My relationship with Mitch McConnell began, oddly enough, on the baseball field at the Naval Ordnance Plant in South Louisville. It was the summer of 1956, and we were teammates on the hapless Giants of the Beechmont Pony League.
Before Little League came along with its uniforms, equipment, and crazed parents, I learned to play the game on the empty lots and open spaces near my home in the cheap duplexes off Strawberry Lane.
We had no uniforms or coaches or umpires. And we played slow-pitch because nobody had the money to buy catcher’s equipment. We had our own honor code, and anybody who tried to cheat would go home with a bloody nose.
I tried out for Little League when it came along, but wasn’t picked for a team. The next step up was Pony League, for boys 13 and 14. I made the Giants because my father was the assistant coach, or so he said, but I’ll never forget the manager who came up to me during tryouts and said, “You’re pretty good, and I’m going to pick you for our team. ”
Mitch McConnell, childhood photo.
Our uniforms, gray with green trim, were much too big for us. They also were made of heavy wool, the last thing you want to wear on a scalding summer afternoon.
As I recall, we claimed last place at the beginning of the season and tenaciously held on to it. Our best player, who pitched and played shortstop, was a 14-year-old kid who had just moved to Louisville from Georgia.
His name was Addison “Mitch” McConnell.
I remember him as being a bit aloof and more mature than the rest of us. The reason, I surmised, was that he had become a polio victim when he was very young. He spent much of his early years in a forbidding contraption known as an “Iron Lung,” so-called because it helped patients breathe. Polio was the Coronavirus of its time, striking youngsters across the land until Dr. Jonas Salk came up with a vaccine.
But here was Mitch, playing baseball well enough to become an All-Star. I admired the heck out of him. I could only imagine what he had endured. Fortunately, his dad was a civil servant in the U.S. Army, meaning the government paid most of Mitch’s bills.
I played second base because that’s where they always put the guys with weak arms and limited fielding range. But one game, when Mitch was pitching, I found myself in right field.
With the game on the line, the rival batter hit a high fly ball toward me. It should have been the last out of the game. Alas, however, I misjudged it badly and stood watching helplessly as it soared over my head.
I retrieved the ball and made the long, painful trot back to the bench. Mitch didn’t say anything at the time, but years later he would never fail to bring it up. His standard introduction was, “This is my friend Billy Reed, the worst baseball player I ever saw.”
Both Mitch and I were interested in civics, so during the 1955-’56 school year at Manual Junior High, we found ourselves together on the Executive Board of the Student Council. Years later, I got back at Mitch for his remarks about my baseball ability. I would tell audiences that “some people say it’s a shame I didn’t become a politician and Mitch a sportswriter.”
My family moved to Lexington after my seventh-grade year, and I didn’t see Mitch again until a state student council convention at Georgetown College. Headed for his freshman year at the University of Louisville, Mitch was one of our counselors. I was getting ready to be student council president during my senior year at Henry Clay High.
Want more great content like this?
Become a sustaining member of NKyTribune with a tax-deductible donation today and help us continue to provide accurate, up-to-date local news and information you can depend on.
We exchanged pleasantries, but didn’t spend much time together because I was smitten by the charms of Miss Donna Clancy, who was a year ahead of me at Henry Clay.
I lost touch with Mitch until he enrolled in law school at the University of Kentucky. Three of my Transylvania College fraternity brothers – Bruce Davis, Glen Bagby, and Larry Langan – were there at the same time, and they were impressed by Mitch’s ambition and drive. We all agreed he was destined to be a politician.
And so he was.
Initially a Kennedy Democrat, Mitch changed parties after serving an internship with U.S. Senator John Sherman Cooper, a statesman who was highly respected on both sides of the aisle. Working his way through the ranks, Mitch was elected Judge-Executive of Jefferson County in 1977, the same year I was named sports editor of The Courier-Journal. We often would run into each other at U of L football and basketball games, and our meetings always were cordial despite Mitch’s zingers about my baseball ability.
The divorced father of three daughters, Mitch had a relationship with former jockey Claudia Starr in the early ‘80s and I did a story about it for the C-J Sunday magazine. I remember Mitch giving Claudia credit for making him a kinder and gentler man.
He was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984, shocking Democratic incumbent Walter “Dee” Huddleston in a very tight election. Although I was a moderate-to-liberal Democrat, I was pleased to see that Mitch seemed to want to emulate his mentor Cooper. I was proud of him. Heck, not everybody can say they used to play ball with a man who rose to Senate Minority Leader, then-Majority Leader when the Republicans gained control of the Senate.
But then something happened to Mitch. I’m not sure what caused it, but he suddenly became a ruthless power broker who took partisanship to a new level. When Barack Obama became America’s first black President, McConnell said publicly that his main goal was to make sure Obama was a one-term President.
