Fantasy meet Reality ... Reality meet Fantasy

"The athletes love the rockers and the rockers love the athletes, but the photographers always get the pretty girls."

    -- Terry Lyons

A Blog Post by TERRY LYONS

The Big League Dream

Sometimes the real life experience is beyond your wildest dream and telling the story just doesn't do it justice. On those ocassions, reality takes such an amazing turn that -- the next day -- you actually ask yourself, 'Did you just live through the experience of a lifetime or was it just a wonderful dream?'

I love to dream. Luckily, I rarely have a bad dream. In fact, as of this writing, I can't even recall a bad dream even if I reach deep into my memory. That's a fortunate son, if there ever was one. Sometimes, I can say with all humility, my life is a dream come true.

When I was little, I dreamt of traveling the world. While the other kids described their "dream home" being a Cape or Ranch on Long Island or a Colonial on the North Shore, I dreamt of having an apartment in New York City, not too far from Madison Square Garden. I dreamt, like all kids do, of being a pro ball player but just when reality set in on that dream, I was introduced, via the "Silver Screen",  to Walter Matheau in his role as "Oscar Madison" in the great film, The Odd Couple.

I couldn't believe Oscar made a living as a sports writer, covering the Mets. And, even though I regularly read the newspapers as a kid (Newsday and The Long Island Press), somehow, I hadn't put two and two together to realize the newspaper showed up everyday because of the hundreds of people who worked hard, travelled, reported, typed, dictated, took photos, developed photos, edited and set copy, drove trucks and rode bikes to deliver the papers. So, while the other kids held onto their dreams to be Julius "Dr. J" Erving, Walt Frazier, Willie Mays, Tom Seaver, Willis Reed or Bill Bradley, I wanted to be Oscar Madison. 

Growing up on Long Island in the 60s and 70s, as my bedroom floor turned pretty messy, sometimes, my Mom and Dad weren't too thrilled with the whole "Oscar" thing. Could you blame them?

But life takes it twists and turns. I can remember attending Communion Breakfasts (Mets catcher Jerry Grote was the featured guest) and business functions at the JFK Hilton (Ollie Taylor of the Nets the featured speaker) and I remember my Dad encouraging me to have the confidence to walk up, introduce myself politely to the star athlete and ask for an autograph. Little did I know there were hard working public relations people behind the scenes at those functions, afterward placing the photos in the Pennysavers and the local community newspapers in an attempt to sell just a few more $6 full price or $3.25 youth tickets to a game at the old Island Garden in Hempstead or at Shea Stadium, or the jewel of the Isle, the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, built for the Nets and expansion New York Islanders and where we enjoyed the first game ever, an epic battle against the Nets and the Pittsburgh Condors on February 11, 1972.

So, even though I had more of a "Felix Unger" personality, I was hooked. I wanted to be a sports writer. When I enrolled at Holy Trinity High School, one of the first orders of business as a freshman was to sheepishly get up the nerve to ask Mrs. Peggy Lockwood if I could join the student newspaper, The Trinity Triangle.  Well, as they say, the rest is history. As many know, I took the slight twist and turn in my road while at St. John's University, under the tutelage of Mr. Bernie Beglane, one-time LI Press beat writer, lifelong newspaperman and then the recently named Dean of the Athletic Administration program at St. J.  It was Dean Beglane, Bernie to all of us, who knew Matt Winick of the NBA who introduced me to the world of pro basketball as the league office's "first" intern in 1980-81. 

My first day was December 20, 1980. So, say it again! The rest is really history!

With that backdrop, and a passport that had been stamped only in Germany and on a Caribbean Island or two as the son of a Pan Am executive, I ventured off on a full-scale "Worldwide Tour" with a basketball tucked under my arm, a typewriter/then/laptop stowed in my briefcase, and armed with a pretty damn good budget allowance and a blank canvas on which to scribble the letters "NBA" on anything that made common sense, we gradually built awareness, appreciation and fan interest in the World's Greatest Athletes.

