“Out in right field — it’s easy ya know” — Noel Paul Stookey
August 26, 2009
BILLY SUNDAY Chicago White Stockings
As I was picking up my suitcases at the airport in Savannah the other day, my cell phone rang. It was my brother, who wanted to know when major league baseball players stopped leaving their gloves on the field while their team was at bat. And why did they do that in the first place?
Between us, my brother and I have been working for years on collecting all human knowledge. This was just the latest installment. The only answer I had at the moment, as I yanked a suitcase off the carousel, was that the practice was still in place when I first went to a game at Yankee Stadium in 1951, and I was certain it had been discontinued by ’57 or ’58. So my guess was that it stopped in the early ’50s.
Since then, I learned that a rule requiring that all equipment be removed from the field at the end of each half inning was adopted in 1953 and took effect for the 1954 season.
As for how the practice began, the information is sketchy. It is certain that when organized baseball emerged in the middle of the 19th century, fielders didn’t wear gloves at all. When gloves first appeared, on an individual basis, they were work gloves — probably used to protect an injured finger or hand — and a player would stuff those gloves in his pocket when he left the field.
ADMIRAL SCHLEI New York Giants
As gloves made specifically for baseball appeared, they were too large to fit in a pocket, so that was no longer an option. Those early gloves were left on the field at the end of a half inning because they were used by players on both teams. As gloves and mitts became more customized, players no longer shared them, but they continued to leave them on the field. If a thrown or batted ball hit a glove that was lying on the field, that ball was in play. If a fielder tripped over a glove, that was his tough luck.
The rule adopted in 1953 was in a way based on the idea that a glove lying on a field constituted a hazard to navigation. Gloves and mitts by that time had become much larger than their forbears — though not nearly as large as those in use today — that baseball officials decided the practice should be discontinued.
HARRY DAVIS Philadelphia Athletics
The fact that gloves were left on the field for so many years suggests that there weren’t many incidents in which players were injured or the outcome of a game was affected. That doesn’t mean there were never repercussions from the odd habit. On September 28, 1905, for instance, Harry Davis of the Philadelphia Athletics hit a ball that struck a glove left on the outfield grass by teammate Topsy Hartsel, and the carom enabled Hartsel to score the winning run in a 3-2 victory over the Chicago White Sox.
… and it’s gone!
August 10, 2009
GABBY HARNETT baseball card
The Boston Globe has a touching little story about Sara Bejoian, a Watertown woman who carried on a friendly baseball rivalry with her husband, Jim, who died last year when the couple had been married just shy of 54 years. Sara was a Red Sox fan and Jim rooted for the Yankees.
The point of the story was that Sara has agreed to throw out the first ball at an old-time baseball game, as a tribute to her late husband. The account by Peter DeMarco includes this sentence: “Jim Bejoian’s passion for the sport extended to the Oldtime Baseball Game, an annual charity game held at St. Peter’s Field in Cambridge in which local amateurs dress in uniforms from bygone teams and swing wooden bats in the gloaming of a late-summer night.”
What caught my eye in that sentence was the word “gloaming,” a favorite word of mine, but a word that has been neglected to the point that it is practically extinct. “Gloaming” means “twilight” or “dusk.” To my ear, each of those terms has its own connotation, each suggests a different atmosphere in those moments after sunset. Gloaming has a kind of a brooding sound.
Baseball fans — I mean fans — know that the word “gloaming” occupies a special place in the history of the game. It is associated with a game between the Chicago Cubs and the Pittsburgh Pirates at Wrigley Field on Sept. 28, 1938. The Cubs were a half game behind the Pirates in the National League pennant race, and their record for September up to that point was 18 wins, 3 losses, and a tie.
GABBY HARTNETT
On Sept. 28, the teams were locked in a 5-5 tie in the bottom of the ninth inning. The sun had set, and night was coming on. There were no lights at Wrigley Field, so when Cubs playing manager Gabby Hartnett came to bat with two men out, it was clear to everyone that if he didn’t reach base, the umpires would end the game in a tie. With two strikes on him, Hartnett hit the ball into the darkness. The Cubs won and, three days later, clinched the pennant. The event has been known ever since as “the home run in the gloaming,” and what expression could capture it better?
I hope Hartnett is still an iconic figure in Chicago, where he played for 18 years. He certainly isn’t one in the everyday vernacular of baseball. He deserves better. He was one of the leading catchers of his time and an excellent hitter. He was a six-time All Star and an MVP, and he is a member of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
In addition to his outstanding record as a hitter and fielder, Hartnett took part in two more of baseball’s legendary moments, at least one of which actually happened. He was behind the plate in the 1934 All Star Game, when Carl Hubbell struck out in succession Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx, Al Simmons, and Joe Cronin. And Hartnett was the catcher in the 1932 World Series when Babe Ruth ostensibly called his own home run to centerfield.
