WarChild Riding Group
Sandy's Toddle Inn - Chaffee MO
Bikers Who Care – We Support:
Finding Cures – Saving Children
Free Spirit
Patriot Guard Riders Mission Statement
Notice - The PGR store is open since the first of the new year.
Thank you for your patience.
The Patriot Guard Riders is a diverse amalgamation of riders from across the nation. We have one thing in common besides motorcycles. We have an unwavering respect for those who risk their very lives for America’s freedom and security. If you share this respect, please join us.
We don’t care what you ride, what your political views are, or whether you’re a "hawk" or a "dove". It is not a requirement that you be a veteran. It doesn't matter where you’re from or what your income is. You don’t even have to ride. The only prerequisite is Respect.
Our main mission is to attend the funeral services of fallen American heroes as invited guests of the family. Each mission we undertake has two basic objectives.
1. Show our sincere respect for our fallen heroes, their families, and their communities.
2. Shield the mourning family and friends from interruptions created by any protestor or group of protestors.
We accomplish the latter through strictly legal and non-violent means.
Folks, this is not just important…
It’s what we do!
Join Us!
RD - SE Missouri Ride Captain
Stars & Stripes Museum
 This Dayin History |
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Over the last 139 years, millions of copies of The Stars and Stripes have been distributed throughout the world. And, it all began during the Civil War in the town of Bloomfield, located in southeast Missouri. It was here on November 9, 1861 that ten Illinois Union soldiers, using the vacated press of The Bloomfield Herald, published the first "Stars and Stripes" which they named after the American flag. One of the original copies of that 1861 paper is now owned by the Stoddard County Historical Society and to be put on loan with the museum. The Stars and Stripes flourished during each of the five major wars this country has fought. |
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During World War II, General George C. Marshall referred to The Stars and Stripes "as a symbol of the things we are fighting to preserve...free thought and free expression of a free people". Many famous people have been connected with The Stars and Stripes: Cartoonist Bill Mauldin; Andy Rooney and Steve Kroft of "Sixty Minutes" were former Striper's as was Harold K. Ross, founder of the New Yorker magazine. Grantland Rice, Ernie Pyle and other war correspondents have also contributed to the newspaper. Several former S & S staff members and various war veterans have donated personal letters, unpublished behind-the-scenes reports, back issues of The Stars and Stripes and other interesting war-related items to be displayed or filed as reference material. |
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All this history will be preserved. A Stars and Stripes Museum/Library with climate-controlled storage, handicapped accessibility, display and meeting rooms will be invaluable for research. The facility serves historians, students and writers, as well as the general public. |
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Happy Birthday Dizzy Dean
(RD Note: Dizzy Dean was the first TV baseball announcer I ever listened to. He and Pee Wee Reece were my connection to Major League Baseball each weekend during the season. I probably didn't realize until later in life that Dizzy was ridiculed for fracturing the English language. But that's what baseball will always be for me, simple down home heros, both on the field and in the booth. Today's Dizzy's birthday. Happy birthday "Pod-nuh". Rest in Peace.)
From Voices of the Game
In 1953, Diz began the ABC "Game of the Week" -- TV sport's first network series. Two years later it entered CBS' posher home.
For a decade Ol' Diz sang "The Wabash Cannonball," read telegrams to "good ol' boys," and razed the language. Batters "swang." Pitchers "throwed" the ball with "spart." Runners returned to "their respectable bases."
Inducted as a player, Dean told the Hall, "The Good Lord was good to me. He gave me a strong body, a good right arm, and a weak mind." As a 1960s child I was unaware of Diz's pitching genius. I knew only how he made of baseball existential joy.
Tall Cotton
The son of a migratory cotton picker was born in an Arkansas shack January 16, 1910. Schooling stopped in second grade. "And I wasn't so good in first, either."
At 16, Dean crashed the Army for $21 a month. Next year, joining the Cardinals' Western League team, he bearded its president at 4 a.m. "So the old boy is out prowling by hisself, huh? Us stars and presidents must have our fun."
Diz won his first bigs game in 1930 -- and at least 20 a year from 1933-36. "Hold that success against the country's tone," wrote baseball historian Bob Broeg. "In the '30s states around St. Louis were reeling, and you wouldn't draw flies," the exception being Sunday.
Invariably St. Louis played a double-header. Gates opened at 9 a.m., outlanders filling Sportsman's Park. Among them: the Fellers of Van Meter, Iowa. "We'd muster a couple dollars, and sit in the bleachers," said son Bob, knowing that Diz would pitch, since the Redbirds stacked their schedule.
