Category Archives: Sports

Cookies in the Fields

Professional Baseball has had some highly creative owners in its history.  Some were showmen trying to improve fan participation and attendance.  Some wanted to improve the game.  Some left us with features that lived well beyond themselves, and have become integrated into American culture.

Bill Veeck

The first such owner who comes to my mind is Bill Veeck, Jr (1914-1986), owner of the Cleveland Indians (now: Guardians), St Louis Browns and Chicago White Sox.

New scoreboard at Wrigley goes operational

Veeck Jr had some ideas to help dwindling attendance in the Depression 1930s.  As a 13-year-old lad working for his dad (Bill Sr was an executive with the Chicago Cubs and eventually club president) young Bill dreamed up the concept of the outfield walls covered in ivy.  Ten years later, as a team executive (his dad passed away in 1933) he had the now famous ivy on Wrigley Field’s outfield walls planted.

Veeck had the also now famous Wrigley scoreboard installed in center field. Modified several times over the decades, it still carries that feeling of yester-year.  It’s been recognizable by every MLB fan for many decades. It’s one of only two such hand operated scoreboards in baseball; the other is Fenway in Boston.

In the ‘30s Veeck was the first to suggest inter-league competition.  He surely had an eye toward a Chicago northside-southside rivalry (Cubs, Sox).  That took decades to be accepted.

Ivy going in at Wrigley, 1937

As a baseball whiz and promoter, the apple didn’t fall far from the tree.

Veeck Jr. served in the Marines in WW2 for 3 years, suffering an injury in an artillery accident that ended his military duty … and cost him his right leg.

Veeck Jr. still had baseball in his bones.  Now a recovered veteran, he took on heavy loans to become the controlling owner of the Cleveland “Indians” in 1946, aged only 32.  Here he’s remembered for signing Larry Doby, the first African-American in the American League. [1]

He also signed pitcher Satchel Paige. He was 42 years old!

Eddie Gaedel, shortest person to ever appear in a Major League Baseball game makes his only appearance.

After a sensational Hall of Fame career in the Negro Leagues, Paige had finally moved to the Majors; until recently completely “mayonnaise”. He’s still the oldest rookie in MLB history.   On the roster for fewer than two months of that rookie ‘48 season (the last two months, in the pennant stretch), Paige was starting pitcher 7 times, recording six wins against one loss, with a stellar 2.48 ERA, while also tossing two shutouts. And an opposition batting average of only .228. The Indians went on to win the World Series. [More on Paige later] Oh, by the way, the Indians set an attendance record that year, over 2.8 million.

Veeck sold the Indians and bought the Saint Louis Browns.  With low attendance and poor teams Veeck tried to work his promotional magic.  Most famously he signed (for one game) the 3 foot – 7 inch tall (or short) Eddie Gaedel to take one single At Bat.  Wearing the number 1/8 he walked on four pitches. [He bowed to the crowd as he waltzed to first base; he was immediately removed for a pinch runner]

Veeck also had a “Grandstand Managers Night” — Fans were polled to make decisions in critical game situations.  The promos all failed to achieve significant attendance increases.  In 1954, Veeck was forced to sell the team to a group of investors, who moved the team to Baltimore (renaming the team the Orioles).

A few years later Veeck bought the Chicago White Sox.  Here he originated shooting off fireworks after games. Under Veeck the White Sox were the first team to put players’ names on their jerseys.  More stuff too: “exploding” score boards with fireworks after homeruns, Disco Demolition Night (tix were only 98 cents; riots ensued, leading to a forfeit).  His son, Mike, also didn’t fall far from the family tree.  Among other things, while running the “Sox”, he had a “Tonya Harding Bat Night.”  No kidding. She even appeared as part of the promo and actually signed baseball bats.  As owner of a Florida class A team, he scheduled “Vasectomy Night” … on Father’s Day.  Thankfully, the “promo” was cancelled.

Bill Veeck Jr is in the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame.

Charlie O. Finley

Better known, to me and my generation I suppose, is Charlie O. Finley.  He bought the Kansas City Athletics in 1960 (formerly Philadelphia A’s).  He ditched the traditional dingy grey and white uniforms for bright gold and green hues.  Considered garish at the time, many teams today sport bright, colorful uniforms. Although not every game.

Charlie’s favorite mascot: Charlie-O, the mule [photo credit SportsBroadcastJournal.com]

He also thought the team needed a mascot.  A mule.  Yep, a mule for a mascot. A real live mule. Maybe because they’re known for being stubborn <?>. He named it “Charlie-O” (after himself) and dressed it in the team colors. For a while, Finley had relief pitchers ride in on Charlie from the bullpen when they entered the game.  Fans loved it.  Lawyers and insurers not so much.  The mule remained, but riding it did not last long.  [credit SportsBroadcastJournal.com]

Mr Finley rides his mascot

The A’s had a horrendous season in 1965.  In that season Finley put a pitch clock on the scoreboard. He hoped it would make pitchers and catchers aware of how the time between pitches extended a game’s duration.  Didn’t work well then, but now in the 2020s it’s part of every game – as a rule, not a suggestion.

Two of his most memorable stunts came near the end of that miserable ’65 season. First, he had his shortstop, Bert Campaneris, play all 9 positions in a single game – one for each inning.

Soon after, Finley signed the aforesaid Satchel Paige, now 59 years old!  Paige, who would be voted into the MLB Hall of Fame just 6 years later, had not pitched professionally in 12 years.  And even that was at a very, very advanced age for a Major Leaguer.

On September 25, in his sole appearance that year, Paige strode proudly to the mound as the starting pitcher against the Boston Red Sox at the A’s KC stadium: Municipal Stadium. [2] Paige was magnificent, going three scoreless innings, allowing only a single hit.

In ’65 the Red Sox were also struggling, but it was no cakewalk for Paige: The Sox had Hall of Famer Carl Yastrzemski and slugger Tony Conigliaro. Only 9,300 attended the game.  [Yaz got the only hit, a double.]

In KC, Finley continually struggled with low attendance and poor performance.  He moved the team to Oakland in 1968, where they’ve been ever since. Well, for now, at least.

While the team achieved a three-peat, 1972-4, three consecutive World Series wins, he really got rolling with innovation and promotion.  He kept the 1,200 lb mule; Charlie-O followed the team to Oakland.

[When Finley sold the A’s in 1981, the mule was eliminated as mascot.  The A’s reverted to their traditional decades-old mascot: an elephant.  But only on the logo.]

More from Charles O. Finley:

Fans couldn’t see the baseball?  He proposed orange baseballs; even getting authorization to try them in spring training games.  The idea didn’t go far and never made it into a regular season game.

Game too slow?  Too boring? He proposed the count going only to 3-balls and 2-strikes.  The late ‘60s games had been dominated by pitchers and seemed boring to many fans.  He thought the 3-ball walk would increase scoring.  And to a quicker game. Tried in a spring training game, the approach led to a game with 19 walks.  Hardly entertaining.

Boring Schedule? Finley proposed interleague play in the early ‘70s (as Veeck had done decades before); this finally came to fruition in 1997, only a year after he died.  It’s been part of MLB ever since.

Rollie Fingers and his famous handle bar mustache

During the A’s great success of the 1970s slugger Reggie Jackson refused to shave his mustache.  Wishing to not appear as caving in to his star, Finley encouraged all the players to grow facial hair; at least one chose exotic facial hair, Rollie Fingers.  Most of the team joined in with their own styles.  The ‘60s had changed a lot of things.  People were eager to express themselves, and Finley his players that freedom. [3]

He instigated Hot Pants Day and Mustache Day at the stadium.

He was also instrumental in getting the Designated Hitter into professional baseball.  I’m not a supporter, but this idea won over the American League — and the non-position “position” DH-role has been part of American League baseball since 1973.  Since Covid, it’s also in the National League (ugg).

It’s 1973.  Oakland resident Stanley Burrell was 11 years old and a baseball fanatic.  He was particularly fanatic about the Athletics (A’s) [that’s what “fan” means, it’s short for “fanatic.”]  He’d hang out in front of the stadium before games, dancing and even doing James Brown Splits getting the fans revved up as they came through the parking lot.  He had been emulating Brown and other performers for quite a few years.  His other hobbies included writing poetry and lyrics and music that he could submit for product promotional jingles.

One day Finley saw young Stanley dancing. He was quite amused.  So, he hired Stanley, as a lark, for the team’s executive vice-president position.   As VP, he traveled with the team on road trips, doubling as the team’s bat boy.

After college Burrell tried to follow his dreams of professional baseball and communications.  He flamed out at both.  The US Navy offered stability, discipline and a salary.  He needed all three.

Long story short, after his 3-year military career, Stanley went back to his original passions: singing, lyric writing and dancing.  As he performed successfully more and more often, first locally then branching out, he took the nickname “MC” – for Master of Ceremonies.  Soon after he also took the name Hammer:  MC Hammer.

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The last Finley innovation we’ll address is Ball Girls.  During a baseball game many balls are grounded foul, just outside the 1st and 3rd base lines.  This might occur a dozen or two times each game. The balls eventually hit the fan/field wall and roll or bounce along the wall, toward the outfield.  For many decades teams have placed a “retriever”, usually a teen boy, out along the line to pick up or catch these foul balls before they ricochet into the outfield.

Finley said he wanted more female participation in the game; but he was surely looking for more male interest too.  In 1971 he hired two striking local 15-year-old blonde girls as the first Ball Girls —   Debra Jane “Debbi” Sivyer and Marry Barry.

Debbi Sivyer on delivering for a cookie and milk break

They were fetching to behold, especially for males’ eyes, attired in short and rather tight white shorts (Hot Pants), tops of white, gold or green, and usually long stockings, often of A’s gold.  They were a huge hit.

Creative Debbi Sivyer began a cookie break for the umpires. She served them her homemade cookies with milk.  Sometimes coffee or water, too. Young Ms. Sivyer was passionate about her baking hobby; she’d been working on her cookie recipes for years.  She used the five dollar per hour ball girl wages to purchase baking supplies.

The ball girl thing died out pretty rapidly, a couple of years – the players’ wives started complaining. First Finley adapted by having the young ladies wear less skimpy clothes and white slacks.  Not enough. To keep “matrimonial stability” Finley phased them out.

No worries for Debbi Sivyer.  She was soon Homecoming Queen and graduated at 17.  While attending Foothills College, in the south Bay area, she met a successful businessman who had founded his own successful investment company, Randall Keith Fields.  They were soon married, he was 29, she 19.  She took his surname, Fields.  She became Mrs. Fields.

