It was Thursday, October 13th, 1960. My mother and I lived in a basement apartment in Cheektowaga, New York just next to the Buffalo International Airport. I was ten years old. It was the bottom of the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series. All the schools had let us out to watch the game. I was a Pittsburgh Pirate fan because both my mother and father were Pittsburghers transferred to Buffalo by Westinghouse. My friend Eddie was watching the game with us. He was a Yankee fanatic who when he hit a home run at wiffle ball would run the bases shouting as a radio broadcaster...."Mantle rounds first....Mantle rounds second....Mantle rounds third.... the crowd goes wild" I still hate Yankee fans.
Bill Mazerowski came up to bat with one out. I was so nervous that I had to run outside. A minute later my mother had one hand on the back of Eddie's shirt and the other on the seat of his pants and was ejecting him from the laundry room which was the closest exit from our apartment to the outside. Folks, you would have to know my mother, I Love Lucy must have been based on her life. She once super-glued here lips together. Another time she nailed her fingernail to the wall hanging a picture, and yet another time she knew a shortcut to the swimming hole.....the car stopped all of a sudden....we were in the middle of nowhere and our car was teeter-tottering on a bump in the little used country road.
So I missed Maz's home run...maybe the greatest home run in the history of baseball! If you are old enough, do you remember the year in baseball 1998! Sammy Sosa hit 66 home runs that year but was four behind Mark McGuire who had 70 home runs. According to a New York times article from 2009..."Of the 13 players who hit 40 or more home runs in 1998, eight have now been linked, through Major League Baseball testing, the Mitchel report or other sources to use of (drugs.)"
Dan Rather, according to the same article, "Led his nightly newscast on CBS with updates on the chase." Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs three years later in 2001. He hit three home runs on September 9th, two days before the attacks on the World Trade Center. Major League Baseball cancelled all games for a week. According to MLB records, the top six all-time single season home run leaders....Bonds 73, McGwire's 70, Sosa's 66, McGwire's 65,Sosa's 64, and Sosa's 63 came in the years 1998 to 2001. Yet today nobody really cares. Roger Maris sits alone with 61 in 1961, the Babe is next with 60 in 1927.
Why do I bring all these baseball stats up. Well I wanted to tell that Mazerowski story for one thing. Second there's nothing more disgusting than a Yankee fan! I'm kidding folks, I haven't been a real fan of any professional sport for decades. I bring it up because America itself is in the middle of its own tainted home run race. Sanders was ahead...then Hillary throws a beanball at him and he falls down.... Trump hits a home run every day and wins the race....then the American league tries to get the National League's Trump off the record books.....then Russia.....then McConnell.....then this and then that.....I'm sure that you know what I'm getting at.
Folks, the South Korean president wants to have a picnic with the North....He'll bring the hotdogs and Kim will bring the nukes to cook them....France's president thinks he's Napoleon or Jupiter....one of the other....the Middle East is about to shake your world....and we're mad that you open up a pack of baseball cards and they are all Morning Joe....and there's no gum!
To President Trump: forget about Russia....forget about the press....throw that ticker-tape tweeting thing-a-ma-jig in the garbage....and get rid of that red hat....fire that batboy Jared! Forget the records....forget about renewing your contract....quit badmouthing your teammates....give up the golf.....quit admiring yourself in the mirror. Concentrate on these things.....keep your eye on the ball....swing level.....run out every ground ball........honor the contract you signed....be thankful for your time in the major leagues....and be thankful to God who gave you a major league swing even though you can't catch and can't throw.
I'm adding two recent posts. The first explains a little the comment in the above post, while the second hopefully expounds on the seriousness of what we face with Kim Jong-un.
The South Korean Dilemna
South Korea recently experienced their own internal chaos and elected Moon Jae-in president with 41% of the vote. Moon is a Progressive and former human rights lawyer and activist. Does this scenario sound even vaguely familiar to you? Of course it does. Look around at Canada and France and England and Germany...there's not a whole lot of discernment from the West in the electing of leaders.
I listened to President Moon answer questions from our illustrious press and at the very least it was disheartening for essentially he thinks that if we can but get Kim Jong-un to promise a few things and if we can verify that he keeps the promises.....we can make progress towards peace. I kid you not friends....he actually believes this. There are some extenuating circumstances here and we have to at least put ourselves in President Moon's shoes to grasp how he can be so naive.
