42

Branch Rickey is my hero.

Leo Durocher is my hero.

Eddie Stankey is my hero.

Those are names that I never figured would become heroic figures in my world view, but after watching the movie 42, I've shifted and elevated them in my catalogue of standards.

The film, in case you are unaware, is about Jackie Robinson and the integration of major league baseball during the summer of 1947. I've come to see that moment in time as perhaps one of the seminal events in America's Civil Rights movement, the place where America, in starts and fits, turned a corner — coming as it did just 82 years after the end of the Civil War, America's other seminal Civil Rights moment.

In my youth, my father told me about Jackie Robinson and the hell that Robinson had to endure while breaking baseball's color barrier. We lived in Pennsylvania then, just an hour from Philadelphia, and dad told me about the vile reaction of then Phillies manager Ben Chapman to Robinson's presence in the game.

The movie illustrates this moment until it has you squirming in your seat. You might find yourself thinking, yeah, well, this was a different time, a different era, and then you squirm that this could happen at all.

Isn't that the point of movies, to make you feel something?

What dad didn't tell me is why Branch Rickey, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, picked that point in time to change attitudes (the movie suggests that Rickey, played with verve by a wonderfully aging Harrison Ford, missed an opportunity as a younger man to make a difference. He wasn't going to miss this one). What I never considered was how Rickey's decision affected so many others, whether they wanted social change to happen or not.

At least as it is depicted in the movie, Robinson (played spectacularly by relative unknown Chadwick Boseman) faces his trial with remarkable restraint and courage, while Rickey faces his with foresight and conviction. What a team.

Others come along for the ride. Leo Durocher, as manager of the Dodgers, is charged with quelling a potential mutiny in the Dodger locker room. A fed-up Eddie Stankey confronts Chapman in the middle of a ballgame. Kentucky-born Pee Wee Reese, in perhaps a moment of legend building, puts his arm around Robinson's shoulder between innings of a game in Cincinnati (there is some question about that. No photos exist of the moment, but some remember that picture in time actually occurring in 1948, not 1947, and in Boston, not Cincinnati. But it doesn't really matter.)

The movie, as a period piece, gets a lot of things right. Ebbetts Field and other fabled palaces of baseball get astounding CGI resurrection. The clothes, the uniforms, the cars, the baggy bases, the sweaty locker rooms are all there.

So are the heroes.

Not the least of whom is Jackie Robinson.

Piling on

Last week's news cycle was relentless and it felt a whole lot like deja vu.

Hadn't we been here before?

Of course we have. Four months earlier there was Newtown. Before that, a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Before that a movie theater in Colorado. And that's just in the past year. Deja vu suddenly feels a whole lot more like piling on and it's coming at us at seemingly ever increasing intervals.

Throw in random events like fertilizer factory explosions in map-dot towns and just like that even the word "relentless" feels inadequate.

But West, Texas, appears to be a horrible accident (unless you consider the city planning that allows an anhydrous ammonia fertilizer factory in a residential district an accident). Boston isn't.

And so, for me at least, there is a sense of helplessness. How come, in the 21st century, with a world population that is surely growing ever more sophisticated, blowing up innocents to advance an agenda (or to defend a religion, of all things) somehow still seems like a good idea to some?

This is nothing new. World history is filled with examples like this, which can only make you realize that violence, unhappily, is part of the human condition. Maybe it is the human condition.

Maybe in some future world the violence gene will be excised from the species. Cro-Magnon neanderthals may have needed it to survive. Do we? (Did I just equate the bombers with Cro-Magnons? I apologize to the Cro-Magnons).

There is one curiosity: in the midst of this strange week of violence and mayhem there has emerged stories of incredible heroism and humanity. It's a juxtaposition that almost always seems to be present in stories like these. Maybe those black-and-white opposites are the yin and yang that actually distinguishes our species.

I don't know what the answer is, and I guess that's where my feeling of helplessness lies. There may be no solution.

