Notes from the Shadows of Cooperstown
Observations From Outside the Lines |
Carney's newest book,
Burying the Black Sox: How
Baseball's Cover-up of the
1919 World Series Fix Almost Succeeded, will be available soon.
Pre-order your copy today.
Click to subscribe to 1919BlackSox Yahoo Discussion Group
NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS OF COOPERSTOWN
Observations from Outside the Lines
By Two Finger Carney (carneya6@borg.com)
#307 SEPTEMBER 19, 2003
PARALLEL UNIVERSES
This issue's title comes from the last item, another chapter from Dear Patrick. I'll have more to say about this book after its last chapter is posted, but for now, I just want to recall that it was the first thing I wrote when I started writing baseball back in 1989. The chapters are all letters to my son Patrick, and the dates are not really important; they come in handy when I refer to people in the news back then -- Pete Rose, George Steinbrenner, Jose Canseco -- but they are just a framework. As I recall, I did write much or most of each letter on the date that is attached to each chapter; but then I went back and edited and added and went through many revisions. The first few versions -- I kid you not -- were banged out on my first computer, a Coleco Adam, which had a pretty good word-processing program built in. Long time ago!
Last issue, I included the chapter Farewells from DP, and since then, there has been another farewell in my family. I've written here about my father-in-law Alf Washburn a few times before. But not lately, and not since he was diagnosed a few months ago with terminal lung cancer. The end came with merciful swiftness, he was active up until his last week, and he passed without pain, at home (Hospice was terrific), surrounded by his five kids and their spouses at the end.
I recall him telling me a baseball story -- unlike my own father, Alf did not follow the game much, so he didn't have many. But like any good upstate NY dad, he took the opportunity to take his sons to Yankee Stadium, at the end of the 1961 season. During the game, one of the hometowners hit a home run, and the crowd went wild. Alf asked around, and learned that it was not just any home run, it was Roger Maris' 61st.
For many years, I had the impression that this was the only major league game Alf ever attended, and I recall musing with others here in Notes about the possibilities we can imagine, if we saw just one game, and based our opinion of baseball on it. In Alf's case, you would guess that fans surely over-react to home runs that seem to the objective (uninformed) observer to be quite ordinary. Later, Alf said that he had attended other games, which took something out of the original story, but it was too late, my imagination was running along on its own. Never mind.
IN THIS ISSUE is a review of David Pietrusza's Rothstein, but not a fair one. I focused on the chapters of strong interest to me, the baseball-related ones. A fair review would include a longer look at the chapters I read swiftly.
Also in here is the last in my Horsehide Sci-Fi trilogy featuring the little blue aliens that keep baseball on the straight and narrow path. It doesn't really fit in -- the subject is one of my least favorite, the sport's economics -- but what do you expect of folks who just drop in unannounced from outer space? Over the years, I've written enough "sci-fi" and other-worldly baseball fiction to fill a book, and I've picked out my title, The Shortstop from the Black Lagoon, although to date I have never used that title for a story. I inserted this trilogy here in Notes partly for the many newcomers who have "signed on" since I started writing about the B-Sox, over a year ago now ... and partly to call everyone's attention to the lesser-known corner of the Notes Archive, where much (but not nearly all) of my sci-fi resides.
I GET ASKED THIS FROM TIME TO TIME: Is my book on the Cover-Up of the Fix of the 1919 World Series (and its Undoing) -- also known as Never on Friday -- any closer to getting into print? I hope so. I have chosen to find an agent, rather than a publisher, because I think the book deserves a publisher which is fussy, and only rarely looks at "unagented" material. I have a Plan B, too; if nothing is happening by the end of October, I will submit Never on Friday to SABR for the Jerry Malloy award, which could well result in its publication.
In the meantime, I continue to research in the nooks and crannies of 1919-21. There are still miles (of microfilm) to go before I "sleep" (or at least take a breather). On the other hand, I would feel comfortable turning in the manuscript today. I guess it's Catch-22: the longer my book is unpublished, the better it gets, as I continue to add to it and refine what I have. But what fun is having a terrific but unpublished book?
THANX AGAIN -- I cannot say it too often -- to those of you who have kept me going with your encouraging words, and to those of you who have gone out of your way to send me articles, or look up something, or to recommend new sources, or who asked great questions. I expect my book will need two pages for Acknowledgements, and I've very pleased about that.
