Shots from the Lip

 We drove across country in 1959 - the 4 Lipshers of Brooklyn (and Rusty, our dog) were on our way to becoming Californians.  We went through Las Vegas on our way.  Neither my brother nor I were allowed in the casinos - we had to wait outside as we were clearly underage - I turned 17 a month before we arrived in Las Vegas. There was not much to Las Vegas at that time:  the metropolitan area population in 1959 was 83,000. Five years makes a hell of a difference:  I was 22 and in graduate school, going from Phoenix, Arizona to Las Vegas by car and staying with my mother's cousin's family - Cousin Phil Goldman was Captain of the Copa Room - he ran the nightclub at the Sands Hotel - and I took advantage of this connection and saw Frank Sinatra at the Sands 2 or 3 times.........that was truly memorable! It's Thanksgiving morning, 2025 as I write this,  Nineteen years ago I met my brother in Las Vegas over Thanksgiving for a couple of days - I really do not remem...

  My Baseball Odyssey – Starting Autumn 1944 and going strong after 81 years   OMG, how fucking philosophical I appear to be.  That picture was taken in 2015, in Bangkok. I'm not sure if this picture was taken before or after a photoshoot in the men's room of the most successful bar/whore house on Soi Cowboy, Bangkok.  Two of the 'staff' took pictures with me (with a shirt over the T shirt) but that one picture which became the cover of my 6th book and nearly cost me a divorce........ Sometime during September, 1944 - I am not sure when, exactly - my mother and two of her three sisters went to Ladies Day at Ebbetts Field.  Elder sister Sarah had Barbara, age 12 and Margie, age 3.  Younger Sister Fay had Kenny, age 6. I was just shy of my second birthday. The St. Louis Cardinals won that day although I have no idea about any of the details other than that it cost none of the three Shumsky sisters anything and they supposedly had a great time....

It is late morning on a wet Saturday as the rains - more than a drizzle but not enough for me to consider taking an umbrella with me were I to go out - have been (more or less) steady since early morning, yesterday.  I'm gonna be indoors all day, today - still in my pajamas - no need to go out.......and our small home is pleasantly, comfortably warm - with a thermal vest atop the pj tops as the central heating keeps our place warm. My life is intertwined with baseball tying so much more than the game into it.  Yeah, 'Baseball is Life'.........I wish I still had that T shirt!  I have been on a baseball odyssey from sometime in September, 1944 when my mother and her sisters Sarah and Faye  and 4 cousins attended Ladies Day at Ebbetts Field where the St Louis Cardinals beat the Brooklyn Dodgers.   Of course I don't remember it!  But it is what I do remember from 18 September 1947 on - far more than just the Dodgers and World Series matters.  I have h...

 Listening to the 2025 World Series was sheer joy!  It brought back memories of the last decade of my father's life. Dad had an irregular heart beat in an era prior to pills resolving that irregularity.  Thus, his last eight years were life after a stroke  from which he beat the odds and while invalid, he lived a good remaining life.  Yet his eyesight was mostly gone.  Was it a result of the stroke or from an hereditary gene that caused macular degeneration which is what I was diagnosed with as the 2025 MLB Playoffs were in progress.   I have inherited AMD and am at intermediate stage - dry.  I am now part of a German developed (and in use in Europe since 2018.......only approved for use in the US this past March) non-invasive program involving infrared spectrum lighting for which I have completed the first 9 of 27 sessions I will undergo this year.......and I am optimistic that programs like this, while they will not cure my predicament, wil...

 Joanna gained admission to Sophia University in Tokyo. For baseball, that mean full immersion into NPB - Nippon Professional Baseball.  The 'bridge' for American baseball diehards to baseball in Japan has been Bob Bavasi's JapanBall.  Bavasi, son of long time Dodger General Manager Buzzie Bavasi, had a program that scheduled going to baseball games at all twelve home team stadiums (plus a countryside game) in a two week period.  In 2012, I went on that program which ended on 17 September at the Sapporo Dome where I celebrated my 70th birthday with a whole lot of hi-fiving fans as the four of us JapanBallers passed out CrackerJack packets .........birthday parties do not get as unique as this one was! I never met Bob Bavasi prior to JapanBall but I did meet his father.....and Walter O'Malley.....at the Chock Full O Nuts coffee shop across the street from the office building at 215 Montegue Street where the Brooklyn Baseball Club offices were located, as was the downt...

 Some are either blessed or cursed in life because of the weird manifestation of  their mid-life crises.  Hands down, I had the weirdest and I challenge anyone to come up with something stranger:  I left the US for China, Hong Kong and Thailand at the end of 1990 and with the exception of 7 two week trips to the States over the next 33+ years, I didn't return to live there again until the end of 2023......and that return was something I never, ever anticipated. Of course I still watched baseball!  Joanna and I went to our first ballgame in Japan together, in 2006 at the Kyocera Dome in Osaka .  The two of us, guests of the Japan High School Baseball Federation , saw Shohei Ohtani pitch his final high school game during the August, 2011 National Tournament at Koshien Stadium in Osaka.  That day was filled with truly memorable events but what do both of us remember?  We didn't take sunscreen and came home with horrid sun burn! I do remember one ...

 Baseball most definitely is life.  Baseball - at least to me - is also a religion - witness the million or so who showed up for the Dodgers World Series Parade in Los Angeles on 3 November!), No, I am not a lunatic when I say this - think about it......... Baseball-wise, I was groomed the perfect way, going to my new-found 'temple', aka Ebbetts Field a day after my 5th birthday.    By age 10 I was regularly going there and while getting to a ball game in L.A. was a whole lot different from Brooklyn, Dad, working in Beverly Hills as a loan officer to the entertainment industry, now found it a whole lot easier to be given tickets for all the home games he wanted to go to and happily joined him going to Dodger Stadium night games (primarily) 6 months a year.     The Dodgers were a dynasty in the mid-60s.  I went to World Series games every year the Dodgers were there.  But I remember 1965 not for baseball play but for my baseball knowledge (and...