Page 4A | TYLER COUNTY BOOSTER | Thursday, November 7, 2019

Help stem tide of veteran suicides
By Tom Purcell
The numbers are sobering,
but we can do something
about them.
The Department of Vet-
erans Affairs’ 2019 National
Veteran Suicide Prevention
Annual Report says nearly
6,200 veterans took their
own lives in 2017 – and
more than 6,000 took their
lives every year from 2008
to 2017.
“In 2017, the suicide rate
for Veterans was 1.5 times
the rate for non-Veteran
adults, after adjusting for
population differences in age
and sex,” says the report.
And as with civilians,
suicide rates are increasing
among veterans.
“Among U.S. adults, the
average number of suicides
per day rose from 86.6 in
2005 to 124.4 in 2017,” says
the report. “These num-
bers included 15.9 Veteran
suicides per day in 2005 and
16.8 in 2017.”
The awfulness of warfare
is unimaginable to those
who’ve never experienced
it. That’s why war should
be an absolute last resort –
and why thousands of men
and women who served
are burdened by what they
experienced.
Iraq War veteran Danny
O’Neel, a speaker on suicide
prevention, PTSD and
mental health for the Inde-
pendence Fund, explains his
experience in a USA Today
column.
“War inflicts permanent
psychic scars on survivors,”
he writes. “Scrubbing a
friend’s flesh out of a Brad- witnessing serious harm or
ley reconnaissance vehicle,
packing up the cold clothes
of a new dad to ship home
to his family, pulling tor-
tured corpses out of a water
treatment facility – the
trauma from these experi-
ences is deep and lasting.”
Veterans who have seen
such horrors may suffer
from “moral injury,” which
psychiatrist Jonathan Shay
identified in veterans in
his 1994 book “Achilles in
Vietnam.”
Rita Nakashima Brock
of the Shay Moral Injury
Center and Ann Kansfield, a
New York City Fire Depart-
ment chaplain, explain the
concept in USA Today.
“Moral injury is the result
of violating core moral
foundations by causing or
If you’re a veteran having
failing to save others,” they
write. “It can also occur by
being exposed to a great
evil, like a terrorist attack,
that shakes our foundation.
Losing moral grounding
challenges people’s identity
and meaning systems when
they condemn themselves
for doing the wrong or inad-
equate thing, even if there
was nothing they could have
done.”
Moral injuries burden
veterans with immense guilt.
Without proper help for the
depression that guilt may
bring, they may see suicide
as their only option – when
it surely is not.
And too many veterans
think that seeking such
help is a sign of weakness –
which it surely is not.
give money to a local orga-
such thoughts, contact the
Veterans Crisis Line: Call
1-800-273-8255, then press
1 for a VA staff mem-
ber. Veterans, active-duty
military and their families
can also text 838255 or visit
VeteransCrisisLine.net.
Like or dislike President
Trump, in March he issued
an executive order, the Presi-
dent’s Roadmap to Em-
power Veterans and End the
National Tragedy of Suicide
(PREVENTS). It requires
government agencies to col-
lect better research; estab-
lish better, more aggressive
prevention methods; and
collaborate with local-level
organizations to get veterans
the services they need.
Each of us can help, too.
We can volunteer time or
nization that works tirelessly
to prevent veteran suicides.
Next Monday is Veterans
Day. That’s a great time to
honor our veterans – by do-
ing our small part to tackle
the growing issue of veteran
suicides.
–
Copyright 2019 Tom
Purcell. Tom Purcell, author
of “Misadventures of a 1970’s
Childhood,” a humorous
memoir available at amazon.
com, is a Pittsburgh Tribune-
Review humor columnist and
is nationally syndicated exclu-
sively by Cagle Cartoons Inc.
For info on using this column
in your publication or website,
contact Sales@cagle.com or
call (805) 969-2829. Send
comments to Tom at Tom@
TomPurcell.com.

