47

Happy Birthday to me! Well, to me and everyone else celebrating today. I share this birthday with baseball's J.D. Drew, football's Mark Gastineau and Joey Galloway, comedians Richard Dawson and Dick Smothers, musician Joe Walsh, and a trio of gorgeous actresses: Bo Derek, Sean Young and Veronica Hamel. This was also Bobby Kennedy's birthday. I woke up a little over an hour ago after a pretty good night sleeping, and my 47th birthday started out about as good as I could ever hope. My wife Debbie Veasey was already awake and nearly ready to leave for work, but before she left she greeted me with a big smile, a hug and kiss, and a sincere "Happy birthday, honey!" And she had a birthday card for me too. One of those with a real nice message and signed off with her love. It really doesn't get any better than that. Now here I sit alone at my dining room table just like many other mornings. A fresh, hot cup of Wawa coffee beside me, loaded up with their irish cream, which I understand that they are discontinuing. Wawa is one of life's pleasures, the local chain store for food, cigarettes, newspapers, and other essentials of American daily living. Here at the Veasey Ranch, we buy bags of their coffee so that we enjoy the brew not just on the run, but right here at home. The irish coffee creamer product that Wawa produces at their dairy is my personal favorite add-in. It's creamy and tasty, and along with a couple of packets of Equal, helps make the perfect pick-me-up beverage in my world. I hope the rumors turn out false about the irish cream. Don't you just hate it when some store discontinues some product that you have enjoyed for a long time? So it is with me and birthday cakes. As a boy growing up in South Philly, my local corner bakery shop was a little place called Hier's Bakery at 3rd & Wolf Streets. You could live and die right there at that intersection, which was just around the corner from our little house at 2321 S. American Street. The four corners at the intersection of south 3rd Street and Wolf Street featured Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on the southeast, the Murphy-Ruffenach funeral home on the northeast, a doctor's office on the northwest, and Hier's on the southwest. Those institutions are still on those same corners today, though the actual doctor practice has changed, the funeral home gone through a merger, and the bakery ownership has also changed a number of times. When it was Hier's back in those 'Wonder Years' days for me of the late 1960's and early 1970's, they always featured a cake that became my birthday cake every year. The cake was layered with a chocolate layer on top of a yellow cake layer. Running between the two cakes was a delicious, thin strip of white cream. Surrounding the whole creation was the most incredible, full, sweet, dark-colored chocolate icing. And then at the top was another layer of that same white icing that ran through the middle. I would always take a slice and eat the yellow layer first, making sure that my fork took the thin vanilla icing layer with it. This was only the opening act though. Then I would move on to the upper chocolatey world. There was something about the interplay between this particular chocolate cake, chocolate edge icing, and white top icing that exploded in your mouth. I can taste it still this morning, even though I have not had a piece of that cake in about 25 years. At some point during the 1980's, whomever owned the old Hier's business sold out. I did go in a couple of times and inquired about the cake, but the new owners didn't seem to know what I was talking about. I never saw my birthday cake again. My guess is that the recipe is likely laying around somewhere, maybe in some drawer at the home of a former bakery owner. Maybe the recipe has been passed along, and the cake is being made today in some bakery out there that I have no idea even exists. It is one of those little things in life that was a regular feature of my childhood that is now gone. It is something that was here, is gone seemingly forever, and that I do miss. To find it again one day would be a miracle akin to a Christian explorer locating the Holy Grail itself. Well, okay maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but you get the idea. I hope that little slice of heaven from my childhood is not repeating itself here in my middle-aged adult life with the Wawa irish cream. But one thing that I have learned over these 47 years that I celebrate the anniversary of today is that things change. But as to those things large and small that we have come to welcome and enjoy in our lives, the little things that make life just a wee bit more enjoyable, they will stay with us forever, at least in our memories. I thank God for that childhood birthday cake. I thank God for Wawa irish cream. I thank God for the woman that I woke up to this morning. And I thank God for these past 47 years. Happy birthday to me!