ROTHSTEIN
The title of David Pietrusza's newest book, Rothstein: The Life, Times and Murder of the Criminal Genius Who Fixed the 1919 World Series (Carroll & Graf, 2003 -- try B & N, Wal*Mart or Amazon.com), leaves no doubt about whether David thinks Arnold had a major role in The Big Fix. This was no surprise to me, as I had exchanged some e-mail with David about the fixers and the evidence against Rothstein. The certainty suggested by the title is not reflected in every detail, however, Rothstein cleverly kept his distance and used middle-men. What nails A.R. in the end is a process of elimination -- no one else could have afforded to bankroll The Fix, at least no one in the network of fixers that we know about.
There are also those little affidavits found in Rothstein's stuff after he was knocked off, seventy-five years ago this November (how does one celebrate the occasion?), from lawyers Fallon & McGee, and Abe Attell and Sport Sullivan. I was rather disappointed that the contents of those documents did not appear in Pietrusza's book, but then again, how believable would the statements of Abe ("Cheaters Cheating Cheaters") Attell and the others be?
The portrait of Rothstein that Pietrusza paints is broader than those that I've found in earlier books, including Now I'll Tell, the 1934 bio (Vanguard Press) by his wife Carolyn; Donald Henderson Clarke's In the Reign of Rothstein (Vanguard Press, 1929); or Craig Thompson and Raymond Allen's Gang Rule in New York: The Story of a Lawless Era (Dial Press, 1940), Henry Chafetz' Play the Devil (Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1960), Rich Cohen's Tough Jews (Simon and Schuster, 1998), or Leo Katcher's The Big Bankroll (Harper and Bros., 1958), not to mention the books that skim over The Big Fix (Ginsburg's The Fix Is In, Dan Gutman's Baseball Babylon). I didn't find much new, but that's just because I've read so much on Rothstein's 1919-1920 activity in the past year. I recommend the book, and it will be a whole lot easier to find than those titles from 1929 and 1934.
Pietrusza picks up on something that the 1920 grand jury let drop, the testimony by Charles Weeghman that he heard about the fixed Series in August, from Chicago gambler Monte Tennes, when the two ran into each other at the Saratoga track. Monte Tennes, according to Alan Hynd in True Detective, said he found out by overhearing two men talking on a train, on their way to the Saratoga races. Pietrusza has Tennes hearing about the plot right from the horse's mouth -- from Rothstein -- but Tennes denied Weeghman's story, like any good friend of A.R. who enjoyed living, and I don't think Pietrusza makes the connection with Rothstein clear and convincing.
The account of the Big Fix, like that in Eight Men Out, is nicely drawn -- but too neatly, if you ask me. The sources we all have are not entirely credible (especially Attell), and lack the big picture (Maharg, Burns, and the ballplayers themselves). I like New Yorker cartoon punchlines, and one I used to use a lot was this: "You're forgetting one thing. Asia." Well, we have just recently gotten some details about the Des Moines connection to The Fix (from Ralph Christian, who presented on the topic at the last SABR national convention, in Denver; Pietrusza interviewed Christian in late July 2003, and imagine how fast he had to work to get this material into his book) ... and I have still seen no one follow up on the Pittsburgh syndicate fingered by Rube Benton, or the possible Boston connection (Sport Sullivan aside). Someday, a book will focus on The Fixers and flesh out the skeleton that is suggested when all the little stories are put together.
I think that's what Hugh Fullerton was saying when he laid out his plan for an investigation in his blockbuster December 15, 1919 article, where he urged baseball to interrogate various ballplayers, reporters and gamblers, including in the last category, "Eddie of Boston" and the St Louis reporter Ed Wray.
So when I read a statement such as "The scheme began in St Louis in early 1919, with ... Carl Zork and ... Henry 'Kid' Becker," I mentally insert a "may have" or "could have" after scheme. We just cannot be certain, and David knows that and says as much as he goes on. ("Kid" Becker was a new name to me, and here's why -- he was shot dead in April 1919.)
Pietrusza's focus is Rothstein, but he knows better than to make a few errors in his account of the baseball side of things. For example, he has Comiskey taking his worries after Game One directly to Ban Johnson, when it is pretty clear that he used NL president John Heydler as a go-between (and if you look into the matter, the exchange may have been a phone call, a hotel room call, or on a train). He has Swede Risberg (not Gandil) packing up his loot and heading off to California, never to return. He has Joe Jackson accepting $10,000, instead of $5.000, and he has Jackson confessing the day after Cicotte, instead of later that same day.
