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NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS OF COOPERSTOWN
Observations from Outside the Lines
By Two Finger Carney (carneya6@borg.com)
#304 AUGUST 30, 2003
"WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN CONSENT"
Well, since last issue I have spent parts of two days with the "Black Sox Scandal Papers (American League)" at the National Baseball Library in Cooperstown. I have about four pages of notes, but cannot use them until I obtain ... you guessed it, the prior written approval of the Office of the Commissioner of Baseball ("MLB"). In order to see the stuff, I had to sign an agreement to that effect. I was also not able to make photocopies, which slowed me down, but I managed to read the whole collection.
These papers have been sitting there, less than an hour away from me, since 1995. I stumbled onto them while looking for something else on ABNER, the Cooperstown library's directory. You can find it at the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum web site ... make your way to the A. Bartlett Giamatti Research Center, and (I think) click on Archives. There you will see a five or six page Abstract.
The majority of the material is correspondence -- Ban Johnson was a prolific writer. He was a Cincinnati reporter when Charles Comiskey, the Reds' manager, guided Ban into a more active role in the national pastime, helping him to become the president of the struggling Western League. Johnson not only revived the league -- Commy took over one of its teams, and later the Chicago franchise -- but by 1900 the Western League became the American League. In another year, it was at least the equal of the National League.
But the collection also contains some fascinating documents and exhibits from the 1921 "Black Sox" trial, newspaper clippings (some I've not seen before), and some confidential memoranda. It has the feel of the tip of an iceberg, but it's all there is.
So, until I get MLB's OK, I will have to wait. Sorry.
NEXT TIME I should be able to report on my August 31 interview with Eliot Asinof. Unless I am asked to sign something that forces me to clear my notes with Eliot's lawyer. Just kidding, I hope!
IN THIS ISSUE, inexplicably, are a number of items related to Japanese baseball. OK, the is an explanation: I recently listened to You Gotta Have Wa! on book tape; and then the kids from Japan won their third Little League World Series in five summers.
There's not much on Williamsport, but I just remembered another reason I don't like the LL WS. It never struck me until my son was playing LL ball. Here in upstate NY, the fields are not very playable until April, if we are lucky, so the seasons start in the late part of that month. Then come June, they are all over. When I was ten or twelve, our summer was going full throttle in June, July and August. When I naively asked someone why we ended so soon, I was told, "Williamsport."
Williamsport is the tail-end of a long series of playoffs, and to get it all in, with every district on the globe participating, the tournament that ends in Williamsport has to start in late June (or early July). So not only does Little League teach kids that baseball is run by adults (what fun can that be?), but it's also The Spring Game -- except for the handful of kids who actually keep playing through August and end up in Williamsport.
Don't get me wrong, I had fun when my son was in Little League. So did he, because his coaches made it fun. But I wouldn't even try to compare it to the fun I had with my friends at our local sandlot. I never played Little League, but my best friend did, and I went to some games, not many. I recall waiting for him to come home after his games, so he could change out of that Harmony Dairy uniform, and into jeans. Let the real games begin!
The Milwaukee Braves had a rookie pitcher in 1953 named Joey Jay -- he was the first graduate of Little League to make it to the majors. He'd gotten a HUGE $20,000 bonus, and tossed a three-hit shutout in his first start, at age 18. That was before my time as a fan, but he was still pitching when I got hooked in 1957, and he became a familiar name. And sure enough, every time he pitched, he was recalled as the first fruits of Little League.
Maybe that's why he wrote an article, with Lawrence Lader, in 1965 for True magazine: "Don't Trap Your Son in Little League Madness." He calls LL a "Disneyland caricature of baseball" -- not a bad image, and that's before Williamsport was televised, I think. It's an article that stands up. "Our local league in 1948 concentrated on sportsmanship, character development, and above all, fun." Jay felt that LL had degenerated from its nobler beginnings. It's not all negative, Jay give seven positive suggestions to reform Little League. They remain On Deck.
Enough about Little League. The rest of this issue, to repeat, has an Oriental flavor. Except for the next chapter of Dear Patrick -- which apparently somebody is reading, because I have gotten comments on it here and there since I started running it, back in #294. In case anyone is curious, there are 17 chapters, and an epilogue.
YOU GOTTA HAVE WA!
