Decisions can have long-term effects in more ways than one

Everyone makes decisions at one point or another in their lives that affects what happens next.

Key Bridge to Georgetown

To marry or not to marry, to relocate or stay in the same place. Sometimes even to choose between one career and another. When I was 29 years old and living in McLean, Va., my life fell apart.

My first wife decided that she didn't want to be married any longer, so whatever vague plans we had been making sort of went out the window.

That was the spring of 1979, and between then and the spring of 1990, when I moved to Southern California for my last job, I worked and lived in six different states -- Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Missouri, Colorado and Nevada.

That sounds goofy enough, but when I think of jobs I was offered and choices I made, I could also have worked in Washington, D.C., another part of Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, upstate New York, back in Missouri, Hawaii and two different places in California.

Except for a fairly desperate period when my employer in St. Louis was bankrupt, I never had trouble getting jobs. In fact, there were at least five or six times when I had the opportunity to choose between two offers.

As for the St. Louis thing, it always seems so fitting that when you need a job the most, you have the toughest time getting one.

The first time I had a choice, it was between a paper that no longer exists and The Washington Post.

Guess which one I chose.

A shame we couldn't trade Dick Cheney for Jon Rumble

"I had other priorities in the '60s than military service."
-- DICK CHENEY, 2004

You may have heard the old expression that war is all about old men sending young men off to die. Well, today is the day we honor those who fought and died in defense of our country.

We even honor those who only thought they were dying for their country. It certainly wasn't their fault that they trusted the dishonest men who lied us into war. Nor was it their fault that they expected people in high positions to be honorable.

Yet thousands of Americans died in Iraq because of the mendacity of men like Dick Cheney. A former colleague of mine, Conor Friedersdorf, now writes for The Atlantic, and three years ago he did a brilliant piece called "Remembering Why Americans Loathe Dick Cheney."

This may not be the most appropriate piece for Memorial Day, but nobody had to lie us into World War II, and I never heard anyone tell me his dad or grandfather was in the trenches in Italy or storming the beaches of Pacific islands and asking why they were doing it.

Jon Rumble

My friend Jon Rumble died at Quang Nam in December 1968, and many years later I spoke with a friend of his who served with him in Vietnam. Don Dark is gone now as well, but this was part of his memory of their service.

"By the time we met, we both had the same view of the war. We knew that all the lives lost were in vain and that, given the politics of the time, we were not there to win the war."

As a nation, we had other priorities.

But Jon Rumble and 58,000 others like him were just as dead, and the lives they would have lived and the children they would have had were every bit as nonexistent.

Jon was a wonderful guy, someone who really enjoyed his life. He played one of the two leads in our senior class play in the spring of 1967, and one of our classmates described him as a "master of the universe" that spring.

Were 58,000 young Americans worth throwing away in a war we were never going to win?

Hardly.

Next time send Cheney.

Send Don Rumsfeld. Send G.W. Bush, whose Alabama National Guard service was a classic example of how rich kids risk nothing anymore. Hey, at least Georgia never invaded Alabama on his watch.

I weep for the lives lost of all the young men who believed they were defending America, who truly believed that the blood of patriots must be shed in defense of our country. They believed that Bush and Cheney wouldn't lie to them, but let's be fair. We are coming up on 13 years of war in Afghanistan, and the fact that a liberal president is responsible for five and a half years of that makes me sick to my stomach.

We could fight in Afghanistan for 100 years, and six months after we left it would be as if we were never there.

I'll try to end this post on an upbeat note with a beautiful video that captures the spirit of Memorial Day, but I do want to say one more thing.

America would have been far better off if Cheney had died in Vietnam and Jon Rumble were still alive today.

Time to slow down a little and look at what we've already got

When I was younger, I used to enjoy just about every technological advance I could put my hands on.

Bigger TV sets with sharper pictures, CD players for the home, for cars and for walking around, even my first cell phone, the one that was the size of a brick and gave me 20 minutes of calls for $35.99 a month from LA Cellular.

When my wife called me from her bank in France in 1995 and said she had forgotten some papers she needed, being able to use our home fax machine and send the documents from Los Angeles to Toulouse in less than five minutes left me agog. I was convinced that the fax machine was the greatest invention of all.

And when I got a laptop with a cellphone attachment that meant I could access the Internet anywhere I could get a cellphone signal, I thought we had reached the pinnacle of achievement.

