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@adelphia.net)
#360 OCTOBER 3, 2005
OKTOBERFEST!
*** PLEASE NOTE, I HAVE A NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS: carneya6@adelphia.net *** The old one will no longer work! ***
This time around, it is just very hard to believe that it is October already. It seems like just a little while back I was in Tucson, watching the White Sox take on the Cubs, never suspecting that the Sox would still be playing, come October.
But that was March. The "regular season" that followed, the one now past, was not particularly regular for me. Because in March I not only enjoyed some southwest sun (and some Grand Canyon snow), I also signed a book contract. And that, as the poet once said, made all the difference.
Completing the final proof-reading, as the season itself wound down to its somewhat disappointing endgame (who doesn't love a sudden-death playoff game, after the 162-game schedule is inconclusive?), was perhaps a fitting way to watch the last innings of 2005. So much happened between March and October, and I'm not the first one to observe that every season is a lot like a novel.
In fact, some of the best baseball books have taken a single season as their subject. Some of us know that every season -- bar none -- could fill a book. Maybe not a famous book. And maybe not right away -- sometimes books appear five or ten or twenty years later, when the season at the focus emerges in a special context. Well, who would know at the time it would be the last time the team would be in a Series? And maybe not a great book, maybe the book would be the chronicle of an amateur, a fan who is still a rookie writer.
Looking back on 2005, my book has been a kind of distraction from the unfolding dramas in MLB. My Pirates peaked early, after 60 games they were playing .500 ball. The arrival of several fine rookies (on the heels of their first-ever ROY, Jason Bay), has given Buc fans some hope, that maybe things have bottomed out at last.
No other National League team hooked me this summer, although something in me rooted at various times for those poor Cubbies, and the transplanted Washingtons, and the Phillies. I confess that I missed Barry Bonds; I know some fans were glad that he wasn't around much, but I wasn't. I know, I know, that Braves' outfielder with the odd name (not Jones, the other name) hit over fifty dingers, but it just wasn't the same.
In the final months, I found myself pulling for the Indians, and of course, for the Red Sox to finish above the Yankees, and I simply do not want to let the word tie-breaker into the language of baseball, already contaminated by wild card. And I will credit the Yankees with finishing 2005 with the same number of wins as the Red Sox -- not more, not less -- and it's an achievement, but to me, it's not finishing higher. I also refuse to credit Atlanta with a 14th straight championship, as if the Expos failed to top the Braves in 1994. Why some teams cannot accept finishing 2nd is beyond me. Many cities would kill to finish 2nd.
And so here I sit, on the Eve of the Playoffs, looking back and looking ahead. The summer past was dotted with highlights, like a 40-years reunion in July, the Toronto convention in August, and always, never far away, was The Book. I continued to do research -- in fact, I don't see how I can stop! So there was always some writing, some composing, some editing, some proofing going on. Then there were photographs to find, captions to write. Footnotes galore to nail down. Reviewers to recruit, marketing to begin. Networking becomes as natural as breathing.
To my e-mail correspondence (almost daily), with SABR and its committees and the Yahoo B-Sox group, there were added hundreds more messages, either in regard to the debut of Mornings After at SABR 35, or in regard to The Book. It is simply amazing that my computer held up as well as it did.
What is even more amazing is how everything has turned out. Thanks to dozens, maybe hundreds of people, my book looks like a real major league production. The kind of book I never dreamed of writing, really. I am pleased that the publisher has pretty much let it stand, as I wrote it and organized it. (I'm still not crazy about their title, but that is such a minor thing now.) I can probably write ANOTHER book about how this one evolved -- and maybe here in NOTES -- since issue #268 -- I already have.
THE PLAYOFFS AHEAD
I am rooting for a White Sox vs Padres World Series.
Neither team has made it to the Series in a while. I happen to remember when both teams did it.
My most vivid memory from 1984 has me trapped in some auto shop, while my car was getting new tires. The Padres and Cubs were on television. I must have been pulling for the Cubs -- those poor devils. Up 2-0 in games, how many of you remember them sending Dennis Eckersley out to the mound in Game 3, to try to clinch it? The Eck was a hired gun that summer, brought to the Windy City to win ten games and get the Cubs into October. But on October 4, he wilted in the 6th. The Padres followed with two more wins, to earn the right to go up against the steamroller of a team that Detroit put together that season. Who can forget that, 35-5 out of the gate, 104 wins for Sparky, and how come Jack Morris isn't in Cooperstown yet?
