Black History Month 2025 - February 14 - J.R. Richard

This year, as a 60-turning-61 white man, I am going to highlight African Americans that have had some kind of influence in my life. Some are famous, some are friends, and others are just people. #blackhistorymonth

February 14th - J.R. Richard

The hosts for the podcast “This Week in Baseball History” tell a story. They were at a memorabilia show with another baseball writer. Sitting at one of the tables was a giant of a man, sighing autographs. The other writer walked up to the man and said, 

“You are J.R. Richard. You were the baddest that ever was.”

Richard stood up, all 6’ 8” of him, took the writer’s hand with his giant one, shook the writer’s hand without crushing it, and simply said, “Yes.”

He was. There was nobody who threw harder than J.R. before late nineties, except maybe Steve Dalkowski, the famous minor leaguer who never really put it together. Nolan Ryan joined the Astros in 1980, and he was not the hardest thrower on the team; Richard was. Mike Schmidt, probably the most feared contemporary slugger, hit .171/.239/.195 against him, with 7 hits, one of them a double, zero home runs, and 16 strikeouts.

In his debut in 1971, striking out 15 San Francisco Giants, walking 3, in a complete-game shutout. Mays struck out 3 times at the age of 21. But he was pretty wild when he was younger, and spent several seasons going back and forth between the majors and the minors.

In 1976, he finally put it all together, and became one of the best pitchers in the National League. He struck out 313 batters in 1979.

The first half of 1980 was a story of pure dominance; Richard was simply great. He started the All-Star game, and pitched 2 innings, with runners on base both of them. But he was clocked by the ABC radar gun at 101 mph on a pitch.

Early in July, he started complaining of a dead arm.and nausea. Many in the media started quoting baseball sources as saying he was “malingering”. I remember a report in the local papers that implied that he was hanging around with a group of local black athletes involved in cocaine. The negative press and rumors were positively disgusting.

On July 30, at the Astrodome, starting to throw again after his DL stint, Richard collapsed on the field. He had had a stroke, and doctors removed a life-threatening blood clot in his neck. He never pitched again in the major leagues.

After a series of bad investments and relationships, Richard ended up homeless. He found help with a local minister, and started working in construction and as a minister. He did charitable works the rest of his life.

He died of complications of Covid in 2021.

I just loved watching him pitch on TV, or listening to the games on the radio. My favorite was a game against the Reds, where he pitched 12 innings for the win, uncorking a 92 MPH slider in the 10th or 11th inning, something that just did not happen before the modern pitching era. I also loved that he beat the Dodgers 15 times in 24 games. He also hit 10 home runs in his career. 

I am quite convinced that the 1980 Astros, who were 6 outs away from their first pennant, would have won the World Series if Richard had not been struck down in the middle of the season.

Richard is my favorite all-time player. I am still furious at the treatment he got at the hands of the media, with leaks from the Astros coaching staff and front office. I am glad he found his path back to redemption later in life.

Black History Month 2025 - February 13th - Nancy

This year, as a 60-turning-61 white man, I am going to highlight African Americans that have had some kind of influence in my life. Some are famous, some are friends, and others are just people. #blackhistorymonth

February 13th - Nancy

When I was in my 2nd year at Rice, this very interesting woman (I’ll call her "Nancy”) joined the Marching Owl Band. She was smart, funny, and gregarious. She made the MOB even more fun than it already was.

I did not get to know her particularly well most of the rest of my time at Rice. She was two years behind me. The MOB was huge, and she was in a different section. She was not a computer science major. She was in a different residential college.

My last fall at Rice was the last semester where the drinking age in Texas was 19; it would go up to 21 that December. Wiess College, one of the residential colleges, threw a party every year called Night of Decadence. It was deliberately provocative, pushing the boundaries of how far a party could go with booze and nudity and taste every year. It was finally shut down in 2023 after several students were hospitalized for alcohol-related problems. But 1987 was the last year that 19 and 20 year olds could legally go and get absolutely blasted, and they loudly advertised that fact.

I went to my one and only NOD that year. I lived off-campus and had had a job interview that afternoon, so I will still in my suit. I decided I would go as a Decadent Yuppie, in the Mike Douglas/Wall Street mode. At the party, I was standing and talking to two friends, when I felt somebody press up against my back and a hand feeling my crotch. My friends got thoroughly bemused looks on their faces, and I said, “Would you excuse me?”.

