Opening Day 2008 for the Timber Rattlers is April 3. That is 106 days from today. This off-season, the countdown will be based on books. Each day between now and Opening Day 2008, I will pick a random book out of my library and excerpt a passage off the page number corresponding with the number of days remaining to the first pitch of the new season. I will try not to repeat a book during the countdown.
Here is the opening part of Ron Fimrite's profile of Walter Hagen from the June 19, 1989 issue.
He had such a jaunty manner, such a regal air, such insouciance that he was called Sir Walter or the Haig. Gene Sarazen, a contemporary and a great golf champion himself, recalls what it was like seeing him for the first time: "It was at the U.S. Open in 1920. I was just kid of 18, and two heroes of mine, Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, had already come into the locker room. And then in he marched, head held high, looking like he was the sultan of someplace or other. But that was Walter Hagen for you. He acted like he was the whole show all the time. I remember once, a few days before the 1921 Open in Chevy Chase, Md., Walter was in the locker room calmly shaving while President Harding waited for him on the first tee. There was Walter, without a care in the world, keeping the president of the United States waiting!"Put today's excerpt in a baseball contact.
No comments:
Post a Comment