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)
#368 JANUARY 15, 2006
ON DEATH AND DYING
That title, of course, is not mine. It belongs to a 1969 book by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a kind of classic in the helping professions. Those who have personally dealt with death and dying (and how else can you really deal with it, if you are human?), are almost universally grateful for the book, I think. In a former life as a program coordinator for a conference center, I corresponded some with Ms Kubler-Ross, and attracted one of her workshops to upstate NY. Alas, when she came to give it, I had moved on, so I never met her in person.
Last June, Jonathan Eig came to upstate NY to speak, too, at the annual Cooperstown Symposium. But I missed him, too. If I had not, I believe this review of his book, the occasion for this issue of Notes, would have been written last summer.
Eig might have borrowed the title On Death and Dying, too. Instead, he (or his publisher, Simon & Schuster, 2005), chose The Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig.
The book had been recommended to me, and not many are these days. It lived up to its billing. And I in turn recommend it.
If I skimmed a bit over the baseball seasons, with which I'm pretty familiar, I made up for it at the end. Which does not come abruptly. Looking back, the first signs of the insidious disease ALS came well before The Streak was over.
Numerous letters to and from Gehrig were the key to this book. They enabled Eid to get beneath the newspaper surface, to reveal a Lou Gehrig not shown before, not in baseball lore, not in that movie, not anywhere else I've seen.
The Life part is well done, too -- his curious relationship with Ma Gehrig, and Ma's with Lou's wife Eleanor, and then there is the Babe, and the Yankees. On the dynastic Yankees of the 1920s and 30s, Gehrig was a workhorse, and an iron one at that, plugging away, often matching or exceeding the feats of the Bambino, whose flamboyance earned him headlines and a salary that was staggering. Gehrig should have been paid at least as much as Ruth, for many of those glory summers, but was not -- he was focused on what he thought was a fair wage, and accepted small raises, and moved on. Making him, I suppose, almost a poster boy for the ERA, or for anyone who quietly does excellent work, while others who do less are rewarded with more money.
Lou Gehrig's career was cut short by at least five seasons, and he died days shy of his 38th birthday. The great value of Eid's book, to me, anyway, was the way he demonstrated how Gehrig faced death as he faced life. Taking it one day at a time, ever hopeful. Not wasting his time on things that were frivolous. Even after baseball, when he could have spent his last years relaxing on beaches or traveling, he chose work, for NY City, a daily grind as parole commissioner, with duties he took seriously. He didn't need the money, he needed to work. Work was his life. Or as Freud put it, lieben und arbiten. (Lou spoke German.)
Lou Gehrig was famous, most of my lifetime, as the Iron Horse who played over 2,000 straight games. (That streak was somewhat artificial, Eid's readers will learn, but his durability and perseverance were real.) He hit a ton of grand slams and drove in runs -- only Aaron and Ruth drove in more.
(Aaron played in over a thousand more games than Gehrig, Ruth in 339 more. Lou drove in runs at a rate of .919, better than Babe's .883 and Hank's .696. Interestingly, the other fellow up there at those heights is from the Dead Ball Era -- Ty Cobb.)
And then there was that Yankee Stadium speech, on Lou Gehrig Day, July 4, 1939. According to Eid, that speech contributed more to Gehrig's fame than all his numbers. And perhaps it did. The Speech is more than the "luckiest man" snippet, and Eid has reconstructed it nicely. Looking back, we can see that it capped Gehrig's lifetime, but at the time, his real condition (ALS) was not known to the general public, so it capped his career to the fans at the Stadium that day.
Gehrig's lifetime was more than his Yankee days. Who we are is always more than what we do. Eid's book has the good sense not to focus on just the time Gehrig spent in pinstripes. In fact, we see him in everything from a Tarzan suit, to cowboy togs, to the suit-and-tie uniform of everyday America. Lou Gehrig had the good sense to know he was not Babe Ruth, and never tried. He was just Lou Gehrig. From beginning to end.
I'd like to see Eig's book become a film, I think we are ready to do better than Pride of the Yankees. I'd like to see my book become a film, too, not to replace Eight Men Out, but to tell the rest of that story.
FROM ROMANCING THE HORSEHIDE
There was never any doubt that I would have to include a poem on Lou Gehrig, when I undertook Romancing the Horsehide: Poems on Players and the Game (McFarland, 1993). Player nicknames were the titles of each player-portrait. The more famous the player, the more challenging it was, to say something new, worth saying. I always liked this one.
IRON HORSE
What's in a nickname?