I turned around, and Nancy said “Hi!”. She was really really really drunk. She kept up what she had been doing with her hands. I said, “Hey there! How are you?”.

“Oh, I’m better now!” There was a rather large African-American man watching our exchange. I asked her if there were any problems with her date in a low-enough voice for nobody else to overhear. She said, “No! He’s great!”. I told her that she should then go be with him instead. She said, “Oh, you are no fun! But you are right. I’ll see you later!” And she stumbled over to the man, and disappeared into the crowd.

I enjoyed watching the party, and I really enjoyed the band, The Dishes, who played the party every year.

The following Monday, I called Nancy in her dorm room and asked if she would like to meet and talk about what had happened. I went by her room that afternoon, but first I ran into her roommate. She told me that Nancy’s date had ditched her at the party, and was not happy with her behavior. Her roommate then walked her back to the dorm, helping her out as she threw up several times.

Nancy answered her door, and immediately said, “I am so sorry! Please come in.”

She told me that she had been drunk 2-3 times before the party, and she did not know her own limits, and went off the deep end. She was obviously quite embarrassed. I assured her that she had nothing to be embarrassed about with me. She told me that it was the second time she had been out with that fellow, and well, he wasn’t going to ask her again.

She then said, “Listen, I do not know what to make of my behavior with you. I am attracted to you, but I don’t see a situation in my life now where we could have any kind of relationship.”

I told her, “Well, I was flattered, but I’m afraid I don’t share the attraction. So I am relieved that you weren’t expecting to go any further with this.”

She visibly relaxed, and said, “Oh, thank you. I think you understand that there are social and peer-pressure issues with my dating a non-black man. I feel ashamed that this inhibits me, but it sounds like it would not have happened anyway.”

“Listen, maybe it would be worth it if we both felt that way. You do not have to be ashamed to take that stuff into account. I would have to as well.”

We then told a couple of band stories, and ended the conversation on a couple of good laughs.

After graduation, we had dinner when she visited Silicon Valley. We are connected in Linked In, and she is doing quite well with her family and career. I am glad I got to know her.

Black History Month 2025 - February 12th - Shawn

This year, as a 60-turning-61 white man, I am going to highlight African Americans that have had some kind of influence in my life. Some are famous, some are friends, and others are just people. #blackhistorymonth

February 12th - Shawn

The Lanier Stage Band was mostly black; I was one of 4 or 5 white kids, and there was one Mexican-American, and one recent Vietnamese kid whose family was one of the many who made it to Houston after the fall of Saigon.

However, one of the African-American kids was different than the others. He did not really hang out with the other kids in the band. And unlike most of the others in the band, he was in the Vanguard program, like me, and was in a couple of my academic classes.

One day early in 7th grade, I heard a big commotion, and looked over, and Shawn had another kid pinned to the ground in a wrestling hold. The teacher broke it up and sent both kids to the principal, but the scuttlebutt was that you just did not mess with Shawn. He fought hard, and was not above fighting dirty. Neither kid was suspended or anything, and nothing like that happened with Shawn around me throughout junior high and high school.

I found out on a band trip later that Shawn’s father was a wealthy successful businessman. Shawn had a really great saxophone, a sweet boombox on the bus, and was always dressed impeccably.

Shawn loved teasing me, and I really don’t take teasing well at all. One day, he had been firing rubber bands at me while I was playing, and then, as we were leaving the lunch line, he laughed at my reactions to it. I lost my cool and took a swing at him (I only ever did that twice, and I am totally ashamed of both times). He ducked, laughed, and ran as I chased him out of the band hall. Once I realized how foolish I was, I stopped. The next day, I apologized for the violence, and he apologized for launching rubber bands.

And we gradually became friends. He was a voracious reader, so we talked about books. He took up bassoon at roughly the same time I took up bass clarinet, and we should sit in concert band with our burping instruments and cut up and misbehave and have a great time.

We ended up at HSPVA together, and were in the #1 jazz band our senior year. Doc Morgan would get mixed up and call him “Syd” and me “Shawn”. One time he did that to me, and I said, “Doc, I know we both went to Lanier, and we both play sax, but Shawn in the black one.” He, Shawn, and I all laughed heartily.