Three Thrilling Innings

Unable to get into Citizen's Bank Park at anything close to resembling a reasonable price, my wife, Debbie Veasey, and I ultimately decided to hunker down in the comfort and warmth of our family room to watch the conclusion of Game #5 of the 2008 World Series. The 52-inch TV, our dog Petey, our home cabinets and refrigerators with drinks and treats, my cellphone to text friends and family during the game, and our new video camera would be our companions through the night. Nowhere else that I would rather be, or anyone else that I would rather have been with, than Deb. She is a huge Phillies fan in her own right, and we enjoy watching games on TV and attending them together in person all spring and summer. Pre-game we decided to head out to a local Chinese buffet where we talked some about what we thought would happen when it re-started. With Game #5 having been suspended after 5 1/2 innings by incredibly horrid rain and cold on Monday night, the first time in history that an MLB post-season game was ever suspended, some unusual situations were set up. Phillies original starter Cole Hamels would be leading off the bottom of the 6th for the Phils, but since he would not be available to pitch on such short rest (two days of the delay), he would certainly be replaced with a pinch-hitter. Local radio sports talk hosts had speculated that the Phils would go with either pinch-hit king Greg Dobbs or slugging Matt Stairs. But I told Deb that I felt the choice would and should be Geoff Jenkins. It was silly to use Dobbs that early, you might need his clutch bat at the end. And Stairs is a one-trick pony who you needed to save just in case you needed that trick, a homerun, at some stage. This situation called for someone left-handed, since the Rays had a righty on the mound. Jenkins was the one left, and was the obvious choice to me. Apparently it was the right choice by Charlie Manuel (pictured, with the World Series trophy) as well, because Jenkins it was to lead it off, and he drove a 3-2 pitch to deep right-center field for a double. A sacrifice bunt by JRoll and a humpback single to center by Jayson Werth, and it was 3-2 Phillies right off the bat. But that was only the beginning, as this suspended 3 innings of play would pack in as much drama as most full games. In the top of the 7th, the Rays tied it on a homerun from Rocco Baldelli off of Ryan Madson. Later in the inning it would be up to Phils' 2nd baseman Chase Utley to provide the heroics with his glove, arm, and head. With two outs and Rays shortstop Jason Bartlett at 2nd base, Akinori Iwamura sent a ball bouncing up the middle. Utley ranged nicely to his right and behind the bag at 2nd, fielded the ball cleanly in his glove, transferred the ball to his bare hand, and pivoted as if to throw to first base. As Utley likely knew, there would be no chance to get the speedy Iwamura on this play. But he made it seem as if he was going through with the throw, fooling Bartlett into thinking this, and Bartlett never stopped in rounding 3rd, heading for home with the go-ahead run. Instead of actually throwing to first, Utley double-clutched, turned his body slightly, and fired a one-bounce strike to catcher Carlos Ruiz just slightly up the 3rd base line. Ruiz took the throw and dove out after Bartlett, who was diving around his tag attempt in trying to get to home plate. Ruiz stretched out and nailed Bartlett three feet short of the plate, and the Phillies were out of the inning still tied. Utley's heady play will go down in history as one of the greatest, if not the single greatest, defensive plays in the history of Philadelphia sports. And a nice assist to Ruiz on the other end as well. In the bottom of the 7th, the longest tenured Phillie, leftfielder Pat 'the Bat' Burrell, would lead things off. Burrell was the only Phillie to not get much involved thus far in the Series as he was hitless, and this could well be the final at-bat as a Phil since he is a free agent this coming off-season. Almost every Phils fan that I heard talking in the time leading up to the game was rooting for Burrell to do something special, and Pat didn't let us down. He got a hold of a fastball and drove it deep to centerfield, the farthest part of the park, for what looked like it was going to be a go-ahead