South Korea has lived in the shadow of a murderous and now nuclear North Korea for some time. This isn't new to them. They, the Progressive element, simply wants to keep the danger from getting worse. Sounds reasonable and probably is reasonable in their perspective, but this argument completely falls apart when the United States is added to the equation.
We have not lived under the threat of a nuclear attack from North Korea, for it has not had anywhere near the capability to threaten our country, but that is changing fast, so we are in an entirely different situation than South Korea! What has already happened to South Korea...we cannot let happen to the United States. It's as simple as that.
So although we were on the same page with conservative South Korean leaders who were aware of the always imminent danger and evil just beyond the DMZ, we may not be on the same page today. Are they to jeopardize war with North Korea just to protect us? Kim Jong-un would be 'president' of all Korea today if it were not for the United States but how can we expect the Progressive in South Korea to see that if the Progressive in America despises our past.
The Many 'Sacks" Of Christian Rome
Secretary of Defense James Mattis said that if the situation escalates into war with North Korea that it would be a "catastrophic war"....and this as the United States is deploying its third carrier based Naval Strike Force to the western Pacific. President Trump had laid it on the line previously when he described this potential war as a..."major, major conflict."
All of America was on edge during those thirteen days of October 1962, I remember it as a twelve year old, yet today with a similar and even more intense situation we hardly give serious thought to what is going on with the Korean Peninsula. Now it's conjecture here but I expect that pulpits around America in October of 1962 spent considerable time in prayer on what was happening in and around Cuba. I doubt if many pulpits even mentioned North Korea yesterday.....in what is supposedly a much more religious climate and America than a half century ago.
We have become accustomed to a North Korean leader doing something rash followed by a tense week or two and then a return to 'normalcy' for a few years before the Korean dictator decides for whatever reason to cause trouble again. Staying on the same 38th parallel but moving to a different part of the world, George W. Bush was faced with a very similar but somewhat less immanent crisis in 2008 when Iran escalated their nuclear weapons program. The feeling at the time was that dealing with Iran might hurt John McCain's chances in the election. McCain would deal with it after he won....but he didn't win. Barack Obama told Israel to give him until December to work out something with Iran. That was December of 2009! He then spent the next seven plus years not only not dealing with Iran but bolstering their nuclear program!
So here we are.....2017! North Korea is close if they aren't there already to having the capability of exploding a nuclear device either over America, in one of our ports, or actually reaching our mainland with a missile! Yet we as a people are almost in ho-hum mode. The liberals are too concerned with possibly impeaching Donald Trump to worry about a silly thing like a nuclear catastrophe, while others are almost looking forward to bombing somebody....anybody. Much of the Christian church almost nonchalantly says...'God has it all under control'
It's been reported on a few times over the years in various newspaper and magazine articles....the United States Third Fleet faced two typhoons consecutively in 1944 and 1945. In one of them three destroyers were lost in the storm along with almost 800 lives.....and this without a Zero in sight! God does indeed control the destiny of nations. He controls the waves of the sea, the undulations of the earth, the course of asteroids and even the men who plan wars. He has everything under control....just as He had everything under control in the many sacks of 'Christian' Rome, the Peasant's War during the Reformation and every other period of unmitigated chaos.
Is there nothing that will wake us up short of calamity? Are we that confident that our nation will continue to just roll along like Ol' Man River. We can watch with great anticipation as the ping pong balls are sucked into a tube on a $100 million lottery but barely ponder let alone meditate upon a 'catastrophic war' that has a 50/50 chance of occurring...using here man's familiarity with the word 'chance.'
Iran and North Korea are only two very potential catastrophes to Western Civilization that we have deconstructed into a babbling suicidal toga party. There are others. My point in these posts centered on the 38th parallel on the Korean Peninsula is that it is impossible for this North Korean crisis to just go on as it has in the past! Kim Jong-un will wither totally give up his nuclear program or there will be a conflagration....or a catastrophic war as General and Secretary of Defense Mattis described it. One more cooling down and just going on period would be just add insanity to absurdity! Which do you think it will be?