I lost touch with him after high school, but I will never forget Shawn for what he once did for me. At the end of 9th grade, he came up to me and presented a paper bag to me. Inside was a “Universal Method for Saxophone” book. He had had everybody in the band sign the inside front cover, and then then wrote:

“To Syd, our honorary Soul Brother”

It was one of the greatest honors I have ever received.  

Black History Month 2025 - February 11th - Perry Kay - Original essay

 This post is the original essay I wrote for Perry Kay. I posted February 11th - Perry Kay on social media, but wanted to record this for later.

Black History Month 2025 - February 11th - Perry Kay

This year, as a 60-turning-61 white man, I am going to highlight African Americans that have had some kind of influence in my life. Some are famous, some are friends, and others are just people. #blackhistorymonth

February 11th

Perry Kay

Houston in the late 70s and early 80s was a hotbed of jazz education. Every school in the area had a jazz band, sometimes called a stage band. I went to Lanier Jr. High, and Mr. Kay started the Lanier Stage Band my first year in 7th grade.

Mr. Kay was a graduate of the North Texas State jazz program, the best jazz program in the country. He was a great sax player. While he was not the most well-spoken man, he knew his stuff, and he knew how to convey it. He put all of the kids who played trumpet, trombone, or saxophone and had been through beginning band in the stage band. He also picked the best drummers, found some piano, bass, and guitar players, and we were up and running.

The band we had in 7th grade was usually in the worst time slot at jazz festivals. We were all just learning how to do this jazz stuff. In 8th grade, we were quite a bit better, and in 9th grade, we started winning.

Mr. Kay was passionate. He was really good at demonstrating what he wanted, on any of the instruments in the band, but especially saxophone. He encouraged me when I was interested in playing bari sax in 8th grade. He allowed me to check out a bass clarinet so I could teach myself how to play well enough to make Houston All-City Orchestra on two weeks notice, and hey, look, now he had a bass clarinet player for concert band!

One day, he spent one entire class period dedicated to the blues scale. I went home and noodled around with it, and stumbled on a lick which I thought sounded amazing. He also had copied some magazine article about what it meant to be a jazz musician and improviser. It was life-changing for me, and I decided I wanted to do this for a living.

When my parents bought me a shiny new tenor sax for 9th grade, he had me play it a lot, but he still let me play bari on the tune that I made my own, Neil Hefti’s “L’il Darlin’”, from the Count Basie book. I won awards at jazz festivals for that tune. I would watch my mother smile whenever I did that gliss down to low B.

He worked with my mother to make vests for the band on an extremely limited budget.

He brought in local players to work with the band. One day, he brought in a fellow on crutches who smelled of cigarettes and "old man". It was Arnette Cobb, who had been a star in Lionel Hampton’s band, but whose career had been cut short by a serious car accident. Cobb had started playing again, and was doing clinics all over town. He would stand there leaning on his crutches just holding him up at his shoulders, tenor hanging on the strap, and just wail out the most soulful sound you ever heard.

At one point, Cobb looked at me, and said, in his rough almost-whisper, “Young man, this is your band! You are carrying them on your back. Show them how it is done. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise!”

Mr. Kay did an incredible job with that band. I still play to this day, even though I do something else for my actual living.

Black History Month 2025 - February 10th - John

This year, as a 60-turning-61 white man, I am going to highlight African Americans that have had some kind of influence in my life. Some are famous, some are friends, and others are just people. #blackhistorymonth

February 10th

John

I spent 6th grade at McGregor Music and Science Academy, a newly designated magnet school in the heart of Houston’s 3rd Ward. My class was about 60% African American.

One day during the first half, my teacher asked me help tutoring a student who was having trouble with math. So worked with John, and taught hm fractions and long division over the next few weeks.

Another day, at PE, we played basketball, and I was terrible. Truly. I had been sick most of my childhood to that point, so I had zero skills. John approached me on the way back to class, and offered to give me pointers on how to play basketball during lunch as payment for teaching him math.

He worked with me off and on the rest of the year. I was still a terrible shot, but at least I could dribble, at least with my right hand, and I could defend.

We both helped each other out with what each of us was best at. As it should be.

Black History Month 2025 - February 9th - Ken Brown

This year, as a 60-turning-61 white man, I am going to highlight African Americans that have had some kind of influence in my life. Some are famous, some are friends, and others are just people. #blackhistorymonth

February 9th - Ken Brown

I had Mr. Brown for Geometry my first year at the High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. He was in his late 30s, wiry, and in shape. He wore tight shirts that showed some chest, gold chains, and rings.