And, as I noted last issue, Pietrusza has hit man "Harry F." threaten Lefty Williams, and does not acknowledge Eight Men Out for that little (fictional) detail.
To sum up, readers of Rothstein will learn more about the fixers than in most standard baseball treatments, and probably a few new things about the cover-up, too. Pietrusza's book on Judge Landis is worth a look, too. Those who want to know more about the role of Nicky Arnstein (yes, Fanny Brice's beau) or The Great Mouthpiece, William Fallon, will not be disappointed. Fans of Buck Weaver will find more support than fans of Joe Jackson, I think, but the ballplayers are not center stage here. Rothstein was a true underworld kingpin, like Al Capone a little later, and as I've written elsewhere, the 1919 Fix was a footnote on his rap sheet. But one that just will not go away, not ever.
In NOTES #305 and 306, I included two of my "Horsehide Sci-Fi" stories that star the smurfy aliens who love baseball. This story completes the trilogy. There are more short pieces on the blue guys in the NOTES Archive, in the "Postcards" section. Winter Meeting first appeared in NOTES #118, November 18, 1995.
WINTER MEETING
In the wake of Art Modell's move out of Cleveland, I started half a dozen essays on the economics and politics of baseball and sport, and they all wound up in the trash. What survived is the short story that follows.
Winter Meeting is the third appearance of the blue aliens. They first showed up when they proposed The Right Dimensions for baseball. Then in October 1994, they returned in time to salvage that season and its Series -- alas, Repercussion was fiction.
This time, they were more long-winded and preachy, but we all get that way when we focus on the business of baseball. It is the least attractive aspect, no question of that. And it is frustrating to tackle the subject, even in fiction, where I can control the ending.
The problems of baseball -- and so many other institutions -- are easy to catalog. We know what's broke. But there seems to be no quick way of fixing what's broke, no easy answers. Sometimes it looks like, and feels like, it would be best to start all over, tear the whole thing down and build from scratch, instead of replacing and repairing parts.
I was out on that branch, when the aliens arrived. And for a moment, it looked like that's what they were going to do, impose their solutions. Deus ex machina.
About winter meetings, the Dickson dictionary notes that "the relative importance of these meetings has declined with the decline of rigid trading deadlines." So the "December get-togethers in a warm locale" are no longer tense days when fans hold their breath, hoping for a new third baseman. Rosters used to be as stable as parish rolls. Or grade school classes. It turns out that only the past is stable, and we aren't there anymore, we have indeed left Kansas.
The smurfy-blue, horsehide-loving aliens were back. This time, it was not on a polite advisory mission to propose the right dimensions, like the first time. But neither was it the sudden, hostile invasion, an unexpected repercussion of The Strike of '94. This time, it was a business call.
"We thank you for such prompt access to your world-wide cable TV hookup," their somewhat puffy-looking leader began. As if we had any choice, muttered the reporters crowded into the ballrooms of Pittsburgh's Hyatt Regency. (The aliens had been favorably impressed with the site when they infiltrated the last SABR Convention, as they had for 25 years, disguised as Chicago Bleacher Bums.) The reporters had assembled from around the world and looked like a mini-U.N. with laptops and cellulars.
"As you know, we have followed your great sport of baseball for a long time, longer than anyone in this room, or on the planet, for that matter. We have already revealed that we regard it as one of the best in all of space and time, even if some of its arenas have plastic under the spikes and shields between the fields and the sun.
"One thing that has baffled us for many of your seasons, is why your best players are seen in so few arenas -- or ballparks, if you wish. For so long, just eleven of your thousands of population centers were employed to let earth fans see Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, and most of those whom you have honored in that shrine in Cooperstown. Which is not exactly a model of accessibility for fans, by the way, but that's a different issue."
The alien paused now to unfurl a small map of the United States. On closer inspection, it turned out to be a weather map from an issue of USA Today, and an old one at that, because the dominant color was orange, and this was December.
"Think of it! Just eleven cities!" The alien's blue tentacle was now a pointer, tapping at the sites circled on the map, clustered in the northeast, where there seemed to be a chance of rain. "We came very close to intervening about this after the Black Sox thing, which really ticked us off, by the way, because we do have a mild gambling problem. Nothing too heavy, nothing we can't handle, thanks. OK, so we lost half our moons betting on the Sox, all right? It's over, OK? Besides, we didn't want to deal with Landis. You think Newt Gingrich is scary? You should have seen Kenesaw the Mountain Man!
