JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

Patty and her sister Vicky and I went to Starlight Theatre for the Doobie Brothers’ concert last night. Kansas City is one of many cities on the legendary band’s 50th Anniversary Tour.

We had not been to Starlight in a few years, and the moment we got in the place I was sorry it had been so long.

Starlight, in Swope Park, is one of Kansas City’s premier attractions. It’s one of those places that makes me feel good about being a Kansas Citian. It projects a big-time, yet relaxed atmosphere. To me, it beats Arrowhead and Kauffman stadiums. Arrowhead hardly smacks of relaxation, while Kauffman has been way too relaxed since 2015.

Starlight, on the other hand, is always warm and inviting and seems to envelope one and create an atmosphere of contentment and security.

Moreover, it’s got landmarks. Consider its stage-flanking, oxidized copper towers. Where Churchill Downs has its Twin Spires — the most recognized landmark in Kentucky — Starlight has its own twin spires.

Soon after we arrived last night (about 45 minutes before the scheduled showtime of 7:30), I excitedly began taking photos with my phone. I didn’t realize until I reviewed them this morning that most weren’t very substantive. But that’s how just being there after a long absence got my blood rushing.

The most amazing and gratifying thing to me about Starlight is how its proprietor — the nonprofit Starlight Theatre Association, in partnership with the KC Parks and Recreation Department — has kept the theater abreast of changing times. Upgrades have been almost continuous since the 1980s.

Here’s what Starlight looked like in June 1950 when it opened with the musical The Desert Song.

The theater was an immediate success initially, but by the late 1960s, it was losing money, and by the mid-1980s it was at a critical point. Crowds for Broadway-type shows had diminished; revenue was way down; and the place simply was not very appealing.

At that point, the Park Board, led by the indomitable Anita Gorman, called on the late Chiefs’ president Jack Steadman, to lead a fund-raising effort, which was successful. In addition, executive producer Bob Rohlf, who had been hired in 1980 as marketing director, helped breathe new life into the operation after being elevated to executive producer.

The 1990s also brought big improvements. As the Starlight website says: “To stay competitive with theater companies around the country, Starlight’s outdoor stage would need to be able to host national touring productions. Recognizing this need, the capital campaign was expanded to include the construction of a new covered stage house.”

The campaign was successful, thanks partly to a gift of more than $1 million from Jeannette and Jerome Cohen.

The $10 million stage made its debut in the summer of 2000. The stage is 10 stories tall and covers 12,000 square feet. It is climate controlled and fully enclosed on the top and sides. While audience members occasionally have to endure bad weather, the performers do not. The show goes on “rain or shine,” with the exception of delays or cancellations because of extremely bad weather.

One of the biggest improvements in recent years was the 2018 addition, at a cost of $600,000, of four “mega-fans” in the seating bowl. The 35-foot-tall fans, which look like wind turbines pointing at the sky, create a breeze of about 4 mph throughout the seating bowl.

From the financial standpoint, here are the critical numbers regarding Starlight: The theater cost $1.75 million to build in the late 1940s; it now has an estimated value of about $80 million, according to the Starlight website.

**

Here’s a look at the Starlight bowl (with two of its mega fans) before last night’s show. And, yes, those are rain clouds moving in from the west, but fortunately it did not rain.

As I said, the Doobie Brothers were good. They played all their big hits and a bunch of others, and Michael McDonald, who was with the band from 1975 to 1981, was on stage, playing keyboards and singing during the entire concert. As you would expect from a 69-year-old singer, his voice doesn’t have the same range and vibrancy as it did in the 1970s and 1980s, but it was good enough.

One of the highlights of the night, from the concert standpoint, was watching Patty and Vicky — who grew up in the ’70s — bop to the song “China Grove.” Here they were before the show started.

Suffice it to say, the three of us were pretty close to heaven last night, mainly because Starlight is a heavenly place.

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Just two and a half years after his book Summoned at Midnight, about the last military executions at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas City native and KC Star reporter Richard (Rick) Serrano is back with another outstanding book, this one about the skywalks collapse at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Crown Center.

