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Hyundai. There's joy in every journey. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Our next story comes to us from Nick Ragon, host of the popular YouTube channel This Date in History with Nick Ragon. Ray Caldwell put on a Cleveland Indian uniform for the first time and none of the 20,000 fans at League Park had any idea that they were about to see something that defies belief.
Let's take a listen. If you're a baseball fan, you're probably familiar with the term electric stuff to describe a pitcher was on top of his game. Growing up in the 80s, it seemed like Dwight Gooden, Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens and other flamethrowers had their electric stuff every night.
But what if I told you that the term actually originated in the early part of the 20th century? That it wasn't really used to describe a pitcher's throwing prowess, but rather traces its origins to one of the strangest events in Major League Baseball history. Heck, one of the strangest events in sports history. It was August 24, 1919, by all accounts an uncomfortably muggy day at League Park in Cleveland.
The first place Indians were hosting the Philadelphia Athletics in front of 20,000 fans. They were excited to see their new pitcher, the journeyman Ray Caldwell, who was recently let go by the Boston Red Sox. Once upon a time, Caldwell had been regarded as a generational talent, one of those guys with transcended stuff that screamed can't miss potential.
But years of hard drinking and erratic behavior had left him a shell of his former self. By 1921, Caldwell was desperate for a last chance to show that he could still play the game. He no longer had his dominant fastball on nasty curve, but he did sport one of the game's best spitballs, which in 1919 was still legal.
On this particular afternoon, he had total command of his spitter. The athletic players were flummoxed by the way it bobbed and weaved through the air, impervious to contact. A combination of the bright sunshine and saliva-ridden ball had resulted in just four base runners for the A's through the first eight innings, giving the Indians a slim one-run lead heading into the top of the ninth inning. Fans would later say that they noticed dark clouds that seemingly materialized out of Lake Erie and descend upon the stadium with alarming speed, practically enveloping it. With droplets of rain beginning to sprinkle from the heavens, Caldwell worked extra fast, hoping to avoid a rain delay. He quickly got ahead of the first batter and induced a meek pop-up to the shortstop for out number one.
A nasty spitter resulted in a second infield pop-up and Caldwell and the Indians were now one out from putting the A's away. By this time, the wind was howling. It's as if the stadium was mired and a total eclipse had become so dark. Some fans had already scattered from League Park, a combination of the rain and sense of foreboding chasing them away.
So picture this. Caldwell is towing the rubber and leaning in to get the sign when a flash from the sky explodes into the middle of the field. Indian shortstop Ray Chapman would later say he felt a surge of electricity go down his leg and the violence of the lightning strike causes the players to dive for the ground.
I took my metal mask and threw it as far as I could, said Cleveland's catcher Steve O'Neill after the game. I didn't want to attract any bolts towards me. Seconds after the lightning hit the ground, the players were still staring at each other in disbelief. On the mound lay Ray Caldwell, arms spread wide, completely unconscious.
The lightning bolt had struck him directly. Players rushed to aid Caldwell, but the first man who touched him leapt into the air, saying he had been zapped by Caldwell's prone body. The players and Umph stared over Caldwell, his chest smoldering from where the bolt burned it. Shortstop Ray Chapman blurted out to nobody in particular, is he dead? The players were terrified to touch him to even take his pulse.
Nobody knew what to do. Believe it or not, they were ready to pronounce Caldwell dead when the 31-year-old pitcher started groaning and crawled back to his knees and then his feet. His teammates were thrilled to see him alive, but they kept their distance from the guy whose chest was on fire just minutes before. One of the umpires offered to assist him off the field and take him to a hospital, but Caldwell would have none of it. I have one more out to get, he testily barked at the ump.