Lou's was
A tale of two eras
The horse was power
Before planes trains and automobiles
Natural brawny native
Tame to the eye but always wild
Galloping past broken-down buggies
To spaces where no tracks had been laid
Iron had its virtues
Durable hard strong
Locomotive stuff
Crossing the land without rest
Putting towns and cities on the map
The Iron Horse took the field
Season after shining season
Enduring as no one before or since
His accomplishments in the game
Hardly suggest a career
Cut short
His final seasons spent courageously
Slugging against an invisible hurler
A disease destined to strike out
"The luckiest man on the face of the earth"
Iron rusts and horses die
We know all that
Yet Gehrig's words jar and haunt us
Our nickname
Was supposed to
Let him play
Forever
THE STREAK
I wrote that poem about four years before Cal Ripken, Jr, played in his 2,131 straight game, on September 6, 1995. Lou's 2,130 was lodged in my memory for decades. Cal's streak has already faded. Here is how I marked the occasion in Notes #112:
2131: THE UN-LONELIEST NUMBER
Not only did Cal's Streak, when it finally exceeded Lou's, eclipse the eclipse -- but it shined even brighter because of the shadow cast on Baseball '95 by the yet-unresolved Strike. We all cheered, for reasons we didn't even know. Millions of us felt a solidarity with the fans standing at Camden Yards and with each other, and with all the fans who have cheered before us, who cheered Gehrig and Everett Scott and Honus Wagner.
For that moment when the game stood still, baseball was its old self. You put on your uniform, you go out and play hard and give it your best shot, and you do it again tomorrow. And the fans will cheer. That's not so hard to understand, is it?
Tears of joy turned America into Mudville that evening; Mighty Cal had not struck out at all. He tipped his cap, and we forgot all the stories about player/fan friction. He jogged around the park like a kid, touching fans and picking up hats that fell, and we felt intimate with the game again. We knew Cal was an exception, almost an aberration, like The Streak itself, impossible to reproduce without a heavy dose of luck. But we cheered anyway, as if he was every player we ever cheered, as if every player could deserve such unabashed cheering.
And it felt so good, that we didn't want to stop. It was a downright nostalgic binge of cheering, like we used to do before words like salaries and work stoppage and greed cluttered up the language of baseball. It was old-fashioned, but the kids joined right in. When there's magic in the air, no need to explain.
THE STREAK REVISITED (also from NOTES #112)
In the final days before the September 5-6 climax of Cal's Streak, I found myself reading a lot about Cal (I dug up that Baseball Weekly featuring the streak, from 7/21/93) -- and about Lou Gehrig. In Total Baseball, Jack Kavanagh's article "Streaks and Feats" has a long section on Lou's Streak. Here are some of the highlights.
We all know Gehrig started his Streak by subbing for Wally Pipp, who complained of a headache. Actually, young Lou had pinch-hit the night before. In the Streak's first month, Gehrig often was removed for a pinch-hitter himself, or for late defense. About five weeks into the Streak, Lou appeared once as a ninth-inning pinch-hitter.
Gehrig was ejected from half a dozen games in his Streak, but never suspended. (Imagine how popular Selig would be, if he ever suspends Cal!) Astonishingly, Gehrig stole home fifteen times, and was regarded (like Ruth) as a daring baserunner -- but somehow he was spared serious collisions or spikings.
Kavanagh notes that Gehrig developed lumbago, which "hobbled him from time to time. In midseason of 1934, Lou was seized by an attack and, immobilized, had to be helped off the field." He had already broken Scott's record -- his Streak was at 1,426 -- but he insisted on going on. "Hardly able to stand," he was penciled in the lineup" [the next day] as the leadoff batter and shortstop. "Despite his pain, he lined out a single, and with his appearance established in the boxscore, gave way to a pinch-runner." The next day, he was back at first and got four hits.
In 1938, Gehrig hit .295, with 29 HRs and 107 RBIs -- and these numbers were so sub-par for Lou, that they were seen as signs that age was finally slowing him down. Of course, it was not age at all, but ALS, which really hit in the spring of '39. After "eight feebly played games," Lou removed himself from the lineup. The Streak was over.
There are some oddities about Consecutive Games Played Streaks that have not gotten much attention in what I've read. For instance, the fact is that a manager can end such a streak any time he wants. A player on a team that is managed by someone who believes in the occasional day off, is no threat to Cal.
What about pitchers? They may be given "an extra day's rest" between starts, whether or not they need or want it. Does that break their streak? Relievers? Forget it.
Unlike hitting streaks or pitchers' winning streaks, the climax of Cal's Streak was predictable. Baltimore had time to plan, and we all saw the result. Impossible to have all that hoopla on deck, night after night, or in city after city, as someone closes in on Rose's 4,256 Aaron's 755.
The Day After Cal Did It, it was plain that Baseball was "back" -- people who hadn't watched a game in a long time, watched that one. It was a celebration well-planned, and pulled off well, like an All Star Game, but more sincere, I think. Or less glitzy. Like Cal. It was good to see history take center stage, to see baseball find itself, if just for an evening.
ANOTHER ONE FROM THE NOTES ARCHIVE
ALS -- amyotrophic lateral sclerosis -- was identified in 1874 by Jean-Martin Charcot in France. It was a rare disease in Lou Gehrig's day, and it remains rare -- and incurable. In my lifetime, I've known several persons with ALS -- all are now gone. Here is something I wrote about one of them in NOTES #68, May 30, 1994.