That's the title of a book, that I recently enjoyed listening to, while driving around the Shadows of Cooperstown. I picked up the two-cassette, abridged item for a few bucks at the last SABR Regional auction -- we raise funds by donating books, there are no dues. I'd been interested in the book for a while, and while I do not remember the author's name, I recommend the book (or tape).
I had gotten interested in Japanese baseball some years ago, and done a little reading (The Chrysanthemum and the Bat is still slumbering in my deep on-deck circle of books). You Gotta Have Wa -- narrated by that Pat fellow, the Karate Kid's mentor -- is an excellent primer, providing a history, as well as profiles of players and managers, Japanese and American, and Japanese fans. I don't know how much has changed since the book was written (I know it's an oldie), but I suspect most of it holds up.
I knew strategy was different "over there" but that is really an oversimplification. And the book nicely describes, mainly by detailing the difficulties most Western players have adjusting, how the sport is really a place where cultures can clash. And while you are enjoying the baseball, you get lots of insights into the differences between Western & Japanese corporations, really between world-views. The book was much more than I expected.
Unfortunately, I cannot flip back through the book to jog my memory of its best parts. Many of the player names were familiar to me, starting with Bob Horner, but many were not. The stories of the Americans' dealing (successfully or not) with their managers and coaches, teammates, the Japanese media, make for a lively read -- or listen. And the fun I had with it -- coupled with Japan's recent win at Williamsport -- inspired the theme of this issue.
THREE FOR FIVE
That's how many Little League World Series have been won by Japan. I watched the first innings of the final game; when Tokyo scored first, I had the sense it was over, and it soon was, 10-1. I hadn't seen the kids from the Far East play before, but I had been noticing the scores of their games. This was a juggernaut of pre-teen talent. In their six wins this time around, they outscored their opponents 59-9 -- yikes! With the departure of Brian Giles, these kids could probably give my Pirates a run.
There were some graphics in the final games on how well some of Japan's older kids have fared over in the USA's bigger leagues. Hideo Nomo opened a window, Ichiro kicked down the door, and Matsui and several others have played well enough to stick. The story of their adjustment would be much, much different that the problems of their counterparts outlined in You Gotta Have Wa!
From the NOTES Archive: #162, June 7, 1998
THE HOUSE VERSE OF THE RISING SUN
One of my office companions is an old-fashioned (paper, vs CD) encyclopedia, and my World Book tells me that "the rhyme and rhythm found in Western poems do not exist in Japanese poetry because of the nature of the language." This explains the very slow sales of Romancing the Horsehide over there. The rhythm thing may also help explain Hidecki Irabu's season and the past success of Hideo Nomo. As for Irabu last year, well, he was just too Westernized.
WB goes on to tell me that Japanese poetry has two major verse forms, measured by syllables and lines. The haiku is the better known: three lines, 17 syllables, 5-7-5. The tanka is lesser known: five lines, 31 syllables, 5-7-5-7-7. Why they wish their poems to look like a rundown between the third baseman and the left fielder, is not stated.
In any case, I was recently invited by Mike Schacht to take a crack at a baseball haiku, for a special future issue of Fan Magazine. I took some liberties with the strict rules, omitting at times the obligatory reference to the seasons. Here is what I came up with:
Opening Day breeze
Chills no fan in the bleachers
Spring is here to stay
* * * * *
Songs of September
Rise in throats now hoarse from cheers
Green cathedral chants
* * * * *
October shadows
Creep past home plate, past the mound
Cover the summer game
* * * * *
Now Hans' Dutch eyes grin
Pitch hanging over the plate
Will soon find a gap
* * * * *
Ricochet foul ball
Scatters fans like bowling pins
Souvenir bruises
* * * * *
Upper deck ice hangs
Where rows of K's once told fans
Tale of summer heat
K K K K K
Last of the ninth
Bases loaded with trouble
Time for a hero
A mongoose off the home bench?
Or a cobra from the pen?
* * * * *
Casey at the bat
No doubt that he will come through
Mudville wet with tears
Baseball can be a year-round sport, with "the dark side of the calendar," the days between the World Series and "pitchers and catchers," ripe for Hot Stove reading and conversation. Some fans may prefer this "fourth season" to the fresh air of spring ball, the pennant chase of summer, or October's game. One haiku above reminds me of how the shadows at Yankee Stadium -- the Yankees always won the pennant, once upon a time -- played havoc with the images on our TV, as we rooted for the shade to cover the batter, then the mound, then the infield, so we could see our World Series heroes without the glare and contrast, Octobers' late afternoons.