He argued the point with the Indians' player manager, the legendary Tris Beaker, and his intransigence won the day as Beaker reluctantly let him stay on the field to try and record the final out. Give me the dang ball and point me towards the plate, he commanded Shortstop Ray Chapman, who was still in semi-disbelief that Caldwell was alive and pitching. The umpires lingered around the mound as the players slowly took their positions. A shortstop Joe Duggan dug into the batter's box, waiting for the ump's to signal play ball. The ump's just looked at each other for an extra beat and shrugged their shoulders.
Play ball, one of them says. By this time, most of the fans had scattered in the chaos of the lightning strike, but for the few hearty souls who stuck around, they were about to witness the conclusion of the strangest game in Major League history. With the first pitch, Caldwell grooves a fastball to Duggan, who hits a screaming line drive to third baseman Willie Gardner, who knocks it down with his chest and rushes the throw to first just in time to edge out Duggan. And with that, Ray Caldwell, in his first start as a Cleveland Indian, pitches a complete game victory, which includes being struck by lightning. With the media after the game, Ray Caldwell was as curt as he was brief.
I just wanted to complete the game, he hurriedly told reporters as he rushed from the clubhouse purportedly to hit his favorite watering hole. As if the story isn't fascinating enough, there's an interesting footnote, actually two footnotes. Seventeen days after being struck by lightning, Ray Caldwell would pitch a no-hitter against one of his former teams, the New York Yankees. Someone on his team jokingly told the media after the game that he had electric stuff that day, and the term stuck. His stuff would remain electric for the rest of the year as he went 5-1 with the Indians and nearly led them past the White Sox, who would famously go on to throw the World Series. The following year, he notched a 20-win season. Sadly, that would be the same year that the Indian shortstop Ray Chapman tragically died after being beamed in the head by the Yankees' Karl Mays.
His death prompted several rules changes, including banning the spitball and requiring dirty balls to come out of play. So the next time you hear some pitcher has electric stuff, just remember, he's no Ray Caldwell. And a terrific job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to Nick Ragone, and he hosts the popular YouTube channel, This Date in History, with Nick Ragone. The story of Ray Caldwell, here on Our American Stories.
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18 plus. Oh, what fun. It's Christmas all July at Balsam Hill. It's our early gift to you. Unwrap amazing deals on beautiful life-like trees. For a limited time, enjoy up to 50% off plus free shipping. With the big day just five months away, start turning your dream Christmas into a reality.
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Step as far back as possible. And we love to get stories behind stories and Brett Favre's life. We've been digging in deep. And this is the fourth part of a five part series. Brett Favre's life outside of the goalposts, which is what we're interested in here on this show. Not Brett Favre, a football star.
That's interesting. But who's the man? What's life like before and after? Who were his parents? Where did he grow up? How did he deal with fame and everything after?
Here's Brett Favre getting personal about his faith, about humility, and about aging. I can't speak for other people, but we, and I say we more me, but we tend to lean on God when we need him. Going to rehab, spending time by myself, like open a Bible. God, I need some help.
I can't do this alone. And I remember asking people, not, and we still are active in the Catholic church. In fact, Father Tommy, our priest is one of our, we take him on vacations and do all kinds of stuff.
But like leaning on someone, and I've had enough adversity to walk me through the Bible. You go to rehab three times, you lose your dad. Deanna lost her brother out here on a four wheeler accident.
Yeah, he was 19 years old. Yeah. On my four wheeler. He killed a helicopter team out of here to the hospital, but it was bad. You know, so there's enough things that, you know, you go, God, I need some help here. And then you do well for a while. And then you slip. You do well. You slip.
But I think as I've gotten older, I tend to slip maybe less. I look at things differently. I think at 50, I'm a lot wiser than I was at 40, but I'm sure if I make it to 60, I'll be saying, you were a freaking idiot at 50.
You didn't know nothing. And I'm sure that's the cycle that will always be. And I'm talking about just life in general. What we thought was important at 18. At 30, we thought, you know, what were you thinking? And then at 40, you thought, what were you thinking at 30? But I feel like you narrow down as you get older what matters and what it takes to achieve whatever happiness. So I think that my faith has gotten better and stronger, but it needs a lot of work. I'm not going to sit here and brag, but I do know that humility is, I had to look it up.
