What Happens While We’re Busy Making Other Plans
“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”
— John Lennon, “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)”
By Gregory N. Joseph
In borrowing this famous phrase from the writer-cartoonist Allen Saunders for his song, John Lennon sought to emphasize that life is a journey taking us to places we hadn’t planned in ways we hadn’t expected — and rather than fear that inevitability, to embrace and celebrate it as an unfolding story of wonder and possibility.
That point was driven home one lazy, rainy Midwestern fall Sunday afternoon in the mid-1960s as I stood next to my maternal grandfather’s neatly organized workbench while he ever-so-gently unpacked my great-uncle’s, his late brother-in-law’s, violin that had been lovingly and painstakingly wrapped in some old newspapers.
Gramps, Allen Nelson — who had gone from being the foreman of a work crew for the local street car company in the early part of the 20th century to becoming the head electrician of a fine-food grocery chain — was a granite-solid but sweet-dispositioned six-foot-two block of a man affectionately known as “Swede” to his friends. He lectured me on keeping tools orderly and in good condition, no matter what those tools were: “At the end of the day, always clean everything up and put it away for the next day’s work.” During the Great Depression when money was scarce, this meant preserving your livelihood. It also meant not wasting any time. Gramps’ thick, weathered fingers handled the vintage violin with the care of a fine surgeon unwrapping a prized stethoscope.
His brother-in-law, the instrument’s late owner, Paul Heisterberg — “Uncle Paul,” one of my maternal grandmother’s brothers, a thin, reedy-voiced, tousle-haired, pipe-smoking hospital-kitchen worker with a thick German accent who never married and lived with my grandparents — had been gone a long time. I asked Gramps just how many years the violin had been stored away.
“Oh, just a few,” he said with his characteristic disarming wink and smile, a kind of facial embrace that never failed to pull people in while putting them completely at ease. This gentle but powerful man had indefatigably supported his family — and anybody who needed help — through a world war, pandemic, and the Great Depression. Sometimes that meant taking in jobless strangers or those who had been abandoned by their own families, giving them a roof over their head, feeding them and helping them find jobs, no strings attached and no repayment of any sort expected or accepted. This, after teaching himself about the then new-fangled science of electricity by foraging through stacks of textbooks, carefully pencilling in notes along the margins. Gramps was the quintessential self-made man. And he wound up with a lot of lifelong friends who never forgot.
It’s worth noting that he and Grandma were married 72 years. When they met, each was engaged to someone else. They fell madly in love, broke their engagements, and the rest, as they say, was history (when last seen, they were seated side by side in wheelchairs, holding hands). People underestimated Gramps’ quiet resolve at their peril. No raised voice or threats, just a certain look inevitably did the trick. At his wake years later, a family friend described being in his presence “When he spoke,” she said, “his word was law.”
As Gramps unfolded the newspaper enveloping the violin, we noticed that it was dated Friday, Feb. 12, 1943. Save for a tinge of light yellowing at its borders, the paper was still in remarkably good condition, springy to the touch, the smell of printer’s ink still slightly evident. If nothing else, it was an example of how things often outlast people despite our best efforts, a sobering and humbling reminder of our own mortality.
One article on the front page announced that Wilhelmina Houdini — widow of the great magician — had just died of a heart attack on a train traveling from Los Angles to New York. Another explained that U.S. Army Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s authority had been expanded to include the British Army, a momentous turn in those uncertain days of World War II that cemented his place in history, not to mention in American politics, foreshadowing his election as the 34th president of the United States nine years later.
Which brings us to Tuesday, June 12, 1979.
My wife, Mary, and I , along with our son, John, a precocious “cheerful cherub” just shy of his fifth birthday, and our daughter, Jacqueline, a vigorous, sparkling little girl not quite 2, were on our annual trek visiting my parents and maternal grandparents in Kansas City, Missouri.