Her cookies were good.  Great. Everyone loved them. The possibility of a profitable business began to appear.  Starting slowly, by beating the pavement, alone, and word-of-mouth, gritted out a profitable business.  Then Mrs. Field’s cookie business began growing and growing.  She ran and eventually expanded the business to many hundreds of franchises and many countries. Despite Randy’s business acumen, he poo-poo’d the idea for the first several years.  He did get “on-board” the cookie team as its success began blooming, becoming  company chairman and bringing the Fields Cookie company into the computer age by developing software and company databases for building needs, inventory, ingredients and product delivery.  This was pretty important as the company was expanding rapidly.  Debi and Randy had five daughters before they split in ’97.  Debi was the visionary and creative spirit of the team. She sold the company in the early ‘90s for $100 million.  Not bad at all.  She remains their spokesperson.

She’d had a dream and a plan all along.  And she made it work.

Debbi married Michael Rose a few years later. He was the former CEO of Holiday Corporation, and later Harrah’s after it merged with Holiday – mostly managing hospitality and casino operations.  They remained wed until his recent death, in 2017.

Ball girls Marry Barry and Debbi Sivyer Fields remain friends today.  Debbi now resides in Nashville, TN; Marry in Pleasant Hills, CA.  They’ve been featured at A’s games on throwback days, even throwing out the ceremonial “first pitch.”

Thanks for reading.

Joe Girard, 2024 ©

Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com

 

Many of these characters have quite the collection of life stories.  Paige, Gaedel, Conigliaro, Yaz, Doby.  Even the ones mentioned at length here have much more.  But you get the idea.

[1] Indian Team Manager and Player Lou Boudreaux took Doby around to meet his new teammates.  They were all eager to meet him and put their hands out for a shake.  Three players did not.  Veeck removed all three from the roster as soon as he could.

[2] In wonderful irony, or perhaps coincidence, the new Kansas City Municipal Stadium was built on the very site where the Negro League team Kansas City Monarchs had played – the team Paige played for when he made many of his significant successes in the Negro Leagues.  It’s about a half-mile walk from the Negro Leagues Museum, a must see for any fan. Next door is the American Jazz museum, and of course, there is great KC-style BBQ all around.

[3] There are other versions of this facial hair story.  I picked the one that seemed most likely and entertaining to me.  “I refuse to shave” is so Reggie Jackson.

The Two Minute Warning

Two Minute Warning: An Essay in Two Parts

Bear with me here.  Part II builds from Part and is completely different

Part I

How they used to do it, in days of yore

From its origins, many decades ago, American Football still employs the Two Minute Warning.  Off the top of my head, I’ll report the basic idea and history of the warning.  [My brain might be foggy here.  I stopped watching NFL football long before it was cool to do so: stop.  I can’t see spending 3-1/2 hours watching a game with 12 minutes of action. The world laughs at us]. [1]

Long, long ago, on American football fields flung far and wide, there were no stadium clocks showing time remaining.  This was annoying for fans, players and coaches alike.  The head referee on the field, or member of the referee staff so assigned, kept the “official” time on the field.  This was performed for decades with a rather pedestrian wind-up time piece.  Pre-WWI this was likely done with a pocket watch with a man-in-the-loop faux timer function … or not. Oy veh!

Of course, in such a set-up, no one but the referee could know the exact official time.  This is significant at the end of each half.  Not as important in the 1st half, but crucial in the 2nd half, which is the end of the game. Imagine a team driving toward a winning score with a minute, or two, or three minutes left. The game suddenly ends.  Whaaaat? They absolutely must know the precise time remaining for efficient play calling.

Enter the Two Minute warning.  The game is stopped at 2:00 minutes remaining. The referee calls time out and walks to each coach and informs them:  “Coach, 2 minutes remain.”

Perceptions of time can differ among people experiencing the same things – even for the same person in different situations. Coaches on the sidelines would typically have their own timekeeper to inform them with a good estimate of how much time remains.

Anyhow. Enter the stadium clock. I don’t know exactly when this happened, it doesn’t matter much, but let’s guess early- to mid-20th century.

Good ol’ analog stadium clock. Probably in NYC’s Polo Grounds.

The sad fact is, this didn’t totally fix the problem.  Though the game had a timer, or clock operator, they could only made their best guess as to when the clock should stop and start, based on referee whistles and motions.  In other words: a SWAG.  At the two-minute warning from the time-keeping referee, the timer would re-set the clock to 2:00.  However obvious it might be, errors of a few seconds here and a few seconds there accumulated and the stadium clock began to drift away again.  By the time the two minutes are over, the game clock is not quite the same as the stadium clock.

Same problem, not as bad.

Successful technology changes and improves things.  At some point – doesn’t really matter when but let’s guess early 1970s – radio communication allowed instant synchronizing with the official time and the stadium clock.  Stadium clocks became digital; not just two analog hands rotating on a dial. When the clock drifted from referee-official-time we hear the ref say something like “Add 3 seconds to the clock.”

Great!! Problem completely solved.  No more Two Minute Warning needed! But … under the leadership of entrepreneurial experts, like former NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle, the NFL grew to become a colossal money generating machine.  One of the many ways they “exploited” the consumers and fans was to keep the Two Minute Warning, despite its uselessness with regard to the game. Its duration is usually of two-minute duration (don’t confuse the duration with the time it happens) – a free timeout for the trailing or driving team, by the way.   The NFL had grown addicted to selling that TV time to advertisers.

This is the time in a game when fans are most likely most glued to a TV – at home or in a bar – especially in a tight game. It’s expensive to advertise then. During the regular season 30-second ads during the 2-minute warning cost, SWAG, up to $1 million.  During the Super Bowl many times higher. This is very expensive to the advertisers and lucrative to the NFL.  (Actually, that TV time had already been sold to the TV network that had paid for the exclusive right to broadcast the game. Who then re-sold it.  But the general idea remained.)

So here we are.  A useless 2-minute warning that’s not needed at all.  Except to make money.

 

Part II

As the Two Minute Warning is now useless to the actual game of football, wouldn’t it be interesting to transfer a how-much-remains information spot over to some other arena of life, where it might actually be useful?

Warning.  Part II contains both oblique and somewhat humorous references to death.  If you or anyone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 988.  If under medical or psychiatric care call the provider immediately.

A football-based philosophic question comes up from time to time.  As the football Two Minute Warning was used to tell us how much time remained… what if we had an End-of-Life Two Minute Warning?

An angelic soothing voice hits the brain: “We thought you should know how much time remains. You are nearing the end of your earthly presence. At the end of this sentence, you have two minutes.”  Poof, gone.

Clarence the angel announces to George Bailey — not that his life is ending — but that he is there to save it. It’s a Wonderful Life.

Two minutes would, of course, be rather useless.  Even if you’ve used the two minute “free” time out and saved you unused time outs during the last half of life. Since it’s fantasy we should design a more ideal timing of the warning.

Circling back to only two minutes (don’t ya love how talking heads say “circle back” so often?  Rather replaced “frankly” and “at the end of the day.”  But I digress.)

What would you do?

Although imaginary, … what if?  What if a reasonably healthy person got the message?  You have two minutes.

Now, what would you do?  It’s kind of a Rorschach test, no?  Not a realistic question at all, so there’s no right answer.

Me?

Well, first I’m gonna apply “Football two minutes.”  It’s all fantasy anyhow.  The two-minute time out lasts two minutes itself.

I think I can get up to 6 minutes more if I take time outs.  With dead ball time outs, a bit more.  So, maybe up to 10 minutes.

In one last flash of luck, I’m home in the kitchen, and my wife is home too. There’s a nice bottle of tequila in the cabinet.

“Hey honey! Come in here quick!  Urgent news! Really, really Urgent.”

She enters.  What, what!?  I take a shot of tequila and chase it with a can of cheap American lager.

I’d make sure my wife had access to my file of passwords.  Big kiss. Sit on the couch.  Go through our lists.  Find the Wills.”

“I guess I’ll see ya on the flip side.”  Hug.

Look, no BA test

Send a quick prayer to mom, “Sorry for the late notice, but I might be dropping in to see you in a little bit; but maybe not, I don’t know how the process works from here. There’s no bus schedule.”

Then I hope the buzz kicks in (that’s why I did the shooter/chaser first) and hold on for the roller coaster ride, on the couch with Audrey, both trying to remain calm.  [Now if there’s a “Golden Gate” or “Pearly Gate?” If so, then I wonder: does Peter, or whoever, give a Blood Alcohol test?  Probably not, I’m just a ghost, right?] Then the ride starts.  Mom or dad, or someone already passed on who is emotionally close, shows up to serve as my escort.  Round and round it goes. Where it stops, we don’t really know.

Or better.  Let’s choose a bit longer period.  Two weeks, or two months.  Time to get your “poop in a group.” Finish that list, check off those items.  Stage a send-off party.  Indulge yourself.  Get right with your Creator, whatever you conceive them* to be.  Go through memorabilia. Select a mortuary. Then, as satisfied as you could possibly be, it’s off you go.  * [“Them,” since: who am I to presume a gender?]

May you all have a long, healthy, active life.  You’ll never get that warning.  Spend at least a few minutes every day like they might be your last.  Share your love, be generous, be patient, be kind. [2] Be at peace with the world, your creator, and yourself.

Peace

Joe Girard © 2023

Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com

Author’s notes (footnotes follow):

[1] I hope some of my clever and sports-oriented readers noticed that I used a bear (Chicago Bear) picture next to the paragraph that bears the word “bear.”

[2] Based on Paul, Corinthians, 13.

Tick Tock

“There’s no tick tock on your electric clock,
But still your life runs down.”
from “Halfway to Heaven”
— composed and sung by Harry Chapin

Prologue

Among many conspicuous factoids that jump out at me as I observe the world in all its splendor is the astounding number of people who have achieved extraordinarily at young ages.

Usually I come across these individuals while doing research for some other thread. The Internet has made such research endeavors almost unbelievably easy, especially for one who grew up seeking information with only one option: going to the library and fumbling through frayed catalog cards and struggling with the Dewey Decimal system.  And, the internet has also made it easy to drift off onto tangents.

Book Cover: Chernow’s excellent and thorough biography on Hamilton

Examples are many. Alexander Hamilton and the young Lafayette of America’s birthing years.  Isaac Newton, at age 22 and on leave from university during the plague, whiled away his time musing about sundry things, like gravity, light, and fascinating aspects of mathematics.  This led him to the theory of gravity, and a whole new class of mathematics, integral calculus, to prove it.  And the nature of light.  And a method to compute Pi to many digits quite quickly. Then the plague ended.  He returned to school.