I write this on Memorial Day, for tens of thousands of our military will eventually fight this our battle, one way or another. It is far too late to avoid the consequences of our rebellion to God, but it is not too late to humble ourselves before Him and seek His steady hand in the approaching whirlwind, of which He has control....not us. May God have mercy upon us so that our pulpits will wake up from their dreamy state to preach not only our King...but our coming King....not only glory but woe....and not only rejoicing but introspection and repentance.
Bill Mazerowski came up to bat with one out. I was so nervous that I had to run outside. A minute later my mother had one hand on the back of Eddie's shirt and the other on the seat of his pants and was ejecting him from the laundry room which was the closest exit from our apartment to the outside. Folks, you would have to know my mother, I Love Lucy must have been based on her life. She once super-glued here lips together. Another time she nailed her fingernail to the wall hanging a picture, and yet another time she knew a shortcut to the swimming hole.....the car stopped all of a sudden....we were in the middle of nowhere and our car was teeter-tottering on a bump in the little used country road.
So I missed Maz's home run...maybe the greatest home run in the history of baseball! If you are old enough, do you remember the year in baseball 1998! Sammy Sosa hit 66 home runs that year but was four behind Mark McGuire who had 70 home runs. According to a New York times article from 2009..."Of the 13 players who hit 40 or more home runs in 1998, eight have now been linked, through Major League Baseball testing, the Mitchel report or other sources to use of (drugs.)"
Dan Rather, according to the same article, "Led his nightly newscast on CBS with updates on the chase." Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs three years later in 2001. He hit three home runs on September 9th, two days before the attacks on the World Trade Center. Major League Baseball cancelled all games for a week. According to MLB records, the top six all-time single season home run leaders....Bonds 73, McGwire's 70, Sosa's 66, McGwire's 65,Sosa's 64, and Sosa's 63 came in the years 1998 to 2001. Yet today nobody really cares. Roger Maris sits alone with 61 in 1961, the Babe is next with 60 in 1927.
Why do I bring all these baseball stats up. Well I wanted to tell that Mazerowski story for one thing. Second there's nothing more disgusting than a Yankee fan! I'm kidding folks, I haven't been a real fan of any professional sport for decades. I bring it up because America itself is in the middle of its own tainted home run race. Sanders was ahead...then Hillary throws a beanball at him and he falls down.... Trump hits a home run every day and wins the race....then the American league tries to get the National League's Trump off the record books.....then Russia.....then McConnell.....then this and then that.....I'm sure that you know what I'm getting at.
Folks, the South Korean president wants to have a picnic with the North....He'll bring the hotdogs and Kim will bring the nukes to cook them....France's president thinks he's Napoleon or Jupiter....one of the other....the Middle East is about to shake your world....and we're mad that you open up a pack of baseball cards and they are all Morning Joe....and there's no gum!
To President Trump: forget about Russia....forget about the press....throw that ticker-tape tweeting thing-a-ma-jig in the garbage....and get rid of that red hat....fire that batboy Jared! Forget the records....forget about renewing your contract....quit badmouthing your teammates....give up the golf.....quit admiring yourself in the mirror. Concentrate on these things.....keep your eye on the ball....swing level.....run out every ground ball........honor the contract you signed....be thankful for your time in the major leagues....and be thankful to God who gave you a major league swing even though you can't catch and can't throw.
I'm adding two recent posts. The first explains a little the comment in the above post, while the second hopefully expounds on the seriousness of what we face with Kim Jong-un.
The South Korean Dilemna
South Korea recently experienced their own internal chaos and elected Moon Jae-in president with 41% of the vote. Moon is a Progressive and former human rights lawyer and activist. Does this scenario sound even vaguely familiar to you? Of course it does. Look around at Canada and France and England and Germany...there's not a whole lot of discernment from the West in the electing of leaders.
I listened to President Moon answer questions from our illustrious press and at the very least it was disheartening for essentially he thinks that if we can but get Kim Jong-un to promise a few things and if we can verify that he keeps the promises.....we can make progress towards peace. I kid you not friends....he actually believes this. There are some extenuating circumstances here and we have to at least put ourselves in President Moon's shoes to grasp how he can be so naive.
South Korea has lived in the shadow of a murderous and now nuclear North Korea for some time. This isn't new to them. They, the Progressive element, simply wants to keep the danger from getting worse. Sounds reasonable and probably is reasonable in their perspective, but this argument completely falls apart when the United States is added to the equation.