He knew his stuff; I loved the material.

I was reading a Red Book for US Coins in class one day (I collect coins), and he got my attention, and said, “What’s the favorite coin you have?”. I told him that I only had one coin, a 1900 Morgan dollar, and a 1964 Proof Set. I made a killing a few months earlier when the Hunt Brothers tried to corner the silver market, turning about $20 of coins into $200 about three weeks before the silver market crashed back to normal. He told me, “Congratulations!”.

A couple of days later, he caught my attention as I came into class. I stopped at his desk, and he opened a drawer, pulled something out of it, and tossed it on the desk. It was a 2”x2” coin wrapper with something in it. I picked it up, and looked. It was a 1909-S VDB Lincoln Penny, in Brilliant Uncirculated condition. This is one of the most famous coins in the US collection. He said, “This is MY favorite coin.” I told him, he had taste.

I did not really interact with him much after 10th grade, but it was cool that we had numismatics in common.

Black History Month 2025 - February 8th - Frank Thomas

This year, as a 60-turning-61 white man, I am going to highlight African Americans that have had some kind of influence in my life. Some are famous, some are friends, and others are just people. #blackhistorymonth

February 8th

Frank Thomas

My last year in California, and the last year I had season tickets to the Oakland Athletics, they signed 37-year old Frank Thomas on a one year contract. He was signed as designated hitter to supplement their mostly uninspiring offense and hopefully ride their good pitching back to the playoffs. I had seen him a couple of games over the years, but I got to see him on a regular basis.

What a great hitter.

He was giant, 6’5”, listed at 240 lbs in Baseball Reference. You would think he would be easy to strike out with that large a strike zone, but he lead the league in walks four times, and walked over 100 times in 10 different seasons. He only walked 81 times in 2006, as he was only in 137 games. But he hit 39 home runs in 137 games. He demolished Minnesota pitching in the A’s first playoff series win in 16 years, but alas, the Tigers completely shut him down in the ALCS.

With his super-fast swing from those huge biceps, and giant tree-trunk legs giving him even more power, he was a fearsome presence.

When not playing, he seemed gracious and gregarious, with a beaming smile, and an easy-going nature. It was easy to love having him on your team. He also made it through the nineties and early 2000s without ever being implicated in baseball’s performing-enhancing drug scandal.

I am lucky I got to experience him, and wish I could have seen him more in his peak.

Black History Month 2025 - February 7th - Michelle

This year, as a 60-turning-61 white man, I am going to highlight African Americans that have had some kind of influence in my life. Some are famous, some are friends, and others are just people. #blackhistorymonth

February 7th

Michelle

I had a good friend in the Bay Area in the early nineties. He worked in tech as a hardware tester, but I met him playing the Foothill College Lab Jazz Band, where he was playing trumpet. We ended up taking a jazz combo class together. 

He had trouble making ends meet and ended up leaving the Bay Area for New Jersey in the mid-nineties. In 1998, I got an invitation to his wedding, and he included a personal letter and asked me to bring a sax, or at least a mouthpiece or two, because he planned to have a jam session at the reception. So I made plans.

He is white like me, about my age.

1998 was a transition year for navigation. You could go on the web and get turn-by-turn directions to anywhere, but there were no cell phones that could do that, so you would print your directions out and follow them off of the paper. Satellite navigation for cars was right around the corner and in some cars, but not very many, and certainly not rental cars. So I flew into Newark and set off on the drive to central Jersey. The street signs were hard to see, and I was lost pretty much from the time I got on the road.

I drove up to this church, parked, and got out of the car. However, everybody in the parking lot was black, so I thought I was at the wrong place. I got back in the car, and drove in circles for about 15-20 minutes, and came back to the same church.

Then in hit me. Rick was marrying a black woman.

For a few minutes I just sat in the car and tried to calm down and get my breathing back to normal. I was shaken to my core. My own prejudice and assumptions betrayed me that afternoon. Once I realized my mistake and got over my embarrassment, which only I knew about anyway, I went into the church and saw Rick.

The wedding and reception were lovely. Rick and his new bride Michelle were glowing, as was Michelle’s 3-4 year old boy. He obviously adored Rick. And we did get to play a jam session that night. 

Michelle and I got maybe five minutes to talk. But I am writing this to admit my own prejudice. Sometimes we think we are so enlightened, but we get knocked down by reality.