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)
#349 March 29, 2005
NOTES FROM A ROAD TRIP
March Madness, Baseball-Style
My decision to attend my first NINE Conference had more to do with my daughter's temporary residence in Las Cruces, NM (she started grad school there in January -- public health) than with my long friendship with Bill Kirwin, the editor of NINE and the organizer of this event, for a twelfth time.
For newcomers to NOTES, NINE is a nifty scholarly journal published north of the border (in Canada), redeemed by its total dedication to baseball topics -- like NOTES. My stuff has found its way into NINE more than a few times since I started exchanging with Bill in 1998. Mostly book reviews, but NINE carried one of my all-time favorite pieces of spot journalism, At the Hall with Rainman -- and most recently, a long article on Hugh Fullerton (a piece already out of date, because of the HSF material I've discovered in the past year or so).
The NINE conferences bring together a mostly academic crowd from all over North America. The big idea is to celebrate Spring Break (and coincidentally, Spring Training) by heading for a long weekend in the Arizona sun, tricking colleges and universities into paying for all or part of the vacation. And it works.
I had imagined that the conference would be much like the annual Cooperstown symposium, held in baseball's mecca every June, and in some ways, I was right. NINE is a bit less formal, and then there is the "Field Research" -- the ball games. The attenders are a similar inter-disciplinary mix, not quite as rabidly baseball as a SABR crowd, but that's OK.
Here's the difference, I think. SABRites shamelessly worship in the church of baseball; it's their central focus. Presenters in Cooperstown and Arizona (and elsewhere -- there is no monopoly on the formula) keep up appearances. They are deep into art or law or literature or history or you name it, and their passion for baseball enables them to connect their disciplines to the game. SABRites are baseball nuts who have admitted their addiction. The academics are just as hooked and have created the same kind of support groups that SABR provides; but they just can't be as candid about it. What school would send its faculty to a gathering of seamheads? (That's a term of endearment, of course.)
What I have just described would no doubt qualify back on campus as a good example of a false dichotomy. It's not either/or, many folks are both/and. SABRly and scholarly.
When have I attended the Cooperstown symposium (sometimes I just sneak under the tent for the keynote), I'm often asked where I teach, or what subject -- and that happened in Arizona, too. At SABR events, no one assumes that I'm a professor (I'm not, any more than Casey Stengel was). Sometimes I meet people who know me as "Two Finger" from NOTES or from my posts on SABR-L. I like to tweak the PhDs sometimes by explaining that I am not associated with any college or university -- I work in the real world. This invariably draws a laugh, and a knowing nod of the head.
I will spare readers the long and scary tale of my trip south from the Shadows of Cooperstown, undertaken on March 17 (a day when travelers listen closely to see if their pilots have Irish names). Suffice to say that airline over-booking is a crime that should not go unpunished, and doesn't the phrase "class action lawsuit" have a nice ring? All was going well until I landed in Denver, where my brief plane-swapping stay was extended to six or seven hours, some of them spent lobbying with airline personnel, as jet after jet took off for Tucson.
The world seemed to be converging on the very spot that I had targeted many months ago. The NCAA college basketball regionals were in Tucson, spring break was in full swing, and then (of all things) the southwestern desert bloomed, drawing more tourists than the usual snowbird fleet. I finally was rescued, the last flight out, but was not comfortable till the aircraft was in the air. My suitcase arrived the next day, via Phoenix and God knows where else. Oh well. All's well, etc.
The twelfth NINE drew about sixty souls like me. There were 27 short (25 minutes) presentations scheduled, starting like first-class-of-the-day at 8:15 AM or so. Arriving late, I missed the leadoff rendition of Casey at the Bat by the Hall of Fame Research Director (take HOF both ways) Tim Wiles. There was a keynote, too. Some of the presentations were joint efforts, so if you do the math, you notice that most of those attending were part of the program or played a supporting role (eg, representing publishers in the obligatory book room). About twenty were rookies to NINE -- like myself.
It was impossible for me to do much in just 25 minutes with my topic -- the cover-up of the Fix of the 1919 Series (what else?) So I just started talking, and then stopped, and it seemed to be well-received. If my book had been available, I think I might have sold more than a few, on the spot -- not 60, but a lot. Last July in Cincinnati, for the panel on the 1919 WS that I pulled together for the national SABR convention, I had 75-80 minutes (to share) and felt terribly rushed, and then cut off after just skimming the surface. I was doomed to feel the same this time around.
Looking back at the conference -- and I attended just about every session -- I think it is correct to say that not every presentation needed 25 minutes. Some would have gone over fine, shortened to five or ten minutes, but no one wants to be compressed that tightly after traveling so far. (Other sessions could have been extended and bothered no one.) I was reminded of FAN Magazine, where the late Mike Schacht often edited submissions down to one terrific paragraph, or one sentence, or just one vivid and thought-provoking image.
Here's an example, from Mike himself (it was in FAN #7 back in the Fall/Winter 1991 issue): "When I was growing up my father attended most of my games. On the rare occasion when he missed one, his questions were always the same. First, 'Who won the game?' Then, 'How did you do?' If I got a hit, and I usually did, it would be, 'Was it a clean hit?' To this day. I often find myself using that same kind of distinction."
It can be humbling to be edited down, but it was an honor to appear in FAN, as it can be to be allowed to present at NINE.
Anyway, I didn't really mind being squeezed (I was warned). It just meant that the Q & A that followed took place with individuals and small groups, instead of with the whole audience; at breaks, over meals, during the ball games, and in the Best Western pub at night, instead of in the large room.
