One of the worst years in American History.
Tet. Martin Luther King. Detroit. Bobby Kennedy. The Democratic Convention. Going to funerals of friends who had just graduated from HS the year before.
I remember, the evening after Bobby Kennedy was shot, descending into Washington National (now Reagan) Airport and seeing the flames and smoke from buildings burning just blocks from the White House and Capitol, and seeing just east of the Capitol enough flashing red lights from fire engines and police cars that it reflected off the clouds as we landed.
1968 was one of the BEST years in baseball history. Marichal. Drysdale. Gibson.
Gibson.
Bob Gibson became a hero of mine in 1964. If you want to understand why, you have to have lived in Milwaukee in 1957 and 1958 and San Francisco in 1962. My heroes were Spahn, Burdette, Frank Torre (who always said hi to me at County Stadium), and then after 1958, Mays, Marichal, Cepeda, McCovey.... The enemy was the Yankees, Lords of Baseball. To understand more of 1964, you MUST read David Halberstam's "October 1964", which is both an elegy and a celebration of the rise of black and Latino ballplayers that displaced the Yankees until, really, 1996.
But Gibson was at his best in 1968. To watch a guy throw a baseball that from the CF camera looked like it would hit the batter in the back then swerve to be a clean, centered strike was amazing.
Intimidation. It can be dirty (being a Giant fan, I always suspected Drysdale of being Lucifer incarnate), or it can be a life full of pain being expressed in athletic performance..
Please read the following articles. ALL of us can benefit from thinking back on 1968 and what that year was to our country AND to baseball.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1980/09/22/distance
http://joeposnanski.com/no-39-bob-gibson/
This year, it seems to me, we have forgotten many of the lessons we should have learned from 1968: about Imperial overreach, about treating fellow Americans with respect, about scepticism of the ability or will of politicians and politics to solve problems between us and our neighbors. Maybe being a baseball fan can bring out the best in us.
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season. Read in good health.