Weekly Newspaper and Tourism Guide for Ward County Trans Pecos, Big Bend of West Texas

Opinion

September 10, 1998

Monahan's Well

It was about this time Joe Hayes, school district business
manager, a model of conservative decorum, stepped in and
yelled, "62! 62!."

I jumped and began to applaud. Everybody knew what happened.

No one, absolutely no one, had to ask what Joe Hayes meant
when he said, "62." No one had to wonder what Joe Hayes was
talking about as I did the other day when I wondered to
publisher Joe Warren why in the world I should be concerned
about somebody named George Strait. Warren thought that was
pretty funny. He told me I was joking. He said everyone
knows who George Strait is. I didn't and I don't but I sure
know what 62 means and what 62 means is history.

That was why Joe Hayes was showing a little uncharacteristic
emotion. I wonder if Joe knows who George Strait is.

Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals of the National
League had just launched his sixty-second home run of the
year with nearly a month left to play. It was a frozen
rope, a line shot that cleared the left field wall by what
appeared to be about a foot. I watched about a thousand
replays after I made it home to the television set.

I sincerely believe that drive would have gone through the
wall if it had not cleared it. If Mark McGwire's
sixty-second home run had been angled upward a little, it
would have shot out of Busch Stadium through the Gateway
Arch and probably would be somewhere the other side of the
Solar System by the time you read this. But it didn't.
Its trajectory was a little low when it ripped into the
advertising billboard just beyond the left field fence.

Mark McGwire, as fellow home run king Sammy Sosa of the
Chicago Cubs has said, just might hit 70 homers this year.
Sosa, of course, has 58 and before September is over, Sosa
might roll past 62. It would not be unexpected.

You break the record of 61 Roger Maris hit in 1961 and
people take notice especially if they're in St. Louis where
home run records are not really foreseen. St. Louis is the
town whose teams used to win World Series titles with
pitching and speed. It is rumored the Cardinals even figured
a way to sharpen turf shoes to cut shortstops and second
basemen. Cardinals slide with one leg high looking for a
throat. They can't help it. Its in the genes. And now St.
Louis worships Mark McGwire, who does not need to slide
because the baseball leaves the premises.

Mark McGwire of the St Louis Cardinals Tuesday night took
the front pages away from Slick Willie Clinton's latest sex
scandal, Slick Willie Clinton's latest campaign financing
scandal.

Starr might send his special report on Clinton and his
shenanigans over to the House Judiciary Committee this
week.

I don't care. Mark McGwire just beat Roger Maris and Babe
Ruth. Mark McGwire just hugged his kid. Mark McGwire has hit
more than 50 homers for three seasons in a row. Mark
McGwire has fun playing baseball.

I wonder if Mark McGwire knows who George Strait is. He
might.

Vehicle vandalism top crime

That incident is this week's Crime of the Week by the Odessa
Crime Stoppers Group.

Crime Stoppers and the Monahans police department are asking
the citizens for help in catching the vandalizing burglars.

Anyone willing to pick up the telephone and dial 333-TIPS
and tell the person answering the names of the yahoos
responsible for this outrage in our town can collect $1,000.

Susan Rogers of Odessa Crime Stoppers promises you will
remain anonymous. If you don't want to call Odessa, call the
Monahans police department and tell them.

Every now and then we wonder why it is that people in this
era seem to have little respect and no feeling for their
fellow human beings. We don't know why this is so. It simply
is. It is a fact which, if denied, eventually will hurt us.

Still we can mourn the passing of the time when such
vandalism simply did not happen and Monahans was not the
scene of the Permian Basin crime of the week.