"Anyway, when you finally figured out radio, we backed right off. Now earth fans all over could at least listen to your best players. And of course, we no longer needed to disguise ourselves and risk being discovered when we attended the games, we could listen in from a safe, invisible distance."
"And then you figured out TV, and earth fans could see your best players, see them in the World Series even, and let me tell you" -- the alien slud into a decent impression of Dizzy Dean -- "there wasn't much traffic in the Milky Way on your Saturday afternoons." All but the younger reporters chuckled in unison.
"Still, we were curious. Every spring, your best players got together in your south," the alien trolled the reddish area on the map with his natural pointer, "and they used to move north more gradually, playing in city after city all along the way. Sometimes they did this after the seasons, too. But for those months in your regular season, they settled into those same arenas in the eleven privileged cities. Even today, after all the expansion, fewer than three dozen cities are hosts. This has never made sense to us. At first, we guessed that the host cities were ruled by your land's princes, but no, there were just politicians, like everywhere else.
We then guessed it was based on size, but many large population centers never hosted the best players. We guessed that these cities were being punished for some past sins, which seemed likely in the case of Los Angeles, but not in other cases. Our best minds were stumped."
"Have you come here to ask for an explanation of all of the economic and political factors involved in retaining or moving a sports franchise?" George Will asked, hoping to have the stage to himself for a while.
"No. Frankly, as fans, we don't care about that. Do you want to know how few of us care to read the Wall Street Journal?
"We have observed the movement of teams since the beginning. Most of us here," the leader now used the rolled-up map as an extension of his pointer, and indicated seven other blue forms squatting behind the podium, "are well over 200 earth-years-old. And were following baseball even before the eleven-city monopoly. At first, we liked that peculiar arrangement, and the convenience of knowing where to hide the saucer, for example, if we wanted to see Matty up against Three Finger Brown in Chicago.
"And actually, some of your best players did play in other arenas, when the Negro Leagues were going strong. That situation proved to the skeptics of the galaxy, by the way, that the intelligence on your planet was vastly overrated in our early scouting reports. There were Jackie Robinsons galore for decades, as you all now know. Too bad about that. Of course, you still limit your game to just a fraction of your planet, without any good reasons. Again, a different issue. Live and learn.
"No, what we care about, Mr Will, is the Game, and its fans, because we are some of its fans. Owners come and go, and we like them best when they go -- unnoticed, like good umpires. Players come and go, they wear out and are replaced, and we often say that it is too bad that they don't have prime centuries, like us, instead of just five or ten prime years.
"Think of that," the alien turned wistful, its three eyes rolling up like three plums in a slot machine, "Ruth in the same outfield with DiMaggio and Mantle. Would you still trade for Maris?"
Peter Gammons raised his hand, looked around, then sheepishly lowered it, realizing too late that the question did not require an answer.
"We are fans." Suddenly the alien's eyes glowed like lemons. "And while we applaud every time you open up the Game to include more of your diverse biosphere, to demonstrate to yourselves that you can indeed assemble outside your churches and your political conventions and your special-interest groups without violence -- can pass hot dogs and beers to each other without hesitation -- we also feel the pain of the fans left out.
"We have been there, you see. We call them our Dark Ages now, when only a few of us could actually see a game as it was being played. Radio ball is great, although you still have too many commercials and too-bland announcers. And TV can be great, although what the hell was that Baseball Network? It's things like that, you know, that give fuel to the radicals among us who want us to just move in and control everything for you folks.
"You already know how many things can be improved. How Game of the Week can sooth like the sabbath: restore it. How your All Star and October games must start earlier, so all fans from sea to shining sea, to borrow a phrase, can be awake for the last outs. But you can share better, too. For example, let the Reds play each of their league rivals once each summer in Cleveland, and the Indians, each of theirs, in Cincinnati. But play some games in the Akrons, Daytons and Toledos of your land, too. And while the Yankees and Tribe go at it in Toledo, let the Mud Hens play their games that weekend in Jacobs Field. The fans in the larger cities should see the players who are working their way up. They won't be disappointed.
"Yours is among the last planets to realize that satellites and cable exist mainly to enable fans of every continent to watch your best players, and there is no good reason why every game cannot be made available, why only a few teams should have the so-called Superstations. Moving beyond this stage is vital, and will help every franchise. Do it." The reporters were now tapping away on their laptops like waiters taking orders, barely looking up at the alien leader, who now scrolled its map into a thin baton, and did a fair imitation of George C. Scott's Patton.