I'm thinking one thing, and actually what I was thinking, I didn't know how to put it in words, and humility was the word I was looking for. There was a time I thought that it was all about me, but it's like the Oakland game or my career. You could say the Oakland game was like my career. I was just driving the car, you know. God was telling me where to go, when to stop, when to pass, when to park.
And that took a while. I think that goes back to playing 20 years. At 21, I thought, once I got into play, I thought, I can be pretty damn good.
And at 19, 20 years, you know, I'm like, that doesn't matter really. You need to be thankful that God gave you the opportunity. And also, the one thing that I feel really good about is that I made the most of it. I let him down in a lot of ways. That was one of them I didn't let him down. He's like, all right, I gave you a gift.
What are you going to do with it? And I actually told my daughter that today. She said, you got a chance, because she didn't play very good last week. They played Friday and Saturday. She played pretty good Friday, not so good Saturday. She was really down. And she was beating herself up today. And I got to do this.
My weight, so I'm overweight. I said, look, here's the reality. And I said, this is the truth.
You got a chance next week to redeem yourself. And it starts now. What are you going to do with it? There's going to come a time when it's over. And then what do you do? So that's life in general.
We have chances to, in fact, I say you never know when it ends. My dad died at 56. And that was, I was 32 or 33. And I thought I was really young. I mean, I'm almost my dad's age.
And it's kind of like, buddy, you know, I do the physicals and do all the things I need to do. And he didn't, in spite of me trying to say, Dad, you need to get a physical. He didn't take really good care of himself. He just thought he was going to live forever, you know. And that mentality, like, you know, his age are definitely before him. Other generations, I'm sure you say, you need to go see a doctor. Oh, I ain't going to see no doctor.
I don't care how tough you are when it's your time. But he had apparently had had two other heart attacks that no one knew. The autopsy showed that there was a massive heart attack.
He was driving down the road. Again, he was 56, which is, you know, I'm 50 now, 56. There was a time when 50 was like, man, he's 50, sold.
Now I'm like, 56, ain't that, you know. But, you know, it's really unfair. Look at it as when people are like that, like my dad was, it's really unfair to everyone else that you would be that selfish that you wouldn't take care of yourself. You know, do it for the kids or your wife or whatever. If you think about me, you with the kids, if you just neglected, you'd feel terrible. Well, that's what you do when you don't take care of yourself.
If you just walked away from them, that's really kind of the same thing. So, I mean, when it's your time, it's your time, but I'm going to try to hang on as long as I can. And you've been listening to Brett Favre, Part 4 of our five-part series about so much, and my goodness, him talking about humility, having to look up the word so that those words could approximate what he was thinking about. And my good looking back at our lives, we can all do that.
If we're not, we're really not living right. How we looked and did things 10 years ago, hopefully we're doing better now. We have this five-part series from Brett Favre, but no one has anything like it, and that's what we do here on this show. And whether it's the life of Brett or Henry Ford, where we talk to great historians about him, or the Steinway family, or, my goodness, our Dred Scott on Spikes story by George Will about Kurt Flood. It's just a beautiful story.
Brett Favre's story, here on Our American Stories. The following is a high-five moment from highfivecasino.com. I won! Yoo-hoo! Private, put down your phone! This is the Army! Sarge, highfivecasino is a social casino.
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My famous potato salad. Oh, Saturday? But that's when the blinds guys come in to give us a quote. Those appointments take forever. Oh, yeah, I meant to tell you. I already found everything we need at blinds.com. They're totally online, so we don't have to wait around all day just to get a quote. I talked to a blinds.com designer, and they're sending us free samples. Oh, blinds.com? I've heard of them. Yeah, they've been around for over 25 years, but not everyone knows they can also handle the measuring and installation for a fraction of what the other guys charge. Plus, they have a 100% satisfaction guarantee.
