Notes from the Shadows of Cooperstown
Observations From Outside the Lines |
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NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS OF COOPERSTOWN
Observations from Outside the Lines
By Two Finger Carney (carneya6@borg.com)
#342 NOVEMBER 21, 2004
THANX
Thanksgiving is one of my favorite times of the year. It's always been about family, even before I got engaged on Thanksgiving 1976, and before our kids were both born near that holiday. I've written here a few times about how great it would be, if only we could watch baseball instead of football, but that would be too perfect.
This time around, I find myself strapped for time even more than usual. With a couple of publishers looking at my book and a contract almost visibly kneeling on deck, I'm working hard on a final draft -- adding footnotes. (Everything was documented fine all the time, of course. But much of the material -- interesting as a vignette here in Notes -- didn't help the flow of the story. Doing this final editing is not especially hard work, but it is time-consuming.
So much so that I've had little time for Notes. I forced myself to jot down some observations on the World Series past, and the follow immediately. But I need a break from Notes, and so I'm taking one.
However, what I will do instead (of writing a lot of new stuff), is edit some of the earliest issues. This thing started in March 1993, and didn't break onto the internet until March 1999, with issue #184. I've posted a few early issues in the Notes Archive, but there remains a vast quantity of Notes that have never seen cyberspace.
Depending partly on reader response, I could fill the winter with such stuff.
I do encourage those of you who are interested in my takes on all things related to the 1919 World Series, to join the Yahoo group, where I do try to chime in on topics that come up.
One of the pages in my book that I'm proudest of is the Acknowledgements. I've saluted contributors and fellow researchers here as often as possible, but we can't say Thank You enough. I will, in the spirit of the holiday, thank here again Sean Lahman for letting me post Notes at his Baseball Archive web site ... and Rod Nelson for getting the Yahoo group going. In a future issue -- soon, I hope -- I will thank some publisher for bringing my book into reality. It's been worth the wait, because I never stopped working on it and adding to it. If it was printed a year ago, it would not have been -- as good as it is today.
Finally, thanx to those readers of Notes, old and new, who have helped me keep it alive. Happy Thanxgiving, all.
A LOOK BACK AT THE SERIES
Looking back, it is easy to see that once the Red Sox swept past the Yankees, after being down by three games, there was no stopping them. But I was surprised and even a little disappointed that the Cardinals didn't make the World Series go six or seven games this time around.
I was less surprised that I wound up rooting for the Red Sox. But I still remember my first years as a Pirate fans, in the late fifties, when the Pirates had gone three decades without a World Series appearance, and a few more since they had been World Champs. And the Cards had won plenty since 1918.
I watched as much of the games as I could, then set up the VCR, an annoying October ritual. I was not so hooked that I had to see the endings as they happened. Of course, if the Pirates were playing, watching the ends on tape would be out of the question. If I'm not retired by the next time Pittsburgh makes the Series, I'll be taking some morning vacation time.
Fans I was in touch with seemed generally pleased with the Sox win. The victory over the Yankees was sweeter, somehow. But there's nothing quite like going all the way, a phrase that became a Pirate fight song in 1960.
I would have had a serious conflict if Houston had gotten past St Louis, for their first-ever Series. But I was spared that, and then the Red Sox pitching just took over.
Somehow, the Series got tangled up with the coming Election. (A team from George Bush's Texas taking on the city of John Kerry would have been awful.) And after the Election, I was struck by how many people connected the events. Yankee fans who voted for Kerry were forced to compare disappointments, and one remarked that the defeat of the pinstripers somehow prepared him. Yankee fans who liked Bush received some consolation. Red Sox fans -- and by the end, that was a clear majority of us, no? -- were still high, making the election easier to accept. I suppose there were fans who supported both the Sox and Bush, but I didn't run into any of them. They surely are still celebrating.
* * * * *
Below is NOTES #1, in its entirety. The masthead with the title "Notes from the Shadows of Cooperstown" was a simple WordPerfect text box. I still compose in Wordperfect and prefer it to Word. The early issues were not numbered and titles for each issue came along much later. I wish I could reproduce here all the cartoons and other stuff I cut and pasted -- literally -- into those first issues. I think nine people received Notes #1, and I have a file copy. Some of those first readers were folks I was corresponding with frequently at the time, and NOTES was (as I say below) a way to add to the letters I was sending.
