Hey! An op-ed piece I wrote was published Monday in the New York Daily News, and much to my happy surprise, they didn’t edit out my favorite line of the whole thing: “Most of us aren’t fortunate enough to have a spouse named Mike.” (I can just imagine Cub fans across the country sighing in relief!) In case you missed it, here is Blind, but entitled to cast a ballot” in its entirety:

By Beth Finke

Monday, October 31, 2016

I lost my sight in 1986, to a rare condition called retinopathy. By then I’d already voted twice, in national elections, as a fully-sighted person.

Struggling to adjust to blindness, I was determined not to lose my ability to vote — not just casting a ballot, but the act of voting itself.

Going to the polls is essential. There’s no substitute for the feel of a voting device in your hand or the sound of your vote actually registering, a certainty that voting by absentee ballot can’t provide.

For three decades now I’ve searched for a voting experience equivalent to the one I enjoyed when I could see.

It’s a fair expectation. People who are blind are guaranteed that right by law — many laws, in fact, including at the national level alone: the National Voter Registration Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Help America Vote Act and the Federal Rehabilitation Act.

The technology has existed for many years, too. Text-to-speech software translates the candidate selections on the ballot into spoken choices; a special keypad then enables blind voters to choose their candidates by touch, with the selections confirmed by voice again before the ballot is cast.

Some places — like New York City — have more or less that setup, with ballot-marking devices that allow people who can’t see to make their choices in private.
But in many places, blind people can’t choose candidates on their own. The systems may work in theory, but they don’t in practice.

During the last 30 years I’ve made my way to the polls many times, each time hoping to recapture what I felt emotionally, and what I could actually do, before I became blind. What I experienced were more journeys of trepidation than fulfillment, not to mention the convoluted measures needed to approximate an act guaranteed by our Constitution.

We’ve come a long way of course since 1988, when I first voted as a blind person. The technology back then was punch card, so my husband Mike joined me in the booth, selected the candidates for me and placed my hand on top of the stylus so I could physically punch the ballot on my own.

In a subsequent election, Mike was away on business. I made it to the polls myself, but quickly discovered how much assistance I’d need without him. Two judges — one Democrat, one Republican — crowded with me and my seeing eye dog into the tiny polling booth.

I didn’t bother asking them to put my hand on the stylus so I could punch the card myself, just allowed a third party to vote for me with a second third party to witness.

Yes, I cast a ballot, but the experience was invasive and overheard by many.

Text-to-speech software became available in the mid-2000s, and the news coursed quickly through the blind community that we could now vote independently and privately. I live in Chicago, and the city sponsored free trainings at Chicago public libraries. I spent many hours there, getting a feel for the machines and practicing with the buttons on the handheld device.

When I arrived at the polling station in 2008, the technology was in place but no one could operate it. There’d been no training of staff in the sequences needed — enabling the software, activating the audio, even finding the headphones that ensure privacy of selection.

So backwards in time we went. Once again my husband Mike had to sign an affidavit, accompany me to the booth, read the candidates’ names out loud and hear my choices in response, as did everyone else within earshot. The same scenario repeated in 2012 during the national elections.

Next week we again have a national election of great import, and again, my hopes are raised that I’ll be able to exercise the same basic right that sighted people do — to vote in private without public assistance. Millions of Americans with disabilities share this ambition. . Instead, we need to rely on larger systems and resources. “Save yourself the trouble,” some suggest with a shrug. “Vote absentee.”

On a purely technical level, I won’t vote absentee as it’s historically fraught with challenges, including ballots getting damaged or lost, and in many cases not even counted.

It’s the larger imperative that compels me to the polls, however. People need to see me voting. The astonished comments I hear from people waiting with my seeing eye dog and me in queue tell me they really do want me to vote.

Those of us with disabilities can’t let others forget about us. In the not-too-distant past, people with disabilities did stay home, not just on voting day, but perpetually. We can never go back to those days, and voting publicly is one way to ensure we don’t.

Finke is the interactive community coordinator at Easterseals headquarters in Chicago and the author of two books.