Now I know that the Padres have been to a series since 1984, but my baseball memory is not very sharp regarding the last ten years. Quiz me on the fifties, no problem, sixties, seventies. The 80s are a little fuzzy. I'm actually pretty good 1900-1950, too. I can recall Tony Gwynn's last hurrah -- was it against the Yankees? But I'd lose a bet on what season it was.
Then there are the White Sox. I started following MLB in 1957, and rooted hard for the NL reps, the Braves of Milwaukee, to knock of Casey and the Yanks that October. They did. But the Yanks returned the favor in '58.
1959. The Pirates -- who almost always finished last while I was on the planet, until they charged from last to 2nd in 1958 (quite a climb, in an eight-team league) -- should have won it all in 1959. They had not seen October's Game since 1927 -- they were overdue. But it was not to be, '59 was a summer full of injuries and too many losses; the Bucs finished fourth.
'58 had been exciting not just because the Pirates were in a pennant race for the first time in twenty years, but because of Who Was On First. R.C. Stevens broke in with a bang, winning some April games before fading. A big guy who had once hit 66 homers out west, Dick Stuart, made the club, and he could hammer them out of old Forbes Field where no one had hammered them before -- not even Kiner!
And the Pirates had acquired Ted Kluszewski from the Reds. One of the most likeable guys to ever play the game, I think. I liked him when he homered against the Pirates -- how could I not? He had bulging biceps that no uniform could contain. He was simply fun to watch, like a latter-day Babe Ruth. "Klu" had once hit 49 HRs, and 47 another summer, and 40 and 35 in 1956 ... never mind that he swatted just six in '57, he must have been hurt, only 127 AB ... just look at that guy!
Klu was not able to lead the Pirates to the Promised Land, to October, in 1958. He hit .292, but just 4 HRs in over 300 AB. So when Ted Kluszewski was traded mid-season in 1959 for Harry "Suitcase" Simpson (Harry hadn't spent a full season with one team since 1956, and the Pirates were his 6th in 8 years) -- we grudgingly said Farewell. It was time. But wait! Look! The White Sox are in first place!
40 years after You Know What, Chicago had "the Go-Go Sox" -- they stole bases (led by Luis Aparicio's 56), when no other team did. (This was before the Maury Wills revolution, and Lou Brock.) Actually, this team was probably more like the Hitless Wonders of 1906; their only .300 hitter was little Nellie Fox, at .306. They had little power -- catcher Sherm Lollar hit 22 HR. But they had pitching (Early Wynn won 22) and defense and a crafty manager, Senor Al Lopez, who had brought them home ahead of the Damn Yankees.
And for October, they had Klu. That Fall, the Sox were up against the Dodgers of L.A., who still rippled with the power of the Brooklyn Boys of Summer: Snider, Hodges, Furillo, Wally Moon, Charley Neal, Johnny Roseboro. And they had pitching: Roger Craig, Don Drysdale, a kid named Koufax who was almost there, and old Johnny Podres and Larry Sherry, who won two and saved two that Series. The Dodgers took it in six.
But not before the White Sox and Ted Kluszewski gave their fans something to remember for all time. In Game One, the Sox clobbered the Dodgers, 11-0. Klu smacked two two-run HRs, and drove in five. Klu would hit another HR, drive in 10, and bat .391 for the Series -- his first and last.
I realize that younger fans cannot recall the days when the World Series was the post-season. When pennant races were winner-take-all. And the teams that played on October's stage may have never played each other before -- ever -- and maybe never would again. When the world strained for news of the Series games, because they were all day games (move over, soaps!)
Don't get me wrong, I like the playoffs. Sort of. I still hate best-of-five, and games that end past midnight in the east. Not crazy about wild cards.
Sixteen teams! It was not that hard to know all the lineups in your league. Those were the days.
So -- I shall root for the White Sox and Padres. And for games that churn out memories that will last for decades.