I think I’ll start slipping “gloaming” into the conversation and see if I can inspire others to do the same.
The Globe story is at this link:
“Say it ain’t so, Joe.”
July 28, 2009
PETE ROSE
There has been a story circulating this week to the effect that Bud Selig, to whom some refer as the commissioner of baseball, may be softening the Major Leagues’ position regarding Pete Rose. At present, Rose, who has admitted gambling on baseball when he was a player and a manager, is barred from having anything to do with baseball beyond buying a ticket as do the rest of the hoi poloi. The Major League ban also means that Rose can’t be elected to the baseball Hall of Fame.
This last is understandable. If you go to Cooperstown and take the time to read the plaques that record the accomplishments of the 202 men inducted so far, you’ll find that by a singular coincidence there wasn’t an SOB among them. Or, at least, you will get that impression. It’s akin to reading the sanitized biographies of the presidents on the White House web site.
ANDRIAN 'CAP' ANSON
One of the men you can read about at Cooperstown is Adrian “Cap” Anson who played 27 straight seasons in the Major Leagues in the 18th century and was the first player to accumulate 3,000 base hits. His plaque briefly summarizes his accomplishments, but it really doesn’t give him enough credit for his influence. Anson was the first real “superstar” in baseball, and he carried a lot of weight. Using his clout, he played a decisive public role in banning black players from Major League baseball, an injustice that lasted from 1888 until 1947, destroying the hopes of thousands of potential big league players.
While you will find Cap Anson represented in the Hall of Fame, you will not find Joe Jackson.
JOE JACKSON
Jackson was banned from baseball along with seven other Chicago White Sox players who were accused of participating in a scheme to throw the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. There are conflicting reports about how culpable Jackson was in the scheme; he himself admitted to taking a $5,000 bribe though there is no documented evidence that he did anything to give the series to Cincinnati. In fact, he had a fine series at the plate. A criminal jury acquitted Jackson and the others, but Kennesaw Mountain Landis, the first baseball commissioner, banned them from the game. There is a perenniel campaign to permit election of Jackson to the Hall of Fame, both because of the perception of many that he was a hapless dupe, and because he was one of the greatest players in the history of the game — a man with a .356 lifetime batting average and a .408 season to his credit.
What does it mean to be enshrined in the Hall of Fame — that a man was Prince Charming or that he was a good ballplayer? Pete Rose is an obnoxious character but, on balance, Cap Anson did a lot more harm to baseball. Jackson, so far as anyone can show, did none.
Selig said just ten years ago that Jackson’s case was under review. I hope Rose isn’t holding his breath.
“But baseball has marked the time.”
July 8, 2009
BOSTON RED SOX
One thing that is unlikely to appear in a photograph of Boston Red Sox players is red socks. Players for Boston, like most players in professional baseball, have forsaken the knickers and high stockings that have been a distinctive element of the baseball uniform for 140 years.
According to the National Baseball Hall of Fame web site, knickers were introduced to the game in 1868 by the Cincinnati Red Stockings. The innovation met with some resistence. The Hall of Fame site reports as follows:
“The showing of the manly leg in varied-colored hose … [was] unheard of, and when [team captain] Harry Wright occasionally appeared with the scarlet stockings, young ladies’ faces blushed as red, and many high-toned members of the club denounced the innovation as immoral and indecent.”
ALEX RODRIGUEZ
But stockings quickly became de riguer in the game and remained so for many decades. Now, however, in this epoch in which everyone does what he pleases, this tie to the past has been withering away. During last night’s game between the Yankees and the Twins, I counted only four men on the field wearing high stockings: Alex Rodriguez, R.A. Dickey, Joe Crede, and Brendan Harris. The rest looked like they were wearing their pajama bottoms — and walking on the hems at that. Besides looking foolish, they’re monkeying with something essential about The Game — its tradition.
Remember what Terence Mann told Ray Kinsella at the climax of “Field of Dreams”?
“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.”
1869 CINCINNAT RED STOCKINGS
Good, good grief
May 30, 2009
I just read — for the purpose of reviewing it — a book called “Security Blankets: How Peanuts ® Touched Our Lives.” This is a collection of about 50 stories from people who feel their time on earth has been enriched somehow by the comic strip, the books, the TV specials, the tchatchke, or by some encounter with Charles Schulz himself.
It appears to me that the book is an attempt to reinvigorate the trade in stuffed Snoopy dolls (referred to repeatedly in the book as “plush”) or other “collectibles.” Maybe the Peanuts market is suffering from the combined effects of Schulz’s absence, the aging of the Peanuts Generation, and the paucity of disposable income.