Even a partial list is imposing.  Alexander the Great pretty much conquered and ruled the world in his 20s; his accomplishments even intimidated Julius Caesar.  Joan of Arc was in her teens when she led the French to victory over the English. Nadia Comaneci, at age 14, was the first to score a perfect 10 in Olympics gymnastics.  The Beatles were 20-24 years old when they rode the wave of Beatlemania to #1 … in the world.

Speaking of music. This realm is not without more than a few other names, particularly those of the “27 Club”; great musical artists who perished at that age, including Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix. They all passed on from drug abuse complications.  Clean living is no guarantee however — JP Richardson, The Big Bopper, made it to 28, only to go down in a Beech Bonanza, in a foggy snowstorm in a field in Iowa, “the day the music died.”

Following are three short bios of individuals who lived and played with elan, achieved greatly — and left the scene — relatively young.  The Comet, The Sweet Georgian, and The Paderewski of Rag.

The Comet

My dad was born and raised in Chicago; I was born there. Although we moved to near Milwaukee when I was but an innocent lad of 6 years old, we remained loyal to     “Da Bears” and the Cubs for decades, despite all my new friends’ allegiance to the Braves (who dumped Milwaukee for Atlanta in 1966), later the Brewers, and of course, “the Pack.”

50s and 60s style rabbit ears, with aluminum foil

I remember trying to watch televised games from Chicago, some 90 miles away.  We’d string wire through the trees in the back yard, or sometimes I’d stand beside the TV, holding the rabbit-ear antennae just right, usually with aluminum foil wrapped around them in odd shapes (most called it “tin foil”).

“Got it! Don’t move Joe!”

Usually we failed, or the blurry images were barely visible through the “snow”; then we’d give up and listen to a Chicago radio station – that would be WGN, at 720 kHz on AM. As a historic Clear Channel, and at 50 kilowatts, a good reception was a high likelihood.

 

Gale Sayers, looks like rookie or sophomore pic

In 1965 a rookie arrived on the scene for our beloved Bears: Gale Sayers. An exciting running back — fast, shifty and elusive — who could also return kicks. Raised in Omaha, Nebraska, he attended and played football for Kansas University. There he was a two time All-American, picking up the nickname “Kansas Comet.” Of course, as a youngster I didn’t know any of that; I learned that years later by reading his autobiography.

But I did know he was very, very exciting… and annoying to Packers’ fans. I was into my teens — cleaning zit ejecta from the bathroom mirror — before I stopped drawing his number (“40”) on my shirts to wear during pick-up football games.

During a game against San Francisco, in his rookie season of 1965, my dad and I followed probably the most remarkable game a rookie ever had, or ever will have. Sayers scored six touchdowns, 4 by rushing, 1 on a pass (80 yards), and another on a punt return (85 yards).  It was a late season game, so Sayers’ skills were now well-known, and the 49ers had redesigned their defense and kick coverage specifically to stop Sayers. To no avail. [video highlights here]

We were of course aware the mighty Packers were playing an important game across the country, in Baltimore, that same day. Their most glamorous player, Paul Hornung, had been struggling for quite some time with injuries; most notably a neck injury that caused a pinched nerve, accompanied by numbness and “stingers” running down his arms.  He was having a mediocre season and had been forced to sit out a few games.  That he was playing at all is testament to his mental and physical toughness … and to the stupidity of American Football.

Paul Hornung scored five touchdowns that day, a Packer single-game record that still stands. The next few days all my excited Milwaukee friends wanted to tell me  about those five touchdowns.  In a voice that probably failed to conceal my satisfaction, despite its soft tone (I had a bad stammer, and it was not cool to be a Bears fan in Wisconsin, even way back then) I replied: you know, Sayers scored six.

In 1965, Sayers set the NFL single season record of 22 touchdowns, coincidently at age 22.  It’s been surpassed eleven times now, but he did that in only 14 games. The rest, except OJ Simpson in 1975, had the benefit of 16 game seasons.  (Last year, ridiculously, and inviting further brain damage to players, they expanded to 17 games).

The next season Sayers led the league in rushing.  Then disaster.  He suffered repeated knee injuries, the first while playing against, ironically, the same San Francisco 49ers against whom he set the touchdown record.  He gamely came back after each knee injury and surgery (remember, this is way before arthroscopic surgery … the rehab was just brutal) and an ankle injury as well.  He still showed flashes of brilliance, but he’d never be the same Gale Sayers, again.

Comets light up our skies and provide us with something to marvel at, but they come and go quickly.  The same with Gale Sayers, the Kansas Comet.  He retired at age 28, leaving fans with great memories from a career that spanned just a few years.

So phenomenal were those few years, that Sayers was named to 4 Pro Bowl games (the NFL All-Star game), twice earning Game MVP [link].  Remarkable: he only played four full seasons.  In a fifth partial season, he was limited to only 9 games after two more knee injures — he still rushed for 856 yards with an astounding average of 6.2 yards per carry. He was inducted into the NFL Football Hall of Fame at the age of just 34 years old, the youngest ever to be so honored.

Sayers used his injury down time to get additional education, eventually earning a Masters Degree, as well as rehab. After retirement he first moved into sports management, picking up duties as Athletic Director at alma mater Kansas University and then AD over at Southern Illinois University.  Thereafter, he started his own very successful computer company, which he then ran until retirement.

Brian Piccolo — gone too soon

We can’t talk about Sayers without at least briefly mentioning Brian Piccolo, and the friendship they shared.  Piccolo and Sayers came up together, both finishing their college football careers in 1964.  Piccolo, playing for Wake Forest, led the NCAA in rushing that year; he actually nudged out Sayers in the Heisman Trophy voting.  (10th and 11th).

A tough hard running back, Piccolo was not as speedy or flashy as Sayers.  He went undrafted.  Signing a free agent deal with the Bears, Piccolo eventually worked his way up from the Practice Squad to regular roster player, often teamed up alongside Sayers in the backfield.

Coach George Halas decided it was a good idea to have teammates who played similar positions room together when the team traveled.  A budding friendship further bloomed: the black Gale Sayers roomed with the lily-white Brian Piccolo.  The first such roommate pairing in the NFL.  They even had sequential numbers: Sayers #40, Piccolo #41.

As anyone who’s seen the gut-wrenching movie “Brian’s Song” knows, Piccolo soon contracted a rare form of cancer and passed away, aged only 26.

Final link: Sayers and Hornung. Probably not coincidentally, except perhaps the timing, these stars passed away recently, within a few weeks of each other, in the autumn of 2020.  Both struggled mightily with cognitive decline, then dementia, in their later years.  Although no investigations were performed, it’s highly likely each suffered from CTE – chronic traumatic encephalopathy – the worst curse of American football.

 

Sweet Georgian: Bobby

I enjoy the sport of golf.  It can be relaxing and wonderfully distracting.  The exercise and fresh air one gets from playing are healthy, and so are the companionships that develop.  I’ve made a study of the game, including the physics and the history. I may not play well, but I can understand physics and history. One name all golf historians recognize is Bobby Jones.

Born in 1902 in Atlanta, Jones was blessed in many ways: coordinated, intelligent, self-driven and well-reared in a well-off family.  But as a youth he had severe health problems. For example, he was unable to eat solid food until age 5, which probably stunted his growth in these important years.

Doctors prescribed golf to young Bobby.  He lived across the street from a golf course (now the famous East Lake) which provided plenty of opportunity to play and learn.  He took well to the game, and by age 14 was playing – and doing well – in national tournaments.

While playing golf competitively at the highest levels, Jones attended nearby Georgia Tech, earning a degree in Mechanical Engineering.  Then, he went off to Harvard University, earning another degree, this in English Literature. [during his most competitive golf years, Jones would relax in the clubhouse before matches by reading Milton, Shakespeare and Chaucer].  Then, back home to Atlanta-based Emory University to study law.  Jones never fully completed his law studies at Emory, as he passed the Georgia Bar exam after his third semester, aged only 25.  He immediately began practicing law.

Along the way, he married his high school sweetheart and became a head of household: they had three children.

One can only marvel that through all this Bobby Jones compiled one of the most extraordinary golf careers in all of history, and certainly by far the greatest of any amateur golfer.

At age 21, Jones won the US Open. Over the next 7 years he’d win another 12 major tournaments, culminating with the Grand Slam – all four majors – in 1930.

After the Grand Slam (also called “The Impregnable Quadrilateral” at the time) Jones promptly retired, without warning — shocking the sports world.  Like Sayers, he was only 28 years old.  He had proved what he needed to.  He reached heights fans and historians still marvel at.

Robert “Bobby” Tyre Jones — in his prime

Was he the greatest, the so-called GOAT? It’s so hard to compare eras.  For example, Jones accomplished all this with hickory shafted clubs and golf balls that couldn’t be trusted to behave the same from one to another – even from the same box of balls!  Greens weren’t smooth.  He did all this while studying Engineering, Literature and then Law – and then practicing Law and raising a family.  [It is said that during an exhibition match at San Francisco’s Olympic Lake course, Jones reached the green of the 600 yard 16th hole in two shots — a prodigious feat by any era’s standards; he did it with hickory shafted clubs. His reaction?  A sheepish smile.]  If Jones isn’t the GOAT, he’s near the top.

Although his career as golf competitor was over after 1930, Jones’ involvement with golf continued.  Working with the Spalding Company he helped design and promote the first steel-shafted matched clubs.  He founded the Augusta Golf Club, which hosted the tournament he founded, now called The Masters.  He made a series of golf instructional videos – lost for decades; recently found – which are probably the most famous ever, using high speed cameras and special lighting.  Ironic, but it was for these instructional and technical ventures that Jones gave up his golf amateur status; he never accepted a dime for any of his many achievements playing golf.

In the 1940s Jones was still a vibrant and intellectual man.  But soon something was wrong.  He was weakening too fast, and in pain.  In 1948 he was diagnosed with a rare condition called Syringomyelia, in which cysts form and grow in the spinal cord, impinging the nerve channels.  It had been developing for decades, perhaps since birth.

President Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower’s painting of Bobby Jones

Jones’ life on earth lasted until 1971.  Those final decades were marked by extreme pain and progressing paralysis.  Starting in the ‘40s he became acquaintances with a man who would become President: Dwight D “Ike” Eisenhower. Theirs would grow to a great friendship of mutual admiration. Ike was like many other world leaders, from Churchill, to Prince Charles, to Franco and even George W Bush — he enjoyed painting .  Ike, also like many of us, really enjoyed golf. He fell in love with Jones’ Augusta Golf Club and course.  In 1953 Ike presented Jones with a painting of his good friend: a younger and healthier Bobby Jones. [1]

Paderewski of Ragtime [2]

This final tale of Ticks and Tocks is the story that started the germination of this entire essay. I learned about it in a recent newsletter of the 1904 World’s Fair Society, of which my wife and I are members.