To achieve that end, he opposed just about every Obama initiative, including the Affordable Health-Care Act, also known as “Obamacare.” He failed to limit Obama to one term, but he obstructed Obama as best he could. When Obama nominated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, McConnell refused to bring up the nomination in the Senate, even though Obama still had nine months remaining in his second term.
Billy Reed is a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame and the Transylvania University Hall of Fame. He has been named Kentucky Sports Writer of the Year eight times and has won the Eclipse Award three times. Reed has written about a multitude of sports events for over four decades and is perhaps one of the most knowledgeable writers on the Kentucky Derby. His book “Last of a BReed” is available on Amazon. It got only worse in 2016, when the Electoral College overturned Hillary Clinton’s decisive victory in the general election and put Donald Trump in the White House.
McConnell had to be delighted, because he’s infinitely smarter and cleverer than Trump. So he has played him like a cheap fiddle, heaping compliments on Trump to assuage his massive narcissism while pretty much doing what he wanted to turn America into one-party nation. Not even Trump has more detractors in the media and the Democratic party. Yet Mitch just laughs at them and doubles down on his beliefs and goals.
Watching from afar, I keep waiting for my old teammate to show up. Surely a person who almost lost his life to polio should have a heart brimming with compassion for the poor, the sick, and the needy. Surely a person who spent so much time in an “Iron Lung” should want every American to have an opportunity to overcome obstacles.
But it hasn’t happened and apparently won’t. Mitch is too far down the road to perdition to turn back now. Maybe he gave in to the usual suspects, money, and power. He and wife Elaine Chao, a member of Trump’s Cabinet, have become wealthy beyond anything Mitch could have imagined when we were cavorting on the baseball field at the Naval Ordnance plant.
A student of the Constitution and an expert on how things work in Washington, Mitch apparently does not care anymore about his reputation or his place in history. I think that’s a shame. He could never have challenged Abraham Lincoln as Kentucky’s most revered politician, but he could have surpassed John Sherman Cooper, Alben Barkley, and Henry Clay.
Try as I might, I can’t forget the courageous kid from Georgia who came into my life in the summer of ’56. I can still see him in his baggy gray wool uniform. Maybe someday I’ll understand what happened to him.
• • • • • • • • •
EDITOR’S NOTE: Sen. McConnell has asked for clarifications on some of the comments in the column: First, he says, he was never in an Iron Lung. Polio affected his left leg and he didn’t run very well but he was never in an Iron Lung. Also, he did not almost lose his life to polio. He says the worst thing that could have happened to him was that he would have had to wear a brace on his left leg — and again, he did not spend time in an Iron Lung.
He also says he has always been a Republican — not a “Kennedy Democrat” — and, in fact, voted for Richard Nixon in 1960 — therefore he did not change parties after interning for Sen. Cooper.
Yes, like every leader of the opposite party, he said, he hoped the President of a different party would have been a one-termer, but it’s important to note, he said, he negotiated three bipartisan agreements with the Obama-Biden Administration before the first term ended.
Sen. McConnell said that Billy obviously is not one of his admirers and it’s worth noting that the people of Kentucky have made him the longest-serving Senator in Kentucky history and his Senate Republican colleagues made him the longest-serving Senate Leader in history — elected 7 times by them without opposition.
Thanks Billy; an interesting read.
What a powerful insight to a man I do not care for you are right he doesn’t care for us that are less fortunate, I moved to Kentucky 10 yrs ago and he wasn’t a nice man back then. The older he gets the worse he gets. So sad.
Excellent but sad piece by Billy Reed on tbe tumulchuous decline of Mitch. From statesman to buttkisser, Mitch will go down in history as a tragic figure.
Too much Power and greed happened to him. He’s arguably one of the most conniving, dishonest, dangerous and hated men in the US government. At the end, his legacy will not to be admired but for people who knew him in his heyday to say they don’t know what could have happened to him.
Excellent article! The paralysis in Congress for the past 12 years is primarily McConnell’s fault. Blocking Obama’s efforts to lead for 8 years, and now giving Trump full reign to gut our democracy as long as McConnell is still pulling the strings of power, is his legacy. Our poor federal response to this pandemic can be largely attributed to McConnell’s willingness to put partisan politics above the interests of the American people.
Why does Kentucky keep electing him to congress? Is there a white-supremist element that we are not aware of? I contributed a lot of money to Amy McGrath’s campaign because I despise this man.
Mitch did everything short of becoming a Canadian citizen to avoid serving in Vietnam. How could anyone get in the National Guard reserves (for a mere 40 days) without help…JSC?? Mitch has keep the electorate of Kentucky stupid….and kept their vote. My home state remains an embarrassment to the country. It ranks among the lowest in healthcare, education and every other socioeconomic standard.