There’s no day like today
Yesterday is history,
tomorrow is a mystery,
but today is a gift.
That’s why they call it the present.
— Author Unknown
It’s my friend Mike’s birthday today.
When we were kids, he rooted for the Johnny Bench/Joe Morgan/Pete Rose-era Cincinnati Reds. I spent that same period of time pulling for the New York Mets. Mike thinks my arguing that Ed Kranepool was a better first baseman than Tony Perez helped fuel my still-vivid imagination, and he may have a point.
Communicating with Mike and whichever other high school chums we can still locate is fun because we can all let what’s left of our hair down. There’s no need for being coy about our age, like some men foolishly try doing while attempting to impress a new neighbor, inspire admiration from an attractive co-worker, or pathetically flirt with a waitress who was born during the first Clinton administration. When chronological peers gather, everyone knows everyone else’s age, which simplifies things in a good way.
What else is special about Feb. 25 this year? Well, for one thing, the Winter Olympics are over. Really: who cares about the Giant Slalom, the Super G, ice dancing, or the half-pipe or stove-pipe or crack-pipe or whatever they call that structure used for extreme (translation: overhyped) “sports” someone in the snowboarding and/or skateboarding profession invented not all that long ago in order to drum up more business?
It’s hard to figure out how the American broadcast rights to the Sochi games were worth $775 million, since most of the tape-delayed “action” consisted of two weeks’ worth of events that were about as relevant to people in Alabama, Hawaii and Florida as alligator wrestling is to Mainers. NBC got a lot more bang for its bucks than Vladimir Putin got for the $51 billion worth of rubles he shelled out to stage the games, though.
Russians eking out existences in cities like Moscow (1,006 miles from Sochi), St. Petersburg (1,448 miles distant), Novosibirsk (2,671), or Vladivostok (6,209) can’t be thrilled with indirectly sponsoring two weeks of partying for privileged folks from other cold-weather nations, although given that protests aren’t tolerated over there, we may never know that for sure.
And for all Putin’s money, the host nation didn’t even get to the final four in men’s hockey, the glamour event of the games. At least the U.S. of A. got that far, although our team didn’t win a medal either. Not only that, but our neighbors to the north gently but firmly reminded us yet again that a nation with one-ninth of America’s population is still better at putting the biscuit in the basket than our men or our women are.
What else is so remarkable about Feb. 25?
Well, it’s the 56th day of 2014, and the eighth Tuesday. It’ll be the 67th full day of winter, meaning there are still 23 days, 12 hours and 57 minutes until the Vernal Equinox (and spring) arrives.
On Feb. 25, 1751, the first performing monkey was exhibited in America. The site: New York City. The admission price: 1 cent.
Feb. 25, 1862 was the day the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing introduced paper currency. Abraham Lincoln wasn’t on the $5 bill back then, though; he was in the White House.
Hiram Rhodes Revels became the first African-American to be sworn in as a United States senator on Feb. 25, 1870. Which is more surprising: that America’s first black U.S. senator was a Republican, or that he represented the great state of Mississippi?
Oregon became the first state to tax gasoline on Feb. 25, 1919; the levy was one penny per gallon. That led to cleaner air, but also to a precipitous decline in attendance at trained monkey performances in the Beaver State.
Lonaconing (Md.) Central High School’s Marie Boyd scored 156 points in a basketball game against Ursuline Academy of Cumberland in a game Central won 163-3 on Feb. 25, 1924.
Austrian immigrant Adolf Hitler acquired naturalized German citizenship on Feb. 25, 1932, allowing him to run for Reichspräsident later that year. This particular milestone, while being far less pleasant to recall than any of the others, is infinitely more important to remember.
And New York Yankee fans rejoiced 20 years ago on this date when Phil Rizzuto was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame.
Which is the perfect segue to today’s being Monte Irvin’s 95th birthday. But the former star of the New York Giants and the Newark Eagles, who at this writing is the 14th-oldest of the thousands of former Major League Baseball players still alive, isn’t the sport’s oldest living Hall of Famer. That distinction belongs to Bobby Doerr, the Boston Red Sox second baseman during much of the Ted Williams era, who turns 96 on April 7.
Today is Mike’s birthday. That’s why he, Monte Irvin, Bobby Doerr and I will all treat it like the present it is.
— Andy Young is a high school English teacher in York County.
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