Almost at once, NOTES also became a way for me to submit material to publications, including Baseball Weekly, FAN, and a variety of "Fanzines" devoted, in most cases, to teams. While it is true that many of the poems, articles, short stories and humor that appeared in NOTES was published in other places later, that idea of mass-submission never really succeeded. Fortunately, I never had to rely on NOTES for my income. It became a hobby, a habit, and an addiction. Little did I know that when I published the four pages below, I wouldn't be able to stop till 99 more issues followed. All I can say about the first paragraphs is: I was wrong.
MARCH 12, 1993
WHAT'S THIS?
It's not a newsletter, not a magazine. It's an experiment. About twenty years ago, I noticed that my friends really didn't correspond with me -- rather, they subscribed. Because I'm a chronic letter-writer. Someone sending me a postcard might get five or ten pages back in reply. I'm sorry, but I just enjoy writing, and go off on tangents without warning, and if I'm not careful I'll do it now.
This is not a substitute for a letter, but a supplement. I may someday decide to publish a newsletter, but this ain't it. Call it BP, call it action in the bullpen.
REVIEWS
I've read The Chadwick Report (7-1), Jack Jadick's gem (say that fast three times), twice now. Doesn't everyone agree there is a great paperback waiting to be edited, The Best of TCR? I see Jack has discovered the wonderful world of italics, as I did just last year. I wonder if all baseball writers, in & out of the BBWAA, could be found guilty of collusion if we all agreed to write no more about club owners? Draw the line at GMs!
Tribe Tract & Testimonial #6 came the same day as my TCR. Must have been a coupon special at the post office last week. Now I have to dig up Ginsberg's Howl, to decode John's opening parody. Some of you know that John Roca and I share that awful habit of answering our mail same day. At right is our All Star Team of Players Who Never Played in a World Series. Suggestions for improvements welcome, especially at catcher. (Butch Henline? Larry Parrish?) I'm not an Indians' fan, but TTT has put me in their corner. A turnpike Series in '93? I think the Pittsburgh last played Cleveland in a baseball game that mattered back in 1899. (I'm still not for inter-league play -- see OPINION later on.)
FAN #11 was fun to proofread for Mike Schacht, and now I can sit down with the proofs & the final product & compare. I think FAN is ideal for faculty lounges and doctor's waiting rooms and barber shops and the list goes on. FAN is one of just a few things I read cover-to-cover (Oldtyme Baseball News, inexplicably, is another.) My first baseball short story (not counting my sophomore year in HS), Snoozer, appears in the current issue. Over the past year, I've worked with Mike and his editors abridging; and with someone else lengthening it, building it into a possible screenplay. Miles to go.
All for now. This space is where I'll also comment on books, articles, guides -- anything I've read recently!
LITTLE LEAGUE
Our local field is knee-deep in the white stuff, with a blizzard on its way -- they are talking feet instead of inches! So how can this season open on time? My son Patrick (11.4 yrs) will be aiming at Comeback of the Year after a rough LL debut. I don't know yet what team he'll be on or if I'll be an assistant coach. I helped coach Pat's minor league team two springs ago, and had a ball. I can walk to Wankel Park where, on adjacent diamonds, I can sample a wonderful smorgasbord almost any evening: T-ball, minors, LL, Babe Ruth, girl's softball, women's softball, men's softball. It's all happening at the Wankel.
OPINION* (*From a recent Letter to the Utica Sports Page)
On realignment, I haven't always been pro, but I've softened -- I want to see the season preserved (154-162 games), and having one wild card team intrigues me (with the three division winners). In Pittsburgh last Saturday at a SABR meeting, the strongest objection to the plan I heard was horror at the idea of a sub-.500 team getting into the playoffs -- that could happen, if one division was especially weak.
But that almost happened anyway (the '73 Mets, 3 games over), and I doubt it would happen regularly. I've come to enjoy the Playoffs more than the Series over recent years (and not just over the last 3 seasons, when my Pirates were in the NLCS & lost -- it started long before that.) Another tier, I think I could live with. Yes, it makes it harder for one team to make it to the Series, but so what? Now four cities per league can go crazy. And I will still enjoy more than any Playoffs, the six-month emotional roller-coaster ride of the pennant race -- again, as a Pirate fan, I can honestly say that losing in the NLCS did nothing to diminish the half-year of excitement that getting there provided.