homerun. But the ball crashed off the fence, missing that homer by just a couple of feet. As it bounced back to the turf, Burrell rolled into 2nd base, and the Phils had led-off their 2nd straight inning with a double. Eric Bruntlett came in to pinch-run for Burrell, who left to a tremendous ovation, and Bruntlett quickly moved over to 3rd base on Shane Victorino's bouncer to 2nd. Up to the plate stepped 3rd baseman Pedro Feliz, and he delivered the biggest hit of his career with a line-drive single right back through the box, scoring Bruntlett and putting the Phils back on top by 4-3 heading into the 8th. Again in the top of the 8th, the Rays kept coming. With a runner on first, Phils reliever J.C. Romero induced young Rays star B.J. Upton to ground a ball right to Phils shortstop Jimmy Rollins who flipped it over to Utley at 2nd for the forceout. In the same motion, Utley pivoted to turn the doubleplay as the runner barrelled down on him to break it up. But the Phils all-star 2nd baseman hung in under fire and made a strong throw, nailing the speedy Upton by a step to complete the twin killing. The Phils were held off the board in their half of the 8th, and so the game went into the top of the 9th with the team just three outs away from the 2nd World Series title in their 125-year history. Manuel gave the ball to closer Brad Lidge, who had become known as 'Lights-Out Lidge' by not blowing a Save opportunity all year. Lidge got the first batter, but then gave up a hit and a stolen base to put the Rays tying run at 2nd with one out. Nothing ever comes easy in Philadelphia. The next batter sliced a ball to the opposite field that looked off the bat like a game-tying single, but the rocket hung in the air and went directly at rightfielder Jayson Werth for out #2. The Rays brought up pinch-hitter Eric Hinske, who had homered in his only at-bat of the Series in Game #4. Lidge quickly got ahead, and as the centerfield clock at Citizen's Bank Park reached exactly 10pm, Lidge fired a slider that dove down under Hinske's swinging bat and into the glove of catcher Ruiz for a Series-clinching strikeout. As Ruiz charged the mound in celebration, Lidge dropped to his knees and looked prayerfully skyward. Ruiz grabbed him in a bear hug, and the two were immediately tackled to the ground by big 1st baseman Ryan Howard. The rest of the team was in hot pursuit, and the pile-on crushed those three as everyone else joined the celebration. The Phillies fans in the stands waved their 'Rally Towels' with glee, jumped up and down, hugged one another, roared, cried, and generally exploded with joy at the city's first professional sports championship in a quarter century. Back at home, Deb and I had been videotaping our evening and the game as it progressed on TV, and we were jumping around our living room with that same joyfulness. Deb grabbed a pot and big spoon, and ran out front to clang them in celebration with some neighbors. We watched the post-game shows both on Fox and local Comcast Sportsnet, as well as all the local news angles. The street celebrations quickly grew, and Deb and I decided to get dressed and head out. We drove around in Northeast Philly hot spots, honking our horns and cheering out the windows with other drivers and pedestrians, and even stopped at a local sporting goods store at 1am to buy some Phillies world championship shirts. The three innings that began with Jenkins' opening double, that included Werth's rbi blooper, Burrell's heroic double, Feliz' winning rbi single, Utley's defensive excellence, the Rays' persistence, and finally closed with Lidge's strikeout, were three of the most unusual but greatest innings in World Series history. And they ended with the Philadelphia Phillies as the world champions. It just does not get any better than this. Ever. As Deb said, thank you Tug McGraw in Heaven! And let me add to her sentiments both John Vukovich and John Marzano, who were surely watching over and rooting us on from above with the Tugger. And thank you, sweet Jesus! Thank you, God in Heaven! And last but not least, thank you to the 2008 Philadelphia Phillies, from Series MVP Cole Hamels, to all the players and coaches, up to the top of ownership, and down to the lowest employees on the organizational ladder. Today, you are my heroes. Thank you.