When I decided to leave 26 years later, I was asked for a quote to sum it up, and without any hesitation, I quickly typed out:

“Working with the NBA to grow interest in the sport of basketball worldwide has been a 26-year dream come true,” I wrote. “I’ve embraced the endless opportunities at the league and have enjoyed every challenge. For that honor and privilege, I would like to thank David Stern and everyone at the NBA and our teams, including our tremendous players, who truly are the world’s greatest athletes.” 

Now, I'm writing this blog post to open a little window and glimpse into my past but, really, to illustrate another point.

DT & TL at the HoB

In 1979, a child was born in Jacksonville, Florida. At age nine, he bought his first guitar and by age 11, he was performing miracles with that instrument.  He grew up in a world filled with music, as he was the nephew of Claude Hudson "Butch" Trucks, the drummer and co-founder of the Allman Brothers band.  Needless to say, Derek was exposed to some pretty serious music throughout his childhood, but the Allman Brothers band was going through some pretty serious turmoil from 1971 (death of Duane Allman until 1999-2000 when they forced Dickey Betts to withdraw from the band and figured out the differences to allow Warren Haynes to co-exist with a fulfilling part-time Gov't Mule assignment. The result - in 2001 - was a new Allman Brothers Band which included Haynes, Othiel Burbridge (bass) and Derek Trucks on the slide guitar.

Now, in no shape or form am I comparing anything I did to what Derek Trucks has done.  God no. Not even close, so please don't get me wrong.

So, where am I going with this blog post?  Why do I weave a few items into the upper half of my blogs or columns to make you sift through them to get to the point?

That's what makes me different, I guess.  I like to weave in some history or some perspective before I get to my point.

And that is?

There was a kid, born in Jacksonville, who grew up without a guitar in his hands.  He grew to the ripe old age of nine before he bought his first guitar.  That child had dreams and a family history. Unbeknownst to him at that time, he had a grand-uncle, Virgil Trucks, who was a big league pitcher. Virgil "Fire" Trucks could throw a ball as hard as anyone in the land, and he did so before and after World War II.  In fact, he did it so well in 1938 that his 448 strikeouts might be a record that will never be approached, never mind broken.

Fire Trucks enjoyed a visit from his grand nephew one day.  The grand nephew brought his wife and baby boy, Virgil's great grand nephew Charlie - named after Charlie Parker - and they talked baseball. 

For that youngster, the dream of being a big league baseball player was overtaken by a desire to play the guitar. As he learned to play the guitar, he fast-became one of the most talented 100 people to ever play. As he grew to the ripe age of 20, he's amongst the Top 10 of all-time, and some believe he is at the very top of that list.  The raw talent brought Derek Trucks to his profession, right to his destiny as a guitarist and a song writer. Through that profession he met his wife, Susan, a talented songwriter herself and one who owns an amazing voice which can only be compared to that of Bonnie Raitt. Susan, an accomplished guitarist herself, seems to be ever-improving as a musician.  "Osmosis," said her husband to me after a show at the Boston House of Blues not long ago.

The most delightful aspect of their story is how wonderful both Derek and Susan are to all they come in contact with in this crazy world of sports, music and entertainment in which we all make a living, pay our bills as we put a nice roof over our heads. They are both so damn down-to-earth, it's truly inspiring. Derek is a the best guitarist in the world. I'm a behind-the-scenes guy in sports and entertainment. We both met our brides and have a family because of it, very directly because of it all.

I guess we're both pretty fortunate.

Fortunate sons. Fortunate husbands. Fortunate nephews, fortunate son-in-laws, and fortunate grand nephews.

And, the only comparison I'll draw is this.

We're both very glad we didn't become big league ball players.

***

Please read this article written by Boston Globe great Peter Gammons, now a contributor for MLB Advance Media on mlb.com and a frequent commentator and studio host for the New England Sports Network (NESN).

It was written in 2010:

Gammons: Music connects Trucks family

Guitarist Derek Trucks performs in concert with the Allman Brothers

Virgil Trucks had just turned 91 two years ago when this boyish kid who looked as if he were 20 showed up at his door. The kid introduced himself as Derek Trucks, Virgil's nephew's son, and they spent the day tying together the frayed generations of Trucks, of baseball stories Derek loved hearing, and music that Virgil says he didn't fully understand.