For the threads of many gleaned tidbits, I must give credit to newsletter regular contributor Jim Wiemers, the society’s Music Collector.

Ragtime music is certainly a historic throwback; its golden era was around the last turn of the century, from the 1890s to the mid-1910s.  But it’s certainly still enjoyed today.  It’s cheery.  It’s jaunty. Its syncopated rhythms are catchy.  Personally, I’ve enjoyed it since watching the 1973 film “The Sting,” which featured Scott Joplin’s ragtime classic The Entertainer throughout the movie. [Confession: The Entertainer is the only specific Rag tune I can confidently identify].

Rag was not considered respectable music from its beginning, not for at least 10-15 years.  No doubt that’s because its roots lie in the African-American communities of that era, most notably in Saint Louis.

In 1904, the leadership of the Saint Louis World’s Fair (officially “The Louisiana Purchase Exposition”) denigrated the music form and wouldn’t permit it to be played on the main Fair Grounds. Some Rag was played along The Pike, which, in many ways, was sort of a “side show” to the Fair.  {Pike description}

This was a great loss to anyone seeking a combination of contemporary culture and art.  And it was most unfortunate, since the acclaimed all-time king of Rag and Rag Composition, Scott Joplin, lived in Saint Louis at the time.  [You can still visit the house he lived in, on the edge of downtown Saint Louis, just a few miles from Forrest Park, site of the Fair.]

Although most of us today are hard-pressed to name Rag stars of that era besides Joplin, there certainly were many.

According to Fair and music historians, at least three contemporary stars of Rag played on the Fair’s Pike: Louis Chauvin, Sam Patterson, and Arthur Marshall.

Marshall played at the Spanish Café, in the Streets of Seville exhibit, for $12/week (he could’ve made $25 over at the Rosebud Bar, but not on the Fairgrounds).  The job lasted less than a month, as his music was too often drowned out by the bands playing at Hagenbeck’s Animal Show (well, the Pike was sort of a collection of sideshows and odd exhibits, displays and experiences). Marshall was replaced by an Iberian Orchestra. [3]  He outlived most the era’s Ragtimers, and was able to provide firsthand testimony on many of the personalities and events to historians decades later.

Sam Patterson and Louis Chauvin played two-piano Rag at the Old St Louis Restaurant and Bar on the Pike  [for a great map of the Pike at the 1904 World’s Fair, go to bottom of this page: click here.  For a great interactive zoomable map of the entire Fair, here]. [4]

Patterson and Chauvin grew up together in Saint Louis, which was rather a Rag hotbed.  They dropped out of school at 15 and 13, respectively, formed a musical touring group, and traveled the country. Later, they returned to Saint Louis, studying and performing – including at the 1904 Fair – before setting off again.

Louis Chauvin (1881-1908) — just not any good photos of him on the internet

Patterson held various musical jobs and even joined Joplin in New York City for a while, helping him complete the ragtime opera “Treemonisha” before Joplin’s untimely death in 1917, aged 58.

And then there was the prodigy, Louis Chauvin, often called “Paderewski of Ragtime.” [2]  A true superstar of the original Ragtime era. He was a regular performer at Tom Turpin’s Ruby Bar in Saint Louis, a nexus for Ragtime talent.  [Quick aside: we note that Turpin himself was an early Ragtime leader, not only through his bar as a Rag performance venue, but through his talent: his works include the very first published Ragtime piece: Harlem Rag.]

Chauvin played only by ear and could re-create any piece he heard; if it wasn’t Rag, he put his own Rag-spin on it.  He could adapt any melody to Rag, including a Sousa march.  Contemporaries pretty much agreed: Chauvin was the best. They were all in awe. But none of his creations were ever written down. His only published work was a team effort with Scott Joplin: Heliotrope Bouquet.

Sadly for him and the music world, Chauvin’s lifestyle was terrible for his health.  According to Patterson “He stayed up, drank, and made lots of love … he only seemed to be living when he was at the piano.  It’s authentic that he smoked opium at the last.”  Chauvin passed away at age 27.  Various causes were listed, but modern assessments would largely pin it on neurosyphilis … that’s a long term case of the STD syphilis, resulting in coma and, ultimately, starvation.

 

Epilogue

 

Sayer’s career was over at 28. Injuries. Jones also at 28, by choice; other things to do.  Piccolo gone at 26.

Chauvin, perhaps the first member of the great “27 Club.”

Tick Tock, tick tock. Our clocks are running, always running, always ticking.

I really wanted this to be upbeat.  To be a tribute to so many who accomplished so much, and so young.  Alexander Hamilton setting up a new nation’s finances and banking system at age 32.  Leading a charge at the battle that cinched American independence at 24.  Dead in a duel at 47.

Sorry that this took a bit of a dour turn.  That’s why it took me so long to finish and publish.  I was looking for a cheery way out.

Hey, it’s never too late to do something!  Harland Sanders founded Kentucky Fried Chicken at age 62, after already (1) having made and lost a fortune, (2) bounced around the country losing jobs as varied and crazy as kaleidoscope patterns, and (3) also having survived a genuine shoot out.  [5]

Father William Treacy, the priest who married us, turns 103 this week. He still says Sunday Mass, preaching inspirationally as he’s done for 80 years, on love, humanity, brotherhood, peace, compassion and acceptance. [6]

Me?  I’ll just keep observing and writing.

Peace

Joe Girard © 2022

Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com

[1] This famous painting hangs on the wall of the Chairman’s office at Augusta National.  Reprints are available, but good ones are not cheap. Ike presented it to Jones shortly after taking the oath of office, 1953.  He had been working on it for some time, including through the presidential campaign season.

[2] Ignacy Pedrewski, a Pole, was widely regarded as the best pianist in Europe at the time. As his name shows up in Saint Louis, obviously he was world renowned. An animated performer, he largely played classical music from the likes of Bach, Beethoven, & Chopin (of course) to large audiences. Known for reworking pieces to his own style (as did Chauvin), he went on to become Poland’s Prime Minister when it won its Independence as a favorable outcome of WWI.

[3] They All Played Ragtime, by Rudi Bush

[4] At nearly two square miles (1,270 acres) the 1904 LPE Saint Louis Fair was the world’s largest until the 2010 Shanghai Fair, which nudged ahead at 1,292 acres.  Close behind are the Chicago Fair of 1939, at 1,202 acres and the current 2020-22 Dubai World’s Fair, which has been cursed by Covid, at 1,100 acres.

[5] The Harland Sanders Shoot-out story, https://gizmodo.com/no-colonel-sanders-never-killed-a-man-in-a-shootout-1651797965; and in the book, “Colonel Sanders and The American Dream”, by Josh Ozersky.

[6] Father William Treacy.  We often watch his masses by Zoom, or on recording when we’re busy.

Biographic sources for Louis Chauvin:
[a] https://www.allmusic.com/artist/louis-chauvin-mn0002233120/biography
[b] https://www.stlmag.com/The-Best-St-Louis-Ragtime-Musicians-of-All-Time/

[c] https://aaregistry.org/story/louis-chauvin-pianist-born/
[d] And Jim Wiemer’s column on Chauvin the 1904WF newsletter.

 

Ray of Resolution

1900. The Games of the II Olympiad are underway as part of the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris. The Track and Field events are being conducted in the stadium of the Racing Club de France Football. It is not the fancy stadium or field we would come to expect of Olympic Games decades hence – Racing Club plays in the 5th tier of French national soccer (football). But, it is conveniently located close to the fairgrounds.  Not far away, just under a mile, and across the historic River Seine, the 1,000-foot-tall Eiffel Tower – built as an awe-inspiring eye-catching fascination for the 1889 Fair – is in view.(1)

June 16. Ray stands beside the bar as required for this event: the standing high jump. No running approach or adjustment of feet position is permitted.  He takes a moment to gaze at its World Record height; so prodigious a height that, if cleared, it would have sufficed to earn a medal in the regular running high jump in the previous Athens Olympics. He begins his unique routine, breathing slowly and deeply, focusing his attention, gradually folding his lanky legs into a deep squat, stretching his powerful quad, calf, and glute muscles.  As his squat deepens, he begins to swing his arms, farther and farther, back and forth. Then – suddenly! – he explodes almost straight up.

Standing High Jump, Ray Ewry

Would it be Ironic that a man who came to world prominence labeled as “The Human Frog” would have the most life-altering circumstance of his entire life crash upon him during a silly race involving frogs? Because, after Ray Ewry’s performances in the II Olympic Games – winning three Olympic Championships in all three standing jumping events in a single day – that’s what the French media and fans called him: La grenouille humaine. And the name stuck.

I have found that a firm definition of the word Ironic is difficult to pin down, although many English speakers use the word often.  As Merriam-Webster states: “The word irony has come to be applied to events that are merely curious or coincidental …”  Best fit might be when a word’s, or a phrase’s usage – or a real-life outcome – is far different than what one would expect. Or as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said (of something completely different): “I know it when I see it.”

Ray Ewry was that man of world prominence. 

Standing High Jump, Olympics,  Ray Ewry

He was born in October, 1873, in Lafayette, Indiana. That’s the seat of Tippecanoe County, lying along the Wabash River, and contains its companion waterway: the Wabash Canal.  The river, the canal, and even the county fair and fairgrounds provided entertainment for young Ray.  But his life wasn’t even close to easy.


Much of America and Europe went through a canal building craze in the early 19th century.  These ambitious waterway constructions facilitated the transportation of goods and product.  In America grain went from the breadbaskets of the heartland to oceanic ports and thence to other American cities and to the world. Canals also facilitated the flow of all sorts of necessities to the heartland: forged machinery, stoves, clothing, boots, even sawn lumber and fine European clothing and furniture.  (One tip-off regarding canal building and its significance is the number of inland US cities with the suffix “-port” in their name, such as Logansport, Gasport, Middleport, Brockport, etc.  There are at least 4 Lockports, of course all near canal locks: one each in Illinois, Indiana, Louisiana, and New York states).

US Major Canals, circa 1853

Thousands of miles of canals were constructed. The Erie Canal is probably the most famous and enduring.  It opened in 1825 and traversed northern New York state for some 360-plus miles, connecting the four Great Lakes above Niagara Falls to the Atlantic Ocean … and thus helped make many cities along those Great Lakes  become commercial and transportation hubs (Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, etc.), and also helped make New York City into the gigantic hub of commercial trade.  That’s a status it enjoys to this day.