The book, Buried Truths and the Hyatt Skywalks: The Legacy of America’s Epic Structural Failure, will be available for delivery Sept. 28. (Serrano had an advance copy sent to me.) Rainy Day Books in Fairway will have copies.

The July 17, 1981, tragedy was one of the seminal events in Kansas City history, and everyone 18 and older in the Kansas City area should read the book. Furthermore, school districts throughout the Kansas City area should order hundreds of copies and make it available to high-school students.

Although neither of those things is likely to happen, that’s how important the Hyatt catastrophe is in Kansas City history.

For we adults who were here then and are still alive now, it was, and will very likely remain, the most stunning and soul-rattling civic event of our lives.

The collapse of the second- and fourth-floor skywalks — a third-floor skywalk was not aligned with the other two — took the lives of 114 people and injured about 200 others. For some of the injured, like Sally Firestone, who was left paralyzed from the neck down, the event was was totally life changing. She went from an up-and-coming businesswoman to an advocate for people with disabilities.

Those who died included an off-duty Fire Department battalion chief, John Tvedten, whose son, also named John, was a firefighter who also died tragically after becoming trapped in heavy smoke while fighting a 1999 warehouse fire.

The Hyatt disaster left its imprint on all of us and all around us. It’s hard to believe, but for more than a decade now the hotel has been the Sheraton Kansas City Hotel at Crown Center. To that, I say it might be a Sheraton to out-of-towners who stay there, but for us, it will always be the Hyatt. Hyatt skipped town without even contributing to the Skywalk Memorial, which was dedicated in 2015.

At that dedication, which I attended, survivor Frank Freeman called July 17, 1981, the day “that wrenched innocent loved ones from our arms.”

“Mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, sisters, brothers, friends, spouses and lovers — all were gone in an instant,” Freeman said. “Gone. Just gone. How could that be?”

Yet it was…And to his credit, Serrano brings more clarity to the event than anything that has previously been written.

If you ask most people familiar with the collapse what caused it, they will tell you it was a mid-construction decision change: Instead of using six sets of long steel rods that were to start at the ceiling and extend straight down the sides of both skywalks, a structural engineer approved a change to 12 sets of shorter rods, with six sets supporting the upper skywalk and six others offset and bolted to the upper skywalk to support the lower bridge.

Tom Tryon, a drywall installer whom Serrano interviewed, said of the skywalks: “They felt solid…But I just didn’t like the idea of those rods. They weren’t heavy enough.”

There is no doubt that the design change compromised the suspension system, but Serrano’s investigation makes it clear that the design change was part of a much larger problem: a rushed and disorganized construction process spearheaded by a failing general contraction firm, Eldridge & Son, which had done other jobs for hotel owner Hallmark Cards. (Eldridge was fired three months before the project was completed.)

It didn’t help that city building inspectors were essentially AWOL during construction. Serrano wrote: “City records reveal they spent an average of just eight and a half minutes a week supposedly checking the vast foundation, structure, steel, and concrete at the Hyatt job.”

Here are some of the other truths that Serrano “unburies”…

• The “fast-track” construction method, in its early days at the time, led to something close to construction chaos at times, with the workers waiting on designers to give them their marching orders, i.e., the construction plans.
• Live load tests (with significant weight being placed on the skywalks) were never conducted to gauge how much the skywalks would comfortably hold.
• Before the hotel opened a year before the tragedy, some workers and others noticed cracks in the concrete skywalks, and others saw the ends of the skywalks pulling away from their moorings on the walls.
• There were other clear signs before the collapse that the project was fraught with problems. First, Pauly Nold, an 18-year-old apprentice ironworker from the St. Joseph area, was killed in October 1979 after an 80-pound wooden beam fell from near the top of the building and struck him while he was standing just outside the construction area. Second, a large section of the roof crashed to the floor on an October Sunday morning when, fortunately, no workers were there. Hallmark p.r. man William Johnson then lied about the extent of the problem, saying a single 16-foot beam had snapped loose.
• After Nold’s death and the roof cave-in, Donald Hall Sr., then president and CEO of Hallmark Cards, which owned and commissioned the hotel, called for the installation of access panel doors near the points where the hanger rods connected to metal box beams holding the walkways together. The panels were installed, but after that no one ever opened the doors to see how the connections were holding up. Serrano wrote: “Had they checked, they likely would have spotted a truth buried inside: The platforms were weakening.”
• Don Hall (now 93 and living in Mission Hills) spoke frequently about the importance of safety during construction, but, at the same time, he and executives of Hallmark’s development arm, Crown Center Redevelopment Corp., pushed hard to keep the project on budget and open by the target date of July 1, 1980. James Lucas, the final construction project manager, told Serrano: “Don Hall is a nice guy and wanted everybody to be safe and happy. But that was an illusion. A fatal illusion.”

