Hagerstown, MD is a small city (pop. 35,000) in western Maryland, the seat of Washington County. It has birthed the band Kix and myself. I have lived here for the duration of my 29 years; I will not die here. Unlike the former guitarist for Kix, who is a cook at the Holiday Inn.
Hagerstown persists (like a hungry dog) in being a bass-ackwards blemish on the map within the map within the map that comes to the attention of those outside its borders only when great banality occurs within.
Apology accepted.
Fifty-four years after facing racism and segregation in Hagerstown as he started his path to baseball greatness, Willie Mays publicly said Monday that all is forgiven.
“You just don’t hold that against a town because the town isn’t the person who hurt you,” Mays said.
In fact, Mays promised to come back twice more: As grand marshal of the Alsatia Club Mummers’ Parade and when the city gets a new baseball stadium.
During a return visit to Hagerstown, Mays – a legendary hitter and fielder and member of Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame – twice talked about the hateful atmosphere of his debut decades ago.
First, he spoke at a $50-a-ticket buffet and presentation at Antietam Hotel & Conference Center Antietam Creek on Dual Highway.
More than 300 people attended, including about four dozen who paid $750 or $1,000 to privately get Mays’ autograph beforehand.
Mays, 73, later took part in a pregame ceremony at Municipal Stadium, where tickets were a fraction of the price and the crowd was more than 10 times bigger.
It was at Municipal Stadium that Mays, at age 19, played his first professional game in the New York Giants’ minor league system on June 24, 1950.
Mays and people at that game have said that some fans yelled racial epithets and other derogatory names at him. He was forced to stay at the all-black Harmon Hotel on Jonathan Street, apart from his white teammates.
In a 1988 television interview, Mays said Hagerstown was where he suffered the worst treatment when he broke into baseball.
“In 1950, when I was here, it was such a sad, you know, moment,” Mays told Monday’s stadium crowd, “but, still, everything works out. … I have no regrets coming back.”
At the hotel reception, Mays said he turned down an invitation three or four years ago to be a parade grand marshal in Hagerstown.
“I declined,” he said, “because I had a little sadness in my throat. (But) I said to myself, ‘No, that’s not the way to go.'”
“Hagerstown has made a lot of strides and came forward ’cause we’re all here to … welcome you to the community where you started your career with the New York Giants,” said Hagerstown Mayor William M. Breichner, who was at Mays’ first game.
“And I can honestly say that, you know, it was very unfortunate, what happened. … I guess, that was a trend in those days, but it’s no excuse for that sort of thing happening to any individual.”
This time, Mays was treated like royalty. Fans cheered heartily and gave him standing ovations at the hotel and the stadium.
The Suns retired his uniform number. The city added his name to a stretch of East Memorial Boulevard that runs by the stadium. Brian Robinson, whose great-grandfather owned the Harmon Hotel, gave Mays a plaque.
Kurt Landes, the Suns’ general manager who arranged the event, including paying Mays’ fee, said Mays’ return was magical.
“Words can’t describe for myself and … the Hagerstown Suns how proud we are to have Willie Mays with us tonight here in Hagerstown,” he said.
Exuberant fans agreed.
Robert Perrott, 53, of Hagerstown, brought his grandson, Ryan Bean, 13, to the hotel and waited for Mays to arrive in a white stretch limousine. Perrott said Mays is probably “number three in my book” behind Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron.
Sean Guy, 44, of Greencastle, Pa., paid his way into the autograph session with a scorecard of Mays’ first game for him to sign.
Former Major Leaguer Joe Durham, 73, of Randallstown, Md., said he played with Mays in the U.S. Army in Newport News, Va.
Among baseball stars, “there’s nobody that can touch you,” Durham told Mays.
Some people were disappointed Mays’ schedule was tight and allowed little mingling.
Followed by…
HAGERSTOWN, Md. – The mayor has struck out in his bid to rename a city street for baseball great Willie Mays.
Mayor William M. Breichner had hoped to make up for the poor treatment Mays received in the early 1950s when he made his minor league debut here to catcalls and racial jeers. However, his plans to rename Memorial Boulevard ran afoul of war veterans.