For years, Derek had Virgil "Fire" Trucks' baseball card on the back of his guitar, with the Allman Brothers or The Derek Trucks Band, with his wife Susan Tedeschi, playing lead on the Eric Clapton tour, backing Buddy Guy. That he told Virgil, and that Derek's uncle Butch, who has been the Allman's drummer since they formed in 1969, has often had another baseball card on his drums. "I haven't listened to the Allman Brothers too much," says Virgil. "They don't play them much on the Birmingham station."

When Virgil was told that Derek has a 1952 Tiger uniform with Virgil's 23 hanging in a trophy case, he said, "maybe I should start listening to the Allmans a little more."

Derek was more interested in Virgil and never said much about his own biography, how he was the youngest of the Rolling Stone magazine's Top 100 Guitarists of all time, published in 2003,  and how the Wall Street Journal called him the "most awe-inspiring slide guitar players" ever, and how peers have put him in the class of the half-dozen guitarists who ever lived. He proudly got a copy of Virgil's book, and listened to stories about the two no-hitters he threw in 1952 for the Tigers and how he went right from World War II to the World Series, about the day he matched zeroes against Satchel Paige in a game the Hall of Famer won in the 12th.

Virgil says he has never met Butch, but he was thrilled to "meet so fine a young man as Derek. I don't know where the musical part of the family came from, but I'm proud of him."

He was told that when Derek, Susan and their son Charlie went to a Red Sox Spring Training game last March, Susan -- whose family have had season tickets at Fenway Park, where Susan has many times sung the National Anthem -- sat next to Johnny Pesky. She introduced Derek, that he is Virgil's great-nephew. "That coot is still alive?" Pesky replied. "No one wanted to hit off that [guy] he threw so hard." Pesky failed to mention that his candor and character preserved one of those 1952 no-hitters.

Virgil Oliver Trucks was born on April 26, 1917. He won 177 Major League games from 1941 until he retired in 1958. Ted Williams once said he might have been "the hardest throwing right-hander I ever faced."

He is one of four pitchers who threw two no-nos in a single season and he finished fifth in the American league MVP race in 1953 for the White Sox (he started that season with the Browns). And back when the Tigers won the 1945 World Series, Detroit's great staff was called "TNT" -- Dizzy Trout, (MVP) Hal Newhouser and Trucks were three of the best in the game. In the mid-Seventies, Bernie Carbo asked Pesky "did they have anyone who threw hard when you played?"

"You couldn't have hit a fair ball off [Bob] Feller, Trout or Trucks," Pesky shot back.

Go back to the beginning. Andalusia of the Alabama-Florida League. 1938. Including the playoffs struck out 448 batters.

Ye, 448. That, Sweet Melissa, is the most strikeouts ever recorded in an organized professional baseball season.

And for the full season, he was 25-6, with a 1.25 ERA and two no-hitters.

After a strong 1939 split between Alexandria and Beaumont, in 1940 he pitched for Beaumont in the Texas League and threw another no-hitter, in 1941 threw another no-no for Buffalo in the International League and by the time he made his debut on Sept. 27, 1941, he had four Minor League no-hitters on his resume.

Somewhere along the way, they tried to figure out how hard he threw. "They found an old Army gun," says Trucks. "It read 105 miles an hour."

Just 71 days after his Major League debut, Pearl Harbor was hit, and by the end of the 1943 season, Trucks enlisted. When the war in Europe ended in April 1945, Trucks was sent to a base in Norman, Okla., to await his discharge papers. Fortunately, there was a former Minor League catcher on the base, so the two would work out, run and throw every day. Problem is, the papers didn't come.

Finally, in September, he pushed his case, got the papers and got released a week before the end of the season. The Tigers were in a pennant race, so Trucks got his release and called the Tigers. "They were ending the season in St. Louis the coming weekend," Trucks recalls. "So I got a bus to Oklahoma City, took a train to St. Louis and arrived in time for the final series."