THE STREAK
We have been boggled this spring by Griffey Junior's super power display (can he hit 70?), by Paul O'Neill's dazzling batwork (can he hit .500?), and a variety of lesser heroics. But when the Orioles are the topic, sooner or later, The Streak comes up. Can Cal do it?
I suppose we'll be reading soon enough about how the world of baseball reacted when Lou Gehrig passed Everett Scott. It is interesting that Scott was taken out of the Yankee lineup (he logged most of his 1307 as a BoSox SS) for a fellow named Peewee Wanninger. Gehrig pinch-hit for the same Peewee W., the day before he sent Wally Pipp on vacation. File that under "Small Peewee World"!
I've been thinking about Gehrig a lot this spring. One of my son's teammate's father has Lou Gehrig's disease. He comes to the games, and sometimes we talk. His son is a left-handed firstbaseman. Evan loves baseball, and has another Little League summer to go after this one. But this may be the last one he plays in front of his father. Evan's drawn a lot of walks, but is still looking for his first hit, and I hope it's a home run, but I know that a single will do just fine.
Once Lou Gehrig was diagnosed, he, like any person with a terminal illness, immediately began a very different kind of streak. Each new day became precious, and, at the end, each day was an achievement. In Bang the Drum Slowly, ace pitcher Henry Wiggin makes this observation, after noticing his teammates reaction, after they learn their third-string catcher has a disease that will prevent him from finishing the season: "Everybody knows that everybody's dying -- that's why they treat them so well."
We marvel as fans, at Cal's streak ... we know it's taken a lot of good fortune to dodge illness and injury (does this guy ever get sick in the winter, I wonder?) The Streak sure is something. Even if Cal falls short, he can be mighty proud. And so can his father.
* * * * *
There was a sequel to this story. It appeared in NOTES #108, July 22, 1995, and here it is:
CATCHING UP
Squeezed out of the last few issues, the announcement of my debut last month as an official scorer. OK, it was just a Little League game, so what? I still got to sit up in the booth behind home, next to the P.A. announcer, and keep the official scorebook, for an official game.
What could go wrong? Well, in the first inning, there were two interference calls, one on a runner, and the other on the catcher. Then, one of the pitchers takes a no-hitter into the third or fourth (late innings), and I have to rule on a slow roller up the middle that eluded both the pitcher and the second baseman. Hit. Yes, it's only Little League, but they never would have got the kid at first, even if the 2B had fielded it cleanly. I felt a lot better when a clean hit followed soon after.
My son Pat is an alumnus of the team that won -- they broke it open with an 8-run 4th. That was capped by a grand slam by the son of friends of ours, playing his final season of LL. Last year I mentioned Evan's father, with whom I sometimes sat at the games -- he has Lou Gehrig's disease. This spring, he watched from a wheelchair. He wasn't there for Evan's slam, but he heard all about it not long after the game, and I enjoyed his retelling of the story. The game was right around Father's Day.
PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM
I reviewed Eliot Asinof's Bleeding Between the Lines back in NOTES #276 (11/22/02). I had borrowed it from a library, so I only had it a short while. I almost owned a copy, a while later, my daughter thought she ordered one on the internet (probably via half.com or amazon), but instead, I received one of Asinof's most obscure titles (he's written quite a few books, you know).
And so until just recently, I never had a copy of Bleeding handy. So at least one detail found there will not be in my book. Maybe (think positive) in the revised edition.
Speaking of Eliot Asinof -- I'm sure he knew when Eight Men Out went to press, that he didn't have the whole story. I bet right after he turned in the final proofs, he found something else that was just too late to squeeze in. I was squeezing things in right up till the end. That's one reason why readers of NOTES will have more than will appear in the book ... but then, there are some things in the book that never appeared in NOTES, too.
Bleeding Between the Lines (1979, 16 years after 8MO and nine before Sayles' film) is "must" B-Sox reading. In it, Asinof tells how 8MO came to be written. It's not as good as footnotes, but it's better documentation that 8MO in some ways.
All I want to do here, is cite a conversation with Red Faber, that Asinof includes in Bleeding (pg 94), which is further evidence that the Sox and Kid Gleason knew about the Fix early on. Here's Faber, probably on Asinof's tape recorder:
I remember after that first game in Cincy, when they whipped Cicotte, Gleason went nuts. He knew what was going on. Most everybody did. He started yelling at Cicotte and Swede Risberg in the hotel lobby in front of a hundred people, he didn't give a damn who heard him. Can you imagine a manager doing that?
Another book worth a read is Mike Sowell's The Pitch That Killed: Carl Mays, Ray Chapman and the Pennant Race of 1920. It's an oldie (1989) but goodie, with quite a bit on the Fix -- since the Fix' undoing at the end of the 1920 season was a huge factor in that summer's end game. It's also got a detailed look at the Carl Mays case that split Ban Johnson and his Loyal Five from the AL rebel magnates, almost causing a baseball civil war. Wish I had included a reference to Sowell's book in mine. Oh well.