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And here, the storyteller is Horst Schulze, who co-founded the Ritz-Carlton Hotels in 1983 here in America. And this story has a lot to do with service. It has a lot to do with customers. And it has to do also with a fellow Atlanta founder, Truett Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A, and where the phrase, my pleasure, came from. We all talk about service.
Let me define service for a moment. It starts the instant you make contact. It doesn't start a second later. It starts, in fact, within nine feet.
Why? Because within nine feet, you make decisions about somebody and they make a decision about you. So it starts with a great welcome. Welcome. And then it continues with complying to the guest's wishes. And that complying is very simply that.
I'm in that moment. It's not about me anymore. It's not about my company. It's about my customer. I'm now here to help that customer to make the right decision for him or her. That's how I'm complying. I'm here to be an assistant to that guest to make a great decision for themselves. And then it ends by saying farewell. That is service.
Welcome, comply, farewell. Now, when people talk about a great service, ask them to define it. They haven't even given a thought what it is. That's why you don't receive it. They receive it if somebody happens to, if you happen to be lucky and you happen to hit a nice person, not by the sign of the organization.
And that is wrong. It has to be designed by the organization that there is service delivery. That means attention for the benefit of our customer. You know my relationship with Chick-fil-A, you know. And then Kathy, who is, of course, Chick-fil-A is an exceptional company, exceptional people. Dan asked me one day to have you, he tells a story slightly different.
I know that I'm right how I tell it, but they're very close the same, the two stories. One day he asked me, have you been in Chick-fil-A? I said, sure.
So what do you think? I said, well, you're the best of a lousy lot. And he said, what?
He said, well, you're not great, but you're better than the rest of them. And we discussed that. And then, of course, he asked me to kind of teach these people and deal with them.
And we did a lot of things together. And one thing was I had a meeting with his managers, all his vice presidents in the headquarters, talking about verbally how to talk to a customer. And first of all, you should look at them within nine feet and say, hello, good morning, welcome, and so on. The behavioral analysts say that a person relates to you and makes a decision when they come within about three meters, nine or ten feet. That's when you make a decision that instant.
So you want to make sure that that instant, a positive decision, goes into their subconscious. In fact, we have an interesting study. In the very beginning of Fritz Kalden, we had comment cards, which is not very scientific, but I had about 400,000. When I was dealing with Shady Power, and I knew Dave Power at the time very well, he said he was a step out of only automotive, and we were the first company that actually did something with outside of automotive. I said, Dave, I have those 400,000 cards here.
I'm being told it's not very scientific study. And he said, well, give them to me. We'll see what we can find.
He came back and said something very interesting here. Whenever the first contact was good, that means sales or reservation, doorman, front desk or bellman, whenever it was good, never ever did a complaint follow. Never ever. Whenever there was one negative in the first contact, always other complaints followed. So with other words, you can put people into a subconscious positive. If the first contact immediately happens to be well, and nine feet is very important because that's when the decision is being made subconsciously.
Subconscious is stronger than conscience. So it's a very important moment. So we thought from there on, whatever you are doing within nine feet, you look at the customer and say, well, come. And then, and eliminate, in our case, we said, eliminate words like high because I want to tell the customer immediately, you're important to us. If I say hi, I'm saying we are equal. If I say welcome, sir, welcome, I'm saying you're important to us and I am very professional.
I'm giving two messages here, which creates trust. So and then, of course, we taught our people to eliminate two more words. Don't ever say folks, guys, et cetera. And don't say, OK. In our case, say I'm delighted to or it's my pleasure. So right away, this kid that I hired from inner city becomes a very elegant young man that we put into great uniform, because if I hired that kid, he now the next day is facing the chairman of the board of the Bank of England.
I'm going to make sure that interaction happens right. If I eliminate those three things, hi or whatever, dude, guys, folks, and OK, now all of a sudden there's a very elegant young man there. So I was explaining that to Chick-fil-A and said, no, you have to eliminate the OK. We use my pleasure.