The final day of the season was Sunday. If the Tigers won, they clinched the pennant. If they lost, they had to take a train back to Detroit to play a one game playoff with Washington. To Trucks' surprise, manager Steve O'Neill told him he was starting that final game. After two years off and six months in Norman, Okla., Virgil "Fire" Trucks was asked to start the game to get the Tigers to the World Series.

So much for the notion that pitchers need a seven-week Spring Training.

Trucks gave the Tigers 5 1/3 innings, allowing one run and leaving with a big lead. Unfortunately, Newhouser came in and blew the lead, but Hank Greenberg hit a grand slam in the eighth inning and the Tigers were in the World Series. In the first live game action in two years, Virgil Trucks had his quality start.

As Trucks remembers, trains were hard to come by "because they were transporting the troops home, so for the only time in World Series history, we agreed to play the first three games in Detroit and the last four in Chicago against the Cubs." Trucks pitched a complete-game, 4-1 victory in Game Two -- his second start in two years -- and started Game Six. The Tigers won the Series, and three weeks after getting his discharge papers, Trucks had earned his first World Series ring.

In that miserable 1952, the Tigers were dreadful, Trucks went 5-19, but two of those wins were no-hitters and one was a one-hitter that could have been a third no-no. "The second one was controversial," says Virgil. "In the third or fourth inning, there was a ball hit in to short. Now, the umpire blew the call. The runner was out. But the umpire called him safe, and it was ruled a hit.
"The official scorer was John Drebinger of the New York Times, and a lot of the other writers insisted it was an error because Johnny Pesky had problems getting the ball out of his glove. Around the seventh inning, Drebinger called Pesky in the dugout, and Johnny told him, 'I should have made the play. It was an error.' One of the finest people I've ever known.

"I should have had the third no-hitter, though. The Washington leadoff hitter never swung the bat. He always looked to walk. So I started off the first inning with a fastball down the middle, and the guy we called 'The Walking Man' swung snd hit a single." Trucks did not allow another hit, and Eddie Yost had ruined Virgil's shot at being the only pitcher ever to throw three no-hitters in a single season.
Trucks, who was dealt to the Browns after the 1952 season, was traded to the White Sox in June 1953 and won a combined 20 games and finished fifth in the MVP balloting. He eventually became a reliever, and was in the bullpen in his last season, in 1958.

"Casey Stengel left me off the World Series roster because he said Murray Dickson knew the National League hitters," says Trucks. "Now, the National League hitters knew him and not me, but while I was pretty mad, when we beat the Braves, the Yankees gave me a World Series ring."

In 1960, Trucks got his third Series ring when he was the bullpen coach for the Pirates.

Fire Trucks worked for the Pirates, the Braves and the Tigers in different capacities, then eventually retired and moved back to Birmingham. Ted Williams made him one of two pitchers in his Hall of Fame. Two years ago, the Tigers flew him back to Detroit to honor Justin Verlander for his no-hitter.
Derek has been practicing with the Allmans for their March shows in New York. He went to Europe. He's helping Susan prepare for a Jimi Hendrix tour; he has the list of Hendrix's album collection at the time of his death. Derek is re-designing his band so that he and Susan -- one of the great R&B singers on the planet -- will be in the same band.

Next week, Derek, Susan and the kids will drive down from Jacksonville to Ft. Myers to see the Red Sox. "Baseball is in Charlie's blood, he loves it," says Derek of his oldest son Charles (for Charlie Parker) Khalil (as in Gibran) Trucks.

In the blood. Derek and Susan will meet a Red Sox rookie named Lars Anderson, who this spring told me, "I was downloading some Little Feat videos off You Tube and found two with you playing with Paul Barrere. That's gotta be better than being in the Hall of Fame."

Hear that, and you understand why he can't wait to meet Susan Tedsechi and Derek Trucks, the great nephew of the man who struck out more batters in one season than any man in organize baseball history.

Then we have to hope that the process gets sped up so that Derek Trucks goes into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and Virgil "Fire" Trucks can get to Cleveland to be there. And if he does, there's a story he can tell about a ruckus in a Cleveland hotel.

***

Peter Gammons is a columnist for MLB.com and analyst for MLB Network. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.