It's not too early to start really concentrating on Las Vegas, right? I think the thing I like about Vegas the most is that it's such a big "destination event" for so many fans, the crowd there is pretty unique. You get almost no "local flavor" at The Strip, probably for two reasons... 1) A lot of people who live in Las Vegas came there from somewhere else, so it's not like there's any kind of accent, or look, or characteristic that says "Las Vegas" (except, perhaps, pinkie rings on the men...) and 2) The crowd is made up of a HUGE proportion of people who have traveled from all over the county (heck, all over the world!) to be there.

When you're in Englishtown, you know you're in New Jersey. When you're in Reading, you know you're in Pennsylvania. When you're in Vegas, you just know you're at a really big race with a lot of people who have come a long way to have a lot of fun.

Speaking of coming from all over the world, have you seen the Top Fuel entry list? It's the biggest European invasion since 60s pop music! We'll have Lex Joon from Holland, Urs Erbacher from Switzerland, Thomas Nataas from Norway, and Stig Neergaard from Denmark. How cool is that! I first heard from Lex a couple of years ago, and his wife Gerda drops me notes every now and then too, so I wish everyone good luck and I hope to meet a few of these great European racers next weekend. (Gerda wrote me most recently when she was able to translate that German newspaper story about Dan Wilkerson's crash.)

Tying into that, I was talking to Del on the phone yesterday and he was telling me how two of the Euro teams have rented space at the Worsham shop, in preparation for the two races (Vegas and Pomona), and both teams have actually leased the use of a couple of our old Team CSK transporters. That's pretty cool.

Irrelevant note: We have the local "Squeegie Squad" team here today, cleaning all the windows in the house. This is my semi-annual day of not wanting to watch a lot of what they're doing, because our house is basically all windows in back, and the highest point is a solid 40 feet off the ground (I'm guessing, since you won't find me on a ladder back there). The guy is doing all the inside work (yes, we could clean our own windows inside, although the huge living room windows are a real challenge, but they offer the "inside & out" package at such a good rate it's silly to turn it down), and his accomplice is a young lady with hip red hair who looks pretty much like the last person you'd expect to see climbing 35 feet in the air with a squeegie in her hand.

Just a few seconds ago, as I was typing the first paragraph, she was doing the outside of my office windows. I didn't make any faces at her, but it was kinda weird to have someone about two feet away, on a ladder, outside my window.

Second irrelevant note: Greg Ozubko, our esteemed hockey fantasy league administrator, has taken it upon himself to finally alter the "Wilberson" spelling of my name. In honor of it being the baseball post-season, he originally changed my name to Babe Wilber, for a few days. And he didn't even know that Babe was my dad's nickname when he played (you can look that one up). Just as I was getting used to the Babe moniker, I looked at the league yesterday and was simply thankful I didn't have a mouthful of Diet Coke when the page came up. As you can see, sitting in 17th place, is Reggie Wilber - Mr. Oct. That
cracked me up... Let us never forget Reggie Jackson's time-honored words "I didn't come to New York to be a star. I brought my star with me!"

Side note of some surreal quality: It's 1981 and I'm scouting for the Toronto Blue Jays, based out of Fresno. The team had me come down to L.A. for the World Series, Dodgers vs. Yankees, and I'm sitting at a rooftop bar at some hotel on Wilshire Blvd., with Pat Gillick (GM of the Jays) and Bobby Cox (about to become the Jays' new manager) when up walks Reggie Jackson. He sat for a while, chatted with all of us, and even asked me a couple of questions, because he was fascinated that a 26-year-old kid could be a Scouting Supervisor (I wasn't fascinated by that, I was over my head and confused). He got up to leave, shook our hands, and I clearly remember thinking "Holy crap. I just sat here and chatted with Reggie Jackson like it was nothing..." Keep in mind, I'd been around big leaguers all my life. As a matter of fact, Yogi Berra had actually jumped in the back seat of Gillick's car the night before, to get a ride back to the hotel with us, and he sat next to me asking how my mom and dad were, and that was all no big deal to me. But Reggie Jackson! That was bizarre.

Back to Vegas, briefly... Our Thursday afternoon and evening just got a little busier, as Ford is still wanting to video tape Tim driving one of the new Taurus models. They gave him a Taurus to drive at Indy, but somehow the logistics of making sure the film crew stuck around and got some shots of Tim driving it failed to happen, so basically he just had a free car for the weekend. Now, they'd like to somehow coordinate Tim driving the new car in conjunction with the "meet & greet" we're going to do at Gaudin Ford on Thursday afternoon. We're working on it...

I'm also excited to get back to Mandalay Bay, because the spring race in Vegas was a total "lost weekend" for me. I was having major ankle issues all weekend, to the point where I was in sheer misery most of the time and barely able to walk. If you've ever spent a weekend with a high fever, you know what it's like to look back and barely remember any details, other than the fact you were miserable. That's how I remember the spring Vegas race. I wasn't sick, but I was in terrific pain, I was really in the dumps about it, and I just remember trying to survive and get through the whole ordeal, wanting ever so badly to simply get home. No gambling, no nightlife, no meals at fancy restaurants... Nothin' but my hotel room and the racetrack, along with a lot of ice packs and pain pills.

To that end, I've seen one of the best foot and ankle guys in the Twin Cities in the last month, and he prescribed some new custom-made orthotics that I just got a few days ago. The orthotics guy told me it would take a long time for me to get to used to them, so I should be prepared to have them in for two hours, then take them out again, until I became accustomed to the feeling. Heck with that! As soon as I put them in, I could feel both lower legs shift into a much more comfortable position, and I haven't had so much as a tweak in either ankle since. Why did I wait so long to do this???