[The following Baseball Haiku appeared in NOTES #211, April 9, 2000, in honor of the Mets-Cubs Opening Day game in Japan]
March madness: baseball
in the land of rising sun
seen by rising fans
Op'ning Day early
Five A.M. in E.S.T.
Test for the true fans
Hampton, ace is wild
Murphy's* wail heard o'er the sea
"Oh, those B.O.B.'s!"
[That's Bob Murphy, longtime voice of the Mets, who can moan "Oh, those bases on balls" better than anyone.]
Five A.M. first pitch
Five for Cubbies, three for Mets
Five days till O-Day
Crown prince, royal box,
Sumo wrestler gulps sushi --
Fans: it takes all kinds
Players wearing ads --
Wonder where it will all end?
"Now pitching, Mad. Ave."
Agbayani slam
Gives Mets game in eleventh
Sayonara, Cubs!
FROM THE NOTES ARCHIVE: from NOTES #43, November 20, 1993
WHERE HAVE YOU GONE, VICTOR STARFIN?
Who's that again? I never would have heard of him either, but for some correspondence last winter with Stephen I. Thompson of Norman, Oklahoma. The original topic was Native Americans Who Played MLB -- I was considering doing a paper on the topic for that Cooperstown Symposium. But Mr Thompson (a SABRite) turned out to be a wealth of information on Japanese baseball as well.
He sent me several long articles on the topic, and I set them aside, as if they were waste pitches on an intentional walk. However, I picked one up when the stove was at its hottest (we had a long winter in '92-'93) -- and got hooked. The Chrysanthemum and the Bat remains in my On Deck, and I still don't follow those races, but at least the history of baseball in Japan has become a subject I intend to read a lot more about.
Victor Starfin? He's the only foreign player to be honored so far in Japan's Hall of Fame. And he's not an American, he's Russian, born in 1916 while the Tsar was Czar. The peak of his 20-year career (1936-55) was 1939, when he pitched for the Yomiuri Giants, going 42-14 with a 1.67 ERA -- projected to a 162-game season, that would be 71-24! He was Japan's first pitcher to win 300 (303-125 lifetime, 2.09 ERA). Oh yes -- Vic was 6'4" and 230 lbs: Goliath with a slingshot arm!
[In issue #294, I began running DEAR PATRICK: HOT STOVE DELIVERIES FROM A FATHER TO A SON, a book I started writing in 1989 and continued for a few years, till I set it aside. Some of DEAR PATRICK has found its way into NOTES before, but never the whole thing, beginning to end -- until now. Here is Chapter 11.]
CHAPTER 11
LETTERS FROM HOME
February 14, 1990
Dear Patrick:
Happy Valentine's Day! Seems like each of these letters is a Valentine -- I hope they feel that way to you.
Letters from Dad -- what a chapter in my life that phrase recalls! These pages may grow into a book, with luck. But the letters I received from my father could have made for an encyclopedia! Here's how it happened.
Days before I graduated from North, I had made a decision that stunned my whole family. Instead of going on to the University of Pittsburgh, which Bill Lerach now attended -- he was my age, but a year ahead in school -- I decided to join a religious order, the one that taught at North, the Marianists. This was a bolt from the blue, totally unexpected. I had given no warning, just sprung the news on everybody.
To their credit, my parents let me go my own way. I was eighteen and they could have made me wait, but they didn't. A month later, and just a few days before Mick's wedding, I was gone.
I wonder if I'll have that kind of trust when you present me with some jolting news, ten or twelve years from now? I sure hope so. But let's wait and see.
At that time, religious organizations like the Marianists were not very difficult to enter. But they made you spend a year or so in what was called a Novitiate, and my year was spent in Marcy, New York, a peaceful spot outside Utica, known at the time mainly for its psychiatric center, and today for its prisons.
The Novitiate was neither a mental hospital (although you could make comparisons) nor a prison (you were free to leave, any time, and a good percentage did). It was its own unique world, with its own history and rules, and in that way, it resembled baseball!
