BarryBobPosthole
09-29-2014, 08:46 AM
but some folks say it isn't. Nice story about a sweet old lady.
BKB
http://newsok.com/a-lifelong-passion-for-the-st.-louis-cardinals/article/5346367?custom_click=columnist
Virginia Johnson starts to sing, and the years melt away.
She is no longer a great-grandmother sitting in her one-room apartment in an Oklahoma City retirement home. She is no longer a widow passing time knitting prayer shawls for her church. She is no longer 99 years old.
Photo - Virginia Johnson has seen and experienced a ton in her 99 years, but there are tons of sports fans who will be most envious of the people who the Oklahoma City resident saw play baseball. Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig. Jackie Robinson to name a few. These weren't just names in a history book. These were players she saw come through St. Louis and play against her beloved Cardinals. As the baseball playoffs fast approach, Virginia Johnson is a reminder of days when baseball was grand and players were larger than life. Johnson is photographed in her residence in Quail Ridge Assisted Living in northwest Oklahoma City on Wednesday, Sep. 17, 2014. Photo by Jim Beckel, The Oklahoman
Virginia Johnson has seen and experienced a ton in her 99 years, but there are tons of sports fans who will be most envious of the people who the Oklahoma City resident saw play baseball. Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig. Jackie Robinson to name a few. These weren't just names in a history book. These were players she saw come through St. Louis and play against her beloved Cardinals. As the baseball playoffs fast approach, Virginia Johnson is a reminder of days when baseball was grand and players were larger than life. Johnson is photographed in her residence in Quail Ridge Assisted Living in northwest Oklahoma City on Wednesday, Sep. 17, 2014. Photo by Jim Beckel, The Oklahoman
As her eyes sparkle and her voice fills that cozy room, she is 11 years old again — and her St. Louis Cardinals are vying for their first world championship.
Cin-cin-nat-a lost last week;
Cardinals won, wa-n’t that sweet?
Hello, there, Redbirds!
She stops and laughs. Her eyes squint. Her head tilts. It’s just about the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.
On the final day of Major League Baseball’s regular season, fans everywhere are gearing up for the playoffs. They will hang on every pitch. They will cheer every run. They will relish every memory.
Few, though, have baseball memories quite like Virginia Johnson.
She listened on the radio as the Cardinals won the 1926 World Series, their first title. She was there in 1944 when the Cardinals beat the then-crosstown rival Browns for another championship. Over the years, she saw the Cardinal greats — Dizzy Dean, Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial among them — not to mention players who most of us have only read about. Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig. Jackie Robinson.
Roll that around in your head — she saw Babe Ruth play in the flesh, and this week, she’s ready to start cheering her Cards likely playing a franchise that she knew as the Brooklyn Dodgers for the first 42 years of her life.
“I never imagined I would live to have such an ancient history,” she said.
Ancient? Maybe.
Amazing, for sure.
Her father worked for her grandfather in the grain business in St. Louis when Virginia was born in the spring of 1915, but when her grandfather decided to retire eight years later, move to the countryside and open a retail dairy farm, he took the entire extended family with him. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins.
In the younger group of cousins were three boys and three girls, and Virginia often joined the boys playing baseball. They’d catch. They’d hit. They’d play short-handed games called rounds.
The other girl cousins didn’t get it.
Baseball was a fever, and Virginia caught it.
So did her cousin Phil. They became huge Cardinals fans, listening to the games on the radio. Crystal radio, that is. The contraption had metal coiled around a drum, and you had to feel around the dial until you found the right station. When Virginia did, her ears filled with tales of Rogers Hornsby and Sportsman’s Park and Grover Cleveland Alexander.
In the fall of 1926, the Cardinals made it all the way to the World Series against the Yankees, and to make sure they could hear every minute of Game 7, Virginia and Phil convinced her mom to walk them to a nearby radio transmitting station. The signal from KMOX was sure to come through loud and clear there.
As they walked the three-quarters of a mile down their gravel road to the station, Virginia tried to explain baseball to her mom. The pitcher throws. The batter hits. On and on she went.
“I get it,” her mother finally said.
Virginia looked up hopefully.
“The pitcher runs.”
That was about the only disappointment that day. Virginia sat on the floor of the transmitting station listening as the Cardinals took a 3-2 lead into the seventh inning. Then, her hero, Grover Cleveland Alexander — all three names, please — entered the game to pitch.
He had pitched the day before, throwing a complete game and winning for the second time in the series. No one expected him to throw again, including Grover Cleveland Alexander.
He’d gone out the previous night after the game and gotten drunk. Crazy drunk, as Virginia would find out later in life.
But that day, he was still her hero, and after starting pitcher Jesse Haines loaded the bases, Grover Cleveland Alexander came in. Virginia was as nervous as could be. She always got that way when her Cards were playing a big game. And with her favorite player in a bind? Well, she could hardly bear to listen.
