Vintage Baseball

[V.C. Brunswick]

Many of us can remember sneaking a transistor radio to school to catch the World Series. Now they probably watch it on their Smart Phones.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Back in 1955, broadcaster Ernie Harwell wrote an essay for The Sporting News as a special piece for their Opening Day issue -- and it remains one of the best summings-up of what the game meant to the people of the Era:

THE GAME FOR ALL AMERICA

Baseball is President Eisenhower tossing out the first ball of the season; and a pudgy schoolboy playing catch with his dad on a Mississippi farm.

It's the big league pitcher who sings in night clubs. And the Hollywood singer who pitches to the Giants in spring training.

A tall, thin old man waving a scorecard from his dugout -- that's baseball. So is the big, fat guy with a bulbous nose running out one of his 714 home runs with mincing steps.

It's America, this baseball. A re-issued newsreel of boyhood dreams. Dreams lost somewhere between boy and man. It's the Bronx cheer and the Baltimore farewell. The left field screen in Boston, the right field dump at Nashville's Sulphur Dell, the open stands in San Francisco, the dusty, wind-swept diamond at Albuquerque. And a rock home plate and a chicken wire backstop -- anywhere.

There's a man in Mobile who remembers a triple he saw Honus Wagner hit in Pittsburgh 46 years ago. That's baseball. So is the scout reporting that a 16-year-old sandlot pitcher in Cheyenne is the new "Walter Johnson."

It's a wizened little man shouting insults from the safety of his bleacher seat. And a big, smiling first baseman playfully tousling the hair of a youngster outside the players' gate.

Baseball is a spirited race of man against man, reflex against reflex. A game of inches. Every skill is measured. Every heroic, every failing is seen and cheered -- or booed. And then becomes a statistic.

In baseball, democracy shines its clearest. Here the only race that matters is the race to the bag. The creed is the rule book. Color is something to distinguish one team's uniform from another.

Baseball is Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of penicillin, asking his Brooklyn hosts to explain Dodger signals. It's Player Moe Berg speaking seven languages and working crossword puzzles in Sansrkit. It's a scramble in the box seats for a foul -- and a $125 suit ruined. A man barking into a hot microphone about a cool beer, that's baseball. So is the sports writer telling a .383 hitter how to stride, and a 20-victory pitcher trying to write his impressions of the World Series.

Baseball is ballet without music. Drama without words. A carnival without kewpie dolls.

A housewife in California couldn't tell you the color of her husband's eyes, but she knows that Yogi Berra is hitting .337, has brown eyes and used to love to eat bananas with mustard. That's baseball. So is the bright sanctity of Cooperstown's Hall of Fame. And the former big leaguer, who is playing out the string in a Class B loop.

Baseball is continuity. Pitch to pitch. Inning to inning. Game to game. Series to series. Season to season.

It's rain, rain, rain splattering on a puddled tarpaulin as thousands sit in damp disappointment. And the click of typewriters and telegraph keys in the press box -- like so many awakened crickets. Baseball is a cocky batboy. The old-timer, whose batting average increases every time he tells it. A lady celebrating a home team rally by mauling her husband with a rolled-up scorecard.

Baseball is the cool, clear eyes of Rogers Hornsby, the flashing spikes of Ty Cobb, an overaged pixie named Rabbit Maranville, and Jackie Robinson testifying before a Congressional hearing.

Baseball? It's just a game -- as simple as a ball and a bat. Yet, as complex as the American spirit it symbolizes. It's a sport, business -- and sometimes even religion.

Baseball is Tradition in flannel knickerbockers. And Chagrin in being picked off base. It is Dignity in the blue serge of an umpire running the game by rule of thumb. It is Humor, holding its sides when an errant puppy eludes two groundskeepers and the fastest outfielder. And Pathos, dragging itself off the field after being knocked from the box.

Nicknames are baseball. Names like Zeke and Pie and Kiki and Home Run and Cracker and Dizzy and Dazzy.

Baseball is a sweaty, steaming dressing room where hopes and feelings are as naked as the men themselves. It's a dugout with spike-scarred flooring. And shadows across an empty ball park. It's the endless list of names in box scores, abbreviated almost beyond recognition.

The holdout is baseball, too. He wants 55 grand or he won't turn a muscle. But, it's also the youngster who hitch-hikes from South Dakota to Florida just for a tryout.

Arguments, Casey at the Bat, old cigarette cards, photographs, Take Me Out to the Ball Game -- all of them are baseball.

Baseball is a rookie -- his experience no bigger than the lump in his throat -- trying to begin fulfillment of a dream. It's a veteran, too -- a tired old man of 35, hoping his aching muscles can drag him through another sweltering August and September.