There were anywhere from sixty to one hundred twenty novices at Marcy in my year, mostly eighteen-year-olds like me. We were grouped in classes, which came and went every six months. The mid-sixties were peak years for groups like the Marianists or the Peace Corps. Looking back, I think it was the idealism of President Kennedy that made so many young folks think about doing something bold with their futures.
Novitiates were secluded places, where the novices could focus on pretty much just one question: did they want to spend the rest of their life with this religious community? The days were structured with plenty of time for prayer, for thought, for study and for work.
And for play. No baseball, but plenty of softball, with five playing fields going, in season. Actually, "Field Five" was in process when I arrived, being carved out of the surrounding forest. One daring outfielder broke his leg in that trench-erous outfield, going back for a long fly. He left the Novitiate soon after, if not for greener, than for leveler pastures.
I turned out to be a Groat-like place-hitter. After years of swinging at Bill Lerach's sidearm fastballs, fired from close range in one-on-one games at the Tennis Court or in his driveway, I could poke those big, slow-pitch softballs just about anywhere I wanted.
We took turns managing the ever-changing teams of twelve or thirteen players. I recall once managing through a winning streak of about ten, which was followed by a terrible slide of more than ten games. When your team is mired in a slump, life doesn't go on hold, but it doesn't just go on quite normally, either. A fair share of my time in chapel wound up being devoted to figuring how to stop the skid, and praying for deliverance from the throes of the breakdown. Although the games took up just a few hours of each day, they had a way of grabbing my day-dreaming moments, as well as creeping into my slumber, sometimes as nightmares.
Of course, the pace of those softball games often let me catch up on any meditation lost. I think it was Wilfrid Sheed who once wrote that at almost any given moment, when observing a ball game from a passing car, for example, there is nothing going on. The pace is different for players, usually, but in the Novitiate games there was never any no-hitter-in-progress tension, crucial situations, or turning points. No key at-bats, no key pitches -- we played til the bells rang, whoever was ahead at that instant won. It was a lot like your AYSO soccer games -- everybody plays and has fun -- but it wasn't much like baseball. Although the Novitiate itself stood outside of real time, its games were not exempt -- just the reverse of the way it's supposed to be, for fans seeking diversion.
There was one similarity, however. Once inside the game, we were outside the routine. Nothing is farther from military-type regimentation than the unpredictability of play. I'm not a historian, but I understand that baseball was played at the prisoner-of-war camps during the Civil War. Is it too hard to imagine that battlefield enemies may have been playmates, even teammates? Or even perhaps -- if everyone agreed not to tell -- that at times, the color line was broken so enough able-bodied players were available? Worth -- meditating upon!
Since sports was looked down upon as a table-talk topic, we had to wait for the Thursday and Sunday hikes to discuss with teammates how to keep a winning momentum going, or how to break a losing streak. In between times, we struggled quietly alone with one of the sweet mysteries of life, for managers of all times.
Incidentally, one of the most-often-hiked-to spots was the nearby Oriskany Battlefield, site of a bloody and crucial Independence War battle on August 6, 1777, that featured a rain delay! As we became experts on the event, we imagined how the British and Indians and the area patriots might have dealt with umpires who declared the contest over for the day, due to the field conditions, rescheduling it for later in that summer, perhaps as part of a twi-night double-header! Irreverent stuff, that probably would rate the pillory two centuries ago.
The Novitiate was an island. Once there, the outside world was sealed off: no visitors, except for one day in the spring; only emergency phone calls; no newspapers. News of current events, like the Civil Rights movement and the start of the Vietnam War, were announced, and some clippings posted.
The novices could write home only monthly. But there was a loophole in the communications screen: there was no limit on the letters a novice might receive.
My first letter from home arrived in Marcy a few days after I did -- my father must have composed it in his mind as he was returning to Pittsburgh after dropping me off. This is when his talent for long and frequent "missives" first showed itself. Two or three times each week, these overstuffed envelopes appeared on my study hall desk, chock full of Dad's productions and newspaper clippings. It was a little embarrassing, receiving so much mail, while some others got little or none.
The Novitiate had lots of strange rules. Silence was observed more often than not ("Speak only when you will it, and will it only when it is necessary" -- room there for inter- pretation, but the end result was a lot of quiet time).
