(ThyBlackMan.com) When I was a kid, I loved baseball and was an above-average player. Good enough to reach Lutheran league championships three years in a row without winning ( two games lost 5 to 4). Good enough to be selected to one of the city’s two Connie Mack teams. was blessed to have had family members play for the Memphis Red Sox. My Grandmother’s brother, when I was a yougin’, taught me two pitches: the forkball and screwball and they served me well.
We had a minor league AA team in Memphis called the Memphis Blues. My friends and neighbors, brothers Ricky and Anthony Duncan had a cousin who played for the Rochester Red Wings. His name was Taylor Duncan. His best friend on the team was Eddie Murray. Whenever they were in town, he would leave us free tickets and let us come early to shag balls with the team. Over that period, I had to amass over 100 baseballs and even a cracked Eddie Murray bat. I would leave each game I went to with about 20 balls because they let us keep the balls we caught.
My favorite players were numerous, most from my favorite team back then, the Oakland A’s”: Bert Campaneris, Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue, Rollie Fingers, Catfish Hunter, and Claudell Washington. But I did admire others including Hal McRae, Fred Lynn, Hank Aaron, Carl Yastrzemski, Jonny Bench, Joe Morgan, Lou Brock, and Tug “Screwball” McGraw.
At one game they were honoring Bob Feller, why, I do not know. But I would come to learn he was a legendary pitcher, and as a pitcher myself, I felt it was disrespectful not to have known of his greatness in the game. The dude threw three no-hitters. In his speech before the game, he mentioned his love for the country and thanked the brave men returning from Vietnam. Doing my research on Feller which required a library card and knowledge of using a microfiche machine, I learned a lot about this cat.
I also learned that he volunteered for the United States Navy, becoming the first American professional athlete to enlist serving as a gunnery Captain on the USS Alabama during WW II. I found a quote where he said:
I’m no hero. Heroes don’t come back. Survivors return home. Heroes never come home. If anyone thinks I’m a hero, I’m not.
That stuck with me because I was around 12 years old then. Like most people, I followed the Vietnam War on the television set. It was on the news daily. On every channel, it was because there were only four channels at the time. The Vietnam War was on television every night. I remember reporters would be standing with the jungle behind them giving us the play-by-play as if it was a sporting event. Words did not describe or match the video footage presented.
On this day in 1975, the Vietnam War ended. I will not get into its cause (the Gulf of Tonkin incident of 1974) or its dramatic curtain call with the fall of Saigon, but I do want to show some respect to those men and boys who fought and died there, like my Uncle friend Van (RIP).
I think about it now and ask myself, what the fuck happened to the news? Reporters in the 1970s were going on a patrol with us soldiers in Vietnam, knowing they might get killed, compared to reporters today who will leak a person’s address and social security number because they say Trans women are not women. It was a time when news used to tell you WTF was happening.
Among other things, watching the Vietnam War in real time opened my vocabulary to new geography and technology. I learned of “Monkey Mountain” by Danang and the A Shau Valley. I was introduced to the F4 Phantom and the M60. As a kid, I thought these were old men, now I see these were kids in their early 20s and late teens.
They all looked so young and tense and scared. Kids man. Brave kids. Every story showed units made up of mainly boys no older than 21. Watching real-life footage made me realize how young these soldiers were. I can not imagine holding myself so heroic at 19 walking into thick forests and being shot at any moment. Some of these guys were fresh out of high school, and some even still had acne if you look closely enough.
To this day, can’t imagine what these young men went through. These young people were extremely brave. They had balls of steel and I have no idea how they managed to endure that chaos. It was as if they were superhuman.
They collected Purple Hearts like Pokémon cards and took bullet wounds like they were paintballs. American soldiers hiking their way through the jungle, on search and destroy patrol, is not like going out for a casual hike. I can not even imagine how terrifying jungle warfare must’ve been. You could not see 100 feet in front of your nose out there.
A nice, sunny day for them was getting shot at by 100 Vietnamese soldiers. And it was easy to tell they wanted no part of this yet still did their job. I guess everybody is gangsta until the trees start speaking Vietnamese 7.62 x 39.
Most of these men were not even men yet, still boys. To die in a country thousands of miles away is pure insanity. They went through things that none of us will ever have to go through.
May these young men rest in peace and be remembered, on both sides as well. Waste of life, and a pointless war. These guys served their country so bravely and courageously but yet experienced a lot of discrimination when they returned. How can any true American not appreciate these guys? How they were treated returning home when they were just boys and young men who didn’t have a choice bugs me still to this day.
Total respect for you all. Thank you to every single person that served. The fact that the US government forced kids fresh out of high school to fight in such a pointless war is unforgivable and horrific. It destroyed men in their prime, with an average age of 19. Many who returned home did not receive a hero’s welcome. They came home to a divided country and many had trouble adjusting to civilian life due to the horrors of what they had been through. Again, respect to each one of those men.
It is so sad Vietnam veterans don’t get enough recognition. Because 58,000 names on a wall, with thousands more dying after they got home from the effects of PTSD is unforgivable. My uncle wasn’t drafted. But many of his friends were. Ironically, all of my uncle’s friends came home without bodily injury but the mental was not there. We would watch the draft lottery whenever it was on TV praying his birth date was never called. It wasn’t. But his friends were not so lucky. One named Van was a solid stand-up guy. Had all his faculties but when a helicopter would fly over, he would go crazy.
The tours of duty in Vietnam for my uncle’s friends took a great toll on their health. They never talked about the war. Funny because when they were drafted, I remember them upstairs in my uncle’s and my room admitting they did not even know where Vietnam was.
Just an awful awful war. Again, I cannot imagine what they had to endure. I write all of this to say what I could have said in a few words, thank you all for your service you are all heroes and God Bless the veterans.
Staff Writer; Torrance T. Stephens
Can also purchase any of his books over at; Amazon – TTS Books.