My family was eager to babysit, so I decided to seize the moment and treat my wife to lunch at Kansas City’s Country Club Plaza, choosing a restaurant atop a tall hotel with a stunning view of that world-famous fountain-laced shopping district.
We had to hurry. That night, I was scheduled to take John to his first baseball game with my father, Ted Joseph, and my son’s godfather, my mother’s cousin, Tom Hogan, whose late parents were my own godparents. The occasion was special — and became more eventful and enduring — than we ever could have imagined.
As my wife and I bustled out the door, I glanced at the front page of The Kansas City Star, the newspaper where I had begun my reporting career, and couldn’t help but notice an article near the top, in the righthand column, announcing in large, funereal bold black letters that the movie star John Wayne, the indestructible strutting and drawling John Wayne, had succumbed to cancer, or “the Big C,” as he once had called the disease when he thought he had it whipped.
Because of my interest in film, or perhaps because of my own Hollywood background and brushes with those who knew and worked with “Duke,” as Wayne’s friends called him, the headline was etched in my mind as my wife and I enjoyed a lovely meal and The Plaza’s spectacular view before scrambling home in time for the ballgame.
As it turned out, the game was unusual by any standard.
The brash, up-and-coming hometown Major League Baseball team, the Kansas City Royals, then a year away from participating in the franchise’s s first World Series, defeated the mighty Boston Red Sox in spectacular fashion in 10 innings, due in large part to the never-say-die exploits of a young Royals outfielder by the name of Willie Wilson.
In that game, the Royals, behind by two runs with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, were on the cusp of losing. Then Willie stepped to the plate. Acknowledged as the fastest man in baseball, perhaps the fastest baseball player of all time, he lifted a fly ball to left center field.
To any reasonable baseball fan, it appeared to be an automatic out, a foregone conclusion, a game-ender, a signal to fans to start heading to the exits, which many in fact did. And who could blame them? On top of it all, the two fielders pursuing this last “easy” out were exceptional, one in fact destined for the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.
But Willie Wilson did something unusual — at least it’s done all too rarely by ballplayers these days.
He refused to give up, to go through the motions, to chalk up a loss and hurry off to dinner. He didn’t concede the out, or the game.
Instead, Willie ran as fast and as hard as he could, which was very fast and hard indeed.
His effort, with chunky bits of the soft, compacted infield dirt fluttering through the heavy late-summer Midwestern air like so many confused moths, distracted the outfielders. Truth to tell, they shouldn’t have been paying any attention to that at all. But they were. And it cost them.
Looking at him and not the tiny white sphere they were paid handsomely to capture before it hit the ground, they collided. The ball, its only allegiance to gravity and not to two distracted millionaire star athletes, showed them who was really boss, tumbling defiantly to the ground.
Willie, meanwhile, churned his way all the way to third base, his long, powerful legs straining and stretching for every extra inch. The Red Sox were right to be concerned, which, suddenly, they very much were. Reaching third right out of the batter’s box was not an isolated incident for this man. He led the league in triples five times; his 147 career triples are the second-most by any player since World War II. He hit 13 inside-the- park home runs, the most of any Major League player since 1950. He was one of the most prolific base-stealers in Major League history, his 668 career steals the 12th most ever — and he led the American League this particular year with an eye-popping 83. He also was a supremely gifted batsman, hitting more than .300 five times (he retired with a .285 career batting average). Three years after this, in 1982, he reached the summit by winning the American League batting title and in fact leading all of baseball that season — including besting a certain Mr. George Brett, the Royals’ feisty third baseman who himself was ultimately ticketed for the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame — with an average of .332. He was the first swtich-hitter since Mickey Mantle to get 100 hits from both sides of the plate.
On this clear, humid Missouri day, Willie didn’t stay at third base long, and soon scored. And the Royals — those pesky, never-say-die Royals, populated by a potent mix of grizzled, savvy veterans and hungry young talents new to “The Show” — went on to tie the game. Oh, the humanity. For some teams, a temporary, unlikely come-from-behind tie might have been enough, a bloodying of the champ’s nose in the last round, enough to tell the grandkids about some day.