There was another eye-opening “truth” that Serrano unearthed: A federal investigation determined, among other things, that the third-floor skywalk support system had also weakened and that it, too, seemed “very near” to failing.

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Every Labor Day weekend, SiriusXM produces some version of a show in which they play the top 100 songs of the 1960s, “as chosen by our listeners.”

I don’t know exactly how listeners vote on this — and I never have — but it’s always fun, and I try to catch part of it…I wonder, as an aside, if anyone ever plants themselves in their car or residence and listens to all 100.

I don’t have a top 100 or even a top 10, but, as you know, I like to weigh in occasionally with songs I’ve heard recently that I really like. When I happen to have pen and paper with me when I’m driving, I’ll sometimes make note of songs I like and want to pass on to you readers.

This Labor Day weekend I’m going to write about just one song, a song that’s been haunting me for weeks — “You Were on My Mind” by We Five.

I’ve always liked the song, at the same time, never thought much about it or considered it anything special. After I heard it several weeks ago, however, I started gaining a better appreciation of it and seeing its brilliance.

Two things in particular have struck me about this song. First, it’s universally human. Haven’t we all woken up at some time — many times — with someone on our minds? In the song’s context, it’s obviously a boyfriend or girlfriend and most likely (“I’ve got wounds to bind”) an ex-boyfriend or girlfriend. And don’t we all know about that!?

The second thing is how the song starts off gently but increases in intensity and then ends in a veritable crescendo, with the final, echoing guitar chord.

The song was written by Sylvia Fricker in 1961. According to Wiki, Fricker wrote the song while sitting in a bathtub in a suite at a hotel in Greenwich Village — sitting in the tub not taking a bath but trying to avoid the roaches everywhere else in the room.

She and her future husband, Ian Tyson, recorded it in 1963 under the names Ian & Sylvia. Their version, which I would call low-key country, bears no resemblance to the We Five version. The Ian & Sylvia original starts off with a guitar lead-in that is very similar to the lead-in to the Rooftop Singers’ 1962 song “Walk Right in,” which is catchy but, to me, irritating and cheesy. And, I’ve got to say, the Ian & Sylvia original version of “You Were on My Mind” also strikes me as irritating and cheesy. Almost worse, it’s flat. Instead of increasing in intensity, it drones along and ends with the anti-climax of a tied soccer game.

In 1965, Michael Stewart, the founding member of We Five, which came out of California’s Bay Area, saw the song’s potential. He slightly changed the lyrics and melody and came up with an arrangement that transformed the song from blah to combustible.

Where the Ian & Sylvia original went nowhere, the We Five cover reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in September 1965. Not only that, but Billboard later ranked the record as the No. 4 song of 1965, behind “Wooly Bully” by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, “I Can’t Help Myself” by the Four Tops and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by The Rolling Stones.

The other key member of We Five was lead singer Beverly Bivens. Although her voice blends in with the voices of the four males, the song would be nothing without her energy and captivating presence.

Unfortunately for We Five, she left the group in 1966, and that was essentially the end of We Five.

Bivens did not sing publicly again until the opening of an exhibition revolving around the rock scene in the Bay area in the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. She is now 74 or 75, presumably still living in California.

Stewart, the brother of John Stewart of The Kingston Trio, went on to become a record producer and a developer of music software. He died on November 13, 2002 at age 57.

One of the joys of researching this song was coming across a live, 1965 performance on the TV show Live on Hollywood Palace. If you’re like me, you’ll be jumping out of your chair by the one minute, 20 second mark. It’s sensational. Attesting to that is that it’s had almost 3.5 million views.