The novices' mail was screened by the person in charge, the Novice Master. My father drove him crazy with his sixty-pagers that the poor priest felt obliged to read, I guess. He asked me if I could tell my father to cut down some on the sports. I half-heartedly tried, but it was useless.
You see, what my father would do, was sit down at night and tune in the Pirate games on KDKA radio, no doubt with an Iron City beer at hand. His sharpened pencils would be lined up on the table like bats in front of a dugout (as they were, once upon a time, an extra hazard for fielders). Then he'd s select his weapon and start it in motion, weaving the play-by-play into the letter. His own thoughts or stories might be interrupted by bulletins of a "Cleem" (his shorthand for Clemente) triple, or a comment on the quality of the broadcasting. It might also include the broadcasting: Bob Prince calling for a "bloop and a blast" when a rally was needed, "Kiss it good-bye" (a Pirate home run) or "closer than fuzz on a tick's ear" (a "bang-bang" play that might have been called either way).
Blank pages taunted my father, like an empty canvas dares an artist who has oils at hand. Go ahead, fill me up! I suppose that at times, he found himself in a groove, able to knock off dozens of pages at a sitting, like a streaking Tony Gwynn or Kirby Puckett, without a struggle. At other times, no doubt, came a slump -- stare at the page, take some practice strokes, crumple those pages and toss 'em out. He was never afraid to use the erasers (of course, it was always fun to try to read what he tried to cover up.) He'd finally and always write himself out of the slump -- as writers do.
I know from his letters that I have inherited his listening habits. When things are going bad, snap the radio off -- instant pain relief, but also a change, to break the momentum of the enemy. But sometimes the team needs you to turn it around -- don't you dare turn it off! Things going your way? Volume up. If the game is theirs, turn it down to where the announcers are barely audible -- then listen to the crowd -- they'll let you know when it's safe to turn the sound up again. Sometimes you need to get up from whatever you're doing -- even if you're in bed -- and pace.
My Dad's letters provided a sports page for a hundred starving young men from all over the eastern United States, from New York to Florida -- Clevelanders starving for news of the Indians, Cincinnatians for Reds' scores and lots of proud New Yorkers, confident that the Yanks would win again and again. My study hall desk was the spot where pennant races and batting races could be followed -- I simply fed the grapevine of stat-poor souls.
By the end of my Novitiate year, things had loosened up some. We gained access to a TV and could kind of keep in touch by watching the Game Of The Week on Saturday afternoons. That took some pressure off me, and Dad's letters.
That rookie year in O.R. (organized religion) was concluded, for those who decided to join the Marianists -- as I did -- with a fitting ceremony, a kind of graduation program. My family was in full and happy attendance. The day after, I was permitted to "leave the property" with them, just for the day. Recommended trips included the National Shrine of the North American Martyrs at Auriesville, along the Mohawk River to the east; and the City of Museums, Cooperstown, less than an hour south.
For my family, there was no hesitation. We were good Catholics, sure, but we made a beeline for the Baseball Hall of Fame.
It was a treat for us all. I remember seeing the Colonial brick building for the first time, and entering it as solemnly as I would a cathedral. Inside, I was dazzled by keepsakes like Ty Cobb's sliding pads, well-worn from use (I could have used them at the Tennis Court, when we practiced hook-slides!) and all kinds of Babe Ruth memorabilia: photos and balls and bats and clothing and his locker, too? If Yankee Stadium was the House that the Bambino built, then this was the one he furnished!
I'd been a frequent visitor to Pittsburgh's main museum from grade-school days on. That was Carnegie -- you've been there a few times now -- out in Oakland, not far from Forbes Field. Older was better there, too. I had become familiar with its awesome dinosaur hall and its Egyptian loot.
At Cooperstown's Hall, as at Carnegie, what was extinct was retrieved into full view: the quaint and baggy wool uniforms were Brontosaurus bones; the box-scores, preserved footprints, and proof that giants indeed had once walked on this planet. And there was one of the places where they played their games, a replica of Brooklyn's Ebbets Field!
The displays of antique balls and tattered gloves reminded me of some of the relics that we had pressed into service as kids. And there was an "Iron Mike" pitching machine. I thrilled to see Harvey's game honored with a special exhibit. My first tour of the Hall most of all served to put some flesh and bones on the players I'd known only by their statistics, or from when I "managed" them on my APBA "Great Teams Of The Past."