But it wasn’t enough. Not by a long shot. And everyone in the stadium could sense it.
The Royals knew it, the Red Sox knew it, and so did those of us still in the stands. The fates, with a little help from Willie, had already decided.
When the Royals won in a single extra frame, prevailing 7–6, we were all aware that something truly rare and remarkable had transpired. It was human drama, with the sky as proscenium. The Royals and their fans exploded in shared elation at game’s conclusion that would do a giddy, confetti-filled, throw-it-all-to-the-wind World Series Game 7 victory celebration proud. (This game was no fluke for Willie, or the Royals. Three days later, he led the team to what one sportswriter described as “a comeback for all seasons” against the Brewers in Milwaukee. The Royals, trailing 11–2 at the end of four innings and 11–6 going into the ninth, went on to win 14–11, with Willie going four-for-six as he hit two three-run home runs and scored another four. “It has to be a thrill,” he said.)
A year later, when the Royals reached the real World Series, these games were looked back upon as turning points for the young team.
I saved the ticket stubs from the game we attended — John’s, my Dad’s, John’s godfather’s, and mine — along with a program from the game and the next day’s newspapers with articles describing the improbable come-from-behind victory, meticulously sealing the material in a large eight-by-ten manila envelope and packing it away for posterity, scribbling a description on the front in black felt-tip- pen. The envelope remained unopened, and largely forgotten, for decades. Until now.
A few years ago, while attending a Royals’ spring-training game at Surprise Stadium in Surprise, Arizona, the team’s off-season practice facility, I noticed a familiar-looking figure seated at a table signing autographs and other souvenirs to raise funds for a youth organization. It was Willie Wilson. Grayer, a little thicker (but not much) around the middle, with most of his hair and the long sideburns and mustache gone. But the smile and swagger — muted now, the strut of a respected elder statesman in his sport with nothing left to prove— were still there.
I made my way slowly to where he was seated, and when my turn in the line came, stopped in front of him, mumbled a few words of praise and thanks, thanks that I did not fully explain, and left, not telling him of how our lives had intersected many years before, and how he had helped change ours for the better in so many memorable ways.
When I returned to my seat, my wife asked what had happened.
“You didn’t tell him?” No, I said, I didn’t want to bother him.
She was incredulous. “Well, tomorrow,” she added, “go back — and take all of your stuff with you and show him!”
So I did.
Once again I stood in line. This time, upon reaching him I pulled the long-sealed envelope from under my arm, and holding it up so he could see it, stammered, “Hi, you probably remember me from yesterday, or maybe you don’t, but anyway, I just wanted to share something I have here that I thought you might like to see … “
He went silent. After hearing my description and seeing the material, which by now I had removed and spread on the table where he was sitting, his eyes widened and moistened. He read slowly through the old newspaper clippings and booklets, handling them with care and studying them incredulously as I explained their importance to my family.
“Where,” he whispered, his voice raspy and slightly trembling, his head shaking side to side, “did you ever get all of this?”
A camera crew swooped in out of nowhere to film the moment.
Willie and I have been friends ever since.
I see him often at spring training these days. He is always patiently and cheerfully greeting fans, signing autographs and posing for pictures in tireless and unstinting fund-raising efforts. When he’s there, we inevitably flag each other down with a wave of the arm, depending on who sees whom first. We bring each other up to date on our lives and families, and without fail, find ourselves recalling with great specificity Royals games from the team’s greatest glory days — his time (“I hit two home runs that day against Milwaukee — two”), an electric span of play that led to his being named to the Royals’ Hall of Fame as one of the franchise’s greatest players ever.
My hope had always been to introduce him one day to my son, a United States Naval Academy and Stanford University graduate, a former Navy pilot and decorated Iraq War veteran, now a very successful Silicon Valley executive with large responsibilities.