Here you go, then, “You Were on My Mind” by We Five.

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Many of you probably aren’t PGA tour followers, but an interesting interpersonal and social dynamic is unfolding in the case of long-drive hitter Bryson DeChambeau.

Partly, at least, through his obsessive-compulsive need to be the best and to be a fan favorite, the 28-year-old DeChambeau has become a lightning rod in the golf world, dividing fans into pro- and anti- camps.

I started following DeChambeau when he was an amateur, back in 2015 and 2016. He was fun to watch because he was so good. In June 2015, he won the NCAA individual championship and two months later won the U.S. Amateur title. He was only the fifth person to win both the NCAA and U.S. Amateur titles in the same year, joining such stars as Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods.

His first professional win was the John Deere Classic, in the Quad Cities, in 2017, and he now has a total of eight wins, including the 2020 U.S. Open. The U.S. Open is one of golf’s four major tournaments, along with The Masters, the PGA Championship and the British Open.

DeChambeau has always stood out from other pros for at least two reasons: He sport Ben Hogan-style caps instead of the traditional baseball-type hats, and he appears to want to subject the game to his will.

In his quest to become No. 1, he has taken some unconventional steps. For example, early on he went to irons that were all the same length, dumping the traditional models that get progressively shorter as they get higher in order (that is, 7, 8, 9) and have greater loft angles. A physics major when he was at SMU, DeChambeau started exploring the single-length concept because, in the interest of eliminating as many variables as possible, he was concerned about having a slightly different stance when standing over his iron shots.

The most dramatic change he made, however, occurred in 2019 and 2020, when he added 40 pounds to his 6-1 frame with the intention of driving the ball farther. It worked. He’s now the longest driver on the PGA tour, often hitting the ball 330 yards or more. (For reference, I’ve been playing golf all my life, and I’ve never hit a drive more than 250 yards, even with the wind behind me and the ground hard.)

DeChambeau’s intensity and will to prevail have gotten him into big trouble this year, however. He has earned the wrath of some fellow pros for his slow play, prickliness, obsessiveness and, sometimes, lack of manners.

Another top player, Brooks Koepka, who is as bland as DeChambeau is compelling, several months ago took to needling DeChambeau on social media and on the course for his slow play and penchant for asking for relief, that is, seeking permission to move the ball because of an impediment or a perceived impediment. In July 2020, for example, he sought relief because of a red ant near his ball. A rules official denied the request. The next day, Koepka, after lining up over his ball in a similar location, stepped away and said to his caddy, “There’s an ant.”

Some fans have now started turning on DeChambeau, and at last weekend’s tournament, some were nastily yelling at him, calling him “Brooksie.” Oddly, DeChambeau has responded to the deepening melodrama by refusing to talk to the media. I say that’s odd because media interviews are the best forum tour players have to show their personalities and present themselves as fierce competitors and yet men of dignity and graciousness.

Now, the golf world is torn over whether DeChambeau is an earnest practitioner who has unfairly been singled out for criticism or whether he is a blowhard who is solely responsible for the tumult swirling around him.

I think this situation is unfortunate and bad for the game. It is totally wrong for Koepka and fans to bait DeChambeau and try to get under his skin and thrown him off his game.

Reluctantly, however, I’m in the camp that thinks DeChambeau’s actions have brought him to his current predicament…I used the word “graciousness” three paragraphs ago. That has long been the chief measuring stick of whether a pro golfer is a good sport or a sore loser. The way it should be is you compete like hell, but if and when you lose, you smile, look the victor in the eye, extend your hand and congratulate him.

Well, that’s not the DeChambeau style. Three times, I’ve seen him brush off competitors after being beaten. The first time was more than a year ago. I don’t remember the tournament or the specific situation. All I remember is that DeChambeau either didn’t shake hands or did so ever so fleetingly. I do remember he was asked about it later and gave a denial and apology at the same time.

Then came last weekend, when he and Patrick Cantlay, a picture of composure and icy determination, finished regulation play tied, setting up a sudden-death playoff at the BMW Championship in Bethesda MD.

