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Wizards make a wish come true

From the July 16, 2003, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Fort Wayne, IN

Author: Steve Warden, The Journal Gazette

Joel and Trish share their story on this Podcast of The DNA Radio Show broadcast on July 18, 2009.

"These people who were so good to us - to go out of their way for people they don't know – that's what's in my heart. That's what I'm taking home." —Mary Dockum

From his first open heart surgery when he was 7 years old to his second when he was 14, Joel Dockum has been waiting for death to take him. That is what you do when there is nothing else to do.

You watch while others play. You wish while others do. And oh, how you wonder. You wonder what it is to dust the brown, powdered dirt off the front of your baseball uniform from a head-first slide into second base, or what it must feel like to play basketball from the noontime heat into the evening's shadows, and then to have your legs ache that deep, wonderful ache that says you played long and hard.

Yes, you go through your quiet life wondering these things, from 7 to 14 to 25, as Joel Dockum is today. But you also wonder why – and occasionally you question why – God gave you this burning want to play sports; to sweat and slide and skin your knee so you can bleed just enough to go home and have your mother mend it with a kiss and a bandage.

You wonder why you've been given the desire to run and play even though your heart can't take the stress, because the slightest bit of exertion could, and would, destroy you.

You grow up wondering why you. Bitter and rebellious. You quickly understand that your life, no matter how long it will last, won't be normal when the doctor who first cut you open offers to buy you a Nintendo video game system to keep you on the couch and out of possible danger.

"My whole life I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop," says Joel Dockum, who has lived with subaoritc stenosis, an abnormal muscle tissue that grows and constricts the aorta.

Sunday at Memorial Stadium, the shoe never did drop for Dockum, who, with his mother Mary, had driven out from San Diego for one of the best moments of his life. The shoe was actually handed to him. And you know what he did with it? He autographed the thing and handed it back.

The shoe literally came from a little boy who didn't have anything for Joel Dockum to sign. He had no ball, no program, no slip of paper on which to collect autographs on Family Day – the day when the Fort Wayne Wizards players linger in right field after the game and sign autographs until there are no more to be signed.

So the boy handed Dockum his shoe. How was he to know he wasn't really an honest-to-God Wizards player? He was, after all, wearing the white uniform, was standing amid all the other players, and Dockum even had a Sharpie so he could sign anything that came his way. A smallish 5-foot-7 with rust-colored hair beneath the blue cap, he looked the part, except for that scruff of red goatee on his chin.

"At first I didn't feel right about it," Dockum said of joining the Wizards for the autograph session. "Kevin (pitcher Kevin Seibert) said, 'Stand next to me. Go out there and just hang out. These kids will look at you like they look at everybody else.' " A day earlier, Joel Dockum told the players to appreciate where they are in life, and that the little kids, "saw them as gods."

Mary Dockum, with freckles on her fair arms and her blondish-gray hair tucked into a bun, says she doesn't believe in luck. Doesn't believe in happenstance, kismet, accidental fortune or serendipity.

It was fate, sure and sweet, that interceded in her life and the life of her only child Joel. It was fate that caused Joel and 18-year-old Trish Garigen to begin talking over an Internet chat room, that led mother and son and even Puppy, their 80-pound half-pit bull, half-Rottweiler ("and 100 percent chicken," Joel says) on a cross-country trip that began in Southern California and ended less than a week later with a grateful and tearful weekend in Fort Wayne.

He was in San Diego. Trish in Fort Wayne. He loved baseball. So did she. As a matter of fact, she confided, her father, Jim Garigen, is not only the owner of the Lighthouse Cafe on the campus of the YWCA, but is also the chef for the Fort Wayne Wizards – the Class A affiliate of Dockum's favorite baseball! team, the San Diego Padres.

Their typed conversation lingered, each waiting for the other's response. She asked whether he played baseball. He said he couldn't, and explained a childhood of living with a heart that could stop in an instant. If only he could have played, he told her. That had always been his dream – to play baseball, or at least see what it could have been like. And that's when Trish Garigen asked her father if the Wizards could fulfill a dream.

"She didn't say, 'Let's do this for this guy and people will think we're wonderful,' " Jim Garigen said. "She was like, we have. Why can't we share?"

So Trish and Jim Garigen talked with Wizards general manager Mike Nutter about this young guy out in San Diego. Would Nutter allow locker room access to meet the players and maybe to even sit in the dugout?"

"(Trish) came to me and explained the story and asked if there was anything we could do, and I said, 'Of course,' " Nutter said. "As trivial as it is, but working here, sometimes you get a chance to make somebody's day. When she explained the situation, I thought it was a long shot that we'd ever see the guy. Nobody gets in the car and drives for three days each way. Well, not nobody. They proved me wrong."

It was Tuesday, July 8, when Joel and Mary Dockum, with Puppy in the back of their 2002 Ford Explorer, left Monroe Avenue in San Diego and set out on their quest for Fort Wayne. Four days, three nights and 2,200 miles later, all three showed up at the home of Trish Garigen. Had it been up to Joel entirely, the traveling trio would have arrived even earlier. "I didn't need to sleep," he said. "I didn't need to stop. I didn't need to pee. I didn't need to eat."

