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A beautiful song from a terrible moment
By JOE POSNANSKIThe Kansas City Star
“Let’s Stick Together,” well, it came from a different place. It has a few other lyrics, sure. Mostly though, it is Jim and his 3-year-old daughter, Lyda, singing those three words “Let’s Stick Together” again and again.
There’s a little baseball in this story, a few terrifying moments, a happy ending.
•••
You may know Jim Cosgrove by his other name, which is Mr. Stinky Feet. He’s 43, and he has been performing for kids and families for 10 years now. He grew up in Kansas City — he used to mow George Brett’s lawn when he was young — and he was one of those people who worked hard to find out what he wanted to do with his life. He had what he called grown-up jobs. But he first learned to strum a guitar when he worked as a volunteer on a Navajo Indian Reservation. He recorded his first children’s album on the $1,000 his Godmother left him back when he taught business writing classes.
And, after a while, he found his speed. He loved performing for kids. He seemed to speak their language. He sang songs with names like “Ooey Gooey” and “Bop, Bop Dinosaur” and, of course, “Stinky Feet.” He never quite viewed himself as a musician, but the gigs kept coming in, and the kids kept singing along, and one day he realized that, yes, he had become a musician.
“I wake up every day and think, ‘This is my life?’ ” he says. “Wow, I’m lucky.”
•••
Jim took his family on tour with him to Wichita last year. The family was his wife, Jeni, daughter Lyda and baby daughter Willa, just 8 weeks old. They stayed at a hotel that was a walk from the ballpark. Lyda saw the lights through the window.
“What are they doing there?” she asked.
“It’s a baseball game,” Jim said.
“Baseball!” Lyda said. “Can we go?”
Jim had grown up around baseball. His father was a real fan, the sort to keep score during games, the kind to remind his kids again and again to quit horsing around, to watch the game, to keep their eyes on the ball. Once a screaming line drive rushed at Jim, and his father grabbed him and pulled him down. The ball blurred by and hit an older man nearby. It drew blood. The man was fine. But Jim never forgot it.
The family found a seat pretty far back. Jim relaxed — this was fatherhood as he imagined it. It was the first time he had taken his daughters to a baseball game. Jeni was nursing the baby. Lyda was looking around in wonder. The place smelled like popcorn.
And then … Jim noticed a left-handed batter at the plate. He had the strangest feeling. He would remember hearing his father’s voice before the pitch … “Be alive, Jim, keep your eye on the ball.”
The batter swung. He hit a hard foul ball. And it came at them. Jim grabbed Lyda and covered her up. Jeni covered Willa as best she could. The ball hit Jeni in the arm and glanced off. People rushed over to make sure everyone was all right. Everyone seemed all right. The baby was crying, but everyone said that was a good thing. Then she became lethargic. That wasn’t good. Jim noticed what appeared to be a bruise on the back of her head.
The medical people seemed to think she would be fine. But — Jim would remember this clearly — there was a fireman there, standing back, and he looked Jim right in the eye and shook his head very slowly. “It’s like he was telling me, ‘Hey, if that was my daughter, I would take her to the hospital right now,” Jim would say. So they went.
•••
The first thing the trauma doctor said was that he needed to speak to both the mother and father at the same time. There was something hard in his words. Lyda whispered in her father’s ear: “I don’t like his voice.”
The trauma doctor then said that the neurosurgeon was on the way, and that Willa had a fractured skull and would need immediate surgery, and if the surgery was successful, he said, the baby could still have long-term brain damage.
The only word Jim and Jeni heard was “If.”
They waited for the neurosurgeon, the worst 45 minutes of their lives. Too many horrible thoughts filled them in those minutes. But the point of this story is not tension — in the end, the neurosurgeon came, and he said that because Willa’s head was so soft, she would not need surgery. Instead, she was put under — essentially put into a coma — and (as the surgeon had hoped) she began to recover. The surgeon said: “If it had been you or me with our hard heads, it would be a different story.” Willa seems perfectly healthy. She turned 1 year old this week, the same day that Jim’s old boss George Brett turned 55.
No, the point is not tension. The point is that during those terrible 45 minutes, the worst of Jim Cosgrove’s life, his daughter Lyda grabbed each of her parents’ legs and started singing, in a tune from somewhere in her head, “Let’s stick together. Let’s stick together. Let’s stick together.”
•••
It’s a strange thing … that crazy day has reconnected Jim with baseball. The Royals heard the story and sent Willa an autographed jersey and invited Jim and the family to sit in a suite during a game. Jim and the family have been back to a few games since then. Lyda loves baseball. Willa, for a 1-year-old, seems to love baseball, too.
These days, Jim thinks a lot about his Dad … baseball really can do that. He thinks a lot about his daughters. He worked with Lyda on her song, added a few words, but mostly kept it as he remembered her singing it. The song was perfect that way.
•••
Jim Cosgrove’s new album “Upside Down,” which includes the song “Let’s Stick Together,” will be released digitally on his Web site www.mrstinkyfeet.com. It will be a “You pick the price” offer, meaning you choose how much you want to pay for it.