I was watching closely and wondered how DeChambeau would react when it came time, on the 18th green, to congratulate Cantlay before they headed out to for the first playoff hole. As they approached each other, Cantlay looked directly at DeChambeau and extended his hand. DeChambeau, walking quickly, extended his hand and glanced fleetingly at Cantlay but diverted his eyes even before their hands touched. It was bush, and anybody who was watching closely could tell. None of the TV announcers made note of it, although I think it would have been appropriate, given all the hoopla surrounding DeChambeau and questions about his sportsmanship.

DeChambeau and Cantlay then engaged in an exciting six-hole playoff, which Cantlay finally won by holing an 18-foot birdie putt. Again, I watched closely to see if DeChambeu could muster any graciousness.

The answer was a decided “no.” Once again, he gave the victor a momentary glance and a lightning-quick handshake before while rushing off the green. I found this telling photo by Getty Images photographer Rob Carr.

DeChambeau looks good in those Ben Hogan caps, but as long as he’s going to be a jerk, he might as well outfit himself in black from head to toe because, whether he realizes it or not, he’s on the verge of becoming the Oakland Raiders of golf.

I hope he sees the light before that happens. He could become a good sport. It wouldn’t be hard. It’s just a question of whether he will wise up or whether he will continue blindly, bullheadedly, along the course he has chosen for himself so far. I hope he comes to his senses and finds humility and sportsmanship. It would be good for golf. To take it a step farther, it would be something of a salve for our terribly divided country.

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It’s been pretty serious around her the last couple of days, what with me slamming The Star’s baseball reporting one day and then reporting Steve Vockrodt’s switch from The Star to NPR the next. So, today, I’m going to lighten up and go with some random stuff that I know you’ll be interested in. (How do I know? I just do.)

**

Have you noticed — leading question here — how difficult it is to get through to many businesses and organizations on the phone these days?

Two examples. Today, I got the name of a guy at Bank of America that I need to talk with about a City of Fountains Foundation matter. The person who gave me the guy’s name didn’t have his number, but I thought, “How hard could it be to reach a guy at one of the most prominent banks in town?”

Doing a Google search, I discovered that the downtown office of Bank of America had closed. So, I started calling branches of the bank, thinking, surely, whoever answered would be able to direct me to the guy I wanted to reach.

I called three branches, and at each number the phone rang several times before flipping to a voice message that started out, “Everyone is currently assisting customers…”

Oh, yeah, assisting customers. You know what they were doing…Most were either texting or surfing the web. And why should they bother to pick up that telephone that was ringing or buzzing nearby?

With some more Googling, I came across a document the guy had written, and at the bottom was his phone number and email address. I promptly called the number. You know what it went to…

He sounded kind of tired and beat down in his message, like he’d been assisting a lot of customers. I’ve been waiting by my phone all day, but nothing yet.

**

Another blogger in town, Tony Botello, yesterday wrote a lead-in to a linked story about Main Street congestion, and his headline was “Kansas City Hates Poorly Planned Main Street Traffic Cone Maze.”

Now, I’ve heard a lot of comments about the Main Street work but very few complaints. That’s because the vast majority of KC residents understand this is short-term pain before we get a major civic and commercial improvement — the new streetcar line that will extend from Union Station to the western edge of the UMKC campus at 52nd and Brookside.

The current line, from Union Station to the River Market, has been phenomenally successful, and there’s no reason to think the extension will be any different. Will people want to ride from the River Market to the Plaza or even farther south? Well, hell yes! This is going to spur businesses along the extension and make Midtown streets safer, partly because many people will drink and ride instead of drink and drive.

Tony needs to get out of his mother’s basement, which last I heard was blog HQ, and look down the horizon.

**

A few weeks ago, I did a photo post on the section of State Line Road between 75th Street and about 39th Street. The part between 75th and 71st has been particularly troublesome the last several years. It’s been humpty-bumpy, pot-holey and closed for maintenance quite frequently. It’s the main road I take to and from home because I try to avoid Ward Speedway.

