A Good Joe

One of my favorite writers is a guy raised in Cleveland, who grew up idolizing our very own Duane Kuiper.  Joe Posnanski has covered the Kansas City Royals for 14 years. He writes for Sports Illustrated. He is loved by athletes, other media guys and fans alike. I think he is one of those guys that when he was told "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it". ..he didn't. 

We tend to think of that particular cliche as trite, false and impractical; something practiced only by monks and the Little Sisters of the Poor.  We certainly don't expect  to find someone with a compassionate disposition to be a featured writer for Sports Illustrated. Perhaps the following excerpt from his blog of June 6, 2011 will tell you more about him than any superlatives I can dish out.

What I love about Joe, is that he remembers to remember all the good guys...even when everybody else has forgotten them. Maybe thats why I like him so much. In his June 6 blog he writes about another good guy, Steve Palermo. His writing lets me know that its okay to keep the memories of really old warriors alive. And to write nice things about people; even when they have a dark side. He reminds us of our humanity in almost every paragraph. He is leaving Kansas City. It is hard, even when there are new adventures and wonderful people waiting for him in North Carolina.  Moving is only hard for the sentimental and tradition-bound I think. I've never met Joe, but he is one of those guys I would like to meet before I check out  and try to score tickets for Pete and the Pearly Gates. He's just one of those guys you hope nothing bad ever happens to. If you've ever had a guileless kid brother than you'll know what I'm talking about.  Enough.

On to Joe:
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Just talked to Steve Palermo. Stevie is one of my favorite people in the world -- someone I have spent many hours talking with at ballgames. You undoubtedly know his story. He was a big league umpire -- and one of the best in the business. To this day, people still talk in hushed tones about Steve Palermo's ability to call balls and strikes. He has a million great stories, my favorite being that he was the left field umpire who made the unnecessary but official call that Bucky Dent's home run was fair. Well, Palermo's father Vincent lived and died with the Red Sox and one day he starts screaming at Stevie for calling that home run fair.

"Dad," Steve said. "It was fair by like 30 feet."

To which Vincent Palermo said: "What, you couldn't have called it foul?"

One day in Dallas, Steve Palermo was in a restaurant with some friends after a game, and the bartender yelled that two women were being mugged outside. Steve and others rushed outside to help. In the horrible flurry, Stevie was shot in the back. The bullet hit his spinal cord. He was instantly paralyzed. He was told he would never walk again. He has walked.

I've written about Steve many times. The story I stands out is one I wrote one story a few years ago about how life goes on after the movie fades to black. Steve Palermo's movie faded to black the day he walked when doctors had said he never would. That was the moment of sweeping music and happily ever afters for our hero. But to me Steve's heroics come in living day-to-day, in trying to help people who have been paralyzed, in working with Major League Baseball to guide the sport he loves. It isn't easy. He has a hard time getting around. He feels a lot of pain. He has had to face the imaginary life he never got to live if that awful night in Dallas had never happened.

And he stays positive. He pushes forward. He tries.

I think often about something he told me for that story I wrote -- I look it up and realize that I wrote it more than 10 years ago. Steve was talking about how people constantly ask him if he regrets going out to help the two women in trouble, if some small part of him wishes that he had stayed in his seat in that moment of danger. And what he said haunts me and inspires me still ...

He said: "If I say no, I wouldn't do that again, then what does that mean? It means I made a mistake. I can't admit it was a mistake. ... I went to help people in trouble. How can that be a mistake?"