I didn't talk B-Sox the whole weekend, but it came up a lot, after I spoke on Friday night. It turns out that almost everyone can relate to the topic, and discussing the evils of gambling in sport, while simultaneously keeping tally of how one's brackets were faring in the NCAA tournament, added to the fun. National pastime, gambling.
Something else was going on during this particular NINE time, the hearings on steroids. Several people told me that as I talked on about the B-Sox and the cover-up of 1919-20, they kept flashing forward to today's revelations (and coverings-up). I did not make that connection myself, but it is easy to see what they meant. Baseball turning a blind eye for years, then paying for it with a black eye when the facts are chased out of hiding. Players scapegoated (Say it ain't so, Barry). A scramble to take credit for the cleansing of the sport -- no, make that the sport's image. Pretended outrage, grand jury leaks, media sharks, it's still the same old story, and play it again, Shoeless.
THE GRAND CANYON
I was joined after NINE by my family, and the four of us headed north the next morning in my daughter's green Honda Civic. After a hiking stop in Sedona, we parked a couple days at the Grand Canyon, my first view from the ground. To those readers who have been there, no explanation is needed -- words cannot do the view justice. The Canyon is a humbler, it stops you in your tracks and make you feel like a newborn, looking down on the millions of years revealed by the gorge's depths.
It cannot be seen in a day, especially not a foggy, snowy day. While the blustery cold kept us moving, it also kept down the crowds. No one built the Grand Canyon, exactly, yet they will indeed come. From around the world, not just Iowa. Because it's there. It's the original Natural, not a hoax.
They come. No games, no names. No logos, no moving parts. Just the shadows move, under the sun, and the clouds. Nice.
'Way back in NOTES #77, in 1994, I described a stop at Niagara Falls, while on a Jay Buckley baseball tour. That came back to me in northern Arizona last week. Here it is:
En route from "The World's Greatest Entertainment Centre" [Skydome] to Three Rivers Stadium, the tour paused at Niagara Falls, and the contrast between this natural wonder, and Toronto's artificial one, was striking. I had been to the falls thirty years before, with my parents, and five or six years ago, with my wife and kids. The falls are unchanging, they dazzle by their sheer power and size in a wordless way, no tour guide needed, no film on The Making Of.
No The Making Of for the Canyon, either, but the Imax movie near the (south rim) entrance was fantastic.
The rest of our trip went well, we meandered south thru Santa Fe and then Las Cruces and finally El Paso, and no one bumped me off the flight home, and after eleven days on the road, I was back in the Shadows again.
ON THE TRAIL
Despite the radical change of scenery (or not so radical -- we had some snow in AZ and NM, but not the traffic-stopping upstate NY brand), the steady diet of restaurants and motels, all the sight-seeing, the immersion in baseball at NINE and the decompression afforded by the first family trip in many seasons -- I managed to work in a bit of B-Sox research.
One thing I've learned is that state capitals have libraries which just might contain (on microfilm, but just maybe in a form that can be searched digitally) newspapers from 1919. So when I found myself with a couple hours free in Santa Fe, with the state library and records house across the street, I couldn't resist.
Here are a couple notes I made there:
* Byrd Lynn, the Sox' backup catcher in the 1919 WS, caught for Phoenix on his way up, in 1915, and in one game in New Mexico he broke umpire Harry Kane's toe with is bat, earning him a suspension. I was looking for post-Fix Lynn interviews -- nothing found.
* Checking the box scores from the tail-end of 1920, just before the scandal broke, I noticed Amos Strunk's name in the Chicago lineup. He was traded to the Sox that summer. I've checked all of the files in Cooperstown for the 1919 Sox -- but not the 1920 additions. What might have snuck past me?
* In the Santa Fe New Mexican's account, Eddie Cicotte was ushered out "a disused rear door" of the courthouse just before the indictments were announced. Not sure I've seen that detail anywhere else. This paper got their info directly from a leased wire or phone. (My hunch is that every newspaper in the country covered events a bit differently, when they strayed from the wire service versions.)
* Eddie Cicotte, the New Mexican went on, was released into the custody of a detective from the states attorney's office, William Sullivan. The name was familiar to me:
... William Sullivan, an investigator for the State's Attorney's office in Chicago, had a role. Sullivan had gone south to spring training with the Sox prior to the 1920 season, at Comiskey's invitation. He was unsuccessful at that time in confirming the team's suspicions about the Fix, but said that on the night of Monday, September 27, Eddie Cicotte came to him saying, "I've got a load on my chest." Sullivan sent him to Comiskey. [Los Angeles Times, September 29, 1920]
* On September 30, 1920, the New Mexican reported that, according to Abe Attell, ten gamblers won $250,000 betting on the WS of 1919. In the same issue, prosecutor Hoyne (Maclay Hoyne, an Illinois State's Attorney who left office after losing a bid for re-election in Fall 1920 -- he recalled after the scandal broke that he spoke right after the Series with Charles Comiskey about the Fix) speculated to reporters that the 1920 grand jury actions (the indictments) were illegal.
THAT'S ALL, FOLKS
Next issue will probably be another collection of my postings in the Yahoo B-Sox group. But maybe not. Anyone can join this group by clicking on the proper link at the NOTES web site.
Looks like my next road trip will be this May, the Seymour conference (a SABR event -- see www.sabr.org) in Cleveland. No presentation, unless someone cancels (maybe the keynote speaker). But I had fun at Seymour last May, and I can drive to this one. Might substitute for a stop at the Jake with a visit to the Cleveland Public Library. Treasure hunting, B-Sox style.