The backlash prompted Breichner and the city council last week to drop plans for renaming the street Willie Mays Way.
The rejection comes eight months after Mays returned to the western Maryland city. At the Aug. 9 event, Breichner publicly apologized to the Hall of Famer and promised to name a street in his honor. But after Breichner formally tried last month to make good on his pledge, scores of war veterans protested.
ESPN also devoted a segment of its “Outside the Lines” program to this story.
Did you know we have a Wal-Mart? You didn’t?!
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is pulling a skull-and-crossbones T-shirt from its shelves after a Maryland blogger complained that the image was identical to a Nazi SS emblem from World War II.
Rick Rottman, who runs an online journal called Bent Corner, posted a picture of the shirt late last week next to an image of a divisional insignia he said was used by the 3rd SS Division, a unit of Adolf Hitler’s Waffen SS.
The design is a distinctive image of a squat-looking human skull slightly angled to the side.
Wal-Mart said Monday it was not aware of the origins of the image until Rottman’s post and is working quickly to get the T-shirt out of stores, spokesman David Tovar said.
“We are deeply sorry that this happened, and we are in the process of pulling all of these T-shirts from our stores,” Tovar said. “Respect for the individual is a core value of our company and we would never have placed this T-shirt on our shelves had we known the origin and significance of this emblem.”
Wal-Mart is also reviewing its processes among suppliers for checking products in an effort to ensure this never happens again, Marshall Manson from Wal-Mart’s national public relations firm Edelman wrote in an e-mail to blogs that carried the story.
Rottman told The Associated Press by telephone Monday that he had seen the shirts in three Maryland Wal-Mart stores during the weekend.
MORE ON THIS STORY
Wal-Mart finds getting upscale isn’t easy
Rottman, 42, an electronics technician and a Air Force veteran, said he noticed the shirt at a Hagerstown, Md., Wal-Mart on Thursday.
“The image kind of struck me. I used to read a lot of books about World War II and the skull is really distinctive,” Rottman said. He took a photo with his cell phone and checked the image at home, he said.
The Waffen SS was the fighting arm of the notorious SS (Schutzstaffel), founded in 1925 as the personal bodyguard for Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders.
Waffen SS divisions have been implicated in murder sprees in German-occupied countries on the eastern and western fronts in World War II. Some guarded concentration camps.
HAGERSTOWN, Md. (AP) — Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which promotes itself as a seller of clean music, deceived customers by stocking compact discs by the rock group Evanescence that contain the f-word, a lawsuit claims.
The hit group’s latest CD and DVD, Anywhere But Home, don’t carry parental advisory labels alerting potential buyers to the obscenity. If they did, Wal-Mart wouldn’t carry them, according to the retailer’s policy.
But the lawsuit claims Wal-Mart knew about the explicit lyrics in the song, Thoughtless, because it censored the word in a free sample available on its Web site and in its stores.
The complaint, filed Thursday in Washington County Circuit Court, seeks an order requiring Wal-Mart to either censor or remove the music from its Maryland stores. It also seeks damages of up to $74,500 for each of the thousands of people who bought the music at Wal-Marts in Maryland.
“I don’t want any other families to get this, expecting it to be clean. It needs to be removed from the shelves to prevent other children from hearing it,” said plaintiff Trevin Skeens of Brownsville.
Skeens said he and his wife, Melanie, let their daughter buy the music for her 13th birthday and were shocked when they played it in their car while driving home.
Wal-Mart, of Bentonville, Ark., has no immediate plans to pull the CDs from its shelves, spokesman Guy Whitcomb told The (Hagerstown) Herald-Mail. He said the company will investigate the allegations. No hearing dates have been set.
“While Wal-Mart sets high standards, it would not be possible to eliminate every image, word or topic that an individual might find objectionable,” Whitcomb told the newspaper.
He told the Herald-Mail that the song sample online was censored by Walmart.com, a separate division of Wal-Mart.
Whitcomb didn’t return telephone calls Friday from The Associated Press.
The lawsuit also names as defendants Wind-up Records LLC, the New York-based company that recorded the music and decided not to apply parental-advisory stickers; and distributor BMG Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony BMG Music Entertainment, of New York.