"I won't use the words that I used when (Trish) said it, but basically I asked, 'Are you for real?' " Dockum said when the offer was made to come to Fort Wayne. "And she said, 'Yeah. A hundred percent for real.' I mean, this is somebody who knows nothing more about me than what I've told her." "I'm always up for a road trip, and a road trip to Indiana is wonderful," Mary Dockum said. "I love the Midwest. Plus it gave me a chance to see my son smile from ear to ear, because it's the best moment of his life."

Best moments? Joel Dockum didn't know how to separate one best moment from the others, because there had been so many and they came so quickly from Friday afternoon to Monday night. Certainly signing autographs in full team regalia Sunday afternoon was a moment never to be forgotten.

He was presented a team jersey – No. 37 – that was signed by the entire team; a jersey he wore throughout the game Monday as he sipped cold beer from his front row seat next to Trish Garigen. If he lets himself, he'll still be able to hear the explosion of the ball hitting the catcher's mitt as he stood near the bullpen. "I thought I could hit a ball, but no I can't," Dockum said. "Not when they're moving at 95 miles an hour going like this (he dives his hand downward to emphasize a slider)." But it was the fireworks display Friday night, the first night he was in town, that reached inside him and touched his heart, flaws and all.

"He came back to the (hotel) room, and his face was beet red," said Mary Dockum. "His eyes were puffy. He couldn't even talk. And that's because he got to go down on the field and watch the fireworks with the team." "That," said Joel, "is when I lost it." At long last, he was one of them, a part of the team, and they made him feel as though he belonged.

"To see someone like that so excited to be out here, it really puts perspective on where you're at and how far you've come and how many people wished they were doing what we're doing," said Seibert, the pitcher who coaxed Joel onto the field to sign autographs. "To see him out there was a great joy. To see his joy for the game was really awesome." Again, tears well from his eyes, and his voice squeaks as he tries to speak – as he tries to explain what these past few days have meant to him. Joel Dockum catches his breath and rubs his eyes. "I got to see what they see every day," he said.

And maybe that was the best moment of all. He heard the clack of spikes on the cement dugout steps, and listened to the ball hit the catcher's glove like a firecracker, and saw the greenery of Memorial Stadium that went on forever, or at least until Coliseum Boulevard.

He laughed and ate and lived the game with young men he'll probably never see again, but then again, some he might if they ever make it out to San Diego to play with the Padres. If they do, he's offered them a free place to stay.

He talked about how this was a "pontoon" that spanned the bridge of his life, and how this has helped his own rehabilitation - not with the heart, but with the soul.

"I spent a lot of my life being really, really mad at everything and everyone, and that God was responsible for this," he said. "I screwed up at school (he quit high school his junior year, but vows he'll get his GED) because I didn't care. I screwed up morally because I didn't care. I was so angry at the world for not being able to be a normal kid. I spent a lot of time having animosity toward everything – my mom, my dad, my friends, life in general.

"Neither one of my parents had any control over me from the ages of 14 to 19. My whole life, I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop. And until I was about 23, I started thinking, you know, maybe I am going to live long enough to regret all the stupid things I'm doing right now. I tried to start growing up, and that's not easy to do at 23. I'm 25 now. Hopefully by the time I'm 30 I can be closer to being an adjusted adult than I am now. This has been a huge, huge help. I can't say that I didn't get there, because I did."

Across the table from her son, Mary Dockum sat quietly and cried quietly and dabbed her eyes with a white paper napkin. "What we're both taking home is more than a baseball team and more than a baseball game, or even more than Joel being on the field," she said. "It's how this all happened. These people who were so good to us - to go out of their way for people they don't know - that's what's in my heart. That's what I'm taking home. People were so good to do this for my kid, and that does it for me. "As Joel and I have both said, if we had just sat in the stands and watched the game, meeting this family (the Garigens) has been worth every mile that we came and every mile that we go back." Added Joel: "We'll cry all the way home. I know we will."

Until then, Joel and Mary and their 80-pound San Diego chicken dog will return to their home on Monroe Avenue, just a mile away from Qualcomm Stadium where the Padres play. Only this time, they won't be waiting for the shoe to fall. Together, they said they'll wait for medical science to find a cure to stop a muscle that keeps growing back around the aorta of a dreamer's heart – that maybe, just maybe, has softened during a Midwest summer weekend.

Michael Jackson's Death Was Tragic, But He Was Little More Than an Icon of Mediocrity

By Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's Blog

Posted on July 9, 2009

I have watched the fawning nonstop media coverage of the death of Michael Jackson with skepticism this past week.

Yes, premature death is tragic. Upon that we can (mostly) all agree.

What I cannot agree with, however, are the repeated claims that Jackson: was a musical genius; broke down racial barriers; was a brilliant singer; was a great dancer; changed American culture.