For nine innings, baseball is the story of David and Goliath, of Samson, Cinderella, Paul Bunyan, Homer's Iliad and the Count of Monte Cristo.

Willie Mays making a brilliant World's Series catch. And then going home to Harlem to play stick-ball in the street with his teenage pals -- that's baseball. So is the husky voice of a doomed Lou Gehrig saying, "I'm the luckiest guy in the world."

Baseball is cigar smoke, hot-roasted peanuts, The Sporting News, winter trades, "Down in front," and the Seventh Inning Stretch. Sore arms, broken bats, a no-hitter, and the strains of the Star-Spangled Banner.

Baseball is a highly-paid Brooklyn catcher telling the nation's business leaders: "You have to be a man to be a big leaguer, but you have to have a lot of little boy in you, too."

This is a game for all America, this baseball.

 

[Nobert]

There's a great short story called The Golden Key by James Street. It's not about baseball specifically, but baseball plays a big part of it, and shows the effect it had on the American populace even back in the era of telegraphy. Baseball legend Christy Mathewson (Giants?) plays into it.

This story can be found in H. Allen Smith's Desert Island Decameron, which must have been a best seller at some point, based on the number of copies of I run into in used bookstores.

 

[Espee]

Vin Scully (who is staying at least to 2012) does all nine innings (without a "color man") for the Dodgers on TV, for almost all home games, and Western Division road games. That can be on the local cable channel, or on the broadcast TV outlet (Channel 9 these days.) His call is carried on radio too, through the third inning. I rarely get to see the games on TV, but I often listen to the radio while driving.
I have those typical boyhood memories of "transistor radio under the pillow... for listening to the late innings after bedtime" (which was not quite such a sin during the middle of the season, when school was out.) But as we grow up our bedtimes get later, and around 1974 the game start times were moved up in the name of energy conservation. So the only time I'll hear the end of a game after I go to bed is if I have the flu or something-- and even then, the game would probably have to go into extra innings.
Of course this is a West Coast perspective-- if you're in the East, a lot of road games from the West are "late night."

 

[Flipped Lid]

The White Sox announcing team of Harry Caray and Jimmy Piersall (circa 1980) was the most entertaining collaboration I've ever heard. It was pee in your pants funny.

Harry and Jimmy were completely off the hook. There was never anyone like them before or since. I recall one night when some lady had sent Harry a lemon meringue pie. Stroh's beer was the sponsor at the time. Harry says, "Thanks to (lady's name) from (some city) for sending me this delicious lemon meringue pie. And nothing goes better with lemon meringue pie than an ice cold Stroh's."

 

[Tomasso]

There was never anyone like them before or since.

I was actually going to write the same thing! Even Bill Murray's stint as Cub's guest announcer when Harry took ill wasn't as funny as Harry and Jimmy.

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

When listening to the Dodgers games on the radio this was opening theme.

[video=youtube;cHAWzkU7zsI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHAWzkU7zsI[/video]

 

[LizzieMaine]

One thing that sets baseball apart from all other professional sports is the sublime quality of its literature. Fifty one years ago today, Ted Williams played his final major league game, hitting a home run in his final plate appearance -- and author John Updike was part of the small crowd at Fenway Park for the game. He published his impressions of the day in the 10/22/60 issue of the New Yorker, in an essay that's gone down as perhaps the most highly-regarded piece of baseball writing ever.

Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu

 

[Flipped Lid]

That is definitely a great piece of work, as are all of these:

http://www.amazon.com/Ball-Four-Jim-Bouton/dp/0020306652/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317214475&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Boys-Summer-Roger-Kahn/dp/0060883960/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317214568&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Red-Smith-Baseball-Greatest-Writer/dp/1566634156/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317214619&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Veeck-As-Wreck-Autobiography-Bill-Veeck/dp/0226852180/ref=cm_lmf_tit_9

http://www.amazon.com/October-1964-David-Halberstam/dp/0449983676/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top#_

I don't follow baseball nearly as closely as I used to, but I still love reading about what I consider to be the golden age of the game, from the late 1920's up through the late 1960's to early 1970's. I have a ton of baseball books and the above are my favorites from my collection. You couldn't go wrong with any of them and you don't even have to be a big baseball fan to enjoy the offerings of Kahn and Halberstam. They touch on the anthropological aspects of the game as much as the game itself.

One thing that sets baseball apart from all other professional sports is the sublime quality of its literature. Fifty one years ago today, Ted Williams played his final major league game, hitting a home run in his final plate appearance -- and author John Updike was part of the small crowd at Fenway Park for the game. He published his impressions of the day in the 10/22/60 issue of the New Yorker, in an essay that's gone down as perhaps the most highly-regarded piece of baseball writing ever.

Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu

 

[Tomasso]

Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu

"All I want out of life is that when I walk down the street folks will say 'There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.' " ~Ted Williams



I'm of the opinion that Ted accomplished what he set out to do.

 

[LizzieMaine]

One of the games I attended as a kid pitted the Sox against the Washington Senators, then managed by Ted Williams -- and we arrived early to see batting practice, on the off chance that we might see The Kid take a few cuts in the batting cage. He was no longer a Splinter by then, and he looked bizarre in a Senators uniform -- but he still had that swing.

For many years after he retired, every New England kid knew who he was -- he was and still is part of our native folklore, like Paul Bunyan with a bat. Even when he was that old guy in the Nissen Bread commercials, we knew he was The Greatest Hitter Who Ever Lived.

 

[Caleb Moore]

I'm a Giants fan, born and bred, but after reading several books about ball in the Era, I think my favorite player would be Bobby Doerr (Red Sox).

 

[LizzieMaine]

I'm a Giants fan, born and bred, but after reading several books about ball in the Era, I think my favorite player would be Bobby Doerr (Red Sox).

He's still a revered figure among Sox fans -- at age 93, he's the oldest living Hall of Fame player, and one of only a handful of men still alive who played in the major leagues during the 1930s.

I was at Fenway the day they retired his uniform number -- an honor that was long overdue.

This photo, by the way, shows the proper way to wear a baseball uniform. Note that the pantlegs are neither right at the kneecap nor dragging in a slovenly manner at the ankles, but are neatly bloused just below the knee, the better to display the striping on the sock. Modern players please note.

 

[Fletch]

Also, baseball is very statistics-oriented, much more than any other American sport. Fans, broadcasters, and those in the print media can -- and do -- geek out on the most arcane and esoteric of stats.

This, I believe, explains a lot of its appeal to the intellectual classes - writers in particular. The bright, awkward, sheltered white boy from the big city finally had a sport to call his own, even if he couldn't run without falling in a heap or even see a ball coming. He found his heroes thru the worship of knowledge - stats - and only indirectly thru their prowess and strength. And it so happened that that kind of boy, grown to a man, loomed very large in the literary firmament of the mid-to-late 20th century.

 

[Fletch]

ISTR reading that Doerr was Teddy's stoutest friend - the only guy Ted would never rank on, and the only one who could ever tell him he was out of line. Who wrote that? It was in some slick magazine.

 

[Caleb Moore]

For anyone interested in Williams, Doerr, etc. I recommend "The Teammates" By David Halberstam and "Real Grass, Real Heroes" by Dom DiMaggio. DiMaggio's book has a lot of little details about life in general back in the 30's and 40's and differences between baseball then and when he wrote the book (early 90's, Believe).

 

[LizzieMaine]

Correct -- Williams, Doerr, Dom DiMaggio and Johnny Pesky were an extremely close clique, and as the senior member of the group in terms of service with the team, Doerr was sort of the de-facto leader. This friendship continued into their post-baseball lives, and continues today with Doerr and Pesky, the two survivors. Doerr is not well, though -- he had a stroke last month, and at his age it hit him hard.

I remember him as first base coach for the Sox in the late sixties, and was always surprised he never became a manager.

 

[Tomasso]

I never cared much for Joe DiMaggio. He was a prima donna......from basically causing Mickey Mantle's devastating knee injury by not waving him off a ball in the outfield until he was sure that he could make an elegant catch......to demanding to be introduced as The Greatest Living Ballplayer at any baseball related event he attended. I recall an interview (Dick Cavett?) with Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle and when the subject of Joe D came up Mick bit his tongue but Willie ripped him a new one.

 

[John in Covina]

Although fictional, I really like to watch the movie "The Natural" i have the director's edition which has a few more scenes that do add to the movie. For me Baseball is an amazing sport with team work and as Al says in the Untouchables individual acheivement. In its heart it is basically the same game as it was in the early days.

I love to hear about the Brooklyn Dodgers and the NY Giants and the Yankees the best team money can buy was what my friends always said about the Yankees.

Ken Burns documantary "Baseball" that he did ages ago is a great one to watch if you want to learn about the sport and its history.

 

[Caleb Moore]

I never cared much for Joe DiMaggio. He was a prima donna......from basically causing Mickey Mantle's devastating knee injury by not waving him off a ball in the outfield until he was sure that he could make an elegant catch......to demanding to be introduced as The Greatest Living Ballplayer at any baseball related event he attended. I recall an interview (Dick Cavett?) with Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle and when the subject of Joe D came up Mick bit his tongue but Willie ripped him a new one.

Believe me, Mays has no shortage of ego, either. He will be the first one to tell you how great he was.