Of the significant but lesser-known canals we consider the longest North American canal at nearly 500 miles: the Wabash & Erie Canal.  This canal network connected Toledo’s Maumee Bay, at the western end of Lake Erie to Evansville, Indiana, on the right bank of the mighty Ohio River.  From there transportation to and from the Mississippi and to the Gulf of Mexico was possible.

With construction beginning near Toledo in 1832, and finally reaching Evansville in 1853, the canal’s long-term future (as for many other canals) was doomed before it was completed, even though it had been in use since the first few miles of the big ditch were dug.  The steam powered “Iron Horse” was the next transportation rage.  Fueled with coal and using rapidly developing steel technology for engines, wheels and rails, the railroad would almost immediately surpass and suppress the potential of canals for convenient transportation.

1904 Saint Louis.  The Games of the III Olympiad are underway, again as part of a World’s Fair.  The Track & Field events are occurring on the newly constructed Athletic Field of Washington University (now known as Francis Olympic Field).  Again, the field lacks much of the glamour and size we’d grow to expect in future decades. The University is in the process of moving from downtown Saint Louis to just across the city limits.  Its many buildings and grounds are still works-in-progress.  Just a few yards away from the Athletic Field, the World’s Fair is using the University’s new Admin Building as headquarters for its massive spread of 1,270 acres of exhibitions – the largest Fair until Shanghai over a century later, in 2010.  And just a bit further away the Ferris Observation Wheel, at 264 feet tall with a capacity of 2,160 passengers is clearly visible.

August 29.  Ray stands at one end of the Long Jump pit.  His feet are on the ground; this is a standing jumping event.  He’d need one of his better jumps to secure 1st place and a gold medal (the 1904 Olympics were the first with gold, silver and bronze medals).  He gazes out to a spot well over 3 meters away, to world and Olympic record distance.  Fellow American Charles King has already broken Ray’s Olympic record at 3.21 meters.  Ray quiets his pensive, disciplined mind and begins his now well-known routine.  When he leaps, his explosiveness surprises no one.  When he lands –  properly not falling backward – the crowd roars its appreciation.  Ray has set a new World and Olympic Record at 3.47 meters (11 feet, 4.6 inches) – and won himself another Olympic championship.

Ray Ewry, Standing Long Jump, 1904 Olympics, Saint Louis

Unlike Paris, the Olympic events are spread out over several months; yet like Paris, most of the athletic (track and field) Olympic competitions were crammed into just a few days.  In Paris, all of Ray’s events were held on a single day; in Saint Louis his events spread out a bit.  Yet, Ray won three golds again, sweeping the standing jumping events, between August 29 and September 3.  Although he set a record in the Long Jump, his other numbers were off from his personal best – a trend he had begun to notice in his training.

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Not much detail is known of Ray Ewry’s early life in Lafayette, except that it was profoundly difficult.  I found little.  He had one sibling, a sister, Mabel, a few years younger.  His father, George, was prone to drink. His mother, Lizzie, died of “consumption” (now known as tuberculosis) when he was only 5-½ years old, and his sister was still a toddler.  Sodden with alcohol and sorrow, Ray’s father was unable to deal with the duties of sole parent, household management, and employment – so he turned to his friends and neighbors, the Elisha family, to raise his children. Mary Elisha became Ray’s and Mabel’s mother. Mr. George Ewry then vanished forever. Ray was an orphan.

Little was known about diseases – including hygiene and sanitation – even late into the 19th century.  And little could be done for what was known.  Thanks to Hooke and van Leeuwenhoek, the prolific lives of bacteria were certainly known, yet Fleming’s discovery of penicillin was decades away, and widespread use of it even further.  Viruses were unknown, although they were proved to exist in the 1890s; yet they were so small they were little understood until well into the 20th century.
____________________________________________________________________________

In Lafayette Indiana, like many other places, children frequently played in, and splashed about in, fetid waters.  Ray Ewry often did such when he was not off playing at the county fairgrounds.  He’d jump and swim in the Wabash Canal or River. All the kids did.  No one really thought much of it.

2021. It’s still the time of coronavirus, or Covid-19, although – hopefully – the end is nigh. Or at least major relief.  Tokyo will host the Olympics with essentially zero spectators.  Of the countless types of viruses, there are a tiny fraction that can have horrible effects on humans. But a tiny fraction of a very large number is still a large number. Among this vile fraction are a set of three that can cause conditions that terrify anyone: the polio viruses.

These are three similar but distinctly different polio viruses. Call them variations on a gene.  All are highly contagious and are different enough that vaccines must contain three different antigen triggers.  Thankfully two types are considered to be fully eradicated from the earth, and the other is found only in remote places – mostly Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Much as with Covid-19, the vast majority of people who got infected with a polio virus suffered very mild-to-no symptoms; some medical sites say 95-99%.  Of those with symptoms, most might have felt like they had a mild cold, or flu, and feel achy for a few days, or maybe a week. Perhaps a slight fever. And then it was gone.  [Also, like Covid-19, these asymptomatic infections can spread the virus]. What history and imagination conjures up for us is the one-in-two hundred or so who suffered some sort of paralysis. The onset of paralysis was usually some time – several days, or even a week, or more – after the body had seemingly “beaten” the virus. Overwhelmingly such paralysis victims were children: from very young to adolescents.

The odd adult case has a most memorable example.  Franklin Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the US, was stricken with polio paralysis at age 39 – the year after he had unsuccessfully stood for Vice-President as the Democratic Party nominee.  About 75% of such polio paralysis victims eventually get most, even all, capability back in their stricken limbs and muscles.  Roosevelt was among the minority who did not.

Sadly, for those who do recover, there is a high incidence of PPS – Post Polio Syndrome.  After many years, even after decades, the previously afflicted muscles begin to slowly weaken, and may eventually fail altogether.  The biological mechanism is not understood, as the virus itself is long gone from the body, and – now that Polio is nearly totally eradicated thanks to diligent vaxxing of all children – the phenomenon may never be understood.  Perhaps the aging body just “remembers” the condition and reverts back to it.

There are other infectious diseases that can have long-lasting effects, long after the infection is beaten.  One is caused by the genus of streptococcus bacteria.  Bacteria are much larger than viruses, but just as devious.  They are frequently “opportunistic”: the body generally fights them off well, but they still strike hard when the body is run down, perhaps fighting another infection (often viral), or there is a large cut or scrape to the skin, as often happens to young boys.

Strep bacteria have distinct proteins on their cell coating which the human body’s immune system identifies as antigens: something to attack and kill.  But sometimes the body is too run-down to fight the bacteria off quickly, or perhaps, after the age of Fleming, the use of antibiotics is delayed.  When strep hangs around the body for a while, the immune system gets over-programmed to attack the marked bacteria’s protein in its cell coating.  Unfortunately, that protein is very similar to other proteins that the body needs, such as in the muscles of the heart. And tissue in the joints.  The result is Rheumatic Fever.  It is usually a life-long struggle.  It’s an auto-immune disorder: the body attacks itself.

It was probably not uncommon to suffer such an infection along with a viral infection … like polio.

1906, Athens. The International Olympic Committee has decided to hold another Olympic Games competition to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the first modern era Olympics, also held in Athens.  Dubbed the “Second International Olympic Games of Athens”, they were the first clear forerunner to the much spot-lighted and hyped-up Olympics we know today.  Well planned, highly promoted, and separate from a World’s Fair. The track and field events are held near the center of ancient Athens, in the Panathenaic Stadium, a magnificent edifice, fully worthy of the Olympics, which remains today the only stadium built entirely of marble. So magnificent, in fact, that it was used as a main venue for the 1896 and the 2004 Summer Olympic Games, as well as 1906.

Olympic Stadium, Athens, Olympiakó Stádio Athinon

Ray Ewry successfully defends his Olympic Championship in two events, the standing high jump and standing long jump.  After the 1904 games, the standing triple jump was removed from the Olympic event list, for which Ray and his aging body were grateful.  A tad discouraged by failing, yet again, to reach the height and distances of his previous performances, Ray nonetheless takes the time to scoop up some soil from the Athenian Olympic field and take it back to America.

June, 1881.  School is out.  Ray and his friends spend many muggy days playing in and around the old horse and wagon trails, taking time to splash about to cool off and “rinse off” in the fetid waters of the nearly abandoned Wabash Canal, part of the lengthy Erie & Wabash canal system.  Catching a few frogs was not out of the question.  Such “boy things” were commonly done, and no one thought much about it.

In June Ray caught a bad cold, perhaps a flu, with fever, chills and aches.  His greatest fear was missing the Tippecanoe County Fair.  To him the Fair’s highlight would be the Wheelbarrow Frog Race, to be held on July 4th.

Such “Frog” races were rather new to America, and especially Tippecanoe County.  Apparently the highly entertaining, laugh-a-minute race idea came along with immigrants from Italy.  The general idea is that each contestant gets a wheelbarrow (with low sides, or even no sides) and a frog.  Place a frog on each wheelbarrow and run.  Race distances were from a few hundred yards to a mile.  You must complete the race with both a wheelbarrow and a frog upon the wheelbarrow to win.

Frogs are generally placid and stay put … until the slightest bump or turn occurs.  Whereupon they jump off, and the unfortunate contestant must discard their wheelbarrow, stop running the race, and start running after their frog – hopefully retrieving it quickly.  It was not uncommon, and considered within the rules, that contestants would bump each others wheelbarrows.

Fortunately for Ray, he recovered from his summer “bug” after a few days, and Mary Elisha allowed him to participate in this hilarious half-mile race.  A bunch of young boys with small wheelbarrows and frog aboard (perhaps caught in the canal) took off from the starting line.  Along the dirt race path each participant, of course, had his frog escape from time-to-time: that’s the whole idea and the source of the fun.  Sometimes boys would catch each others’ escaped frogs (rules say one needs “a frog” to win, not “the frog you started with”). It was such fun for all of them and for the spectators!!

While chasing his escaped frog Ray began to feel tingling in his legs, like something he’d never felt before.  Each time the frog escaped and he chased it down, the tingling experience was of short duration; yet, each time it was longer and more intense; and each time he ignored the funny tingling and began running the race again once he had his frog aboard his wheelbarrow.  Coming down the home stretch Ray felt like he had a chance to win. The leader was just a few strides ahead. He ran and pushed as hard as he could.  No sense risking losing his frog now.  At full stride, the tingling returned.  It turned to weakness. The faster he tried to run the weaker his legs became.

With what seemed like the whole county watching, Ray fell face first onto the race path.  Had he stumbled?  Horrified, Mary Elisha and others watched as he tried to get up and complete the race.  But Ray couldn’t get up.  His legs were completely paralyzed.  At 7-½years old.