And I guess and I think this is wrong for your market segment. Let's find a different word. And everybody agreed it was not the right word for Chick-fil-A. My pleasure was too fancy. And we kind of discussed it when suddenly in the back of the room. Somebody raised a finger and said, I like my pleasure.
Which was Truett. Who the owner, the founder, this great gentleman, I like my pleasure. I said, yeah, yeah, but you know, but it is too sophisticated for Chick-fil-A. Mr. Cathy, that was Truett Cathy.
It is too sophisticated. He said, I like it. That ended the discussion, by the way.
Guess what they're saying? They're saying my pleasure, you know, and implemented some other criteria of service, which Dan will tell anybody that I was successful to help them with. No, they didn't become an exceptional company because of me. But those are the little things that I helped them with, including the my pleasure thing, which they became famous for. I was wrong. And now I didn't tell them to use my pleasure. I was against it.
So anyway. And a terrific job on the editing and storytelling by Greg Hengler and a special thanks to Horst Schulze, as always, for sharing his stories with us. And it's not just a story.
We have a bunch by Horst because, well, what a storyteller he is and what wisdom he has. And by the way, what a thing to know that it all starts in that very first contact. And if you've ever been to Ulrich-Carlton, it's different than the other hotels, impeccably dressed, alert. They greet you from far away. It's always welcome.
And they're different on every contact throughout the organization. And we can all be different and we can all be better versions of ourselves. And what a story about my pleasure and where it came from. Just beautiful storytelling.
Go to more of Horst's work on OurAmericanStories.com. His book is called Excellence Wins, a no-nonsense guide to becoming the best in a world of compromise. The story of where my pleasure came from, here on Our American Stories. High Five Casino High Five Casino is a social casino with real prizes and big Vegas hits at HighFiveCasino.com. The hottest games right from Vegas, and all winnings go straight to your bank account.
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Hello! We thought, like, we would never, ever get adopted, but I thought this was, like, a really good blessing for us. I never actually had a mom and a dad under the same roof, but it feels great.
They both, like, a half of something, like peanut butter and jelly. Hello, I'm Deshaun Olds. And I'm Sophia Olds, and we would like to tell you about our process, our story of adoption. We have always wanted to adopt. We've been married for about 13 years now, and it had always been in our plans to adopt and to have biological children.
We actually took the classes in 2006 and were preparing to adopt a child. However, we couldn't agree upon an age. So we postponed it, got busy with life, enjoying life, continuing in our careers in college, military, us traveling. We just were enjoying life. We were having a wonderful time together with family, with friends. I know a lot of people probably wonder and question, why is it that they don't have biological children?
It just never happened for us. In 2013, I took a pregnancy test, and the test came back positive, and it was the scariest thing to me. I cried and I cried and I cried because I wasn't ready to be a mother.
I know that being a mother is one of the most important jobs, number one, in this world. And I guess I felt like I wasn't ready to do that, that I couldn't be that yet. And a couple days later, I miscarried. It was confirmed by the doctors, and I had miscarried. And again, I felt another form of sadness because a child that we would have, we no longer would have, even though we were early on in our pregnancy. It was still devastating for me. No, I hadn't felt the baby kick.
I hadn't felt the baby move, but it was devastating. But again, we continued life. Also, we were very active in our local church, so we were active in, my husband is the youth pastor, Children's Church, ages what?
Four to twelve. I've always been a part of my life just to help out with children in the church. And I guess one thing that we always did is that every time we gave our offering, we had, on the back of it, adopted a child on there. And then it was just no surprise that the story came out the day after Thanksgiving. And the day after Thanksgiving, what most people are doing is shopping.
How we are shopping. And we saw the story on Facebook, these seven children who needed a home. It was home for the holidays. And one scripture that came to my mind is that in my father's house, there's many rooms, and I go prepare a place for you.