Sony BMG declined to comment on the lawsuit. Wind-up didn’t return calls from the AP.
The Skeens’ lawyer, Jon Pels of Bethesda, said he aims to “take this case national, even if that means going state by state.”
He dismissed Whitcomb’s suggestion that Wal-Mart stores didn’t know about the censored version of the song. “They are a multimillion-dollar corporation and they certainly can communicate among their various entities,” he said.
They ended up with a cash settlement; the amount was not made public, but as an employee at the Circuit Court of Washington County, I was privy to the ruling. If Mr. and Mrs. Skeens read this, can I please hit you up for a loan? I will be house-hunting soon.
HAGERSTOWN – Paparazzi followed pop star Britney Spears’ soon-to-be-ex-husband to Wal-Mart in Hagerstown on Friday, causing store officials to call police to control the commotion. James Hornsby, Wal-Mart store manager, said Kevin Federline and two of his bodyguards came into the store to buy food, clothing and video games. “They were on their way to Washington, D.C.,” Hornsby said. “He said it was the second time in our store.” Federline signed pictures after shoppers recognized him, Hornsby said. “We had to call Hagerstown city police because of the paparazzi following him,” Hornsby said, noting the store has a strict policy about photographers on the premises. “One tried to come inside the store, and the police stopped him.” Spears and Federline created a fresh wave of celebrity news this week when they separately filed divorce papers.
And just when you thought those events defined us perfectly!
ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Fake bull testicles and other anatomically explicit vehicle decorations would be banned from Maryland roads under a bill pending in the state legislature.
The measure was filed in the General Assembly on Monday by Delegate LeRoy E. Myers Jr., who says children shouldn’t be exposed to giant plastic gonads dangling from pickup truck trailer hitches. The bill also would ban displaying images of naked human breasts, buttocks or genitals, with offenses punishable by fines of up to $500.
“It’s time to take a stand,” Myers told The (Hagerstown) Herald-Mail.
The American Civil Liberties Union objected to Myers’ bill.
“The legislation is overly broad, and would probably make it illegal to have a sticker on your car of the Venus de Milo from an art museum,” ACLU of Maryland spokeswoman Meredith Curtis wrote in an e-mail.
Pamela Campbell, whose Bullhead City, Ariz., business sells fake bull testicles, suggested that the swinging decorations can prompt healthy discussions about anatomy and reproduction.
(Mr. Myers has since stopped his crusade.)
AP) HAGERSTOWN, Md. A former Hagerstown police officer will be sentenced this week for making anonymous, racially biased death threats against school children and a black city council member in the western Maryland city.
Jeffrey Shifler’s sentencing is set for Friday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.
The 42-year-old Maugansville resident pleaded guilty in August to two civil-right violations and faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and $500,000 in fines.
Court records state that Shifler began making threats in letters and telephone calls in March 2004. That was four months after he was fired from the Hagerstown police department for allegedly falsifying payroll records.
My former brother-in-law’s brother. His threatening, virulently racist call to one local high school was answered by a young girl of half-white, half-black parentage–my niece.
This shit is too golden. At the end of the week, I hereby dedicate myself to dedicating an entry to whatever unique goings-on come to my attention in this here Bush. This includes the highlights of “You Said It”, a feature in the Herald-Mail wherein various Goofuses and Gallants from everywhere from Hagerstown to Williamsport (“Weemsport”, in the vernacular), Smithsburg, Hancock, Clear Spring, golly it’s wide-ranging.
This week wasn’t too histrionic for the feature. Let’s get to the best.
“That poor guy there in Smithsburg says he really enjoys going into Smithsburg without his cigarette smoke, but that’s what they made ventilation for. We have our rights too. Get a life.”–WILLIAMSPORT
Yes, smokers have rights. But people shouldn’t just be expected to accept anyone’s lifestyle choice. The word is “tolerance”, I believe. It’s when you try to force someone to mold their beliefs system to allow for your well-being that trouble arises. I cannot believe people still use the term, “Get a life.” Get a better, less puerile way to finish your sentences.
“I feel is people don’t want to have children, then they should take precautions….Just because it may not state in the Bible concerning abortion doesn’t mean people has to do this despicable act.”