1908, London.  The Games of the III Olympiad are again, and for the last time, held as part of a World’s Fair.  The IOC had found, from experience in 1900 and 1904, that holding the games concurrent with such a grand Fair was not consistent with their vision for the future of the games…  especially after the success of the 1906 games in Athens, which stood alone, and shone greatly.

The 1908 games were awarded to Italy, to be hosted in Rome. Unfortunately, the catastrophic 1906 eruption of Vesuvius had stressed the Italian government greatly, and they backed out as host of the games.  London, which was to host another grand World’s Fair in 1908 (they had hosted what is arguably the first modern World’s Fair, in 1851) would now host the Olympics for the first time.  [Rome finally hosted the Olympics in 1960, and the achievements of Wilma Rudolf there are not without remarkable parallels to Ray Ewry.  London hosted again in 1948 and 2012].

At the astonishing age of nearly 35 (for a track and field athlete) Ray Ewry again defends his Olympic title in both the standing Long and High jumps, eking out height and distance just barely ahead of 2nd place.  Quietly both proud of his achievement and also a tad disappointed in his slipping numbers, Ray takes home the last two of his ten Olympic first place awards.  He is 10 for 10, winner of 10 events and undefeated in his Olympic career.  Unheard of even today for a multiple gold medal winner.

1881-1891. Young Ray is distraught and discouraged by his condition: Paralyzed and bed-ridden.  Mary Elilsha refuses to give up, reaching out to doctors and medical centers far and wide.  There is full consensus: this is a life-long condition.  Ray is forever paralyzed.  But one doctor provides a glimmer of hope: perhaps some physical therapy could possibly help.  It might well have just been a simple kind thing to say to a grieving “mom” like Mary.  No sense heaping more grief on her, and Ray.

Mary runs with this advice.  She finds a woman with a therapy background willing to spend time with Ray.  Some research suggests her name was “Kate”, but the source is not firm. Nevertheless, she quickly moves past massage and assisted range-of motion stretches; she improvises with a peach basket, cutting two holes in the bottom and hanging it from a rope suspended over a pulley on the barn.  Ray, wheelchair-bound, was lifted into the basket, its height adjusted with the pulley so that his feet barely touched the ground.

“Push Ray, Push!”

Day after day, month after month, year after year, Ray spent endless hours in the basket.

“Push Ray, Push!”

Slowly, incrementally, almost imperceptibly, the basket was lowered – first by Kate, then after she had left, by Mary Elisha.  As it was lowered, although unknown to Ray for some time, he could support ever more weight, and this allowed him to flex his legs, exerting his muscles over greater range of motion.

By the time Ray reached his senior year in high school, he was still using crutches. But he could get himself into and out of the basket, raise and lower it himself, and he was growing in several ways.  Ray was growing stronger – much stronger.  He was also growing to be quite tall, now reaching 6 feet. And he was a superior student.

By the end of his senior year he was walking.  After 11 years of paralysis.  He enrolled at nearby Purdue University and started participating in the track club.  He continued his own training and therapy, keeping careful notes, and training with the club.

In 1894 Ray completed a degree in engineering, and moved on to a few years as an Associate Engineering Professor at Purdue.  His intellect and his physical prowess were catching a lot of attention.  Since freshman year, Ray began winning track events, although at a club level and against mostly regional schools.

Ray Ewry and the Athenian Olympic Stadium. At right his Olympic shirt bears the Winged Foot insignia of the New York Athletic Club

Later in the 1890s, Ray got the opportunity to move to the New York area, with a position designing and building ships for the US Navy.  As a coincidental bonus, he was also offered a sponsored membership at the exalted New York Athletic Club, where he could continue training and competing.  It was they who sponsored his participation in the Olympics. And provided a training site for him.

 

1910-11. Despite his age, Ewry had every intention of competing in the 1912 Olympic Games, in Stockholm. He continued his training and kept meticulous notes.  Outwardly upbeat about his chances of qualifying to be on the US team, inwardly and in his notes his mood was a bit darker.  His joints ached; not just his knees and not just when he trained.  It was everywhere. And he could feel his leg muscles weakening, despite his disciplined workout and training regimen.

It’s hard to tell the difference between the effects of aging and the combined effects of Post-Polio Syndrome and Rheumatic Fever.

In 1911, aged 38, while training for the Olympic tryouts, he suffered a knee injury.  These had occurred before, and he always recovered and worked through them.  Not this time. He just could not get through it this time.  After a few months of further training and therapy Ray decided it was time to retire from competition (although he remained active in the sport for decades, both coaching and judging at events).

After a very distinguished career with the Navy (as a civilian) Ray was recruited by the city of New York City to help further develop their water supply infrastructure.  The large city was still growing, and they would soon need not only more water, but better systems to deliver it.  Ray spent a lot of time over the next decades touring the state, inspecting and directing implementation of his designs, many of which are still providing steady, faithful service today.

Along the way, Ray married a local Lafayette girl, a lass named Nelle Johnson, several years younger than he, who had taken kindly to him when he was young, shy and struggling with polio paralysis.  They had only one child, a girl named Mary Elizabeth, who usually went by Betsy or Bets.  Sadly, Betsy got very early Alzheimer’s, and all of her memories of her father were lost.  Her only son (I think, and thus Ray’s only grandson) Thomas Carson,  a music industry professional, compiled much of Ray’s lesser-known history through much personal research. His work was a great resource to me in writing this essay. [2]

Ray passed away in 1937 just before his 64th birthday.  One would normally think that is quite young for an athletically accomplished man who attended faithfully to his health.  I can’t find the circumstances, but it seems it was a quick slide at the end and might well have been negatively affected by the health issues of his youth … which followed him  through most of his adult life.

In 1928 Ray Ewry was invited back to Purdue to be present at the dedication of the new Ross-Ade Football Stadium.  As Purdue’s most accomplished athlete ever (and perhaps most accomplished engineer), he was the guest of honor.  For the ceremony, and unknown to almost everybody, Ray brought with him a small jar of soil from the Olympic Field at Athens, still untouched after more than two decades.  For the surprise highlight of the dedication ceremony, Ray spread the hallowed ancient Olympic soil upon the stadium field of his Alma Mater.

Ewry’s Olympic record of ten championships held up for many decades. In fact, so far, it has only been broken once, by the superhuman Michael Phelps, who has won 23 gold medals.  He broke Ewry’s record of 10 when he won his 7th through 14th Olympic Gold Medals at the Beijing Games, in 2008.  However, Phelps is not undefeated, as he won zero medals in 2000 (at Sydney, age 15) and has 28 overall medals (also the most ever) against “only” 25 golds.

It should be noted that several decades later, in 1949, the IOC decided that the 1906 Games were not “Real Olympic Games” and purged all records of those games from their official list. Most historians of athletics disagree, however, and they do indeed count these games and awards, since they were highly attended, highly promoted as Olympics, and set the trajectory for how the games evolved. So, officially, I suppose, per IOC (and Wikipedia and others) Ray Ewry has only eight Olympic championships. But I am with the consensus of historians: we emphatically say ten!

Thank you, Ray Ewry, “The Human Frog”, for showing us that anything is possible if we keep pushing our boundaries and continually try to better ourselves, even in times of strife, viruses, and disease… and beyond.

Joe Girard © 2021

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Footnote (1) Today, the Tower is only visible from this site if one peers carefully between trees growing in the park and new buildings built later in the 20th century. Here is a painting of an aerial view of the 1900 fair, which was likely made from a sketch that was made by an artist aloft in a balloon.  The athletic field is the green space across the river. It is possible that the old Theirs city wall, which was quite close to the park and fields, could have obscured the view, despite being heavily damaged during the siege in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870.

1900 World’s Fair. Athletic Field is the green space across the river. Arial Painting by Lucien Baylac, based on Balloon observations.  The Observation Wheel (Grande Roue) was about 354 feet tall, higher than the huge wheel built by George Washington Gale Ferris for the 1893 Fair in Chicago, and also used at the 1904 Fair in Saint Louis.

 

Footnote [2] Thomas E Carson V, Ray Ewry’s grandson, wrote a biography about Ray, called “Unsung.”  It was the culmination of decades of work in which he interweaves Ray’s bio with his own nearly epic pursuit of the details of Ray’s life, as well as his medals.  There are many, many sources on Ray.  But, to the benefit of me as a writer and you readers, Mr Carson’s book provided much of the rich contextual detail about Ray that made his story much more “human.”  Thank you sir!

Carson is also a published fiction writer, and I believe you can find his works (including some serials based on a main character named Drum Bailey) on Amazon and elsewhere.

Mr Carson may not be Ray’s only grandson, but some genealogy searches turned up no others.

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Various sources, among so very, very many …

Before Leaping To 10 Golds, Athlete Beat Polio : NPR

Ray C. Ewry | American athlete | Britannica

Biography of Ray Ewry <small>(1873-1937)</small> – TheBiography.us

The Ray Ewry Sports Engineering Center – Ray Ewry Sports Engineering Center – College of Engineering – Purdue University

Ewry begins Olympic career with 3 titles in 1 day in Paris – Washington Times

Shore Up

See the source image

Ernie Shore, circa 1917

I haven’t written about Major League Baseball (MLB) this year until now.  I’m still a bit discouraged by all the new rules for covid, and those that  have carried over.  The game drifts farther and farther from the one I learned and loved as a child.  Strikeouts are now matter-of-fact; those numbers continue to soar.  Batting averages sink.  There is a controversy about this being linked to many pitchers illegally applying various substances to the balls to improve their grip. Is it that, or that every swing seems to be a “home run” swing?

But it’s still America’s game.  America’s great past time.  Old games stay in our memories, and in the record books.  Just as new stars and events make their ways into the same places.

Consider the phenom playing for the Los Angeles Angels, the once-in-a-century supremely talented Shohei Ohtani.  The Japanese star hits for extraordinary power and is also a starting pitcher.  His home run rate rivals that of Babe Ruth, the other most-famous pitcher-and-hitter; and, depending on how one calculates, Ohtani hits HRs more frequently than the Babe.  Both over his career and especially this year.

Like the Babe in the earlier part of his career, Ohtani is also an exceptionally good pitcher.  Stuck with a mediocre team, his win-loss record doesn’t accurately reflect his talents.  He has one of the fastest fastballs, and regularly throws at, or over, 100 miles per hour.  With a full assortment of pitches and deliveries – cutters, sliders, splitters, curves – he’s dropped his ERA this year to 2.70 and strikes out one-third of batters he faces; both are among MLB leaders.

