My On the Way Out series, Vol. 1, Part 7 What's Love got to do with it?

My On the Way Out series continues with some spur-of-the-moment ramblings. After reading my latest ramblings, my baseball buddies will say, "Pigpen is losing it!"

Another week has passed as I continue to recover from my latest injury. I swear I've been dealing with bone spurs, from head to toe, for a decade or more. This is what I look like when I inch my way to the side of the bed every morning and put my boots on—I mean, boot on.

I need to make that call and tell them Pigpen Price is down and out and back out of the Men's Senior Baseball League World Series, which is just over five weeks away. But I have yet to make the call. So, here I sit in a slow recovery, wishing and hoping. The only things working correctly are my fingers, the charge inside my laptop, and that crazy side of my brain that allows the words to flow.

So, to all my teammates and readers: Just deal with it as I run off on a tangent and discuss something the players on my senior citizen baseball team rarely discuss in the dugout: Love.

All the players on my 60-and-over baseball team will discuss just anything in the dugout; some of those things will not see the light of day on this blog, but here goes as I choose just one former player's love life, the fantastic story of Richard McAnally and his beautiful wife, Gladys.

Gladys passed away in 2011, and Richard "You can call me Ray" McAnally passed away in December 2015. So I constantly called Richard Ray; I couldn't get around his first name. But, of course, he was called many things on our old-timers' team: Richard, Ray, Mac, Coach, Judge -- because he was a well-known Tucson lawyer and a judge...and he was a catcher for the University of Arizona back in the early 1950s. 

McAnally (now that's easier) always told me (away from the dugout) that his most cherished moment was in 1956 when he met Gladys for the very first time at the Running of the Kentucky Derby.

Richard was stationed at Fort Knox and made the trek to the Derby. Gladys was at the races that day. They met, and a courtship followed. Soon after, they would head to the altar and say their vows.

Just three years before his death, Richard contacted the Kentucky Derby in 2012, and they honored his request. Richard would make a final journey to the Derby, but this time, with the kindness and help of track officials, he was allowed to spread his wife's ashes inside the confines of the winner's circle.

My friend, Richard, once said to me, from the dugout no less, after all of my teammates had headed home after another game in the books: "I know she is happy. The Kentucky Derby was such a special place for us."

All over the world, you can find such stories about life...and love. If you're asking what love has to do with it?

Plenty!

 

Photo: Ray...I mean, Richard.

Photo: Yours truly, Pigpen Price.