Yesterday, it was closed again at 75th Street northbound, and I could see that the pavement had been stripped. Today it was open and the pavement had been stripped all the way to 71st. That means one thing: Repaving is going to be happening soon…Damn, life is good!

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On. Aug. 15, Kansas City Star editor and president Mike Fannin announced that the paper would be “hiring nearly a dozen new journalists” and nearly doubling its investigative team to nine reporters and three editors.

Today, however, one of the leading members of that investigative team, reporter Steve Vockrodt, confirmed in a phone call that his last day at The Star was Friday and that he would be joining NPR’s new “Midwest Newsroom,” a consortium of four stations, including Kansas City affiliate KCUR, on Wednesday.

“I feel good about it,” he said. “It’s a chance to try something new, try something different, and hopefully grow what I can do professionally.”

He added that he felt sad about leaving The Star. “They’ve been good to me,” he said.

Vockrodt, 39, has been The Star’s most productive investigative reporter since the paper hired him away from The Pitch five years ago. Where most members of the paper’s investigative team toil for months or even years on the same story, Vockrodt is more of a quick-strike researcher, turning around news-related investigations in a matter of days or a couple of weeks.

Vockrodt’s new title is investigative editor for the Midwest Newsroom, which consists of KCUR, St. Louis Public Radio, Iowa Public Radio out of Des Moines and Nebraska Public Media out of Lincoln. Technically, his employer will be St. Louis Public Radio, although he will be working primarily out of KCUR.

Holly Edgell, managing editor of the Midwest Newsroom, said she was eager to see Vockrodt “apply his reporting chops to the role as well as coach, lead and mentor other reporters.”

She added: “Steve’s journalistic and emotional intelligence are apparent to anyone who’s read his work and followed his career over the years. We are very excited that he’ll bring his ideas, investigative skills and integrity to amplifying important stories across the region.”

Vockrodt will be part of a five-member team headed by Edgell.

From the personnel standpoint, this is a big “scoop” for NPR and KCUR. Over the last 15 years, The Star has declined sharply under McClatchy ownership. KCUR, on the other hand, has steadily expanded over the last five to seven years and now is a stout challenger to The Star for the title of leading news source in the KC area.

KCUR has a staff of about 75 full- and part-time employees. Its annual budget is about $9 million, and it serves about 160,000 listeners in the area.

Vockrodt is just the latest of several big-name Star journalists to make the jump, at one point of their careers or another, to KCUR. Others have included Donna Vestal, a former Star business editor; Scott Canon, a former national reporter and editor; Dan Margolies, a business reporter; and, of course, political reporter Steve Kraske, who hosts KCUR’s popular Up-to-Date show.

A KCUR story last year said the four stations comprising the Midwestern hub would “coordinate and expand their local and regional reporting, providing stories to national news programs as well as the 25 public radio stations serving the four-state region.”

Vockrodt is a native of the Denver area. After graduating from the University of Kansas, he worked for a group of Northland papers before joining the Olathe Daily News. From there, he went to the Lawrence Journal-World, then it was back to Kansas City to the Business Journal, before going to The Pitch and then The Star.

The most recent story bearing Vockrodt’s byline led today’s KC Star website. It was titled “Kansas City awarding massive airport contract for restaurants, bars and shops in secret.”

Vockrodt resides in Fairway.

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I went to bed early last night and, unfortunately, missed Salvador Perez’ historic, second-game-in-a-row grand slam against the Seattle Mariners.

I read about it — and the Royals’ 12th inning victory — on kansascity.com when I got up this morning, but I’ve got to tell you it was an extremely disappointing read.

For years, The Star had a history of hiring great baseball writers, like Bob Nightengale (now a baseball columnist for USA Today) and Bob Dutton (now retired), but since 2018 it’s been a different story.

Just like the quality of the writing in the rest of the paper, the quality of Royals’ reports has gone south.

Perez became the first Royals’ player to hit home runs in consecutive games, and those two smashes were electrifying to Royals’ fans. Somehow, though, Royals’ beat writer Lynn Worthy managed to make it sound perfunctory.