There's only us.

Road construction ahead... and behind

You can't get there from here.

Not if you live in Lexington.

Suddenly, it seems, somebody is fiddling with Lexington's road map.

The still uncompleted bridge over Abbotts Creek. Be patient.

If you try to get out of town by going on East Center Street Extension (ECSE), you're primarily rerouted to Raleigh Road because of the construction of a new bridge over Abbotts Creek. I haven't quite figured this one out. I always thought the East Center Street Extension bridge was in pretty decent shape. It was the old, uncomfortably narrow bridge on Raleigh Road near the prison that needed immediate help.

If a car, or God forbid, an 18-wheeler, is coming in the opposite direction and reaches the Raleigh Road bridge at the same time you do, I bet you: a) physically hold you breath; b) mentally hold your breath; c) subconsciously hold your breath; d) close your eyes; e) all of the above.

Construction on the ECSE bridge is expected to be completed sometime in May. Then work can begin on the Raleigh Road bridge.

Meanwhile, there is no bridge at the other end of town. Be patient.

Meanwhile, if you try to get out of town on West Center Street, forget it. They've knocked down the old curvy bridge (Highway 64 west, otherwise known as Mocksville Road) that spanned Business I-85, so now you're rerouted to either the service road in front of Lexington Barbecue — is that Smokehouse Lane? — or to West Center Street Extension to Forest Hill Road before you can track your way back to Parkway Ford, Food Lion and Rite Aid.

Another option is to go out Fifth Avenue to approach Forest Hill Road from that direction. More on that in a moment.

That area definitely needed work. The whole package of merges, egresses and yields there needed some serious rethinking. For now, at least, I'm not too enamored with the thought process. And who knows how long this construction will take? I suspect I may not see its completion in my lifetime, and I plan on being here for a least another decade or two.

There's probably a five-mile stretch between the two Center Street bridge constructions. It just strikes me as a little odd that both these projects would be going on at the same time while tying knots at both ends of town.

But wait, there's more. Remember Fifth Avenue? It's usually a significant artery in town anyway. And now, with the bridge construction over Business I-85, it's a major detour route into and out of Lexington.

Or rather, it was. On Monday, they start resurfacing Fifth Avenue, from Business I-85 to Main Street.

Brilliant, right?

Oh, wait. Shorty after that, they'll be resurfacing Main Street.

Making a left-hand turn at the Square. Be careful.

And, of course, Main Street intersects Center Street at the Square, where you can now make left-hand turns for the first time — in what, ever? Or at least for the first time in most of our memories.

Some folks are excited about this development, others not so much. I'm approaching all of this cautiously and with some reservations. These left turns are still an experiment being conducted by NCDOT to test its feasibility (All of these simultaneous ongoing projects are NCDOT efforts, by the way). As it stands right now, there is no dedicated left-turn lane, and no left-turn arrows on the stoplights. I think there's already been at least one accident there. In an era that features way too many roadway distractions, not the least of which is texting while driving, messing with left-hand turns at the Square is like messing with Satan — who apparently is working for NCDOT.

Motorcycle mama: Who knew?

More than a week after the camera shutter clicked, I'm still trying to make some sense of this picture:

My wife begins her career as a leader of the pack. Who knew?

Holy smokes. I took the shot. You'd think I'd know something about it.

And yet, I'm completely in the dark.

This is my wife, Kim. She's sitting astride a Harley-Davidson, a huge smile creasing her face.

I mean, we've been married for 32 years and we've done a lot of interesting things together, not the least of which is cruising Alaska's Prince William Sound in a catamaran. We've eaten splendid seafood dinners all along the Atlantic coast from Camden, Maine, to Savannah, Georgia. We've hiked in the mountains and relaxed in historic 200-year-old inns.

Not once has a Harley-Davidson come into play.

Maybe that's why she's smiling so broadly now. I don't know.