Where was Ralph Kiner? we wondered. (He was voted in eleven years later.) Ah well, at least there was Honus and Paul Waner (Little Poison re-united with his brother the same year Ralph made it) and Pie Traynor to represent our city.
Finally, I remember my father that day, wandering around, not saying much, raising his glasses here and there to squint at names and dates on the bronze plaques and artifacts that no doubt took him back to his youth. A nostalgia binge for sure.
I'm sure that my father, growing up on Pittsburgh's lower North Side, never imagined that he'd ever get close to Cooperstown. He traveled only when he willed it and that was only when it was necessary, never for this kind of basking pleasure.
The central chamber where the players elected to the Hall are honored, had a church-like atmosphere, and visitors spoke in whispers. It was a place to linger, unhurried. We did. Auriesville couldn't have been better.
My college years were spent in Dayton, Ohio, mostly on the East Campus of the University of Dayton, a.k.a. Mount Saint John. If the Novitiate was an island, the Mount was a peninsula, connected to the outside world, but not by much.
My father's letters kept pouring i
n, and now I could reply more often, with a typewriter to help. Although I could read the newspapers daily and watch more TV, the play-by-plays kept coming, too.
I still didn't have access to a radio, and fellow Pittsburghers Tom Brenn and Tom Jesulaitis and I had to rely on a crystal set, of all things, when the 1966 pennant race went down to the final days with the Bucs still in the thick of it. A crystal set was a primitive radio that didn't need electricity, but good connections to a metal wire or surface was a must. We'd hook it onto the second floor lavatory doors for optimum reception (and for secrecy -- this was not cum permissu behavior!)
There were plenty of Pittsburghers on campus, and we all had our sources; the results of late games were exchanged before morning prayer, outside the chapel at 6 a.m., via grinning winks (meaning the Bucs won) or thumbs-down frowns (they lost).
When a forbidden radio was obtained, a lot of the tricks that I had learned at the Tennis Court for pulling in games served me well: using the precision turns of a safecracker on the tuning knob; holding the transistor or clock radio at every possible angle, to see where the strongest signal was coming from; screening out static with the bass/treble controls; turning the volume up as the signal weakened, and down when the station started coming in clearly. Ball crowd babble had to be sorted out from static with a trained ear, when announcers went mum.
Desperate listeners quickly learn to read announcers' tones, so the score can be guessed at before it is heard. Resignation means a probable defeat; satisfaction, a victory; but heightening concern, tension, panic means the game's up for grabs. Nothing beats being at the park, but many people prefer baseball on radio over television. For me, that would depend on the announcers.
In my letters, I could now describe the baseball games in which I played. Novice softball was dead. With around a hundred and fifty young men on the East Campus, it was not too hard to find a quorum for hard-ball on the spring and summer weekends.
In Dayton, I discovered that those duels with Bill Lerach had not only developed my batting eye, but also my pitching arm. I didn't have much stuff on the ball or speed (I was never a "thrower") but pinpoint control and my "nickel curve" (I don't mean a slider -- I mean my best curve wasn't worth much) took me a long way.
I also could toss up my limited repertoire of pitches from overhand, three-quarters, sidearm, and submarine-style. Hours of imitating Drysdale, Marichal, and the Pirate flingers paid off at last. I was skinny and agile in those days, and I wish I had photos or films to prove that!
One other thing I had, that no successful pitcher -- or person, I think -- can get along without: confidence. Fortes in Fide -- strong in faith -- had been my high school's motto, and in the Novitiate I'd adopted it as my own. Believing in yourself is so important. It can carry you through sometimes, when the muscles aren't enough. If you can look your opponent in the eye, even when he's bigger and stronger -- then you at least have a chance.
I was studying theology and philosophy and Latin and French (although all languages were Greek to me) in those Dayton years -- very abstract stuff -- and the baseball games were wonderful excursions into the world that was not abstract, but hard as the horsehide. No room for doubt or for solving logic problems, when you're at bat, or on the mound. But the well-exercised brain did feel like an asset at the time.
I remember a Game of the Week interview from somewhere around 1960, when someone Joe Garagiola asked Hank Aaron what he looked for when he went up to the plate. Aaron, dead pan, didn't hesitate: "The baseball." That's kind of how I muddled through as a pitcher. I threw the baseball. If it curved, I took credit for a curve.