Here’s how Worthy, who’s been on the beat the last three seasons, started his story about Perez’ heroics:

While in the midst of a career season and a year likely to make history for a player at the game’s most grueling position, Kansas City Royals All-Star catcher Salvador Perez has continued to attain new levels of amazement.

He has more home runs (three) than strikeouts (two) in his past three games dating back to Wednesday. In his last two games, he has four hits, eight RBIs, two grand slams and just one strikeout.

Perez became the 24th player in the history of the American and National leagues to hit grand slam home runs in back-to-back games when he hit one for the second consecutive night to help the Royals to an 8-7 extra-inning win on Friday night in Seattle.

Even more appalling was the caption on a photo accompanying Worthy’s story. The caption — which Worthy was not responsible for — read:

Kansas City Royals’ Salvador Perez points skyward as he heads home on his grand slam against the Seattle Mariners in the fourth inning of a baseball game Friday, Aug. 27, 2021, in Seattle.

Patty laughed out loud when she read that. She came into the house from the patio, screeching “…in the fourth inning of a baseball game?!”

Point being it was pretty obvious from the photo, with Perez rounding the bases with a grin on his face and his right index finger raised high, that this, indeed, was a baseball game.

Patty was equally disgusted with Worthy’s soporific account of the game, and I told her that just for fun I’d try to come up with a version that did justice to Perez’ feat.

So, I sat down at the computer and in about 15 minutes came up with this:

With the Royals trailing 5-1 against the Seattle Mariners last night and the bases loaded, Salvador Perez had the chance to become the first Royal ever to hit grand slams in back-to-back games.

On the third pitch from Logan Gilbert, Perez swung hard at a ball low and over the outside part of the plate. He connected, and the ball sailed deep toward centerfield. Mariners’ outfielder Jarred Kelenic ran back and climbed the wall but sank back in futility as the ball fell into the extended hands of fans a few rows up.

With one swing, Perez had not only set a Royals’ record but had tied the game and positioned the Royals to go on and win the game 8-6 in 12 innings.

“We’re watching an MVP-style season with what’s going on here with this guy,” Royals manager Mike Matheny said after the game.

**

Now, I’m not going to run out and apply to become Royals’ beat writer for The Star — I’m sure most of the staff regards me as a pain in the ass anyway — but I ask you: Doesn’t that go a long way toward capturing the thrill of that event? And wouldn’t it make you want to go on reading?

That’s what the first sentence, or the first few sentences of a story are supposed to do — draw the readers in and “hook ’em” from the get-go.

Poor Lynn Worthy and poor KC Star…For the most part, they’ve lost one of the most important dimensions of reporting: vibrant writing.

**

You can see Perez’ home run here.

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After a week in Cape Cod, it could have been time to head home, but, no, it was on to Chicago to meet up with friends from Louisville and visit our son Charlie, who’s been living there a couple of years and working at the University of Chicago Medical Center.

On Thursday, we caught a late flight from Logan to O’Hare, and by the time we got to our hotel and into the bed it was past midnight.

We had to fire up quickly Friday, however, because our friends from Louisville, Bill and Denise, had lined up tickets to the Royals-Cubs game at Wrigley Field.

This was only the second time I was at Wrigley. The first was many years ago, before the stadium had been improved and all home games were played in the daytime.

Let’s get to the photos…

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Decades ago, one of five branches of the Fitzpatrick family (my father and his four siblings) ended up in New England. It’s always been a bit perplexing to me how this branch of the family — which, like the rest of us, had its roots in Louisville — ended up so far away. But that’s what a good job with a big company — GE — will do.

Over the years, I’ve had several opportunities to visit the Boston area and Cape Cod, and I’ve come to really appreciate the best of New England, that is, Cape Cod.

Boston is okay, but I’d take Kansas City over it any day. At least two of the times we’ve been there, it’s been as hot or hotter than Kansas City, and the public transportation system is not good for a city its size — except for the Silver Line buses that run between the city and Logan International Airport.

Recently, we spent a week in Cape Cod for the second family reunion held there in recent years, and it was a wonderful and gratifying occasion. At one time I had six aunts and uncles and many cousins. I still have all but one of those cousins — the one died way too early — but I’m down to a single aunt in the generation ahead of me.