Happy Anniversary, Baby

For many people, true love seems elusive. At least in the popular media, women are usually perceived to be and often portrayed as being in search of it, and men often seem to be doing everything they can to avoid it. But that is a broad generalization that speaks more to the somewhat higher level of maturity that many women have over the men in their same age bracket. I believe strongly that, in addition to things like wealth and status, it is this maturity that older men eventually attain which attracts younger women to them as partners. It is one of the reasons that you see 'twenty-something' women with 'fourty-something' men. In the late spring of 1992, at one of the lowest points in my own life, true love found me. I was going through a separation from my first wife, and there were many things going through my mind and heart as I made that break, too personal to discuss here. But suffice it to say that love was the last thing that I was looking for on a Saturday night when I made what was going to be a quick after-work stop at a local private club. Suddenly while sitting there at a bar, talking to an acquaintance, an angel walked into the place, and my eyes went right to her. I don't care how many people think these kinds of things are the stuff of fiction, because I can tell you that it was a fact that something big drew my attention to her. Oh sure, she looked great: blonde, built, and beautiful. She was wearing a white top and a white mini-skirt on that late-May night. She would have attracted the attention of most any guy. She made her way to the bar, where directly across from me a group of what turned out to be her friends was sitting. After talking with them for a bit, she slipped around the bar to where I was sitting. It was my good fortune; strike that, it was fate, that she knew the person with whom I was sitting. At one point he turned and introduced us, and we began to talk. At some point I asked her to dance. We 'clicked' immediately, and we ended up having a nice time spent mostly together, talking and dancing, for the next couple of hours. I forgot all about my problems, all about my life. At that moment, my life was right there in that room with that woman. We kissed that first night, and it was 'fireworks in the sky' stuff. I asked her to go out again, and we actually went out the very next night to the very same club. She became my steady date: same club every Friday night. Eventually we gave in to the obvious, and after a year and a half we got engaged. I was getting ready to do something that I never thought I would do while going through the early months of the separation from my first marriage: take the plunge yet again. On October 7th, 1995, with all of our friends and family gathered with us, we enjoyed what remains the most special day of my life. We married at the Gloria Dei 'Old Swedes' Church in South Philly, took wedding photos at a rose garden in the historic area near Independence Hall, and celebrated our wedding with a tremendous party of a reception at the Firefighters union hall. We then left on a week-long getaway to the island of St. Lucia, a paradise that neither of us will ever forget, where we enjoyed many of the most fun times we ever had in either of our lives. The entire period around our wedding was an experience that I wish everyone, especially my own girls, could enjoy at least one real time in their lives. In the ensuing years, I was not always a good and proper steward of that love, and I let her down on a few occassions, a couple of them truly testing our bond. But through her love and faith in us, and our firm commitment to one another, and the blessings of God, we have been able to not only overcome those difficulties but rise above them. She is the light of my life, the love of my life. My best friend, my partner, my wife. Today is our 'Lucky 13th' anniversary, and I can say in all honesty that I would not trade her for anyone or anything. If you haven't found this kind of thing, keep looking, it's out there. If you have, and you're not nurturing it, make that change, because it just doesn't come along very often. Whatever you out there are doing today, what I will be doing is celebrating the gift of this wonderful woman in my life. I am in love with Debbie Veasey, my wife, and I am happy to tell the world. Happy anniversary, baby.

The One That Got Away

It was just after 1:00 AM in the typically freezing cold early morning hours of Friday, January 30th, 1970. It was just three weeks earlier that the Beatles had performed together in the studio for the final time, and since the new soap opera 'All My Children' had made its debut on television. The remnant of a previous snowfall still coated the ground as rookie Philadelphia police officer Fred Cione pushed his red patrol car around the corner and into the 1700 block of west Oxford Street in the city's 23rd district. My wife, the former Debbie Marshall Howe, grew up just two doors from the Cione family on east Huntingdon Street in the city's Kensington area. As a 14-year old budding adolescent at that time she already recognized that Freddie, a single Vietnam vet, was 'really handsome' and 'built'. As this handsome 25-year old rookie cop drove around that night he came upon three men walking the streets, and found something suspicious about them, or their behavior, or just the fact of them being on the streets in that location on that kind of night. In any event, the only thing we really do know is that Freddie got out and approached the three, and that one of them opened up on him with three gunshots, one of which went into this chest and another into his gut. The men ran off, and Freddie was left to die like a dog in a North Philly gutter. That was almost three full decades ago. Just last week I was teaching a CPR class at the department's Advanced Training Unit, and one of the cops in attendance wore the nametag 'Cione'. I asked if he was a relative of Fred's, and the young man responded that he was Fred Cione's nephew. I am quite sure that he has heard the story a number of times already in his life since his own father, Freddie's brother Nick, became a Philly cop after his brother's death, and two of Nick's own sons subsequently have become cops. The murder of Fred Cione on that cold January night came back to me in the past couple of days as we here in Philly suffered the murder of yet another of our young stars, police officer Pat McDonald, the fifth Philly cop to be murdered in the last 2 1/2 years. But there is one big difference between the murders of Pat McDonald and other Philadelphia officers murdered in the line of duty like Chuck Cassidy, Gary Skerski, Steve Liczbinski, Izzy Nazario, Danny Faulkner, Lauretha Vaird, Steve Dmytryk, Danny Boyle, and Leddie Brown and the murder of Fred Cione. The big difference is that the murder of Fred Cione is the only murder of a Philadelphia police officer that was never solved. Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo and his top investigators were never able to find anything to solve the case: no real suspects, no murder weapon, no motive. The police Homicide Unit has never let the case die, assigning top detectives to take a new look at it every so often, but no one has ever come up with any substantive leads. The only reliable witness, a female, was brought in to look at thousands of photos over the years, but was never able to identify anyone. The case remains the ultimate frustration for all of us as Philadelphia police officers. When one of us goes down on the job at the hands of a bad guy, the very least that we expect is that our brothers and sisters will hunt our killer down to the ends of the earth, and bring that killer to justice, one way or another. The three young men whom it was the unfortunate fate of Freddie Cione to run into on that cold, dark night so long ago now remain four ghosts that we need to exorcise. If we cannot ever solve Freddie's particular case, which we must always be open to doing, we must vigorously investigate all those that will come along in the future. Think about and remember Freddie Cione as you drive past his mural, painted on the Aramingo Avenue side of his neighborhood rec center just south of Lehigh Avenue. He shares the mural with Joey Friel, another neighborhood native killed on-duty. We not only must never forget Fred Cione, but we must specifically remember him and his case, and never allow justice to elude us again.

