A very popular New Year’s resolution is to lose weight. The day you hang that new calendar on the wall, you swear that you’ll stick to this diet or that exercise program; however I have come across a much simpler way to lose weight as explained by former Detroit Tigers’ hurler Boots Poffenberger  who hailed from right here in Williamsport.

Cletus Elwood Poffenberger, who was also nicknamed “Baron,” was a free-spirit; what polite people call eccentric. He reported to the Tigers’ spring training home of Lakeland, Florida in 1939, 10 days late and 25 pounds overweight. No matter how hard he worked, which apparently was anytime a Tiger official was looking, the weight would not come off. Boots, however, had a ready explanation. According to a newspaper blurb, “Boots Poffenberger says he’s overweight because the Tigers made him get up too early . . . Instead of letting him snooze, the Baron pointed out, they rolled him out at 8 a.m., and he had to eat breakfast, luncheon and dinner . . . By sleeping until 1 in the afternoon he would require only one meal.”

There you go, all you folks who have resolved to lose weight this year. Try the Boots Poffenberger “One Step” Weight Loss Program. It’s a “one step” program because you sleep to 1:00, then eat one meal. Simple.

My New Year’s resolution is to complete a biography of Boots before 2013 rolls around, I have been fortunate enough to have Boots’ family loan me all his scrapbooks, which amount to a large tub-full. I’ve spent a week reading about 100 pages–of the first one. I’ll keep everyone posted on my progress and I’ll keep passing along words of wisdom from one of baseball’s most colorful characters, Boots Poffenberger.