Inherit the Wind

I should have known better. I should have remembered Spencer Tracy's wonderful speech as Henry Drummond in "Inherit the Wind."

"Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there's a man who sits behind a counter and says, 'All right, you can have a telephone but you lose privacy and the charm of distance. Madam, you may vote but at a price. You lose the right to retreat behind the powder puff or your petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.'"

When I was little, making a long-distance phone call was a very big deal. It was an era before direct dial and area codes; in fact, I've mentioned before that my family's first phone number I can remember -- in 1957 -- had six digits.

As we get older, it's pretty nice to be noticed for who we are

It's funny how things change over the course of a lifetime.

When I was 25 or 30, it was almost like I didn't want people to acknowledge the fact that I was getting older. If I was in a restaurant or some other place of business that I frequented, and someone called me "Mister Rappaport," I usually corrected them.

"Mister Rappaport is my father. Call me Michael."

It wasn't a unique response or even a particularly clever one. I'll bet 10 million guys have said that at one time or another.

I don't know when it happened that I stopped saying that, or even when I didn't particularly enjoy people a lot younger calling me by my first name, but it happened.

They call me Grandpa.

Certainly by 2008, the year my father died. After that it would have seemed bizarre. Add to it the fact that was the year I found myself involuntarily retired and all of a sudden the only people calling me by my first name were close friends and relatives. I had two people calling me "Dad" and eventually two more who called me "Grandpa Mike."

Maybe the nicest surprise of my life has been how much I love hearing my two wonderful grandchildren call me "Grandpa."

If all goes according to plan, 5-year-old Madison will come visit us for a week this summer, her first solo visit to her grandparents.

"Grandpa" was only a little bit better than the joy I felt for all the years my two kids have called me "Dad."

Another thing that has changed is how I feel when I'm recognized by salespeople in places I visit often. When I was younger, one thing that horrified me was when I would go into a restaurant -- fast-food or slightly nicer -- and the waitress would ask if I wanted my "usual" order.

My reaction to that was deciding I had gotten into a rut and I had better try different restaurants for a while.

But since we moved to Georgia in late 2010, one of the things my wife has truly enjoyed is how friendly people are in stores and restaurants. Today I took her to a doctor's appointment, and the receptionist in a very busy office smiled, called her by name and asked how she was doing.

I have been getting prescriptions filled at the same drugstore chain for 20 years -- the first 16 in California -- but here in Georgia when they see me coming, they greet me by name and ask how I'm doing. It always impresses me.

But the real surprise is at a small local bookstore that I frequent once or twice a month, the friendly sales clerks call me by name. Sure, it's "Mister Rappaport," but it's still a good feeling to be recognized.

Things do change in the course of a lifetime, and not everything about getting older is bad.

Not at all.

My top 10, uh, top 15, uh, Sweet 16 favorite baseball movies ever

I was watching two baseball movies -- one I'd seen before -- and it got me thinking. There are at least six or eight different movies I have heard different people calling the best ever and there are three I've had at the top of my own list at one time or another.

So I figured I would put together a top 10 list and maybe five honorable mentions. I decided to take only movies made from 1970 on, and I decided that with one exception, I was not going to include movies made about kids. I also have one additional "special" mention that isn't a good movie, but that I love anyway.

We'll start with that one:

"For Love of the Game" -- 1999 -- Kevin Costner's last baseball movie. He's a 40-year-old pitcher making the final start of a Hall of Fame career against the Yankees at Yankee Stadium at the same time his life is falling apart.

There's the drama of a very special game, and the beauty of hearing the greatest of all the broadcasters, Vin Scully, narrate the action. I saw it with my son Virgile, who was 14 at the time. His review: "I liked it, but it's not really about baseball, is it?"

Well, enough.

That was the special mention. Now let's move on to the five we'll call honorable mention.

5. "The Bad News Bears" -- 1976 -- One of Michael Ritchie's classics about '70s California, following his wonderful and all but forgotten "Smile." Walter Matthau as the alcoholic coach and a young Tatum O'Neal as the girl phenom pitcher. The beginning of an entire genre of youth sports movies, and maybe the best of them all because the underdog team actually failed to win the big game.

4. "Pastime" -- 1990 -- A veteran minor league pitcher in 1957 finds himself mentoring a young black pitcher. A wonderful movie made on a tiny budget that was seen by almost no one. This movie has been described as "Bull Durham" without the jokes. Cameos by at least six different Hall of Famers.

