My Favorite Columnist and Her Baseball Career

7/4/2012

Ancient Olympia, 2004 Photo by Stratos Safioleas

We used to hang around together on the road – Stanley Cups in Montreal and the Garden, that Italian restaurant in Nagano, the shot-put in Ancient Olympia, and insane nights at Fenway and Yankee Stadium and the Kingdome.

I could be deep in thought in the press box, composing my early-edition column, when a voice would screech right behind my head: “Pop!!!” Everybody in the press box would stop what they were doing.

If we were in Boston, she would deposit a roll of Necco Wafers on my desk. She always had a stash.

My daughter Laura Vecsey was a sports columnist in Albany and Seattle and Baltimore for more than a decade. I marvelled at her big-sister insight into Junior and Alex and Pedro. One day Jim Palmer, on the air, praised her throwing arm.

Life on the road was never the same on the road after she became a political columnist in Harrisburg, Pa., keeping an eye on chicanery and obtuseness in the real world.

After she got out of the newspaper business, I realized what a good job she had been doing when I met former Gov. Ed Rendell on a live television show. His first words were, “I miss your daughter.” I bet he does.

Last month the editors at the Harrisburg Patriot-News asked her to write a personal tribute to Title IX, to go along with their impressive package on the 1972 legislation.

Laura wrote a lovely memory about being a 10-year-old who wanted to play ball, but the only way was with the local Police Athletic League boys’ hardball team.

Her entire essay can be accessed via this link:

http://blog.pennlive.com/patriotnewssports/2012/06/commentary_title_ix_legislatio.html

Laura then told how competition for women got better mostly because of Title IX. My big thrill was when my daughter made the basketball varsity as a sophomore. I was playing on Monday nights in adult recreation up at the high school, and the scoreboard contained the roster of the girls’ varsity. How cool was that, to see the family name up there.

In her essay, Laura recalls her responsibility, as the point guard, to set up the star of the team, Debbie Beckford. And if the team got off message, Mr. Beckford, in his lilting Caribbean accent, would shout: “Get the ball to Debbie!” Quite right, too. Debbie became as a Big East star for St. John’s and is now a success in business.

The lives and working careers of women have been enriched by varsity sports in the age of Title IX – including my colleague who supplied me with Necco Wafers and screeched “Pop!!!”

ugly george link

7/4/2012 07:29:07 am

No-one would have suspected that the distinguished columnist George Vecsey would resort to the Cheap Tick of keywording "ugly" and "george" just to get on ugly george's 450 million links. Tsk Tsk
BTW, my website is not 4 minors or commie pinko's!

Alan Rubin

7/5/2012 12:41:08 am

George

Nice!! A proud look into the next generation.

Ed martin link

7/6/2012 05:17:52 am

Loved reading Laura's essay, reminds me of her Dad, (of course I don't know her Mom). Working on The Education of All Handicapped Children Act at that time we cheered Title Nine and anti-discrimination provisions in the Vocational Rehab. Act-all part of the most historical change in the nation following the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, since the Declaration and the Emancipation.

Our evolution as a society continues but in steps forward and backward. Cheers for Laura and for people of good will like you.

Frank Barning

7/6/2012 05:23:59 am

The first time I saw Laura you were proudly pushing her across the Hofstra campus in a baby carriage. Happy birthday a couple of days late.

George Vecsey

7/6/2012 10:58:56 am

Frank: yeah, we lived near campus. My daughter-the-lawyer went to the nursery school there. Great memories. Best, G

Laura Vecsey

7/6/2012 10:09:05 am

Pop!!!

Thanks for the wonderful words. We had so much fun !!

George Vecsey

7/6/2012 11:06:10 am

Remember the night we were driving from Fenway to Long Island? We stopped in that good burrito place -- and caught the great Cub collapse on the tube.
Pop

Lauravecsey

7/6/2012 12:08:53 pm

Midnight flight for
Seattle to NY JetBlue. Track suit on certain media member. Lou Piniella on a tear.

George Vecsey

7/6/2012 03:02:48 pm

Right after the bomb in Atlanta in 96, Team Times was out in force.. Dave Anderson said to me, "I just saw your daughter. She was dictating from a pay phone."

buy Guild Wars 2 Gold link

8/20/2012 10:58:48 pm

Remember the night we were driving from Fenway to Long Island? We stopped in that good burrito place -- and caught the great Cub collapse on the tube.
Pop

cheap seo company link

1/29/2013 03:40:52 am

I have been teaching a class and we are looking at this subject in the next week. I will be directing my student to look at your post for good information.

http://health.reviewship.com/customized-fat-loss-review/ link

10/28/2013 07:09:02 pm

Life on the road was never the same on the road after she became a political columnist in Harrisburg.

does phen375 work link

9/30/2014 10:38:45 am

Something else you're able to do is to cook nutritious servings for them so you simply actually eat foodstuff that is healthy for the entire body.

IMPROVISE YOUR TRAINING DEVICES

Work out apparatus are considered overpriced just in case it is impossible afford these you may see substitutes from your very own house.

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

My Favorite Columnist and Her Baseball Career

Categories

Buy the Book