Aunt Nanette turned 91 earlier this year, and is in good health. She lives in Needham, outside of Boston, but one of her sons has a house in Yarmouth, in the mid-Cape area. Yarmouth was reunion headquarters, but Patty and I took the opportunity to drive all the way to Provincetown, at the eastern tip.

Here are some of the photos I took…

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Nearly two years ago, then-29-year-old Anthony J. Dorsey tried to elude the Kansas Highway Patrol, which had been pursuing him for an outdated vehicle registration, on westbound I-70.

When the chase, which had begun in Wyandotte County, neared the toll checkpoint just west of Kansas 7 in Leavenworth County, Dorsey wheeled his gray SUV around and began speeding east in the westbound lane.

More often than not, such situations end in big trouble, and this one did.

Nineteen-year-old Nathan Pena of Brookfield, IL, a western Chicago suburb, was heading west on the Turnpike, bound for Colorado to visit a friend. Pena saw the gray SUV do an about-face and start heading in his direction. In the seconds he had available, he whipped the steering wheel of his red vehicle to the right, toward the shoulder of the highway and a grassy incline.

As I wrote back on Oct. 7, 2019, Dorsey also took evasive action, but, maddeningly, he turned the same way. His SUV, larger than Pena’s vehicle, struck the red car nearly head on. Although Pena was wearing a seat belt, the impact killed him. And as sometimes happens in such tragedies, the bad guy was not seriously injured.

Dorsey was charged with first-degree murder, and it took nearly two years for resolution. This morning, in Leavenworth County District Court, Dorsey, now 31, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder. He is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 17 and could get nearly 50 years in prison.

As it turned out, Dorsey had previous convictions for aggravated robbery and attempted aggravated robbery, and he was a parole violator at the time of the crash. There is no indication, however, that the highway patrol officer or officers giving chase knew at the time anything more than that the SUV had an expired plate.

The Star pointed out that the highway patrol policy at that time (I don’t know if it has changed) required the responding officer to undertake a pursuit only if he or she believed the risk to the public is lower than the immediate danger from the suspect remaining at large.

In this instance, obviously, the immediate risk to the public outweighed the danger posed by Dorsey remaining at large, at least for a while longer.

I’m not sure if the highway patrol continued the pursuit after Dorsey turned around. I hope not. In any event, the pursuit should have ended earlier. It had to be pretty clear to the officers Dorsey was only going to be stopped by a crash or — best case scenario — stop sticks.

I don’t think there’s a parent alive who would say, if it was their son or daughter who had died, that the continued pursuit was a good idea.

Among those left to grieve Pena’s loss were his parents Jennifer and Alex; sister Lauren; and grandfather John Pena and his wife Chris Meier and grandmother Alice Iankav.

Four days ago, having just learned of my October 2019 post, Jennifer Pena wrote me an email, saying, “The police were in the wrong for engaging this high-speed pursuit as well as the driver who fled police and killed my son.”

These are always judgment calls. But too often, up to this point, officers seem to err on the side of pursuit rather than public safety. The trend, and policies, needs to change.

In a story today about the Dorsey plea, The Star reported that between 2014 and 2019, at least six innocent people were killed and several others seriously injured in police pursuits throughout the metro area. The story said experts had told the paper that people evading police are more likely to reduce speed and drive less recklessly if they think police have stopped chasing them.

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Below the 2019 obituary that appeared on the website of the Hitzeman Funeral Home in Brookfield is a string of condolences.

A woman named Alexandra Montgomery wrote: “Nathan was an amazing person. I am beyond grateful and blessed to have known him. He made working at Best Buy a million times better. He always knew how to make me laugh and could always make me feel better. He is going to be greatly missed, but his spirit will live on.”

Another woman, Anna Eich, wrote: “Nathan was a good friend to my daughter Linnea when they were at Park (Junior High). They were in band together. I remember Nathan as a good and kind-hearted young man. My heart goes out to your entire family.”

What a tragedy…It shouldn’t have happened.

Note: On Friday, Sept. 17, Anthony Dorsey was sentenced to 49 years and four months in prison.

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