3. "The Natural" -- 1984 -- There are quite a few people, including some I respect, who consider this the best baseball movie ever. That's the only reason it's on this list at all, because it isn't a movie I like. In my opinion, they completely ruined a great story by Bernard Malamud by changing the ending.

Malamud's point was that no matter how good you are, no matter how hard you try, in baseball you will fail more often than you succeed. But Roy Hobbs as played by Bob Redford never fails, and that's why the movie was such a disappointment to me.

2. "Moneyball" -- 2011 -- I never read the book and I had the DVD for two years before I got around to watching it despite being told how good it was.

I just couldn't see the drama in a movie about the way a team's front office operates, but I was completely wrong. It was a really good movie, and Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill were both terrific.

1. "Long Gone" -- 1987 -- This was "Bull Durham" before "Bull Durham," a comedy made for HBO about life in the low minor leagues in the old days of the Deep South. Future stars William Petersen, Virginia Madsen and Dermot Mulroney all shine in a movie that didn't get nearly the attention it deserved.

Once was the time I enjoyed my own 'Day at the Races'

For a period of about four years, I really loved horse racing.

It started in 1973 with Secretariat. I never saw him run in person, but I watched most of his races that year on television, and I have written several times about the 1973 Belmont being the most incredible athletic performance I ever saw. It still brings tears to my eyes when I watch it.


But there were plenty of great races -- and fun ones that weren't so great -- that I saw in person. Whether it was at Laurel Race Course in Maryland, at Charles Town in West Virginia or harness racing at Rosecroft in Maryland, it was fun to go and try to win some money.

I never got very good at handicapping, although there were a couple of times when this blind squirrel managed to find an acorn.

At Laurel in 1973, I was trying to handicap the Daily Double (winners in the first two races). I had a longshot I liked in the first race -- a horse named Guide at 40-1 -- and I bought one $2 ticket with Guide in the first race and the favorite in the second.

Surprise, surprise. Guide won the first race, making my ticket worth $198.80 if my horse won the second race -- and zero if it didn't.

A guy a couple of seats over offered me $50 for my ticket, which was tempting. But this wasn't something I had done by dumb luck, and I would never have forgiven myself if I had won. So I kept the ticket, gambled and won.

Pimlico

My biggest score ever, although not my best moment.

That came at the 1982 Preakness Stakes at Pimlico outside Baltimore. It was a strange race. Gato del Sol had won the Kentucky Derby, but his owners elected to skip the Preakness. That made Linkage an odds-on favorite in a seven-horse field.

Nobody makes money betting odds-on favorites, so I looked at the other six horses to see who could win if Linkage didn't. I put $2 on Aloma's Ruler to win and bought one $2 Exacta ticket with Aloma's Ruler and Linkage.

And that was exactly what happened, 32 years ago. Aloma's Ruler went off at 7-1 and pretty much led the race wire to wire. Linkage came on strong at the end and got within half a length of the winner. The two were seven lengths ahead of the rest of the field.

My win ticket paid $15.80 and my Exacta ticket paid $30.40, a return of $46.20 on my $4 bet. What made me happiest about it was that they had been perfect bets. No hedging, no wheels. Just two winning bets.

I never had another day like that. In fact, I don't think I ever had another day where I won more than I lost.

But at least I had some fun.

And some great memories.

Did we really throw away our chance at a wonderful future?

Who stole the future?

In 1964 and 1965, the summers I was 14 and 15, New York City staged the last great World's Fair to be held in the United States. It was second in size only to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1964, the "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis" fair.

For the kids of the Baby Boom, especially the ones who lived within driving distance of New York, it was a highlight of two summers. A total of 51.6 million people came to Flushing Meadows, and if there was anything about the Fair that was pessimistic about the future, most of us never saw it.

Yes, Jordan's exhibit included a controversial mural about the plight of the Palestinian people, but there were far fewer people who saw it -- or gave it a thought -- than there were people oohing and aahing as they rode through General Motors' Futurama exhibit and saw what the world would be like in the year 2000.



Imagine colonies on the moon.

Men working on the bottom of the ocean to feed the world and harvest its resources.

A research city in Antarctica.

Desalinization  of sea water making the deserts bloom.

Giant superhighways crossing the continent, leading in and out of the cities of the future.

Well, at least we got the highways.