"Your endangered planet," the alien's voice soberly whispered, "is the shape of a baseball. Never forget that. If you can solve the problems of baseball, you can apply the solutions globally. Other planets have done it, have saved themselves by learning from their best games.
"You need to end the wars between 'Haves' and 'Have-nots.' The distances between bleachers and luxury boxes must shrink. You need to escape from the tribal mentality that divides you into races, sexes, religions and nations. You must learn how to pass hot dogs across your oceans.
"You must develop a conscience and wisdom that recognizes overpayment for work: players and owners, of course, but also doctors and lawyers, executives and janitors, rock stars and TV anchormen." At this, there was a collective blush in the group that came across remarkably well over color TV, and made all of the highlight clips.
"You need to extend your love of grass in your infields and outfields, to your forests. And quickly. Your love of the skies over your diamonds must grow to include the skies over your cities and oceans. Otherwise, you are doomed to be domed. You have healthy instincts for wood and leather, let them take you back to Nature.
"You must take your sportsmanship from the games into your workplaces. Transport the sense of wonder into your schools. Respect the laws of your lands, as you do the rules of the game, your authorities as the umpires' -- and your neighbors as your fellow fans."
"Perhaps you understand better now why the Strike angered us so, and why we forced its end. You were on the right path, the clues were being gathered. The game that had so vigorously opposed gambling for so long, suddenly was gambling away the future of the planet. We had to step in. We are not gods, but neighbors, friends. And friends don't let friends -- make seriously wrong turns."
"It's only a game, you know." The alien winked its right eye, then its left, and then grinned. Soon the cameras were off, the reporters scattered, the saucer was aloft.
"Say it ain't so!" was the reaction attributed to the Steinbrenners of the earth. But they were a distinct minority.
And that was very good for the planet.
[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 14.]
CHAPTER 14
PARALLEL UNIVERSES
March 18, 1990
Dear Patrick:
Today, the news we've waited for, all winter -- there will be a spring -- the "lockout" or "strike" or whatever it was, is over. The season will start a week late -- ready or not!
The passing of one season into another, whether the seasons of the year, or baseball's, reminds us that we are swimming in time. Time's powerful current pulls us forward, no matter how hard we may struggle. The only way back is to remember.
So it is here, when I remember baseball seasons past, that I inevitably recall where I was, and with whom. Baseball stories seem to be for telling and retelling, and for trading, like baseball cards. Someday, you'll have a good collection, I hope, of your own.
In the summer of 1974, I moved on from high school teaching and from Cleveland, winding up in Marcy again, to work in adult education at the Marianists' conference center there, Bergamo East. It was a bit nostalgic, in the old novitiate buildings, and upstate New York agreed with me. And I have lived in Upstate ever since.
To remember the community I was leaving behind in Ohio, after six and a half years, I bought a baseball and asked everyone to autograph it, including the cook and her daughters. They did, and a retired math teacher who was the community handyman shellacked it for me in his workshop. It now sits in my workshop, an odd paperweight.
I guess I've been a member of dozens of "teams" in my life so far -- classmates from K through college, co-workers, even the classes that I taught were, in a way, teams. (The first faculty that I joined, the Lion-Tamers of CL 1967/68, would be my personal history's "Gas House Gang.") It is a good thing, then, that I didn't start early to collect autographed balls from all of the teams in my life -- or make it a habit -- it would have made for a real storage problem!
On the other hand, I wish I had that problem. It would be worth it, to look back and have all those names jogging stories in my head. It would have been fun, too, collecting the autographs -- the one time I did it, no one refused, they had the chance to do something that is usually reserved for celebrities. It's not easy writing on a baseball -- you know what your signature is supposed to look like, and you have to struggle a bit to make it come out that way, all the time squeezing it in among others, and avoiding the seams, without anything to support your hand while you're pulling this off. If I did it again, I'd try to take their picture while they were signing!
In the Marianists, by the way, we were assigned to communities, although we were consulted and could express preferences. I once half-seriously suggested that baseball's franchise model be tried, which would enable communities to draft novices and negotiate trades with each other. I also observed that this would work only until someone was traded out of his school-based community for a box of erasers and a pencil to be named later! Or was sent back to the novitiate for seasoning!