Okay, okay. Full disclosure: Kim works part time for the financial consultant firm of Edward Jones, and her office was planning to create new birthday cards to give to their clients. This year, the theme was motorcycles.

So on the day of the photo shoot, and a little unsure of how to get there, Kim asked me to drive her to Tilley Harley-Davidson in Salisbury, where she was to meet her colleagues Kendra Smith, Megan Lane and Steve Jackson. I thought my duties would begin and end as chauffeur, but shortly after we arrived, I was handed a small, digital camera.

"Here, will you take the pictures?" I was asked.

Hmmm.

So I gradually put myself in a frame of mind to do this. While I was psyching myself up for this job, Kim and her colleagues were being accessorized by one of Tilley's female attendants. When it came to Kim's turn, the clerk asked Kim if she preferred to wear "fabric or leath..."

"Leather," I said, perhaps a little too quickly and a little too loudly. The clerk nodded her approval, a smile creasing her face. Why is everybody smiling?

Thankfully, nobody mentioned tattoos or body piercings.

I conjured up everything I knew about taking pictures, especially anything I might have learned while taking pictures as a sports writer for The Dispatch. It wasn't much. We took some shots inside, but just as I feared, it was a little too dark and the flash was a little too weak. I didn't have light reflecting umbrellas, light meters or even a decent camera. So we went outside to the parking lot.

I tried to keep the sun behind me. I asked for a three-step ladder to give me some elevation. I kept looking at the background to make sure nothing inappropriate was lurking there. I never asked my models to say "Cheese." I just said, "Okay, look at me," or "Here we go," and started clicking away.

We were done in less than an hour, and I guess so was Kim's career as a Harley-Davidson fashion model as well as my career as a commercial photographer.

But we'll always have the pictures.

Here is a finished portrait. Did we capture the essence of speed and danger?

Easter bunny tales

Believe me when I tell you that I was shocked — shocked, I tell you — when my wife, Kim, told me yesterday that when she and her brother were young children, the Easter bunny never came to their house.

"What?" I cried. "No Easter bunny?"

I couldn't imagine.

Back in my day (I actually love to say that now), the Easter bunny faithfully visited our house each Easter. He didn't leave colored eggs in the yard for us to find, but he did leave an Easter basket for each of the three sons brimming with goodies, including a hollow chocolate replica of himself planted in a bed of fake green tinsel-like grass (Astroturf before there was Astroturf, I guess), surrounded by handfuls of Hershey kisses, jelly beans, a couple of Peeps or two and a colored hard-boiled egg.

A blatant sugar grab if ever there was one.

Easter, of course, was never like Christmas. It was clearly an understated event. It wasn't something that we'd get up early for. In fact, we were allowed one or two pre-breakfast samples of chocolate kisses or jelly beans, then breakfast itself, before attending church.

Afterwards, it was on to one of the two sets of competing grandparents for an Easter meal, which usually included ham, sweet potatoes, creamed potatoes, a green vegetable and, perhaps in recognition of the Easter delivery system, sliced carrots. For some reason, I remember dessert always being lemon meringue pie. C'mon. We were Moravians. Where were the sugar cakes?

Grandma Kessler, baker extraordinaire, provided us with zip. Nada. What the...? I guess maybe she was still in recovery from her Christmas overloads.

In truth — or at least for me — the Easter bunny never quite gained the same traction that Santa Claus did. Consequently, he soon vanished down the rabbit hole of disbelief long before the jolly old elf poofed in the chimney. Magic rabbits. Yeah, right.

Over the years — and especially since moving to North Carolina and within a half-hour of Old Salem — Easter took on what I feel like are its proper dimensions for me. Every few years we'd go to the celebrated and emotional sunrise service to become revitalized, restored and renovated once again. It's a good feeling.

Then it's back home for NCAA tournament, baseball's Opening Day and — surreptitiously, at least — another sugar grab. Some things never change.