That's My Boy !

My grandson was born just a month ago, and is beginning to make his presence known in the family. But I never had a son, so for a long time the only other male in the immediate family was a boy named 'Petey'. He alternates between long hair, when we sometimes refer to him as the 'puffy dog' and his shaved-down look. I am talking, of course, about our family dog: the one and only Petey Veasey. Pete came to us in the fall of 1999, just about five months after we moved into our new home in the Somerton section of Philly. It was a bit of a coincidence that brought us together. Our new home with a spacious back yard came at the same time that Pete was being evicted from his previous residence. It seems that as a puppy living in a cramped row home in Fishtown, young puppy Pete escaped from his cage one day while his owners were at work and quickly went about the task of tearing a new leather sofa apart. His owner, a young man named Jeff, was engaged to a young woman who promptly told him "that dog is outta here, and you ain't getting back in with him!" This broke Jeff's heart, as he had taken to loving Petey, but he chose his fiancee and put Petey up for adoption at a Bensalem shelter. My wife, Debbie Veasey, worked with and was good friends with Jeff's mom, and heard about the story. We had been discussing the possibility of getting a dog, and when Deb brought up the idea of adopting Petey it sounded good to me. We went to the shelter to meet him, and the first impression was a bit jarring. The dog was a wild child, having not gotten very much discipline in his short 1-year life. We took him anyway, eventually took him to a trainer (who trained us, as much as him), and Petey quickly became a member of the family. He has brought a great deal to our home, basically a fixture here over the past decade. Among his varied interests are chasing his 'ball' in the back yard, taking rides in the car to either the vet or the groomer, and hanging out with his mom and dad (me and Deb). He also has an affinity for knocking cups of coffee all over our daughter Kelly, barking at passing dogs, chasing squirrels, walks around the Somerton Woods, and rolling onto his back for a good scratch. He is a longtime connoisseur of both wet and dry Pedigree brand dog food, and enjoys a variety of treats, most especially pizza crusts. And he is a Philadelphia Eagles fan who hates the Dallas Cowboys. When he was about 2-years old, he was attacked by a loose pit bull while walking in the woods behind our home. The pit bull charged from the woods quickly and suddenly, seemingly from out of nowhere, and aggressively sniffed around Pete before taking a chomp at his neck. Fortunately, part of Pete's training regimen was the wearing of a metal 'cinch' collar for walks, and this combined with his usual leather collar saved him. Pete overcame that trauma to enjoy many more walks, and many more good times. Though we have both been around family dogs in our lives, Pete is the first dog that Deb and I have owned ourselves, and he is a part of our home if not our family. We celebrate his birthday on November 1st, and this year Petey will turn 10 years old, which means that he is an old dog now, and in all likelihood he only has about another two good years with us. But we are gonna enjoy the old boy for as long as we can, and will remember him long after he is gone. When I first got him it would have been hard to convince me that a pet could ever become so much a part of my life, but there it is. My good boy, Petey Veasey, is one of the family, and we are happy to have him.