When I first arrived in Marcy, I searched for two things that I had taken there as a novice, ten years earlier. My baseball glove -- it had been pooled with dozens of others, and was apparently long gone -- and my old APBA baseball game. I never had the time to start a league in the novitiate, and I left it behind when I moved on to college in Dayton. It was nowhere to be found in the gameroom. I wonder if anyone else ever even played it? That APBA game, with its sets of 1960 and 1961 cards, is worth a lot today, by the way, a collector's item.
Cooperstown was always a handy distance away now. I visited the day after I came back to Marcy, with the friend from Cleveland who had driven me to my new home. The Hall had changed little, and I observed to Dave that the village was not so much a tourist spot, as a shrine that drew pilgrims. Like us.
In my journal, I jotted down of the Hall's inhabitants: "These guys knew what they wanted to do." Which was true, while they were playing baseball. The second livelihood was the problem, and that's where I was at the time: in the on-deck circle for my second career.
Upstate, New York: Yankee country, with Mets and Red Sox fans also in abundance. I only feel homesick for Pittsburgh in baseball season.
In that same summer of '74 I attended my Ten Years high school reunion. There I ran into a classmate from North, John Leise, who was now living just an hour away from me in Syracuse. Two Pirate fans, exiled in the land of Mets Magic and -- Holy Cow! -- Phil Rizzuto.
We got together a few times, once in Syracuse for a Triple A game, the local Chiefs against the Pirate farm club, the Charleston Charlies. The Charlies were loaded with talent that year and most of the players we saw wound up in the majors within a year or two. MacArthur Stadium was a tiny chunk of Forbes Field, but it had more character than Three Rivers and its plastic grass. We'll check it out this summer.
For "diaspora" fans -- scattered far away from their native diamonds -- supporting the farm teams is a bit like visiting the old hometown, when it cannot be visited. It's not front-line in-the-trenches rooting, but more like supplying the lines, building up the forces and ammo for future battles, where the games may matter more. It's root, root, root for the franchise, the extended family, the complete team.
In 1975, the Pirates won the NL East again. And once more, Cincinnati stood in the way of the Series. John Leise and I got together for the third playoff game: a support group. (A Pittsburgh proverb: Whenever two or more are gathered to root, there it is like Forbes Field.) The Reds had taken the first two and the games were not close. But a win in Game Three would recapture the momentum. When I arrived at John's apartment, the TV was warmed up, and we pretended the cider was Iron City beer.
Also warmed up was the Buc pitcher, a rookie, John Candelaria -- someone you've known as a Yankee! He struck out fourteen -- I think that's still a playoff record ("LCS" will never catch on) -- and gave up just three hits. Unfortunately for Pittsburgh, two were home runs, and the Reds led 3-2 going into the last of the ninth. The Bucs rallied to tie, but left the bases loaded. Given the reprieve, the Reds went on to win with two runs in the tenth.
They scored off Ramon Hernandez, the pitcher I was sure would be invincible against the Reds three years earlier. OK, Bill Virdon, maybe I was wrong.
The big news of the off-season for Pirate fans was not any trade or injury. It was the firing of broadcaster Bob Prince, "the Voice of the Pirates" for as long as I could remember. My sister Sue sent me the clippings -- a "chore" she inherited from our father. He had been an "institution" not just for Pittsburgh, but for everyone who could tune in KDKA.
It was the end of an era, as they say. Or almost the end. Bob Prince was invited to return to call a game in May of 1985. Sue was there, and sent me the clippings again, but her eye-witness version was more vivid and memorable. Prince took over at the mike in the fourth inning, after a decade's silence, with the crowd greeting him with a standing-O and chanting, "Gun-ner! Gun-ner!" Was that the climax?
No way. The Pirates promptly scored nine runs off the Dodgers, all with two out. I can only imagine the drama, with all eyes at Three Rivers darting back and forth between The Gunner in the booth, and the uncanny, incredible play on the field. (Teams can go years without a nine-run inning. Then -- in Prince's inning! And the Pirates finished last in '85!)
To top it off, Prince asked firstbaseman Jason Thompson for a home run -- and got it. You can look it up.
This whole event is surely a lesser-known the famous "called-shot" home run of Babe Ruth, but why should it be? After all, there is much doubt about what Ruth was doing and meaning with his fingers. There was no doubt about "Prince's Inning."
Before that season was over, Bob Prince died. The team he so obviously loved for so many seasons had said their goodbye. Bob Prince was voted into the broadcasters' wing of the Hall of Fame the next year.