And I don't see realignment a threat to change that.
Inter-league play is another thing. I tried to articulate elsewhere, my biggest concern: TOO MUCH for the fan to follow, in the way this fan is used to following a team in a race.
It touches on another nerve of mine, the rotisserie league. I'm not in one -- I've had the opportunity, but never inhaled. I don't want my rooting -- which is very special to me -- to be warped, and I feel it would definitely become warped, from all I know from rotissarian friends. I don't want to feel good about the guy who got three hits against my team, or to view individual achievements as more meaningful than team results -- I just don't. I sense, from the mushrooming number of ads in Baseball Weekly and the flood of rotisserie guides in bookstores, that I am clearly out of touch with a rising trend. So be it. It's still root for the Home Team for me, not the Seattle outfielder I got stuck with in some draft. I prefer to focus my attention.
That said, I confess that what attracts me about the rotisserie league, is precisely that it forces me to find out as much as I can about Seattle outfielders and Marlins pitchers, and everyone in the majors & high minors -- lest I toss away my five dollars a week (or whatever) in hopeless ignorance.
I grew up in baseball's Age of Stability, when I had to follow just eight teams in my league, the National. (And for a while, the Yankees were the only other team that mattered, because whoever won the NL flag had to play New York! -- or so it seemed.) To be honest, I still follow mainly NL teams, though I read more today about all of the teams -- even the Rockies & Marlins. I think that is a factor here -- my brain likes things simpler. I don't want to have to know 28 teams, all mixed up & playing each other from April thru September, any more than I want to learn a new language or trigonometry. I'd rather know 14 or 18 (if they expand again) teams really well, than know a little about all 28 or 36.
Now don't get me wrong -- I'm not endorsing realignment into two 3-division leagues, I'm just saying I could accept it, if the season was basically intact. (Toss out the DH & Astroturf, & maybe I'd endorse!) I am opposed to inter-league play -- if that happened, I'd probably become a big fan of some minor league club!
But many fans (millions?) today are turned off by the dark side of baseball (the favoritism, bone-headed management, greed, racism, drugs -- in other words, the same things in society that turn off people. And therefore, "something must be done" -- "out with the incumbents" -- realign! When the owners poll, you know they know the results already.
For the record, I don't like fans voting for All-Star teams, either. Never did, not since the Cincinnati nonsense in 1956 (say, isn't that the city that gave us Marge Schott & Pete Rose? Let's take another look at that 1919 World Series....) That annual poll is ample evidence of how fan opinion is often off-base. (I'm a fan, so I can admit it freely.) Fans vote familiarity, just like they vote their pocketbooks in November. So what if Schmidt retired -- get him out there! Would we trust an election where the ballots are distributed to folks on their fourth beer?
My real objection to the All-Star thing is that the players know the vote is bogus, and, if they are normal, they would much more appreciate recognition from their peers. So I'm for giving that ballot to players & coaches, can't vote for your own teammates. If the players conspire to exclude somebody with a giant ego -- hey, that's OK! "Best interests of baseball!"
And in case you're wondering, I think baseball should never have been exempt from anti-trust in the first place. (I don't know its effects on the minors.) And the more I learn about Kenesaw Mountain Landis, the less I like the omnipotent, infallible Commissioner system. Do I have a better idea? Well, not offhand, but I think I'd like a strong leadership that is not so absolute -- a balance of powers, and if a third branch needs to be created to break impasses between the Commish & the owners, well, what do retired umpires do?
ROMANCING THE HORSEHIDE
Still looking for reviews from people who are not relatives, friends, neighbors, folks who've never seen my stuff in print before. I'm still not sure which local bookstores will be carrying the book. Once I know, I'll try for local TV & radio interviews, which should be fun. The Utica evening sports talk show is excellent (Bruce Markusen -- remember the name.) We have two TV stations, neither with a recognizable sportscaster. I remain in hot pursuit of the paperback version that will sell at ball parks, and the audio cassette version. Nominees for the voice of Romancing? Would Joe Garagiola doing poetry be awful?
[Bruce Markusen left the Shadows of Cooperstown for Cooperstown itself, where he became the Voice of the Hall. Bruce has now authored four or more baseball books, with no end in sight.
[ROMANCING THE HORSEHIDE is out of print, after selling around 800 copies, I think, for McFarland. I own the rights, and might try that paperback version some day.]