A Hall of Fame coaching decision

For a little while there, I wondered why I was even covering the game.

After all, North Davidson's softball team is a perennial 4-A state powerhouse while R.J. Reynolds can barely scrape together enough talent to take the game beyond the sandlot level.

Even before the game started, it was evident that North was going to win, and no doubt by the 10-run mercy rule which can end a game after five innings. That's why it's called the mercy rule — mercy for all of us from one-sided debacles. Some games are just like that because of the mismatches in talent, and this was going to be one of them.

So by the third inning, with North already up 5-0 and threatening to score more, North right fielder Mackenzie Hauser reached second on a two-base error. And it was here that coach Mike Lambros replaced Hauser — usually North's front-line pitcher — with courtesy runner Felicia Hamby.

I need to tread lightly here. Hamby, an irrepressible senior who stands in at all of four-foot-nothing, is a special needs student at North, where she is enrolled in the occupational course of study curriculum. She served as a team equipment manager several years ago, but she wanted more than that — she wanted to play.

So last year, she asked Lambros if she could be on the team as a player. He told her yes, but under the condition that she wear a batting helmet with a face guard anytime she stepped on the field. Several parents quickly came up with a uniform for her and she proudly wears the "00" numbers on her back. She was on the team, which in itself is a wonderful gesture by Lambros, who has more than 750 career victories (making him the winningest softball coach in North Carolina High School Athletic Association history), a 4-A state title and enshrinement in at least two halls of fame (including induction in the Davidson County Sports Hall of Fame last October).

Against Reynolds on Wednesday, Hamby got as far as third base, but was forced out at home moments later on an infield grounder. I think more than a few people wanted to see her score a run. She still made sure that she touched home plate, though, before heading back to the dugout. It was, I thought, a nice touch. A really nice touch.

But Hamby wasn't done. She'd already made one appearance this year as a defensive replacement in left field against Mt. Tabor. Now, in the top of the fourth inning, she was in right field, wearing her helmet, replacing Hauser.

She didn't get any chances in the field, though, because pitchers Whitney McBride and Blakely Thrower were combining on a one-hitter. Nobody was getting many chances.

In the bottom of the fourth Hamby finally came up for her first ever plate appearance. Through a quirk of substitution, she found herself as North's clean-up hitter batting in the No. 4 slot. She worked a full count against Reynolds' pitcher Elizabeth Meinberg before taking a called third strike. That was that, I thought. Hamby received a nice ovation for her effort from the small North crowd that showed up on this cold, blustery day. I wish there was a mercy rule for cold weather.

But Hamby still wasn't done.

Because North was in the midst of a seven-run uprising that ultimately sent 13 batters to the plate, she had yet another opportunity against Meinberg later in the inning. This time the bases were loaded. Once again she worked a full count, standing perfectly still as each pitch was delivered, never taking the bat off her shoulder, never altering her stance.

Then came Meinberg's deciding sixth pitch against Hamby's smallish strike zone — you sensed that fans were actually holding their breath. And then — ball four. Take your base.

The implications were enormous. Suddenly, Hamby had reached base on her own, and not as a courtesy runner. Plus, she had forced in a run in North's eventual 13-0 victory. She earned an RBI. And not just any RBI. A varsity RBI.

She was a true player. I hope she earns a varsity letter for this.

After the game, after my on-the-record postgame interview with Lambros, I went off the record.

"Mike," I said, "In 35 years of covering sports in Davidson County, I've never seen a special needs kid play in a varsity game. That was amazing. This is why you're a hall of fame coach."

I think I probably embarrassed him.

It's not the first time Lambros has done something like this. Two seasons ago, one of his assistant coaches, Jeff Pace, was suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease. Lambros let him continue to coach until Pace — who died in December at the age of 45 —just couldn't do it anymore.

If you want to find where Lambros keeps his compassion, it's right there on his sleeve. Next to his heart.

