literary efforts, reminding me of something she told me in a note a couple years previous, that my writing style reminded her of Andy Rooney, the late, legendary “60 Minutes” post-script commentator and author who carved such a wonderful niche in observational rhetoric that built so many bridges between him and his audience. It was perhaps the nicest thing anyone has ever said about my writing. She also told me my travel pieces often reminded her of the travel she and her husband once did.
After thanking Ann effusively, I placed my 25 or so pounds of treasure in the back seat and backed out of the drive. She remained in the drive for a final wave.
You know, it’s so easy to grow cynical in today’s world when we encounter and read about people who simply aren’t very nice. And, then you meet someone like Ann, and your faith in humanity is restored. For those of you who know her, such as Father Dave Ross, who knows Ann through her volunteering efforts at St. Rose Church, well, you are, indeed as lucky as I felt driving away.
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