So what happened? Why is it almost none of that future came to pass? Why is it almost all the progress in recent years -- outside of maybe some advances in science and medicine -- has been in relatively meaningless consumer goods?

Is our life really better because we can watch football on a television that covers an entire wall?

Are we really better off now that we can go on the Internet and see porn from all over the world? Or play computer games for hours on end?

I used to think it was wonderful that I could read newspapers from all over the country for free, but now most of them have paywalls? I pay $99 a year to read the Washington Post, which isn't horrible, but papers all over the country are either going out of business or cutting way back at what they do.

Between 2006 and 2012, 30 percent of the paid journalists in the U.S. lost their jobs and much of it was because of the Internet. I was one of them. In 2008 alone, nearly a thousand of us who worked for newspapers in Southern California got the ax.

It isn't just the Internet, though. One of the biggest problems newspapers have started before there were ever news Websites. People just aren't reading anymore. It isn't as if we were great intellectuals who spent all our time reading in 1964, but it was a much better time to be literate.

And we were close enough to idealism, to the beginning of JFK and the New Frontier that we believed there was more to life than consumer goods. We were five years away from the moon landing, and most people weren't even thinking of Dick Nixon or Ronald Reagan.

Except for a few folks out on the fringes -- left and right -- there was a basic civic consensus, and a basic belief that there was more to life than bigger televisions and flashy cars.

One thing we hear often is that the cell phones we carry in our pockets are more powerful than the computers that took the astronauts to the Moon.

Sadly, the one thing they never mention is that it has been more than 40 years since last we went to the Moon.

Did someone steal the future, or did we just give it away?

Time to improve things in America by getting rid of states

In our toxic political century, we've been hearing a lot about the Original Intent of the Founding Fathers, who we now just call the Founders (even though they were all men).

Original Intent is important to conservatives, who seem to believe that such wonderful things happened in the late 18th Century that we should do our best to live exactly the way the Founders did. That's about as goofy as it gets, but they need to believe that because if they don't, all they're doing is looting the federal treasury with tax cuts for the rich.

The fact is, their Original Intent was to do what they had to do to get 13 very different states to agree on enough things to surrender some of their sovereignty to form a central government.

That's why slavery was legal and why slaves were counted as only three-fifths of a person for population counts.

Actually, considering that they were writing a constitution for a coastal nation of about 3 million people, their work has held up surprisingly well.

With one exception.

States.

More than 225 years since the Constitution was put together and ratified, states are about as useful as powdered wigs, buggy whips and Ben Franklin's scrotum. There is just no reason anymore that an American citizen living in Texas shouldn't be governed by the same laws as one living in Michigan or Oregon.

If you asked a man in 1790 about his citizenship, he might tell you he was a citizen of Virginia, or possibly Massachusetts. Although if he was from New Jersey he might say he was from New York.

Yeah, even back then.

But if you ask someone in 2014 about his citizenship,  he would be far more likely to say he was an American. Unless he was from Texas.

I'm not a Georgian and I wasn't a Californian or a Virginian.

I am an American, and I think my rights should be the same no matter what state I visit.

I don't think children should get a crummy education because their state doesn't want to spend the money. Every American child should have the same right to a crummy education in states that do spend the money.

A reasonable change?

When I speak of eliminating states, I don't mean completely. Mostly I would get rid of two things -- different laws and the way we do representation. It's completely ridiculous these days that Alaska has the same number of senators as California. I've written before that if you start with the smallest states and work your way up, you could get 51 votes in the Senate -- a majority -- from men and women representing about 20 percent of the people.

I'm all for eliminating the tyranny of the majority, but this is ridiculous.

Now that we're no longer a tiny little country, we really should elect both representatives and senators through the concept of one man one vote. Otherwise you've got a guy married to a sheep in Wyoming whose vote counts as much as the city of Pasadena, California.

So maybe you rejigger the map and then call the different areas "districts" or "departments" instead of states. You can still govern at the district level and even the local level, and of course some laws would be different based on geography. Obviously grazing rights matter more in the open west than in New York City.

But the basic rights should be the same. An American should get the same level of education, be able to marry who he wants or get a driver's license the same whether he lives in Detroit or Des Moines, Minneapolis or Mississippi.

I'll bet the Founders would agree.

I've heard they were pretty smart guys who could have adapted to the 21st Century without much trouble.

Especially Ben Franklin.