But Grover Cleveland Alexander didn’t just get a strikeout to end the seventh. He finished out the rest of the game, not allowing another hit.
The Cardinals were World Series champs.
Virginia’s whoops echoed around the transmitting station.
A few years later when her older sister started college at Washington University in St. Louis, her parents moved their family back to the city. And a few years after that, Virginia started going to Cardinals games.
Sometimes, she’d go with Jimmy Johnson, then her boyfriend and eventually her husband. Sometimes, she’d go by herself on Thursdays, which was Ladies’ Day. But whenever she went, she was almost assured to see a player or two who would become baseball legends. Pro baseball only had 16 teams in those days, compared to today’s 30, so the talent was much more concentrated.
It was not unusual to show up at a game and see a talent as grand as Ruth or Gehrig or Robinson.
Virginia’s passion for the Cardinals was as strong as ever when she and Jimmy decided to leave St. Louis in September of 1947. They had two children. They needed to break from all of Virginia’s family. They wanted a fresh start.
Oklahoma City was where they settled.
Over the years, Virginia focused on her family and her church. St. Luke’s United Methodist became a second home, a place where they found friends and connections. There were always meals to be made or cookies to be baked or parties to attend.
Those friends introduced Virginia to football. How could she live in Oklahoma, they said, and not watch football?
Baseball and the Cardinals faded into the background a bit.
Then a little over a decade ago, she met David James, an Oklahoma City attorney who went to St. Luke’s. They quickly discovered a common love of the Cardinals. David had even been to spring training, he was such a fan.
Their conversations about baseball got Virginia all worked up about it. The fever returned. With her kids grown and her husband gone — he died a month shy of their 49th anniversary — she had time in her life and room in her heart for the game of her childhood.
She started watching Cardinals games whenever she could.
Now, she can’t wait to see how Matt Holliday and Adam Wainwright and the rest of the guys do in the playoffs.
All the while, she’ll have butterflies in her stomach. That’s how it’s always been. It happened at 11 when she listened on her crystal radio. It happens still at 99 when she watches on her flat-screen TV.
“I was different,” she admits, “but everybody’s got something they’re different about.”
Different? Maybe.
Dedicated, for sure.
Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at 475-4125. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok or view her personality page at newsok.com/jennicarlson.
BKB
http://newsok.com/a-lifelong-passion-for-the-st.-louis-cardinals/article/5346367?custom_click=columnist
Virginia Johnson starts to sing, and the years melt away.
She is no longer a great-grandmother sitting in her one-room apartment in an Oklahoma City retirement home. She is no longer a widow passing time knitting prayer shawls for her church. She is no longer 99 years old.
Photo - Virginia Johnson has seen and experienced a ton in her 99 years, but there are tons of sports fans who will be most envious of the people who the Oklahoma City resident saw play baseball. Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig. Jackie Robinson to name a few. These weren't just names in a history book. These were players she saw come through St. Louis and play against her beloved Cardinals. As the baseball playoffs fast approach, Virginia Johnson is a reminder of days when baseball was grand and players were larger than life. Johnson is photographed in her residence in Quail Ridge Assisted Living in northwest Oklahoma City on Wednesday, Sep. 17, 2014. Photo by Jim Beckel, The Oklahoman
Virginia Johnson has seen and experienced a ton in her 99 years, but there are tons of sports fans who will be most envious of the people who the Oklahoma City resident saw play baseball. Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig. Jackie Robinson to name a few. These weren't just names in a history book. These were players she saw come through St. Louis and play against her beloved Cardinals. As the baseball playoffs fast approach, Virginia Johnson is a reminder of days when baseball was grand and players were larger than life. Johnson is photographed in her residence in Quail Ridge Assisted Living in northwest Oklahoma City on Wednesday, Sep. 17, 2014. Photo by Jim Beckel, The Oklahoman
As her eyes sparkle and her voice fills that cozy room, she is 11 years old again — and her St. Louis Cardinals are vying for their first world championship.
Cin-cin-nat-a lost last week;
Cardinals won, wa-n’t that sweet?
Hello, there, Redbirds!
She stops and laughs. Her eyes squint. Her head tilts. It’s just about the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.
On the final day of Major League Baseball’s regular season, fans everywhere are gearing up for the playoffs. They will hang on every pitch. They will cheer every run. They will relish every memory.
Few, though, have baseball memories quite like Virginia Johnson.
She listened on the radio as the Cardinals won the 1926 World Series, their first title. She was there in 1944 when the Cardinals beat the then-crosstown rival Browns for another championship. Over the years, she saw the Cardinal greats — Dizzy Dean, Enos Slaughter and Stan Musial among them — not to mention players who most of us have only read about. Babe Ruth. Lou Gehrig. Jackie Robinson.