The book African American Education by Walter Recharde Allen details the rampant double-standards applied by the US school system to black children. Too many teachers still hold negative stereotypes about blacks. When a white kid says two-plus-two is four, the teachers nod and move on; when the black kid does the same, they stare in disbelief, express surprise, or praise the student for high achievement. In other words, lowered expectations lead teachers to praise mediocrity in black students.

I believe something similar is going on in the US media regarding Michael Jackson.

As a musician (I hold a bachelor's degree in performance from Berklee College of Music) and as a music critic and historian, I can tell you with a clear conscience that Michael Jackson's musical abilities, placed upon the spectrum of human accomplishments in this field, are mediocre at best.

Yet everyone from the London Telegraph to People magazine have gone to great lengths to tell us Jackson was a literal "genius".

Jackson, whose vocal range was limited and who sang often insipid pop songs that rarely ventured outside of a basic pentatonic scale, was no musical genius.

Cannonball Adderley was a musical genius. John Coltrane was a musical genius. Charles Ives was a musical genius. J.S. Bach was a musical genius. Hector Berlioz was a musical genius. These were human beings gifted with uncommon genius in musical understanding, interpretation and expression.

To compare Michael Jackson's twitchy, strange pop singing to the accomplishments of people such as Pyotr Tchaikovsky or Charlie Parker is downright insulting; it is rather like saying the guy who designed the Tilt-a-Whirl is on par as an architect with I.M. Pei.

That the American press have been so quick to jump on the Jackson-as-genius bandwagon speaks to the dismal state of excellence in our culture. As more and more artistic and journalistic decisions have been left to MBAs and accountants, quality has fallen by the wayside. True musical variety has died with the radio monopolies of Clear Channel and others, as we are force-fed the same Lady Ga-Ga tune until we Lady Ga-GAG. Our standards, in other words, have sunk to new lows, and not just in music.

If Jackson is a musical genius, one realizes, it is not such a great leap to imagine Sarah Palin as presidential material, Lauren Weisberger as a great author, or Lou Dobbs as a substitute for real reporting and news. The Simpsons lampooned the growing cult of idiocy and mediocrity in our nation in the character of Homer; sadly, hardly anyone noticed because they were too busy relating to him.

As a culture, it appears that we have accepted the lowest common denominator as the highest we ought to aim. We are told Michael Jackson is the King of Pop, when in reality he is the Clown Monarch of Mediocrity.

Again and again we have heard the Jackson also "broke down racial barriers". ABC News told us he was the first black artist to do so. This is as nonsensical as the claim that he was a genius, for several reasons.

First, Jackson was hardly the first black person to find popularity in American pop music. Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Fats Domino, Coleman Hawkins, Miles Davis - the list of those who came before is seemingly endless to anyone whose sense of US musical history goes back further than the 1970s.

Second, Jackson worked very hard not to be black. He hated being black. His self-hatred was deep and public. To somehow now consider him as being some sort of racial trailblazer is ridiculous and incomprehensible; it also shows that people see what they need to see, rather than what is there.

Did white people like Jackson's music? Sure. But they came to love him not in the respectful way audiences came to love, say, a young Wynton Marsalis, which is to say observing his unmistakable genius in stunned silence. Rather, it was to say "lookie there, what a cute negro child singin' and dancin'" as the very young Jackson sang age-inappropriate love songs in a shuck-and-jive style that brought to mind vaudeville blackface.

This type of admiration is nothing new in a nation that has a long tradition of white folks watching black folks perform mysterious and embarrassing works for their entertainment. The young Jackson was, to most white Americans, like a singing version of Buckwheat from Our Gang.

Jackson hardly embraced his race. Quite the contrary. If he sought to break down racial barriers, it was only to have surgery to make himself white. When it came time for children, he found a sperm donor who was white, because he knew that no matter how much surgery he had, his DNA would still make black babies - and he hated black people. Both his marriages were to white women.

Jackson's dancing, so often heralded as brilliant, was not so. He was an unusual dancer, yes. But not a brilliant one. A brilliant dancer is someone like Mikhail Barishnakov, Alvin Ailey, or Gregory Hines. Jackson was a weird dancer, and a good dancer, but he simply wasn't great.

We Americans have become so accustomed to inappropriate superlatives that we scarcely notice when they are applied to the middling.

As for Jackson changing American culture? Maybe he helped justify our increasing voyeurism and obsession with celebrity by being so publicly and tragically screwed up.

But did he singlehandedly change music? Nope. The uptempo songs are fun to dance to, but the slow songs are excruciatingly insipid. I can't see any of it mattering ten years from now or, for that matter, ten years ago. We knew this a month ago; that's why no one was listening to his music. Now, we pretend we care about his music when the truth is more about the selfish communal realization of mortality among Generation X, who in Jackson lost their first big star. If he can die, we are thinking, then holy shit, so can we.

This still doesn't make Jackson a genius. It doesn't make Gen Xers geniuses, either. But maybe that's the problem. We were the ones with the hippie parents who told us all that we were great. The truth was, most of us, like most people of any age, weren't great at all; we were average. We just thought we were great. Maybe we're projecting.

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Wizards make a wish come true

Michael Jackson's Death Was Tragic, But He Was Little More Than an Icon of Mediocrity