So it was that finally, on Sunday, March 1, 2020, after much anticipation and planning, my son was able to break away from his busy life in Northern California so he could meet the baseball star that he had watched — and remarkably could still recall — from that day many years ago with his godfather and grandfather, both of whom had long since passed.
The three of us, the ballplayer and the father and the son, now a grown man, talked and joked and shared stories that have become fresh recollections in their own right, new memories that will remain with my son the rest of his life as well, augmenting the mementoes I had saved in that manila envelope.
But none of us could have anticipated that a mere 11 days later, the spring training in which we reveled under a gloriously bright and cloudless “high-sky” day, as the players call it, would be halted, the sport stopped in its tracks, and our very existence upended by a global pandemic that would shake us to the core in so many ways.
And yet … and yet … what a day it was.
As I discovered on that long-ago rainy fall afternoon as my beloved Gramps unfolded those vintage newspapers and was reminded many years later with my now-grown son on a sunny spring day at the ballpark, life flows and sweeps us along with it, landing us in places and moments like isles in our lives we never could have envisioned.
Lennon puts it this way in his song “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)”:
Out on the ocean sailing away,
I can hardly wait
To see you come of age,
But I guess we’ll both
Just have to be patient,
’Cause it’s a long way to go,
A hard row to hoe
Yes, it’s a long way to go
But in the meantime,
Before you cross the street,
Take my hand,
Life is what happens to you,
While you’re busy making other plans.
Rather than fear the unknown, with all its vicissitudes, we should grasp it. After all, what choice do we have? As the poet Robert Frost once observed, “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.” Sometimes good things, sublimely good things, burst forth like shooting stars on the other side of even our darkest moments.
Our cherished friend Willie Wilson, in the midst of his exceptional baseball career, found himself mired in a drug scandal with several teammates that landed him briefly in jail. But he emerged on the other side — of his sport, and more importantly, of his life — in ways that can only be described as remarkable and inspiring.
In 1985, the year after his scandal, he led the American League in triples for the third time (with a career-high 21), and went on to help the Royals to the team’s first World Series title, batting a whopping .367 against the heavily favored St. Louis Cardinals. After his playing days were over (a 19-year career in the majors, including time with the Oakland Athletics and Chicago Cubs), he coached in the Toronto Blue Jays system, was elected to the Royals Hall of Fame, and named manager of a team in the Canadian Baseball League. He now runs the Willie Wilson Baseball Foundation for inner-city youths in Kansas City, Missouri, gives clinics to youngsters, and works with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum there. In 2008, the Royals named their minor-league base-running award in his honor. In 2013, during a book-signing and lecture at the release of his autobiography (“Inside the Park: Running the Base Path of Life,” with Kent Pulliam), he was surprised with the presentation of a replica of his World Series ring that had been auctioned off in 2001, a recast replacement funded by 100 of his friends. When we met, he was donating his time and the money he raised at spring training to a youth organization.
As for Lennon, he himself became his own best example of life happening while we’re making other plans. “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy”) was released on his 1980 album “Double Fantasy,” which turned out to be his last. One of the most revered musicians of his time, then at the height of his power and popularity, he died on Dec. 8 of that year, gunned down by a deranged fan as he returned to his New York apartment (earlier that evening, Lennon had autographed a copy of the album for the fan).
But his music lives on, moving new generations with its timeless twin themes of love and tolerance. Fittingly, his son Sean, for whom he wrote the tune after the child experienced a nightmare, has gone on to become a successful musician, songwriter and producer in his own right.
The message of “Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)” really applies to us all, for we all have challenges that interrupt our sleep, and lives, as we search for meaning and answers.
In this regard, the song’s conclusion must be remembered. Steeped in optimism, it warms and sustains us with a thought and advice that never grows old, passed on by loving parents and others who care about us since time immemorial:
Before you go to sleep,
Say a little prayer,
Every day
In every way,
It’s getting better and better.
See you tomorrow.