And in the Lord's Prayer, we do things on earth as it is in heaven. So we had a space to truly be, to open our home for seven children. And we knew that we had everything that these children needed. They needed a mother, a father.
They needed stability, structure, discipline. With us having military, they needed love, they needed care. My husband being a teacher, me being in social work, having those skills, the spiritual background, everything. We were just putting our whole hope and our whole trust in all of our dreams and our ambitions and our life in His hands. We were surrendering all when we decided to adopt our seven children.
And once we put our faith out there, it's amazing how God works it out. These students I've been serving at Rutherford High School, their parents came and said, what can we do? What can we do? They did everything from bring furniture to build bunk beds to donate sports equipment to donate groceries. One parent is a farmer and truly just slaughtered a pig for us.
So we have sausage, bacon, and everything else. And also, our families, a day hasn't gone by that they haven't asked us or given to us whether it be snacks for the children to take to school, whether it be cooking up a big pot of lima beans, helping out, cooking food, getting the children off the bus when we both have to work, picking oranges, whatever it is, any extra that they have had, anything that they could give, whether it be $5. We have had that outpouring from our families from both sides. We have had that from complete strangers that live thousands and thousands of miles away.
It has been no stress, no struggle at all. And I do believe that that goes back to us doing the will of God to help build his kingdom to provide a home for, as the Bible calls them, orphans. You know, that is something that the Bible states we should do. Yes, in James 1.27, it says, true religion is to take care of the orphans. And we all know that it is more blessed to give than to receive. If we were allowed to adopt these seven children, we would do it.
We would work every day of our lives to make sure that they are cared for. And I think what's most important, too, is for them to see and to have an example of what it's like to have a father who is the head of the household, who has a strong faith and belief in God, who can teach them, who can lead the family. And I know that they enjoy that. I know that they feel privileged and proud to know that their dad is up there teaching them. You can see the smiles on their face and they enjoy talking about it afterwards.
They ask lots of questions. So that whole aspect has been wonderful to have him up front teaching our children about God, about the things that they should do in life to be saints, to be good children, to grow up, to be successful. And I just think for my spiritual fathers, because I did not have a biological father involved in my life, but my spiritual fathers from my pastors to different men in my church who helped show me the way right there. And I could just use that to impart not only to my children, but all the children I minister to on a weekly basis. So I think it's important to know that in this story of adoption, I am not called to be a minister, to be behind a pulpit, to preach at a church, to be a pastor. But I know that this is my calling that God has placed in my life and I am embracing it.
I am enjoying it. And that's why I can say that I am not stressed because it is something that we are doing that we are supposed to do. So it makes it so much easier. Does it require a lot from us? A lot of time, a lot of correction that we have to do. But it is also worth it.
Every part of it. This is what we're supposed to do in life. These seven children are our calling to be their mother and their father. And we take it just as serious as if it was a pastor over a church or a CEO or a business. This is us, a manager over a team. This is us. This is what we are called to do. And we give him all the praise, the glory, the honor for it, because without him, we would not be able to do this. And we are doing it. And that is our story. And what a story it was. And thanks, Greg, for doing that. And thank you, Sophia and Deshawn Olds for recording that and for doing what you did.
It's an inspiration. And it was their faith. Of course, the fruits of their faith.
And by the way, NBC's Today Show, ABC News, Inside Edition, Miami Herald, Parents.com and People. They all did this story, but they somehow managed to leave the faith walk of this couple out of the story. And just a few things they said.
And it was Sophia who said this. Once you put your faith out there, it's amazing how God works it out. And in came the food and in came the help from the family members. In came all that love.
True religion is to take care of the orphans. And if more Christians in this great country did what this young couple did, my goodness, we could solve a lot of problems in our country. This is our American story. Sophia and Deshawn Olds' story.
And those seven kids they adopted their stories to. Over twelve hundred games. I won again.
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