Ohtani will be at the All-Star Game in Denver next month.  Many fans are looking forward to his participation in the Home Run Derby.

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I’ve written about amazing pitching performances in MLB history a few times, for example Can’t Touch This and Last At Bat.  104 years ago today, on June 23, 1917, an amazing pitching performance occurred that is sorta-kinda one of the most amazing No-Hitters and Perfect Games that don’t get recorded as such.

The man was Ernie Shore, a teammate of Babe Ruth’s on the Boston Red Sox.  He is linked to the Babe in other ways besides this particular game against the (first) Washington Senators. Both were earlier sold by the Baltimore Oriole organization to the Boston Red Sox in the same transaction.

[Later, before the 1920 season, the “BoSox” would sell Ruth, known at the time as “The Bambino” to their rival Yankees – even though he had helped lead them to three World Series wins. He was just too expensive and demanding. This became known as “The Curse of the Bambino”, since the BoSox, who had won 5 of the first 15 World Series, did not win another until 86 years later.  Meanwhile, the Yankees won 26 championships, or so, in the same time period.  They had won zero before acquiring Ruth.]

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Ernie Shore was a farm boy from the foothills of North Carolina, near North Bend. He was the 2nd of five boys born to Henry and Martha Shore; Ernie arriving in 1891. (My essay about farm boys in MLB here]. Ernie compiled a very respectable record during his four years alongside Ruth on those Red Sox teams, going 58-33.  He also went 3-1 in four World Series starts, helping the BoSoxraves win back-to-back WS victories in 1915 and ’16.

[The Sox won another World Series in 1918, this time without Shore, as he had enlisted in the military to fight in World War 1. When Shore returned, he too, like Ruth, was dealt to the Yankees].

Fenway, pre-Green Monster

The day was June 23, 1917.  Exactly 104 years ago as I write this. World War 1 raged in Europe.  Bodies fell and blood flowed across Flanders.  Fenway Park, the now famous home of the Boston Red Sox, was barely 5 years old.  Its iconic “Green Monster” left field wall was in place, but that nickname came later.  Then, it was just “The Wall”, put up to keep fans and freeloaders off the field.  There were rows of fans in front of the wall.

The woeful Washington Senators were in town for a 5-game series against the Sox, which would include two double-headers.  Such long multi-game series and double-headers (especially on Saturdays) were more common back then, since travel was very  inconvenient.  One of those double-headers might have been a makeup from a weather-caused postponement earlier.

On this fine Saturday, Babe Ruth was the starting pitcher for the Red Sox in the first game of a double-header.  The game’s first batter walked; he was the Senators’ Ray Morgan, a swift-footed second baseman.  Ruth thought both balls 3 and 4 should have been strikes, and he let the umpire know how he felt in no uncertain terms.  In fact, by many reports, the dispute came to blows. Ruth was ejected from the game. So was the Red Sox’s catcher, Pinch Thomas.

Without warmup or warning, Ernie Shore, who was likely scheduled to pitch the backend of the double-header, was called in to pitch.  Sam Agnew, a part-time catcher, substituted for Pinch Thomas.

The situation seemed rather frenetic, and thus opportunistic, to Morgan.  What with the dustup between Ruth and home plate umpire Brick Owens,  the sudden pitching change, and the sudden catcher change, this seemed like a good time to try and steal second base as soon as possible.

He did try.  The new catcher, Agnew, fired the ball across the diamond to second baseman Jack Barry, who then tagged out Morgan.  It was not a good opportunity.

Morgan was the last baserunner the Senators had the entire game.  Ernie Shore retired every batter; 26 up, 26 down.  The Red Sox went on to win, 4-0.   By the way, substitute catcher Agnew went 3 for 3, and knocked in two of the Red Sox’s runs.

This game used to be listed among MLB’s individual no-hitters and perfect games.  But the rules for such things were “shored up” (sorry, pun intended).  It’s now just an interesting game and one of those baseball oddities.  Maybe it wins you a few bar bets.  It is listed now as a “combined no-hitter.”  Babe Ruth steals the headline again.

After World War 1 Shore resumed his career, now with the Yankees.  However, during the winter of 1918-19 he caught a bad bug from his Navy roommate. Perhaps it was the Spanish Flu.  He was bedridden for weeks. It greatly weakened him.  He had a subpar 1919 season by his standards.  He rested and trained for 1920, but the arm strength just wasn’t there. He was sent to the minors in 1921.  He languished there a few seasons, then retired.  He then tried coaching for a while, but Shore didn’t have the body or the heart for baseball anymore.

He moved back to his native North Carolina.  He got married, raised a family, got involved in local youth sports and politics.  He was even sheriff of Forsythe County for 36 years.

Ernie, Thanks for the memories. We might forget you, but the history books will not.

Joe Girard © 2021

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Tony and Farm Boy Records

“It’s work, son,” Father said. “That’s what money is; it’s hard work.”

― Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy

Tony Lee was born to a farming family in rolling rural piedmont country, hidden away in North Carolina’s Lincoln County.  He grew up fast, tall, strong and lean, and went on to set a remarkable and little-known Major League Baseball record that will probably never be broken.

There are many a story of country boys making it big in baseball.  I’ll touch on three of the best known.

Mickey Mantle grew up in rural Oklahoma, along old Route 66. Who knows how many records Mickey Mantle would have set if he hadn’t taken to the bottle? Still, he hit 536 home runs in total – this during an era when baseball players, on average, hit homers only about 60 percent as often as today – and yet “The Mick” stands at #18 on the all-time home run list.  More than a few above him took steroids and should thus be disqualified.

Bob Feller grew up a farming country boy in Iowa.  Playing his entire career with the Indians, and coaching for them until his death at 92, he probably had the fastest fastball in the Majors during the 1940s. He led the league in strike outs seven times (twice in the 1930s as a teenager!). Over a stellar career, Feller amassed 266 victories.  He surely would’ve reached the magical 300 milestone had he not served 3-1/2 years in World War 2 in the prime of his career.  Or, if the Indians had had a slightly better team; they compiled mostly mediocre records in those years, but did manage to win the World Series in 1948. For the five full years of his career that sandwiched his military service he averaged 24 wins a season.  Projecting a bit, that would put him around 350 wins for his career. 

And finally, perhaps the most famous to baseball fans, is pitcher Denton True “Cy” Young.  He grew up working his family’s farm in rural Ohio.  His frame took on great strength and his mind a determined, stern discipline. When baseball found him, he could throw the ball so hard he was nicknamed “Cyclone”; or “Cy” for short.  With a career of just over two decades that spanned the turn of the 20th century, Young won an astounding 511 games at the Major League level – a record that will never be broken.  Since 1956 the Award for the Best Pitcher in each league has been named after him.

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In this time of Covid, I’m not following sports much. Heck, until recently there wasn’t much to follow. But even with this rump of a baseball season coming to its tinny crescendo I have been unable to avert my eyes from box scores and standings completely. 

It’s a lifelong habit and I guess I owe it to my dad.  I can remember him taking me to watch a Cubs game at Wrigley Field during the summer of 1961.  Billy Williams hit a home run.  I could barely follow the game – long periods of sun-drenched boredom with brief moments of athletic excitement where the players and ball moved so quickly that I had little idea what was going on.  All I knew before this was dad tossing whiffle balls to me – as I tried to make contact with a plastic bat – and a cheezy glove that he tossed balls into.  Me, thinking I could catch, or hit! Ha. God Bless him. God blessed me with him.

Within a few years he taught me how to track a game.  How to keep score.  Tricks to playing each position (‘ twas clear from early on I’d never be a pitcher) and what to anticipate what could happen on each at-bat, on each pitch.  I guess he thought I had “Mickey Mantle” potential, as he had me swing from both sides.  Eventually I took to swinging only lefty – even though I am right-handed and right-eyed – which was fine with me.  Billy Williams – who won Rookie of the Year in 1961, later won a batting title, and had become my favorite player – swung the same way, lefty, despite also being right-handed.

Back to 2020. So, I’m tracking some baseball stats this odd year-of-covid, like I always do. This, despite the fact that I’m inclined to believe that nothing about this year should even count.  But, I can’t help myself.  Reasons it shouldn’t count?  Doubleheader games are only 7 innings;  extra innings start off with a runner on second;  and the biggest reason is that even the NL is using the Designated Hitter (DH), which means that – except in the most unusual of circumstances – pitchers don’t have to bat.  Guess I’m just a traditionalist.

One thing I noticed through most of this weird 2020 season is that hitting and run production seem down.  Until a few weeks ago batting averages across both leagues were at historic lows.  And pitchers don’t even have to bat! Run production (scoring) was down only slightly, because players are still hitting home runs at nearly historically high rates.

There was a blip for a few weeks recently when scoring and hitting went way up. Teams started putting up double-digit tallies. In one single day (Sept 9) during that stretch the Brewers scored 19 runs in a game. And the Braves scored 29! In one game. During that Braves explosion, Adam Duvall hit three home runs, one of them a grand slam, and knocked in 9 runs.  This statistic, 9 RBIs, tied a Braves franchise record. Plus a grand slam. [RBI is Run Batted in].

And my mind drifted back to 1966……

Baseball recruiting started to get aggressive in the late 1950s.  For example, Tony Lee Cloninger, a lanky farm boy from North Carolina, was signed to a professional contract by the Milwaukee Braves in early 1958.  For that, he received a signing bonus of $100,000.  That was a lot of money. He had not yet graduated from high school.

Milwaukee. I lived just outside that Midwest city from Christmas week 1962 until the summer of 1974.  Even though my first love was the Cubs, I could not help but follow the local Braves, as news of them was always in the newspapers. And of course, my sports-minded friends all followed them.  So, I certainly knew of Tony Cloninger.

In fact, several superstars, future Hall of Famers, played for the Milwaukee Braves back then – Aaron, Matthews, Torre, Spahn – and I remember watching them all play at Milwaukee County Stadium.

Cloninger set several team records.  He recorded the modern-day era for most wins in a season by a Brave – 24 wins in 1965 – which matched the count put up by Johnny Sain in 1948 (when the team was in Boston), and years later by John Smoltz in 1996.  Not even the great Brave and Hall of Famer Warren Spahn ever won so many in a season.

Cloninger also threw one of MLB’s few Immaculate Innings (9 pitches, 3 strikeouts) in 1963, a feat that had only been achieved 13 times before.  (As an indicator of how the game has changed – so many more home runs and more strikeouts – it’s been done 87 times since).

