In the midst of writing about the wedding yesterday, I forgot to thank Andrew and Meaghan for the thoughtful gifts we received the day before at the rehearsal luncheon! My gifts included really neat baseball cufflinks to be worn at the wedding, a very cool pillow with vintage baseball cards on it!
But the best present can be seen in the photograph at the top of this post. A framed program from the 1964 World Series between the St Louis Cardinals and the New York Yankees! And now for the rest of THE STORY.(Bet you can’t wait) My mother’s first cousin Barney Schultz pitched for the Cardinals that year and he was one of the reasons that the Cardinals overtook the Phillies! He was a call up in August and had a 1.64 ERA and saved 14 games during the Cards drive to the World Series! Because he was on the team, I got to go to my one and only World Series game, he got tickets for us in the left bleachers. It was me, my Mom and Dad and my cousin Jimmy Ashton (a Yankee fan). The game was a pitching duel through nine innings, both Curt Simmons for the Cards and Jim Bouton for the Yanks had given up one run! The Cards went down in the top of the tenth without scoring and Barney came in relief of Simmons. He threw one pitch and Mickey Mantle drove it deep to right field for the game winning home run!! Not only did the home run win the game, but it was the home run that broke the record for the most home runs hit by one player in World Series play!! It was Mantle’s sixteenth!
Needless to say, I went home about as dejected as Barney looks walking off the field as Mantle rounds third base, while my cousin was a happy camper!! So thanks Andrew and Meaghan for the thoughtful gifts!
Oh and one more thing, throughout the day including during the ceremony, I was able to keep from getting all misty eyed . The closest I came to losing it was when I first walked in and saw the table that had all the guest names and table numbers, along we family pictures including this one of my Mom and Dad
and this one of Kathy’s Mom and Dad
with this in between {click to enlarge)
and let me tell you Meg and Andrew both the Karns and the Clarkes would be very proud of you, especially Kathy’s Mom,who is the person Kathy gets her craft talents from, Ruth would have been especially impressed by the day you created!! Again, Thanks and Best Wishes!!