Last week Beth posted about her humanitarian plan to remove me from Chicago while the Cubs played their first home World Series games since forever. Awhile ago, when it looked like the Cubs might just win the pennant, she determined that we’d go to the city of whatever American League team was in the Series.

Well, I’m glad that city ended up being Cleveland, and elated to report that the trip was an absolute success. I escaped Chicago, and Cub fans were spared me.

We saw our longtime friends (dating back to when they were Ph.D. students in the English department at the University of Illinois), Bob and Lauren. They have a great big old house on the west side of Cleveland with lovely views of Lake Erie, which is a short walk away.

I was pretty well-behaved. Most of the time.

We got to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and spent some time in a terrific little a neighborhood called Gordon Square. For Chicagoans, think of Logan Square just before it really got to be Logan Square.

Mostly, though, it was about the baseball. Friday night we ate a scrumptious dinner Lauren and Bob made and watched an absolutely terrific, tense, well-played baseball game that ended with Cleveland winning 1-0. Saturday, Beth and I watched the beginning of the game out at a bar in Gordon Square, and then came back to Bob and Lauren’s to watch the end.

The World Series is a big deal in Cleveland, but it’s different than here in Chicago with the Cubs. There are no W flags, but just a quiet, constant flow of conversational exchanges between friends, clerks and customers, and total strangers wearing Indians garb that invariably ended “Go Tribe!” Cleveland fans don’t care much about Cub fans suffering—they’ve suffered plenty themselves.

They were aware of their status, as our friend Bob termed it, as the Cubs’ generic “opponent.” Or, as this Boston columnist put it, a “prop” in the Cubs drama. Saturday morning, a Cleveland Plain Dealer column in the print edition was headlined, “Just in, Chicago not entitled.”

The visit was also confirmation of the universal sense among all sports fans that announcers are biased against their teams. Here in Chicago, Cub fans detest Joe Buck, largely because of his ties to St. Louis and the hated Cardinals. In Cleveland, they felt like Buck was partial to the Cubs, and that he couldn’t stop talking about the Cubs players, and in particular, Kyle Schwarber.

They also were irked about how the media narrative has been more about the Cubs losing than Cleveland playing well and winning. This is a Cub thing, as the Clevelanders are learning. For example, the 1969 season is still seen by Cubs faithful as the Cubs collapsing. Except: The Cubs won 90 games that year. They were very good. The Mets won 100 games. They were better. They went on to beat a great Baltimore Orioles team in the World Series 4 games to 1. In other words, the Cubs simply lost to a better team. I realize that’s not as much fun as goats and stuff….

Fans packed Progressive Field to watch the games at Wrigley. (Click image for video.)

Generally, fans just seemed very happy to be watching their team in the World Series. Some watched at Progressive Field, the Indians ballpark. Tens of thousands of loyalists paid $5 each to watch the games on the enormous jumbotron. Part of the proceeds went to local charities. The fans hooted and roared as if they were at the real thing. (We thought about going but it was sold out.)

The best part? Hanging with friends. Bob and Lauren subscribe to the print versions of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the NY Times. We hung out both mornings, sitting at their dining room table, drinking coffee, trading sections, reading passages aloud to one another, kibitzing about the game, about the election, the old days, the current days.—and laughing a LOT.

And so, Bob and Lauren, Beth and I—and the Cub fans of Chicago—thank you for putting up, and putting up with, your crazy friends.

If you follow this blog, you know my husband Mike likes baseball. You also know he doesn’t like the Cubs.

Mike Knezovich is a Chicago White Sox fan. He does not think the ivy is cute — crying is OK in baseball, just not shrubbery. He doesn’t think naming a dog Wrigley is clever. He thinks the Cubs manager likes attention a little too much, and is too fond of gimmickry. And grown men posing for photos in onesie pajamas is a sign of weakness.

Last year Mike went to a Cubs-Sox game with some members of my family, including my nephew Brian. The Sox won, the L flag came out, and Brian couldn’t quite believe it (also Note Mike’s Florida Marlins hat).)