The spring of the Bicentennial year of 1976 (a red, white and blue chapter in everyone's memory) was a time of major change for me. In baseball terms, after eleven-plus seasons with the Marianists, I became a "free agent," so to speak, to go on my own and seek a new direction for my future. I signed on with the Red Cross Blood Services, as a professional vampire -- recruiting blood donors, that is. I remained with that franchise for a decade. No, I received no huge bonus for signing. I was just glad to be making enough to meet car and rent payments!
I also began dating your mother. I was keeping a journal at the time, and was in the habit of naming Rookies of the Year, for new friends I made. Your Mom won that award, the year we met. I clearly recall watching the Pirates on her cable TV (my basement apartment had none), while she served up bowls of popcorn. Her recollections of this are fuzzy. Anyway, we were engaged at Thanksgiving -- declared each others' MVPs for life -- and married the following Memorial Day weekend, in her hometown (Gloversville -- not a major league city, although nearby Troy once had a National League franchise.)
I gave your Mom the engagement and wedding rings that my mother had been given by my father. (It was her idea; she had remarried a few years earlier; it was a super gesture.)
Did baseball prepare me in any way for marriage? A good hot stove question! A marriage counselor I knew, some years before my own wedding, said that husbands and wives were best compared to sparring partners in boxing. That is, they agree in advance that although they may fight, they will never hurt each other, and will be friends after every battle. He never said much about baseball.
But maybe there are comparisons to be made between the institutions. Both require a balance and blend of individuality and community, or teamwork, to succeed. In both there is a see-saw rhythm, a give and take, a back-and-forth between offense and defense (to use the baseball terms) that makes for long-running interest. In both, timing is everything -- there's one thing I'm sure of! The pitch or the statement, a fraction off or delivered too soon or too late or out of sequence -- can spell trouble. The hit, the touch, at the magic moments -- can lead to a rally, to a win for "the team."
Baseball and marriage thrive on tradition, I think -- for the latter, two are fused together into a new one -- you were born into a mixture of Carney and Washburn, for better or for worse. I think they thrive on the future, too. Teams that are not contending are rebuilding, if they are serious, and they never settle for mediocrity. It may take a few years to get there, some trading, or some help from the farms (the extended family), but excellence is available for those who work toward it. At eight, you may be bored by this tangent. But read it over again in ten or twenty years, and see if it makes sense then.
Your Mom and I lived our first year together in a tiny apartment, within walking distance of Murnane Field, where the Utica Blue Sox still play their home games. That summer of 1977, they were a Toronto farm club. We made that walk a few times, to watch Jesse Barfield hit home runs. Another fellow whom you know as a Yank!
Barfield was playing in front of us again, just a few years ago, when we were off vacationing (without you and your sister) in Toronto -- he was a Blue Jay then. That was a terrible game: it was sweltering hot, and we were nine miles from the field, out in right. There I had my first taste of "the wave" at a ball park, and I decided at once that it's out of place at a baseball game. (I also noticed that it was usually started by fans who were sitting in the shade!)
An early-inning injury to a pitcher caused a delay that lasted forever -- the reliever in that situation can take as long as he wants to warm up. I enjoyed Toronto enormously, but I'm glad the Jays moved out of that stadium! I confess: we left well before the last out.
Utica has been a farm club for many different organizations over the years. Native Uticans seem to boast most about a club in the late forties that later formed the nucleus of the 1950 Philadelphia Phillies' "Whiz Kids."
Richie Ashburn, Stan Lopata, and Granny Hamner were all on the Utica Blue Sox in the Eastern League. I saw the trio play against the Pirates at Forbes, when the Kids had grown up and lost most of their Whiz. Except Ashburn -- his eye was still razor-sharp, and he could torture Pirate pitchers by fouling off a dozen or more pitches, until he got one he liked, or walked.
It is hard for me to root for a team that is practically brand new every season. It takes a while to get to know a team and much of baseball is history. Not much history is made in any single season. So I go to USox games and find myself pulling for everyone -- the odds are against them all, of ever making it to having their own baseball card. But a few may go on to Cooperstown, not for a regular season game, but for an induction ceremony -- theirs -- some day.
Besides Jesse Barfield, I'll also never forget from the first summer of going to games as a married couple, an incident from a Little League game. We went to see the son of a friend play -- I don't remember where or what that kid did that evening. But a teammate of his clouted one over the fence and when he arrived at home plate, a gray-haired old fellow (we guessed it was his grandfather) rushed out and forced a dollar bill (or a five spot or maybe even a sawbuck) into his fists!