World Series announcers talk too much, say too little

By Joe Guzzardi
The World Series is
over, and so ends the noise
pollution barrage that Fox
Sports’ announcers besieged
their viewers with. 
Perhaps Joe Buck and
John Smoltz were under
an executive office edict to
never stop talking – leave
no second of airtime empty.
Much of what Buck and
Smoltz parroted was beyond
the grasp of a large audi-
ence segment – exit velocity,
launch angle, spray charts,
WAR, Whip and other
er superfluous sabermetric
o mumbo jumbo.  pity that Buck and Smoltz
n- Dinosaur fans remem-
n ber the days when a single
broadcaster occupied the
tyler county
booth to provide merely
the baseball basics – the
pitch count, inning, on-deck
hitter. But when the Los
Angeles Dodgers’ Vince
Scully retired in 2016, that
ended the long-ago era
when silence was golden.
In their commitment to
talk more but say less, Buck
and Smoltz never followed
up on the 1933 Washington
Senators, as the Nation-
als were then known. They
mentioned numerous times
that the 1933 Senators were,
until 2019, the last Wash-
ington team to appear in the
World Series. More’s the
dropped the ball because
that Senators team had Hall
of Fame frontline players,
and a supporting cast that
was even more interesting.
Led by 26-year-old
shortstop/manager Joe
Cronin and sluggers Heinie
Manush and Goose Gos-
lin, the Senators ended the
season with a seven-game
regular season margin over
the Ruth-Gehrig New York
Yankees. Bit Senators play-
ers included Cecil Travis
whose Hall of Fame-bound
career ended when in World
War II his feet became
frostbitten. There was also
part-timer Moe Berg, whom
Casey Stengel called “the
strangest man ever to play
baseball,” a reference to the
catcher’s Princeton Uni-
versity and Columbia Law
School degrees, and to his
subsequent assignment as
a World War II Officer for
tors’ outfielder Sam Rice,
who was involved in one
of the World Series’ most
controversial plays. The
play’s final disposition – safe
or out – wasn’t resolved until
after Rice died. In the 1925
series against the Pittsburgh
Pirates, Rice dove over the
center field fence to stab a
long fly. Rice, recognized
as a peerless ballhawk,
emerged waving his glove
with the ball intact. The
umpire signaled out. But
since Rice was outside of
everyone’s on field line of
vision, the Pirates immedi-
ately challenged the call, and
ultimately appealed the safe
decision to Commissioner
Judge Kenesaw Moun-
tain Landis’ office. Landis
declared that he couldn’t
override the ump.  behind the hated Yankees.
ruled “out,” case closed. Fi-
nally, at Rice’s 1963 Hall of
Fame induction, he prom-
ised that he would provide
the specifics in a letter to
be opened after his death.
When ten years later Rice’s
letter was read, he had writ-
ten that at no time did he
lose control of the ball.
In 1933, D.C. was on a
high. President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt replaced
Calvin Coolidge in the Oval
Office. Prohibition was over.
FDR’s New Deal gave hope
to the Depression-ravaged
nation. When the loaded
Senators clinched the pen-
nant, D.C. fan euphoria was
as high as it was in 2019.
Despite winning 90 games
or more in 1930, 1931 and
1932, the Senators finished
Bill Terry, ran roughshod
over the D.C.-nine. The
Senators fell in five games,
losing two to future Hall
of Famer Carl Hubbell.
Not for nothing was Hub-
bell nicknamed “the Meal
Ticket.” In his two complete
game victories, the lefty
didn’t allow an earned run.
Skeptics who question
why anyone should care
about a World Series played
more than eight decades
ago must remember that
baseball history is American
history. 
Sabermetrics, on the other
hand, is just cold numbers,
incomprehensible to most.
–
Joe Guzzardi is a Society for

BOOSTER
TEXAS PRESS
ASSOCIATION Strategic Services, later the For years, journal- But unfortunately for American Baseball Research
CIA. The OSS licensed Berg ists pleaded with Rice to and Internet Baseball Writers
BETTER NEWSPAPER CONTEST

AWARD WINNER
2018 the Senators, the New
to kill, literally. come clean. Rice would York Giants, managed by Association member. Contact
Then, there’s Sena- only say that the ump first baseman/manager Joe at guzzjoe@yahoo.com.

Alvin Holley, Publisher

(USPS 645-560)
Entered as periodical matter at the Post Office at Woodville, TX 75979
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