Roll that around in your head — she saw Babe Ruth play in the flesh, and this week, she’s ready to start cheering her Cards likely playing a franchise that she knew as the Brooklyn Dodgers for the first 42 years of her life.
“I never imagined I would live to have such an ancient history,” she said.
Ancient? Maybe.
Amazing, for sure.
Her father worked for her grandfather in the grain business in St. Louis when Virginia was born in the spring of 1915, but when her grandfather decided to retire eight years later, move to the countryside and open a retail dairy farm, he took the entire extended family with him. Aunts. Uncles. Cousins.
In the younger group of cousins were three boys and three girls, and Virginia often joined the boys playing baseball. They’d catch. They’d hit. They’d play short-handed games called rounds.
The other girl cousins didn’t get it.
Baseball was a fever, and Virginia caught it.
So did her cousin Phil. They became huge Cardinals fans, listening to the games on the radio. Crystal radio, that is. The contraption had metal coiled around a drum, and you had to feel around the dial until you found the right station. When Virginia did, her ears filled with tales of Rogers Hornsby and Sportsman’s Park and Grover Cleveland Alexander.
In the fall of 1926, the Cardinals made it all the way to the World Series against the Yankees, and to make sure they could hear every minute of Game 7, Virginia and Phil convinced her mom to walk them to a nearby radio transmitting station. The signal from KMOX was sure to come through loud and clear there.
As they walked the three-quarters of a mile down their gravel road to the station, Virginia tried to explain baseball to her mom. The pitcher throws. The batter hits. On and on she went.
“I get it,” her mother finally said.
Virginia looked up hopefully.
“The pitcher runs.”
That was about the only disappointment that day. Virginia sat on the floor of the transmitting station listening as the Cardinals took a 3-2 lead into the seventh inning. Then, her hero, Grover Cleveland Alexander — all three names, please — entered the game to pitch.
He had pitched the day before, throwing a complete game and winning for the second time in the series. No one expected him to throw again, including Grover Cleveland Alexander.
He’d gone out the previous night after the game and gotten drunk. Crazy drunk, as Virginia would find out later in life.
But that day, he was still her hero, and after starting pitcher Jesse Haines loaded the bases, Grover Cleveland Alexander came in. Virginia was as nervous as could be. She always got that way when her Cards were playing a big game. And with her favorite player in a bind? Well, she could hardly bear to listen.
But Grover Cleveland Alexander didn’t just get a strikeout to end the seventh. He finished out the rest of the game, not allowing another hit.
The Cardinals were World Series champs.
Virginia’s whoops echoed around the transmitting station.
A few years later when her older sister started college at Washington University in St. Louis, her parents moved their family back to the city. And a few years after that, Virginia started going to Cardinals games.
Sometimes, she’d go with Jimmy Johnson, then her boyfriend and eventually her husband. Sometimes, she’d go by herself on Thursdays, which was Ladies’ Day. But whenever she went, she was almost assured to see a player or two who would become baseball legends. Pro baseball only had 16 teams in those days, compared to today’s 30, so the talent was much more concentrated.
It was not unusual to show up at a game and see a talent as grand as Ruth or Gehrig or Robinson.
Virginia’s passion for the Cardinals was as strong as ever when she and Jimmy decided to leave St. Louis in September of 1947. They had two children. They needed to break from all of Virginia’s family. They wanted a fresh start.
Oklahoma City was where they settled.
Over the years, Virginia focused on her family and her church. St. Luke’s United Methodist became a second home, a place where they found friends and connections. There were always meals to be made or cookies to be baked or parties to attend.
Those friends introduced Virginia to football. How could she live in Oklahoma, they said, and not watch football?
Baseball and the Cardinals faded into the background a bit.
Then a little over a decade ago, she met David James, an Oklahoma City attorney who went to St. Luke’s. They quickly discovered a common love of the Cardinals. David had even been to spring training, he was such a fan.
Their conversations about baseball got Virginia all worked up about it. The fever returned. With her kids grown and her husband gone — he died a month shy of their 49th anniversary — she had time in her life and room in her heart for the game of her childhood.
She started watching Cardinals games whenever she could.
Now, she can’t wait to see how Matt Holliday and Adam Wainwright and the rest of the guys do in the playoffs.
All the while, she’ll have butterflies in her stomach. That’s how it’s always been. It happened at 11 when she listened on her crystal radio. It happens still at 99 when she watches on her flat-screen TV.
“I was different,” she admits, “but everybody’s got something they’re different about.”
Different? Maybe.
Dedicated, for sure.
Jenni Carlson: Jenni can be reached at 475-4125. Like her at facebook.com/JenniCarlsonOK, follow her at twitter.com/jennicarlson_ok or view her personality page at newsok.com/jennicarlson.