Run at thunder

Thunder can't hurt. Harmless noise.

We often like to tie things back to the Portland area, or at least Oregon in general. After all, a good deal of my content is biased toward my Portland heritage (and another specific bias toward Boston College athletics).

Wherefore your title, Run at thunder? One may ask.

Great question.

Amongst other reasons, it comes from a direct quote of Mike Corleone in The Godfather Part III. The "least" of the trilogy, I know, but still.

"Run at thunder ... Thunder can’t hurt! Harmless noise."

Secondarily, the Portland Thunder were a World Football League team in the 1970s and was a big deal in town. The WFL was a short-lived upstart league that tried to compete with the NFL and managed to do okay until financial realities set in.

Portland’s WFL entry in 1974 was originally called the Portland Storm but changed to the Thunder in 1975 when the entire league folded part-way through the season.

There was also an Arena Football League team also called the Portland Thunder that graced the astroturf floors of the Rose Garden in 2014 and 2015, but to little fanfare.

The late Greg Barton, who coached my cousins in baseball for the Raleigh Hills Little League juggernaut in suburban southwest Portland, was the quarterback for the original Storm.

According to former Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann, it was imitating the style of Greg Barton (his former teammate in Toronto of the Canadian Football League) which led him to wear the iconic “single-bar” facemask throughout his NFL career, which ended—on a gruesome Monday Night—with him as the last “single-bar” position player in the NFL.

The late Marty Schottenheimer—eventually an NFL head coach for 21 years with 4 teams—came out of a three-year retirement and a career in real estate to become a player-coach for the squad. Ultimately proving to be a great career move for Schottenheimer.

Briefly on that long ago heyday in Portland sports:

• World Champion Portland Trail Blazers (1977)

• Portland Mavericks of Battered Bastards of Baseball fame (1973-77)

• Portland Storm/Thunder (1974-75)

• soccer’s original Timbers (1975-82)

The amazing thing about all these teams, which all played in second-rate leagues at best, is that a lot of their players, notably many of the best players on all those teams ended up staying in Portland. More importantly, a good portion of those guys who remained in town dedicated their lives to youth sports.

Yes, in the 1970s, the NBA was a second-rate league compared to pro football, hockey, and the big leagues.

Portland was once a great place. The potential is still there.

Whether the will is there in order to make it simply nice again will be a question for the next couple of decades.

A note:

Until recently, Portland had been divided into five so-called “quadrants.” It worked well for over 100 years. Some geniuses a couple years back had it in mind to redistrict a part of Southwest Portland into what is now called “South Portland.”

I am a native of Southwest Portland even though I was born in a hospital in North Portland.

My family heritage is strong in all of the former 5 quadrants.

While living in Portland, I never lived outside of Southwest Portland.

Unbeknownst to future me, as an adult I lived two decades in what is now considered “South Portland.” I don’t recognize the new nomenclature as legitimate.

Rant over.

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Lesson: From the Hills of Southwest Portland and Beyond

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We begin in 1923 with a man named Ray who was born and then raised in San Diego, California.

This fellow broke into the big leagues in 1948 with the Cleveland Indians as a 24-year-old shortstop, the year the Tribe last won the World Series.

Ray played sparingly and would only appear in six contests that season as he was second-string to future Hall of Famer Lou Boudreau, then the 30-year-old player-manager for the Indians.

Boudreau manned the six-hole during the 1948 campaign for the World Champs, winning the American League Most Valuable Player award at season’s end.

Breaking into the Cleveland infield was not easy.

To wit: Boudreau’s keystone partner was the 1942 American League MVP, former New York Yankees second-sacker and future Hall of Famer, Joe Gordon.

Gordon hailed from Portland, Oregon and Jefferson High School in North Portland.

Jefferson High School is notable, not only in Portland, but in national circles for having produced a National Baseball Hall of Fame member (Gordon), Pro Football Hall of Famers (Mel Renfro and Arnie Weinmeister), a Heisman Trophy winner (Terry Baker of Oregon State), a current NBA head coach (Ime Udoka of the Boston Celtics), several other pro basketball, football, and baseball players, and, of course, my uncle Steve.

Let’s get back to Ray…