I was looking for three outs and some good fielding behind me. No one cheers harder than the pitcher when the third baseman stops a smash with his chest, then throws the batter out. (One such play is frozen in my memory, and with every replay I say, "Thanks again, Wendell!" A pitcher also appreciates runs, and I'm forever grateful to Pete Reilly -- who also played a scrappy shortstop -- for a timely two-run homer that turned one game around for our side.)
I pitched a shutout or two, including a two-hitter on a steamy hot Saturday that will forever be "summer in Dayton" to me. I tasted, really for the first time, the sweet pain of a sore arm that's been spent in combat. Wait'll next weekend! Like all of the greatest games ever played, those apexes of my playing days can't be looked up anywhere. But everyone who counted to me then was there.
Had I chosen the wrong career? No -- it was just that the competition was not very keen. Against good ball players, like Don DiDonato, a fellow Pittsburgher who had played baseball for North, I was vulnerable.
I also got a chance to try catching. I had grown up being wary of putting on those "tools of ignorance" that are the catcher's uniform -- the mask, chest-protector and shin-guards. I wasn't anxious for gnarled fingers or for ducking wild swings of the bat. But once I squatted behind the plate, I loved catching, and that's when I really regretted passing up that Little League invitation.
Who can see a baseball game better than the catcher? No one! Everything is in front of him, eye-level, no posts or vendors in between him and the action. He calls the action!
You often ask me my favorite position. I have two, and they are sixty feet, six inches apart from each other: catcher and pitcher. If I had to choose one half of the battery over the other, it would be the pitcher. It's the only position where a score of 99% (one bad pitch out of a hundred thrown) is not an automatic "A" -- and it might even rate an "L" -- a loss! The pitcher carries the most responsibility for the team. I've had a few jobs without much personal responsibility, and didn't like them at all. Give me the ball, any day.
My father's letters started to include something new: his predictions on how the Pirates would do, for each coming season. He would predict series by series -- for example, 2-1 vs. the Cards, 3-1 vs. the Phils, 1-2 vs. the Dodgers. He'd do that for the whole season, concluding with a final prediction of where they'd finish and how far behind. It was always behind, for him.
He left a column blank, and asked me to fill it in with my own predictions. I always would. Year after year, he'd pick the Bucs to win eighty or eighty-five games, and finish third or fourth, occasionally second, never first. I always had them winning ninety or more and finishing on top.
In the late sixties, his predictions were usually closer than mine, but I got even later on. I don't know why he never picked the Pirates to win. He accused me regularly of making my predictions with my heart, and not my head. No one rooted harder than my father for the Pirates, so was he intentionally pessimistic in his predictions, just so he could say he separated his feelings from his thinking? Or was he afraid he'd jinx them?
I confess that I had no good reason for my annual optimism about the Pirates. But I had come to agree with the philosopher who said that our reason is often the slave of our passion, and I could let myself go with that, at least in baseball! In other words, we can almost always create or improvise an explanation for the way we feel about something. I can come up with dozens of reasons for picking Team A over Team B, but at the bottom of it all, is the reason that I like Team A.
The exercise of those predictions did make me sensitive to one other thing: when even the most wide-eyed optimist looks ahead, he must acknowledge that in the best scenario, there will still be plenty of losses. As in life, long winning or losing streaks are the exception.
There are no seasons of pure success and none of pure failure. No one bats 1.000, except in fiction. We can achieve much, but never all. "You win some and you lose some," is the cliche; I always liked the addition, "but you have to dress for them all."
Our predictions had nothing to do with the Pirates' performance. They were a game, just between us. Something to write back and forth about, like we were playing catch in the back yard, on Kennedy Avenue.
Oh, yes -- my father concluded each and every letter with one of the most common of words, one of the most misunderstood, and most understood: Love. "Love, Dad."
I did, too. Once, I spelled the word "luv" -- don't ask me why (it was the late sixties) -- and it drew from my father a long, spirited response. "Luv" to my father was not "love," but a hippie, sloppy, slippy (Pittsburghese for "slippery") version of love. To him, love meant commitment, special, and forever.
I've spelled it with four letters ever since.