I know that sounds great to you but we were appalled. Surely getting cheered by the crowd and pounded by his teammates was all that was called for. There's more of a moral in that true story, and let's talk about it more.
In my ten years with the Red Cross, I found a life that imitated baseball in many ways. Each blood donor drive was like a game, and could be neatly summarized in a box score (Appointments Made/Kept; Walk-Ins; First-Timers; Percentage of Goal; and so on.) And each year was a new season, with a new cycle of "bloodmobile visits" to schedule, always with a few rookie sponsors joining the roster of regulars. I quickly noticed how some facets of performance could be measured, and therefore planning could be based on a track record. I "could look it up" (as Casey Stengel was fond of saying) and ask each school or company or village to shoot for new personal bests.
In donor recruitment, I'd stumbled onto a field where the staff and volunteers had done a marvelous job, over several decades of collecting stats, but hardly anyone knew what to do with them to improve the operation. I gradually formed my own opinion about which were worth keeping, and which were useless, and got into some good debates over that -- if you're looking for a baseball parallel, it was sorting out vital stats like Runs Batted In, from the trivial, like the short-lived Game Winning RBI. While I was wrestling with such issues at work, a baseball announcer -- I want to credit Vin Scully -- tossed out this gem, in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable TV game, and it struck me as pure gold: Some people use statistics like a drunk uses a lamppost -- for support (of their theories), instead of for illumination.
For national Red Cross conference, I wrote and presented a paper in which I described "the .300 Donor Recruiter" -- noting how in baseball it took a while before any standard was set for batting. I was in a new profession, which was a mix of education, sales, forecasting, managing and cheerleading. I loved it, but found that some bosses, like George Steinbrenners, meddled to the point where the game was not as much fun.
A Sporting News article by Leonard Koppett on "positive neggies" hit home. It went something like this. Who's made the most outs? (I think it was Ty Cobb at the time, and Rose was ready to pass him.) Who's lost the most games? (Cy Young.) Who's struck out the most? (The leaders in K's are all in the Hall of Fame or headed that way.) Koppett gave a bunch of other similar examples. His point was that you must be very good to get the opportunity to make those outs, lose those games, whiff that often. There's no shame in holding those "negative" records -- they really point to a great ability.
Well, that's how I felt sometimes about recruiting donors. I saw the positives in every negative -- there was usually some redeeming feature about every blood drive, even if it missed its mark by a mile. I was coordinating dozens of teams of volunteers, gambling here and there with new groups because I believed they all deserved the chance. So I didn't have much patience when the Steinbrenners demanded more than was reasonable to expect, especially when the teams did their darndest. Without pay! Since the volunteers couldn't be fired, the staff was pressured to produce; this made about as much sense to me as holding a shortstop accountable for every game, including the ones in which he rides the bench.
And if baseball does teach lessons for life, surely one of the obvious ones is that there are important, crucial aspects of any undertaking that are impossible to quantify. Like defense. There are moral victories, that seem like losses at the time.
"Give credit where credit is due" was a saying I grew up with -- and it's one that I've found is hard for some people to put into practice. If it is ignored, successful teams can disintegrate suddenly -- in baseball or in business. Some bosses want to take credit for success, but distance themselves from anything that looks like failure -- as if the two didn't often go together! I like the boss who goes out of their way to find out what went right, and rewards the deserving.
In my last years with the Red Cross, I had become the trainer for the donor recruitment staff for the central New York Region, and was increasingly disturbed by the needless turnover. For a private farewell party for one recruiter, I composed a little satire, a version of Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?" It brought down the house, as they say -- everyone was in tears when it was over. It was all "inside humor" -- to those outside (in this case, outside the donor recruitment department), it would likely not be understood at all. I think inside humor is the funniest kind there is.
By the way, although you can't look this up in any donor recruitment encyclopedia, my teams in the Utica area and in the Region set many records that I'm pretty sure will never be broken, at least not soon. We had peak seasons in the early '80s -- in the days before AIDS. The advent of AIDS divides donor-recruitment eras like the dead/lively ball ages of baseball -- there's really no comparing, only speculating (how many homers Cobb or Wagner might have hit, or how few Aaron or Mays.) There are other factors, too -- the economy and the population decline, for two. It doesn't matter. Records are records.
"How Life Imitates the World Series" wrote Boswell. Well, I can see easy enough how the sport mirrors life. And I guess when we look at baseball for lessons or meanings or just for fun -- we are really looking in a mirror. What we do with what we see is up to us.