THE RED BARON
That’s not to say that there aren’t some good stories here. One of my favorites was submitted by a man whose father was not only a World War I flying ace, but who piloted a Sopwith Camel and, in August 1918, actually outran the Red Baron himself.
Several of the people whose little essays appear in this book said, in one way or another, that their own cares or frustrations became a little easier to bear when they realized that others shared their feelings. Of course, the “others” were fictional cartoon characters, although many a Tuesday night meeting in the basement of a Unitarian church might have provided the same kind of support, except in flesh and blood rather than pen and ink. The writers in “Security Blankets” may have been unwittingly identifying with the often solitary and unfulfilled artist behind those characters rather than with the characters themselves.
MICKEY MANTLE
Still, these stories reminded me of a book I read that contained a collection of letters that had been written to Mickey Mantle whose family published them after his death in order to raise money for an organ-transplant program. The letters told Mantle how much he had meant either to the writer or to someone in the writer’s life — a father, perhaps. Mantle, I have read elsewhere, was always mystified by sentiments of this kind. He felt, I suppose, like Louie DePalma — the “Taxi” character — who said of his girlfriend: “She sees something in me … something that’s not there.”
But both cases may be related to an idea I passed along to my students last semester — that once a writer has published a story, a poem, or an essay, he no longer owns it. Once he has published it, it belongs to the reader — and to each individual reader in a unique way. Neither the writer nor the writer’s critics can tell the reader what the reader can infer from the work. Maybe that’s true of cartoonists and swtich hitters, too: that once they have led their lives, they cannot control, nor contradict, what people infer from them.
Let’s play two … or more.
May 19, 2009
JOE OESCHGER
The announcement that post-season baseball games broadcast on Fox will start before bedtime this year is better than no progress at all. Games that were running well over three hours and ending after midnight on the East Coast were hard on fans who have to get up early, and they were precluding many kids from watching – and that’s an audience baseball shouldn’t take for granted.
Of course it wasn’t the bleary-eyed fan or the starry-eyed kid who inspired this change. It was the poor ratings for last year’s American League playoffs and for the World Series, both of which threaten revenues from advertisers who were probably nodding off while their own commercials were playing.
If the advertisers get nervous enough, maybe the post-season process itself will be streamlined so that it isn’t crowding Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, the announcement by Fox that many of the games will start earlier has evoked comments about the fact that the games are too long no matter how early they start. I, for one, am in no hurry when I watch baseball on TV or listen to it on the radio, and at the prices we pay now to see a game in person, I figure the longer it takes the more I get for my money. After all, one of the things that makes baseball unique among American spectator sports is that it has no clock; a game – in theory, at least – can go on forever. That’s what Katie Casey was referring to in the lyric of Jack Norworth’s song: “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack. I don’t care if I never get back.”
To some extent, nothing can be done about the length of games that are held hostage to the radio and TV commercial schedule. The plate umpire still carries out his responsibility and strides ominously toward the mound if the pitcher and catcher confer for more than 20 seconds, but he’s not about to interfere with the shilling that creates the wide gap between half innings. Nor will he reprimand the batter who steps out after every pitch to adjust his golfing gloves.
LEON CADORE
To put the modern, televised, 3 1/2-hour game in perspective, the Boston Braves and the Brooklyn Dodgers played to a 1-1 tie in 26 innings on May 1, 1920. That game took 3 hours and 50 minutes so the teams, in effect, played one game every hour and a quarter. There was no pitch count in those days, fewer calls to the bullpen, and the starting pitchers – Joe Oeschger for Boston and Leon Cadore for Brooklyn – both pitched complete games (and, incidentally, lived to pitch another day). There was no lack of offense – a total of 25 hits – and there was a total of 8 walks. To look at it another way, on Sept. 26, 1926, the St. Louis Browns and the New York Yankees played a nine-inning game in 55 minutes, the Browns winning 6-2. That projects to a little less than 2 3/4 hours if that game had gone on at the same pace for 26 innings.
When I was a kid in elementary school, and the World Series was played in the daytime as God intended, instruction was suspended, and we were told to work quietly at our desks while the play-by-play was piped in through the public-address system. It all depends on what’s important to you.
Ducks on a Pond
May 1, 2009
static.howstuffworks.com
Mike Adamick, blogging for the Los Angeles Times, says his three-year-old daughter has become fascinated with the jargon of baseball. For instance, she loves the term “dying quail,” which refers to a fly ball that suddenly loses steam and drops to the ground. “Where are the quails?” the little one asks whenever a ball is hit into the air. She also likes “worm burner,” a hot ground ball that skids across the grass. “Poor worms!” she says after every hard grounder.