As the players filtered back to the gym, Hamby received the well wishes of several North fans heading back to their cars. "Good job, Felicia. Good job," they told her, and she smiled back at them broadly.

I thought about all of this as I walked back to my own car. This was only a game, after all, and a lopsided one at that. And yet, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had just seen something resembling dignity, decency and self-worth.

All of this at a softball game. Imagine that.

Double fantasy

There's a YouTube video currently going around that was picked up by the major media news outlets this past week showing a high school kid asking Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition cover girl Kate Upton if she would be his prom date (see here).

Ha ha ha, I laughed to myself. Yeah, right. Good luck, kid. Until this got me to thinking about my own fantasies.

Back in my younger days, when I was in my 50s, I had severe crushes on country music stars Patty Loveless and Martina McBride.

My fantasies involved being their love interest in their music videos.

For Patty, I was the guy wooing her on the steps of some joint in New Orleans in "Hurt Me Bad (In a Real Good Way)."

For Martina, I replaced her husband at the end of "My Baby Loves Me." Martina, with her incredibly blue eyes, gives us a particularly pouty — or is it a come hither? — look near the end of the video.

Sigh. Patty and Martina. My double fantasy.

It never occurred to me to ask them out on dates. I'm not sure how I could have gotten my wife's permission for such a project anyway.

The best I could ever do was go to their concerts. We've seen each artist at least three times each during the past couple of decades and I'll have to be satisfied with that, I guess.

Kim and me with Patty Loveless in another lifetime.

I remember one Patty Loveless concert in particular at the Alabama Theater in North Myrtle Beach. Somehow I was able to score front row center seats. I also had plans to meet a female Internet friend (we'd met on a Patty Loveless chat site) at the concert. We'd never physically met before and we had no clue what each other looked like, but I told her where I was sitting. Front row center is not hard to find. A few minutes before the concert started, this drop-dead gorgeous woman appeared before me and asked if I was Bruce.

"Wanda?" I stuttered.

"Yes," she said and gave me a big unexpected hug. My wife could only look on incredulously, even though she knew I was going to meet a woman there. We just figured the odds were that she'd likely be matronish, not swimsuit modelish. I had somehow suddenly acquired the power to summon beautiful women at will, and total strangers at that. Where was this power when I really needed it back when I was in high school?

Apparently this magic worked with Patty, too, if only briefly. One of the first songs in her lineup was "I'm That Kind of Girl," a cute country rocker and I was singing along with her. You have to remember that while she is on the stage, our seats are probably less than 10 feet away.

"I'm That Kind of Girl" is not usually a song that many men sing along to, but I was happily croaking out the tune when Patty and I somehow made eye contact. I smiled sheepishly because I was singing this male-inappropriate song, and Patty — I'm sure understanding the absurdity of the moment — smiled back at me.

I know she was smiling at me because Kim instantly asked me, "What did you do?" as if I was signaling Patty in some sort of secret code or something.

This was probably a hard night for Kim, now that I think about it.

I wish I could remember this moment, but I was in a semiconscious state.

My Martina moment came at the same theater, maybe a year or so later. This was relatively early in Martina's career. She was a rising star and we had post concert backstage access as a result of being fan club members. So after the show we lined up with other fan club folks and waited our turn.

The line bent around a corner and Kim stepped out to take a peek.

"Bruce, she's beautiful," said Kim. That did it. I turned to mush. When it came to our turn to pose for the camera with Martina, I was trying desperately to think of something clever to say. I'm pretty sure I was semiconscious. I put my arm around her back, like we were related or something. Then I think I scolded her for filming the "Wild Angels" video on top of a skyscraper in New York City. "Don't ever do that again," I said.

Smooth. Sometimes you've got it, sometimes you don't.

I've pretty much lost my puppy love for these women. Now my double fantasy involves them as caregivers handing me my dose of Lipitor and beta blockers.