Mike Knezovich owns an “L” flag.

Earlier this month I came up with a plan. For Mike’s sake — and the sake of Chicago citizens — I’d see to it that Mike was away from Cub fans if the Cubs ended up playing at Wrigley in the World Series this year.

Cub fans are everywhere (they’re like cockroaches, Mike says). Where on earth could we go to watch those games where Cub fans would be in a minority? The home of the American League champions!

At the beginning of the playoffs, we knew we’d be traveling to Texas, Toronto, Baltimore, or Cleveland the last weekend of October. At risk of offending any blog followers who live in Texas, I rooted against the Rangers. Mike and I have always been curious about Toronto, and having never been there before, I started out pulling for them. We have good friends in Baltimore, Boston and Cleveland, though, and in the end, I am absolutely delighted to have Mike rent a car and take Whitney and me with him to Cleveland while the Indians play here at Wrigley.

Our friend Brad may drive with us, too — he’s originally from Ohio, loves staying in downtown Cleveland near museums and music halls, and with the
Indians out of town he should have no trouble finding a hotel room.

Mike, Whitney and I will stay with our friends Lauren and Bob there. Bob grew up a Brewers fan, Lauren followed the Mets, and one (of many things) that brought them together was the discovery that both buy scorecards and score every single baseball game they attend in person. Since moving to Cleveland a decade ago they’ve taken on the Indians  as their team. They have tickets to World Series games in Cleveland but will be home to watch it on TV with us during our visit.

We’ve offered our Chicago apartment out to family members (my family is full of Cub fans) to use while we’re away and are very pleased that Floey’s dad and her big brother Justin took us up on the offer. They’ll be staying here and taking public transportation to Wrigleyville, just an earshot away from Wrigley Field
while the games are being played there.

And, because Mike Knezovich will be hundreds of miles away, they should be able to enjoy their time.

I took a lot of cues from my late mother, Esther Knezovich, who was only too happy to provide them. For example, she’d lived in California in 1950 when Richard M. Nixon ran for the U.S. Senate against a woman named Helen Gahagan Douglas. Nixon smeared his opponent as a communist and won. My mom (whose maiden name was Latini, cue the Godfather music) held grudges. She also judged Nixon to be of generally low character. So growing up in our household, even as a boy, I was programmed to despise Nixon long before we learned anything about Cambodia or Watergate. I also learned my mom knew what she was talking about in some matters, and then some.

As heroes go, you can’t do better than Bill Veeck.

If my mom’s villains were mine, so were her heroes. One of them was Bill Veeck. She grew up in a small coal-mining town about an hour from Pittsburgh, and her Italian-born uncle and aunt had settled in not-so-far away Cleveland. That led to summer jobs waitressing at a restaurant that, if I remember correctly, was named Childs. My mom was a Pirates fan, but she adopted the Indians as her American League team. She lived with the aunt and uncle, and took in games at Cleveland’s old Municipal Stadium. One of those games was July 17, 1941, when she saw the Yankees’ Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak broken.

Bill Veeck eventually bought the Cleveland franchise in 1946. He hired Lou Boudreau, a star shortstop, to be a player-manager—a typically unorthodox Veeck move. Boudreau delivered a World Series championship in 1948, the last time Cleveland won the Series. (Boudreau was eventually inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and went on to become a broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs.)

That same championship year, Veeck’s Cleveland team broke the color barrier in the American League when he signed Larry Doby and then Satchel Paige. Larry Doby would eventually become the manager of the White Sox.

The exploding scoreboard was a big deal at Comiskey.

Veeck had cut his baseball teeth working for his father with the Chicago Cubs. William Wrigley, Jr., the chewing gum mogul who owned the Cubs, hired William Veeck, Sr., to serve as vice-president of the team. During the senior Veeck’s tenure, junior started as a popcorn vendor at Wrigley, and he is famously known for helping to plant the iconic outfield ivy.