I recently gave a short talk about this subject as part of a job application process. I asked the group I was speaking to if any of them were baseball fans, and several hands went up, but none of them could decipher the terms “can of corn” (an easily caught fly ball), “cup of coffee” (a player’s short stay in the major leagues before returning to the minors), or “cutting the pie” (deliberately rounding first or third base without touching the bag). They were befuddled by the hypothetical statement: “Jeter tried to shoot the cripple with ducks on the pond, but he started a Lawrence Welk,” which means that, with the bases loaded, Jeter tried to get a hit off an ineffective pitcher but grounded into a double play from the pitcher to the catcher to the first baseman – a play that is scored one-two-three (a-one and a-two and a-three).
My audience was able, however, to distinguish between the hot dog who shows off making one-handed grabs and the hot dog that costs six bucks at the concession stand.
The land of the free
April 3, 2009
I realized this morning while I was shaving that when I first visited Yankee Stadium, it was not yet 30 years old. (Shaving is like hitting, Yogi: It’ s better not to think while you’re doing it.) Anyway, that calculation got me to thinking about the new “Yankee Stadium” – as though there could be such a thing – and I got angry all over again about Macombs Dam Park, a wonderful, expansive facility that was destroyed so that the Yankees could build a stadium better suited to fleecing high rollers. The park is supposed to be replaced – at an enormous expense to taxpayers, most of whom will not benefit at all from either the new stadium or the so-called replacement parks. And no matter what the city does, when it gets around to it, it will never really replace Macombs Dam Park, which was a jewel in the midst of a hard-knocks, congested neighborhood. If the Yankees and the city wanted to tell the people of the South Bronx once and for all, “You don’t matter,” this was the way to do it.
“His life was gentle ….”
March 25, 2009
GEORGE KELL
I see by the papers that George Kell died yesterday. He was 86 years old. Kell played major league baseball, and played it well, for 15 years. He narrowly beat Ted Williams out of the 1949 American League batting title, and he is a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame – based largely on his tenure as the third baseman for the Detroit Tigers. The story about the 1949 batting race is one of the most often repeated episodes in the history of the game. On the last day of the season, the Tigers were playing the Cleveland Indians who inexplicably sent in their prize starter, Bob Feller, as a reliever. With Williams and Kell tied for the title, Tigers manager Red Rolfe suggested a pinch hitter for Kell in the ninth inning, but Kell refused to sit on the bench and win the title by not making an out. As it turned out, the game ended before he had to bat, and he beat Williams .34291 to .34276. Kell was reputedly one of the best contact hitters in the modern era. He was also a man universally admired, both as a baseball player and a baseball broadcaster. People speak of him with affection that a later generation might not have for, say, Alex or Manny Rodriguez. An bit of information in the reports of Kell’s death was that he lived in the same house in Swifton, Ark., from his birth in 1922 until the house burned down in 2001, and then lived – and died – in the house that was built on the same spot. It was an appropriate detail in the biography of a man known for steadiness, dependability. A salesman who used to call at my grandfather’s grocery store told me one day that he figured that I would stay in that store in that town for the rest of my life, as had my father and his father before him. That wasn’t for him, he said, he was going to see the world. I don’t know whatever happened to that man, but I doubt that his death will evoke the kind of sentiment I have seen today in papers around the country, prompted by the passing of a quiet man from Arkansas who never strayed from home.
“How about that?”
March 2, 2009
HANK BAUER, TOM STURDIVANT, and MICKEY MANTLE
It wasn’t enough that this snow storm is disrupting my life; I had to wake up to the news that Tom Sturdivant had died. There may be more glamor attached to Yankee teams of other eras, but when names like Tom Sturdivant, Art Ditmar, Andy Carey, and Hank Bauer bob to the surface, I am again sitting on a summer evening on the step in front of our grocery store, tuning my GE transistor radio until I hear the voices of Mel Allen and Red Barber. I was in paradise, and I knew it: I’m glad of that, at least. During Sturdivant’s brief time as a top starter for the Yankees, I was in high school, I wasn’t serious about life, and others were looking after my welfare. I wasn’t concerned because Mickey Mantle was a drunk, Billy Martin was a brawler, and Enos Slaughter was a racist. These were my gods when they were on the field; I asked nothing more. I won’t look back at more recent Yankee teams with the same naive sentiment – and not because the teams and players have changed, except in the details of their fallibility. I already know – intellectually, at least – that I’ll never sit on that front step again and listen to those southern voices turn the progress of a game into poetry. On this cold day, I didn’t need to be reminded.
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