I prefer personalized service, thank you

As much as I love progress and all things high-tech, there are some aspects of this brave new world I wish they'd killed off in the incubator.

Now, understand where I'm coming from here. This isn't some neo-Luddite railing about progress. I'm pretty plugged in for a geezer. I have my Web-enabled cell phone on my hip, and I do much more communication via text message than I do with voice. I have my netbook close at hand, an mp3 player with headphones dangling from my neck, and a few thumb drives secreted on my person every waking hour.

I'm a great fan of any tech that makes my work and my life easier, and I especially enjoy any such toys that I can play with, take apart, hack the system a little bit, and adapt it to my needs. I'm all for it, and it turns out I'm not the only technophile among my age group.

However, tech shouldn't replace common sense, and I draw the line at erasing the human touch.

OK. So I've become used to doing all my banking online. Sure, I miss those cute bank tellers who know me by name and can continue whatever conversatiuon we'd started the week before. I'll sacrifice all that for something that saves me time or a trip, or makes my life more convenient. But there are still limits.

I think it was a trip to the pharmacy that convinced me where my boundaries lie.

I usually do my grocery shopping at the local Big Box store, and I can do it without feeling guilty about feeding the Chinese economy or the Big Box Conglomerate. I don't much care to visit the place because of my dislike for crowds, but price and convenience trump everything and to compromise I tend to batch my trips there. In this case, though, I made a special trip just to fill a prescription at the Big Box Pharmacy attached to the Big Box Store.

So I submitted my prescription, found a seat on the bench about 20 feet away from the pharmacy counter, and relaxed. Chilled out watching the live version of People Of Big Box, which is a lot scarier than the online version. But I digress ...

So I'm there, relaxing on the bench in the pharmacy department and people-watching when my phone went off. I look at it and don't recognize the number, but I answered it anyway.

Couldn't even get off my standard phone greeting. Some automated voice began talking right away. I can't quote it verbatim nor would I want to, but this automated voice informed me that someone in my household has a prescription ready at the local Big Box Mart pharmacy and I can pick it up anytime.

Call me old-fashioned, but whatever happened to just looking out behind the counter, waving, maybe hollering something, making a public spectacle out of oneself? Whatever happened to just calling on the store intercom?

OK. I admit. I like personalized service, and you sure can't get it when some automated phone call coming from someplace (perhaps India?) tells me my prescription is ready.

Durn it all. Is there any way to bypass this whole process? Like maybe do the whole thing online, including the delivery?

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40 years ago: Reflections on a no-hitter

I hate these reminders of how old I really am, especially when I'm still trying to convince myself I'm still 22.

But some random Internet surfing reminded me that July 3 was the 40th anniversary of the greatest baseball game I've ever seen, when Angels pitcher Clyde Wright threw a no-hitter at the Oakland A's.

I was 12 then, and I grew up in a family of incurable Angels fans. We went to a few games every year, and we were at Anaheim Stadium, third base side in the terrace level on that July evening. My family accounted for four of the 12,131 butts in the seats that night.

OK, as I get older my memory tends to fire more at random, but it seems we were at the ballpark a lot when historic things happened. My grandmother (who was even more incurable than the rest of us) took my brother and me to an afternoon doubleheader the previous year (again the Angels were playing the A's), and when the announcement came that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin safely landed on the Moon, play stopped on the field and we got all misty. But I digress.

The left-handed Wright came off a miserable 1969 (one win, eight losses. But he was pitching like a monster in 1970. Won 22 games that year; only Nolan Ryan was able to match him four years later. Made the All-Star team, during the time the American League was always getting slaughtered -- Wright was the losing pitcher in that midsummer game.

And that no-no. It was right around the sixth inning when I noticed those zeroes on the board. And of course, there's this old superstition that no one on the bench talks about a no-hitter when it's in progress. Out of respect, neither did we.

After his great season, Wright wasn't quite the same. It turned out he had some problems, something about a well-fought bottle. It was years later when I saw a film clip of him finishing his no-hitter, and it was used as a lead-in to a commercial for an alcohol-and-drug rehab hospital. But after his career in the bigs was over, he spent some time in Japan. From Baseball Reference:

In the sixth inning of a 1-1 game early in his first season in Japan, Wright was removed after the first two batters reached. Manager Shigeo Nagashima yanked Wright, who refused to give over the baseball, then charged off the mound and fired the ball into the dugout. After leaving the field, Wright tore off his uniform and threw it into the bathtub and kicked over a garbage can. Wright was nicknamed "Crazy Righto", a name that stuck throughout his time in Japan. Fans and sportswriters called for Wright's release but Nagashima stood by his pitcher ...

1970 was a strange year for no-hitters. Less than a month before Wright's, Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates threw one at the San Diego Padres. His control was way off; he walked eight batters that day. He later said he was in mid-LSD trip during that game (which probably explains why his fastball had a tail).

Wright's boy, Jaret, was a pitching phenom for the Cleveland Indians in 1997, coming out of nowhere to win a bunch of games for them. He started Game 7 of the World Series that year, as a 21-year-old rookie. Arm trouble, though, curtailed his career.

The Angels' leadoff hitter in Clyde's no-hitter was Sandy Alomar, who himself had two sons in the bigs (Sandy Jr. and Roberto). The Angels had some real characters in the lineup that day: Alex Johnson, who had a good bat and serious issues. Jim Fregosi, who later managed the Angels. And noted prankster Jay Johnstone, the man our household referred to as "Ol' DM" for "dirty-mouth." Seems one of us noticed Johnstone had trouble getting through a sentence without uttering a profanity. Being earthy folks, we thought it was funny.

I might as well forget about claiming I had a deprived childhood. How many kids got to see a no-hitter?

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Links:

The box score, from retrosheet.org

What's Wright doing now?

Art Linkletter dead at 97

Another legend gone ... but overcoming some rough spots in his life, making it to 97, dying at home ... you can't beat that.

Art Linkletter Dead at 97: "Art Linkletter, whose People Are Funny and House Party shows entertained millions of TV viewers in the 1950s and '60s and who remained active as a writer and speaker through his ninth decade, died today at age 97. Linkletter was known on TV for his funny interviews with children and..."

In case you're wondering, yes, I remember watching him on the tube (black and white, of course) when I was a young'un. As did the rest of the Baby Boom generation. And yes, kids do say the darnedest things; that part hasn't changed much.

(NBC photo shows Art Linkletter in 1969.)

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