After his time owning the American League Cleveland team, Veeck bought the National League St. Louis Browns. His time there is best known for a stunt: He signed Eddie Gaedel, a person with dwarfism in modern terms, to play for the Browns in hopes that Gaedel’s tiny strike zone would lead to walks.

Which brings us to the South Side of Chicago. Veeck owned the Sox twice. His first stint brought Sox fans a 1959 American League Pennant. Veeck built Comiskey’s exploding scoreboard, with the fireworks that are now standard after home runs at so many ballparks. The electronic pinwheels on the high-tech board at today’s Sox games are vestiges of the actual pinwheels back at old Comiskey. He constantly created promotions, like patrol boy night (that got me in free more than once) to Polish-American night, Italian-American night, … and so on.

His second stint as owner led to some infamy. He and his wife Mary Frances redesigned the Sox uniforms, and one iteration included short pants. One of his many promotions—Disco Demolition night—went too far and devolved into a small riot and a forfeited game.

Throughout his baseball life, Veeck constantly swam upstream against the conservatism of his fellow baseball owners. Way back when, for example, he introduced the radical “socialist” idea of the home teams sharing broadcast revenue with visitors. The owners balked, but that kind of revenue sharing is now part of the lucrative financial bulwark of Major League Baseball.

Even small moves were controversial: In 1960 the White Sox became the first team to wear uniforms with player names on the backs of their jerseys. Some howled. Mostly, it’s standard practice today.

A great off-season read.

I knew most of this by the time I hit my teens (the short pants and Disco Demolition came later) thanks to my mom. But my estimation of Veeck grew on its own as I learned more and more about him. Much of that was via his autobiography, co-authored by Ed Linn in an as told to style, called “Veeck as in Wreck.” It’s a treasure chest of information about the business of baseball, as well as a colorful chronicle of Veeck’s incredible life in baseball.

Veeck was crazy like a fox. He was—and probably still is—the only baseball owner who didn’t come into ownership because he was independently wealthy. His business was first and foremost, baseball. And for all the promotional gimmicks, he was a brilliant visionary when it came to the economics of the game.

And so, on the eve of game one of the 2016 World Series—whether you’re a Cub fan, Cleveland fan, White Sox fan, or simply a baseball fan—you owe it to yourself to give “Veeck as in Wreck” a read.

You’ll love your team, and the game, all the more.

Last week was “Disability Awareness Week” at Wilmot Elementary School, so yesterday Whitney and I took a commuter train to Deerfield, Illinois, to talk with third graders there about what it’s like to be blind and get around with a Seeing Eye dog.

Whit’s always up for a class visit.

The train ride to Deerfield was a long one. Whitney was so frisky when we arrived at Wilmot that she wouldn’t sit still in front of the kids. What to do?

I usually end talks with Whitney guiding me out of the classroom so the kids can see how she follows commands. Maybe this time I’d start my presentation showing the eight-and-nine-year-olds how Whitney works.

I stood up, lifted the harness, and commanded a stern “Outside!”

The kids were all sitting criss-cross-applesauce on the library rug, and Whitney threaded me safely past them to the hallway door. “Good girl, Whitney!”

The children were wowed.

Once I turned around and had Whitney lead me back to the front of the classroom, the valiant Seeing Eye dog was back to her stoic self. Guess she just needed to establish who was really the star of this show. Some of the questions the third-graders had afterwards:

• How do you eat if you can’t see?
• How do you drive?
• I know your dog knows left from right, but how do you know?
• Dogs, you know, kind of, like jump when they go up stairs, so how do you get up the stairs with your dog?
• Do you ever even get into a car?

When all my talks at Wilmot were over yesterday, I took Whitney’s harness off and let any of the interested kids come by and pet her. As Whitney flipped over and over again for belly rubs, one bashful eight-year-old approached with a question she’d been reluctant to ask in front of the entire class. “Can you see in your mind?”

If I could see to find her little hand, I would have patted it. Instead, I did my best to reassure her with words. “Oh, yes,” I smiled, picturing this wistful little waif cocking her head with wonder. “I do it all the time.”