I like pro-lifers who show their truest colors. See, they lean on the Bible when the Bible does not explicitly justify them. They take the words (excuse me, the Word) and twist it and bend it and hem and haw and voila! Hatred and fear given undue gravitas. It is rare and therefore beautiful when someone comes along and, inadvertently or not, reveals that the real reason they are opposed to abortion or homosexuality is not the teachings of God, but rather the fact that THEY DESPISE WOMEN AND GAYS AND SHUDDER TO CONSIDER A WORLD WHERE THEY ARE GIVEN RIGHTS. Bottom fuckin’ line. Wanting to control a woman’s decisions is many times the root of the pro-lifers stance. ABORTION KILLS CHILDREN AND HURTS WOMEN reads the car-mounted sign outside the downtown Planned Parenthood, placed there by two elderly gentlemen shuffling to their inevitable demise in trucker caps and oversized eyeglasses. Now maybe these guys are geniune God-lovers who want his word obeyed, or maybe they just find it a convenient crutch to prop their misogyny against. Whichever…I wish people would be upfront.
Those were the outstanding ones…I promise it will get better, ha. As one final “You Said It” note, our city is still recovering from a few blasts of snowfall that left several white blankets to cover parking spaces and driveways. Luckily, we have some thoughtful folk still around to help friends and family free themselves to drive like idiots and clog traffic at the most inopportune times. Are these recipients of the grace of hardy shovelers grateful? Boy howdy!
“I would like to thank my snow angels.”
“I’d like to thank my snow angels.”
“This is for my snow angels.”
“A thank you to my snow angels.”
“I am so blessed to have my snow angels.”
Fucking Christ. Day after day with this shit. “Thanks for bringing yourself to the brink of a heart attack for my lazy butt” not enough of an acknowledgment? This is what happens when you live in a city with a church every seven steps in either direction from wherever you happen to be standing, and a bar every nine steps.
Allright, though; I’m not ending this negative. Oh no.
A couple weeks ago, my boyfriend Patrick and I took a trip to the City Park. This was one week before my digital camera blew out and I have yet to take it for possible repairs. It may end up that buying a newer, better one is in order.
The Park is one of the undeniable outstanding things about Hagerstown. It has been a refuge for me since childhood, tucked away as it is on the way OUT of the hustlebustle of the city proper. There is no better time to visit than a sweet summer day of bright sun and mild breeze, but hey…February isn’t too bad.
That’s Patrick. Before he gets in the car, he always checks to see that the steering wheel is still there.
The swans, Gira and Jarboe. Years ago we had 10; now, 4. Not long after their arrival, park employees began finding dead swans with grievous head wounds. It took weeks before a group of young boys with a bags full of rocks were apprehended in the dead of night. Swans are very friendly in that they will eat the feed right out of your hand (not like those snob-ass canadian Geese) but the cuteness of it all is tempered by the sloppy technique they employ. Just sends feed flying!
We love squirrels. Fuck with a squirrel, and we’ll fuck with YOU.
Some of us are apparently not so enamored of this site. Waffle House does not offer 24-hour service just so you can throw their cups into the water.
To quote Patrick: “QUACK!”
When I was a little girl, this man-made part of the park seemed so big.
This lil guy, much like the cheese, stands alone. This pic was shot near the place where last year we witnessed ducklings undergoing a rite of passage.
A crowd of parents and kids and one dude with a wicked-looking Rottweiler/German Shepherd mix was gathered at a respectful distance from a mama mallard and her babies, six in all. They were yellow-brown and noisy, perched atop a protective barrier of solid rock where the water met the land. Mama was on the land side, underneath her kids and waiting. One by one, the babies took a dive off and fell the 2 feet or so to the ground where they would shake it off and take position behind their mater. Each duckling’s plunge was met with great fanfare by the throng. It was one of the most amazing things I’d personally seen, and even more so for the timidity of the last duckling, who only followed when he noticed his family taking to the water for a swim without him. I could imagine his quacking as a plea:
“Mom! Can’t I just fall into the water? Can I fall on your back at least? MOM!”
Hagerstown