The inserts have large arch supports, and both force my ankles to roll out a little more, since my natural position has them rolling in and that puts all the pressure on the two medial tendons (the left one, aka "the bad one" is the one I injured way back when, sliding into 3rd base for the Danville Roosters). These things straighten me out, take all the pressure off the insides of my ankles, and make me feel like a million bucks. Well, a thousand bucks...

Okay, now let's talk about one of the most coincidental yet circuitous oddities I've ever come upon when it comes to knowing people, understanding family trees, and other such "degrees of separation."

If you're a Philadelphia Phillies fan, or have even watched any of the NL playoff games, you're probably aware of the Phillies' outfielder by the name of Jayson Werth. He's a very good major league ballplayer, and I even added him to my fantasy team last summer, because of his productivity. Here's the long story... Stay with me. You might want to take notes...

I went to Southern Illinois University - Edwardsville on a baseball scholarship, and one of the first guys I met there was a former SIUE ballplayer named Dennis Werth. He actually got drafted by the New York Yankees the summer before I began my freshman year, so we never played there together, but Dennis stayed in school between his professional baseball seasons in order to finish his degree, and he therefore hung out with all of us. Point to be made: We never called him Dennis. To us, he was Herbie Werth, although I have no idea where that nickname came from. He's also from Lincoln, Illinois, just up the road from Springfield where Tim lives and our shop is located.

Anyway, Herbie was a great guy, and he even played on our SIUE baseball players' intramural flag-football team. At that point, he was already on the Yankees 40-man major league roster and had made his big league debut in pinstripes (a fact we all found fascinating, to say the least). I can remember a late season flag-football playoff game, when it was about 20 degrees out and there was ice and snow on the ground, and Herbie was playing nose guard for us on defense. As the opposing team came to the line to snap the ball, Herbie was laying flat on the ground, with his nose about an inch from the tip of the football, snorting at it and growling, with his vaporized breath looking like something straight out of NFL Films and their "frozen tundra" shows. I think the other team's center was afraid to snap the ball...

At that moment, a couple of us (our whole team was made up of SIUE baseball players) looked at each other and laughed, saying "What in the world would George Steinbrenner think of that!" LOL...

Now, forgetting all about Herbie Werth for a second, skip back to the 1960s. As the son of a former Cardinal, I grew up at Busch Stadium and very much remember a fine infielder by the name of Dick "Ducky" Schofield, who played for the Redbirds throughout most of my childhood. Ducky was from Springfield, Ill.

Many years later, after my baseball career was over and I was a Regional Promotions Director for Converse Shoes, living in Southern California, the Anaheim Angels had a fine young shortstop by the name of Dick Schofield, who just happened to be Ducky's son. He also happened to wear Converse, so we got to know each other as I supplied him with all the shoes, hats, T-shirts, travel bags, and other branded stuff he needed.

So there you have all that. Dennis "Herbie" Werth went to school with me and is from Lincoln, Illinois. Ducky Schofield played for my dad's former team, and I watched him play when I was a kid. His son, Dickie, played for the Angels and I put Converse shoes on him. Got all that???

Okay, so when Jayson Werth came to the big leagues, as such a big strapping outfielder, my first thought was "This kid has got to be Herbie's boy, right..." I did the research and found this: Jayson Werth is not Dennis "Herbie" Werth's son. He's his STEPSON! That
seemed strange enough, that Herbie would marry a girl who already had a little boy and the kid would just so happen to be a great athlete and follow in his new stepdad's shoes, right to the big leagues. Then I saw who Herbie married... A certain Kim Schofield. Herbie married Dickie Schofield's sister and together they raised her son Jayson. Does this kid have some genes or what? Turns out, Kim was such a good athlete she competed at the U.S. Olympic trials, in both the long jump and 100-meters.

So... I've never met Jayson Werth. But, I knew his stepdad well and have that vision of him, snorting on the football, forever burned in my memory. I watched his grandfather play in the big leagues, and I kept his uncle in shoes that had a "star & chevron" on the side. Plus there's the whole Illinois and Springfield connection that ties into what I do today.

The whole thing is a big bowl of spaghetti; it's so intertwined, but there's Jayson, kicking butt in the big leagues. Amazing...

1

1 of 3

 

Where we're headed next. I hope I have more fun this time...

 

Barbara is flying home right now, after a two-day trip to Charlotte and, guess where? Philadelphia! She even snapped a photo out of the window at the office where she was having a meeting in Philly, and the new Phils' ballpark can be seen. The oddities continue...

Oh, and one last oddity. That night in L.A., when Reggie Jackson stopped by to chat...? Earlier that evening I was in the hotel lobby and had a chance to say hi to my former flag-football teammate, Herbie Werth. He was on the Yankees roster for the '81 World Series. World = Small.

Meanwhile, the window cleaner team is still hard at work, although the young girl has yet to tackle the most dangerous job. That happens when we have to put a sheet of plywood on top of our arbor over the patio, and then she'll have to place her tallest ladder on top of the plywood, in order to climb up to get our master bedroom windows. That's the moment I most avoid watching...

I know this was a long and convoluted blog installment, mostly about stuff that might perhaps only interest people with bent minds (like me), but I wanted to get it all written down so that I might be able to even understand the strangeness of it all, at least a little bit more. Herbie... Ducky... Dickie... And Jayson. Oh, and Reggie.

And hey, next week we'll go racing again, we'll try to win some more rounds, and I won't have all this free time to allow my brain to wander off in these strange and crazy directions.

Wilber, out!