We have not lived under the threat of a nuclear attack from North Korea, for it has not had anywhere near the capability to threaten our country, but that is changing fast, so we are in an entirely different situation than South Korea! What has already happened to South Korea...we cannot let happen to the United States. It's as simple as that.
So although we were on the same page with conservative South Korean leaders who were aware of the always imminent danger and evil just beyond the DMZ, we may not be on the same page today. Are they to jeopardize war with North Korea just to protect us? Kim Jong-un would be 'president' of all Korea today if it were not for the United States but how can we expect the Progressive in South Korea to see that if the Progressive in America despises our past.
The Many 'Sacks" Of Christian Rome
Secretary of Defense James Mattis said that if the situation escalates into war with North Korea that it would be a "catastrophic war"....and this as the United States is deploying its third carrier based Naval Strike Force to the western Pacific. President Trump had laid it on the line previously when he described this potential war as a..."major, major conflict."
All of America was on edge during those thirteen days of October 1962, I remember it as a twelve year old, yet today with a similar and even more intense situation we hardly give serious thought to what is going on with the Korean Peninsula. Now it's conjecture here but I expect that pulpits around America in October of 1962 spent considerable time in prayer on what was happening in and around Cuba. I doubt if many pulpits even mentioned North Korea yesterday.....in what is supposedly a much more religious climate and America than a half century ago.
We have become accustomed to a North Korean leader doing something rash followed by a tense week or two and then a return to 'normalcy' for a few years before the Korean dictator decides for whatever reason to cause trouble again. Staying on the same 38th parallel but moving to a different part of the world, George W. Bush was faced with a very similar but somewhat less immanent crisis in 2008 when Iran escalated their nuclear weapons program. The feeling at the time was that dealing with Iran might hurt John McCain's chances in the election. McCain would deal with it after he won....but he didn't win. Barack Obama told Israel to give him until December to work out something with Iran. That was December of 2009! He then spent the next seven plus years not only not dealing with Iran but bolstering their nuclear program!
So here we are.....2017! North Korea is close if they aren't there already to having the capability of exploding a nuclear device either over America, in one of our ports, or actually reaching our mainland with a missile! Yet we as a people are almost in ho-hum mode. The liberals are too concerned with possibly impeaching Donald Trump to worry about a silly thing like a nuclear catastrophe, while others are almost looking forward to bombing somebody....anybody. Much of the Christian church almost nonchalantly says...'God has it all under control'
It's been reported on a few times over the years in various newspaper and magazine articles....the United States Third Fleet faced two typhoons consecutively in 1944 and 1945. In one of them three destroyers were lost in the storm along with almost 800 lives.....and this without a Zero in sight! God does indeed control the destiny of nations. He controls the waves of the sea, the undulations of the earth, the course of asteroids and even the men who plan wars. He has everything under control....just as He had everything under control in the many sacks of 'Christian' Rome, the Peasant's War during the Reformation and every other period of unmitigated chaos.
Is there nothing that will wake us up short of calamity? Are we that confident that our nation will continue to just roll along like Ol' Man River. We can watch with great anticipation as the ping pong balls are sucked into a tube on a $100 million lottery but barely ponder let alone meditate upon a 'catastrophic war' that has a 50/50 chance of occurring...using here man's familiarity with the word 'chance.'
Iran and North Korea are only two very potential catastrophes to Western Civilization that we have deconstructed into a babbling suicidal toga party. There are others. My point in these posts centered on the 38th parallel on the Korean Peninsula is that it is impossible for this North Korean crisis to just go on as it has in the past! Kim Jong-un will wither totally give up his nuclear program or there will be a conflagration....or a catastrophic war as General and Secretary of Defense Mattis described it. One more cooling down and just going on period would be just add insanity to absurdity! Which do you think it will be?
I write this on Memorial Day, for tens of thousands of our military will eventually fight this our battle, one way or another. It is far too late to avoid the consequences of our rebellion to God, but it is not too late to humble ourselves before Him and seek His steady hand in the approaching whirlwind, of which He has control....not us. May God have mercy upon us so that our pulpits will wake up from their dreamy state to preach not only our King...but our coming King....not only glory but woe....and not only rejoicing but introspection and repentance.