Baseball exudes single-season art. 1912, Joe Wood, 34-5; 1968, Bob Gibson, 1.12 ERA; 1999, Pedro Martinez, 23-4. Each was child's play v. Dean's 30-7 1934. The Cardinals clinched Closing Day. A headline prefaced the World Series v. Detroit: "Dean: 'Me 'n' [brother] Paul'll Win Four.'"
In Game Four, Diz, pinch-running, was hit in the head by a throw. Papers plagiarized one another: "Headlines of Dean's Head Show Nothing."
Diz won the 11-0 final. "He threw so smoothly," said Broeg, "that my guess is with luck he'd have pitched into the '50s."
Instead, hurting his arm, the Ozark encyclopedist began Browns and Cardinals radio in 1941. A one-handed catch was "a la carte," fly "can of corn," quarrel "like argyin' with a stump. Maybe you city folks don't know what a stump is. It's somethin' a tree has been cut down off of." Don't fail to miss tomorrow's game, Dean brayed. Listeners seldom did.
One batter had an "unorsodock stance," said Diz, voice deep, full, and twangy." Of Ed Hanyzewski, "I like to broke my jaw tryin' to pronounce that one. But I said it by holding' my nose and sneezing." A station offered a job spinning classical music. "You want me to play this sympathetic [symphonic] music and commertate on them Rooshian and French and Kraut composers? Me pronounce the composers' name?" Dean couldn't ennunce Boston's infield.
The St. Louis Board of Education vainly tried to yank Diz off the air. They had to be his words, he said, because no one would take them. Amazingly, the 1944 Browns won a flag. NBC Radio named Dean to the all-St. Louis Series; whereupon Commissioner Landis jibed, "His diction is unfit for a national broadcaster"; at which point Diz said, "How can that Commissar say I ain't eligible to talk?"
"Anybody who's ever had the privilege of seeing me play knows that I am the greatest pitcher in the world."
"He (Branch Rickey) must think I went to the Massachesetts Constitution of Technology." - The Sporting News (1936)
"He (Bill Terry) once hit a ball between my legs so hard that my center-fielder caught it on the fly backing up against the wall."
"He slud into third."
"Heck, if anybody told me I was setting a record (strikeouts in a game on July 30, 1933) I'd of got me some more strikeouts." - It Takes Heart (1934)
"I ain't what I used to be, but who the hell is?"
"I can't tell you why there's a delay, but stick your head out of the window and you'll know why."
"If Satch (Paige) and I were pitching on the same team, we would clinch the pennant by July fourth and go fishing until World Series time."
"I know who's the best pitcher I ever see and it's old Satchel Paige, that big lanky colored boy. My fastball looks like a change of pace alongside that little pistol bullet ole Satchel (Paige) shoots up to the plate." - Sport (1969)
"I never keep a scorecard or the batting averages. I hate statistics. What I got to know, I keep in my head."
"It ain't braggin' if you can back it up."
"It puzzles me how they know what corners are good for filling stations. Just how did they know gas and oil was under there?"
"I won twenty-eight games in thirty-five and I couldn't believe my eyes when the Cards sent me a contract with a cut in salary. Mr. Rickey said I deserved a cut because I didn't win thirty games."
"Let the teachers teach English and I will teach baseball. There is a lot of people in the United States who say isn't, and they ain't eating."
"Me and Paul (Dean) will probably win forty games (they won forty-nine)."
"Mr. Rickey, I'll put more people in the park than anybody since Babe Ruth."
"Son, what kind of pitch would you like to miss."
"The Cards had one pitcher who won fourteen straight games in a period of twenty-four days. Then when he lost his fifteenth game 1-0, his manager fined him fifty bucks." - The Laugh's on Me (1973)
"The doctors x-rayed my head and found nothing"
"The dumber a pitcher is, the better. When he gets smart and begins to experiment with a lot of different pitches, he's in trouble. All I ever had was a fastball, a curve and a changeup and I did pretty good."
"The good Lord was good to me. He gave me a strong body, a good right arm, and a weak mind."
"Well what's wrong with ain't? And as for saying (Phil) Rizzuto slud into second' it just ain't natural. Sounds silly to me. Slud is something more than slid. It means sliding with great effort."
Final Tribute
"Well we're all ten years older today. Dizzy Dean