1965 was a strange year for the Milwaukee Braves.  The ownership was trying to move the team to Atlanta.  Fans still loved the Braves, but there definitely were some hard feelings.  The case even went to the courts, as the city tried to keep them.  Despite a good record and performance by stars – not just Cloninger’s 24 wins; three Braves ranked in the league’s top ten for home runs: “Hammerin’ ” Hank Aaron, Eddie Matthew and Mack Jones – attendance dwindled to a dismal 555,000, lowest in the entire major leagues.  I can’t blame the fans for not supporting a team that doesn’t love its home city.

Cloninger was a bit of free-spirit, at least on the pitcher’s mound, I would guess, and his career numbers support that theory.  In his great 1965 year (and the next year too), Cloninger led the league in Wild Pitches and Walks issued. During 3-1/2 seasons in the minors he steadily averaged about 7 walks per nine innings: a horrendous ratio at almost any level, especially as a professional. But he also showed a ton of potential and promise. He was promoted to the major league club, the Milwaukee Braves, in the middle of the ’61 season, just shy of 21 years old. He was probably an early poster-child for the term “effectively-wild.”

1966.  Now the Atlanta Braves were hopeful for their prospects, based on a new location, their promising second half of 1965, and a roster full of stars, including Tony Cloninger as their #1 pitcher.  Unexpectedly, both Tony and the Braves got off to a cool start and were definitely under-performing.  For the July 4th weekend, they traveled to San Francisco, to play the first place Giants – they were also loaded with future Hall of Famers.  Prospects didn’t look good.

On a Sunday afternoon, July 3, Tony Cloninger – a much better than average hitting pitcher – pitched for the Braves.  Back then, we Milwaukee-ites all still followed the Braves rather closely – as there was no professional baseball team in Milwaukee to replace them yet (the Brewers arrived in 1970), and we still knew all the Braves’ players, and most (except me) disliked the rival Cubs in nearby Chicago. But we didn’t get a newspaper delivered on Independence Day, July 4th. What happened on July 3rd?

It was not until July 5th that I read what Tony Cloninger had accomplished.  The details were scarce, since the sports section had to cram two days’ worth of news into a single Tuesday edition, typically a publication day of diminutive size.

I first scanned the July 4th results (for some cruel scheduling reason the Braves had to fly all the way to Houston to play an afternoon game the very next day in the new Astrodome against the lowly Astros) and noted that the they had eked out a win.

Then, …  some numbers from the previous day’s box score literally jumped off the pages.  Holy cow! The Braves beat the first place Giants by a score of 17-3.  Tony Cloninger pitched a complete game for the win, and he hit not one, but two, grand slams.  I could not believe my eyes.  A late game single brought his RBI total to 9 for the game.  These are astonishing batting feats for any player, almost unbelievable!! But for a pitcher?  Typically, the lightest hitting player in any lineup.

Tony Cloninger, mid-1960s

Not sure if it was that day or the next, but I remember the Milwaukee Journal showing a grainy photo of Giants’ great Willie Mays looking up helplessly, as a ball Cloninger had clobbered soared over his head, near the fence in Candlestick’s center field. Gosh, I wish I had started saving newsworthy magazines and newspapers a bit earlier.  I’d love to have that now.

This was the first time in National League history that a player had ever hit two grand slams in one game.  And, I’ll repeat myself: by a pitcher no less.   [It has only happened only twice since, with Fernando Tatis hitting two in the same inning(!), in 1999.  It has been accomplished 10 times in the American League.] This has never been accomplished by a pitcher.  Never.  Before or since.  And it never will be done again, especially with the NL contemplating permanent use of the Designated Hitter – which means pitchers practically never, ever get to bat.

The Braves 1966 season improved thereafter, partly due to changing managers (from Bobby Bragan – loved that name – to Billy Hitchcock).  On the flip side: The Giants’ season sort of collapsed.  And the Dodgers (again, sigh) raced on to the National League pennant, with one of the better pitching  staffs in baseball history, led by Sandy Koufax (who promptly retired, aged only 30, when he was at the top of his game, after the Dodgers surprisingly lost the World Series to Baltimore, swept 4-0, at season’s end).

Tony “the farm boy” Cloninger had been experiencing some shoulder and elbow problems. He was a power pitcher, with a great fastball and nasty slider; both can be very tough on the body. 1966 was still a reasonably good season for him (he finished 14-11) and he was still the Braves #1 pitcher.  But that was the beginning of the end.  Even at age 25 his rugged farm-hardened body could not stand up to the rigors of tossing so many innings.  He pitched for several more years, posting only fair results, at best, and he was traded around a couple times.

With his bonus money and salary, Cloninger had been buying up farmland in his native Lincoln County.  He battled on for a few years, then struggled mightily through the first half of the 1972 season, whereupon he promptly retired mid-season, just before his 32nd birthday. Tony returned to his beloved rural homeland; he began settling in at his farm and its bucolic setting in the North Carolina Piedmont.

Cloninger compiled a career MLB record of 113-97. He once made the league top 10 in strike outs. Good, but not nearly good enough for the Hall of Fame.  He’s also regarded as one of the best hitting pitchers of all time.  Still not good enough to technically be in the Hall of Fame as an individual. But, photographs of him made that day in 1966 are there in the Hall.  As is the bat he borrowed from teammate Denis Menke, the one he used to hit the two grand slams.  They should be: it is a record which will never be broken by any player. Nor will even be tied, by a pitcher.

Cloninger couldn’t stay away from the game forever.  In 1988 he took up an invitation from the New York Yankees to join their coaching staff…starting in the minors and ending up with the major league team. Later he switched over to the player development staff with the Boston Red Sox.  I believe he was still with the BoSox when he passed away, just a couple years ago, in the summer of 2018, aged 77.

Tony, thanks for the memories.  You’re a good old farm boy who did well in the world.

Thanks for reading.  Cheers.

Joe Girard © 2020

Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for when there is newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com

Heroes: from Kerr to “The Man”

It’s the middle of the 2019 World Series, and things are getting very interesting.  So, as I’ve done at this time of year before, it’s time to weave a rambling essay of baseball lore – this one with lesser known threads connecting heroes, villains and an indelible splotch on baseball’s reputation – recalling that this is the 100th Anniversary of the notorious “Black Sox”.

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I had the great fortune getting an opportunity to earn an engineering graduate degree at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee.  Among the countless benefits that sprouted from those two years (1978-80) were some that came from a forward looking realization: I might not have the chance to work a fun job that involved playing golf for many more decades. I’ve always liked golf, because, like baseball, it’s a sport that a skinny, short guy like me can achieve some success at.

So, in April 1979, I donned my most attractive, contemporary golf attire (which were a bit frayed and cheap looking) and rode my bicycle to a nearby exclusive golf and country club.  How nice was it?  The following summer it hosted the 1980 Women’s US Open.

I got a job with the pro, whose name was also Joe, after a very short interview. I worked there much of the next two summers doing a variety of golf-related tasks: in the pro-shop, selling golf paraphernalia and running the till; making deposits at the bank; running the driving range; cleaning clubs and carts; even working with the grounds crew to lay sod and build bridges.

Not a great job, at least with respect to pay (I think at $2.92/hr), but the main thing was the fringe benefits.  I was at a top-notch golf facility, where I was privileged to play at least 9-holes of golf every single day and also spend hours practicing every sort of shot.  By the end of the first summer I was a pretty fair bet to break 80 on a US open caliber course – and “from the tips”, as golfers say.  (Oh!, to be able to do that again).

Another benefit was getting tickets to high end golf related events.  For example, I attended the 1980 Music City Celebrity golf tournament at another high-end golf club for free.  This was a splashy fund-raiser for local charities.  I clearly recall following along two celebs for a several holes. 

The first celeb I followed was former President Gerald Ford.  He definitely struck me as athletic, but in a “football player” sort-of-way.  A very mechanical and muscle-bound swing.  Slight fade.  Never gonna be a great golfer, but played with the stoic, almost grim, emotionless face that you’d expect from a conservative.  He did hole a green-side bunker shot on number 9, which brought a huge roar of appreciation from the crowd. 

The other was Stan Musial.  Known to true-blue Saint Louis baseball fans as “Stan the Man”,  Musial’s marvelous baseball playing career came to an end about 17 years before … just as I was becoming a serious fan of the game.  It now occurs to me that I might have seen him once or even twice before, as my father started taking me to Wrigley Field to see Cubs games in 1961.

Stan Musial: late in MLB career

Musial was certainly one of the very, very best hitters of the 20th century, and among the best 2 or 3 left-handed hitters ever, ranking with Ted Williams and Ty Cobb.  Musial is arguably above Cobb, who never put up power numbers like Stan, and it’s tough to compare with Williams, whose overall career numbers (especially hits and home runs) are unfairly well down the list, since he lost three of the best years of his baseball career to military service, serving as a fighter pilot during World War II. 

I said that Musial’s playing career ended some 17 years before I saw him in Nashville, at the Music City Celeb.  But it nearly ended before he even made it to the majors. 

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100 years ago, it was almost impossible to imagine that the Chicago White Sox team of 1919 could lose the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. The star-studded Sox were prohibitive betting favorites.  It’s only imaginable in retrospect, knowing that their best players intentionally played well below their skill level – pitchers tossing easy-to-hit pitches, fielders kicking ground balls and dropping flyballs. 

Books and movies have been made about that team, and what happened thereafter.  The short version is that players thought they were severely underpaid (they probably were). Owner Charles Comiskey was a man of “deep pockets and short arms” – especially stingy with his money, and player salaries.  The sports-betting community connected the dots: prohibitive betting odds and disgruntled players provided the possibility of a gigantic gambling bonanza by giving a miniscule fraction of the winning proceeds to players who cooperated.

In the end, eight players were banned from baseball for life.  There is absolutely no doubt that many players cooperated, although it’s easy to make a case for Joe Jackson’s defense.  Jackson was an illiterate simple country boy from South Carolina, famously went by the nickname “Shoeless Joe” and had the prettiest lefthanded swing that any baseball expert had ever seen.  For the series, Joe hit for a .375 average, with a .956 OPS.  Hard to say he wasn’t trying, and easy to say he didn’t know what he was signing up for.

It’s also hard to imagine that there was a hero for the Sox in that Series.  A genuine hero on a team that intentionally tried to lose. But there most certainly was: the diminutive Dickey Kerr. Mostly forgotten now, Kerr was by no means the best pitcher on the 1919 Sox.  Considered a second-tier pitcher, behind the likes of Eddie Cicotte (“Chick”), who won 29 games that season with a 1.82 ERA.  During the series, Chick picked two games to throw poorly at critical moments.

Tiny Dickey Kerr, 1919

Kerr was a rookie that year.  He stood barely 5 foot 7 inches tall, weighed 150 lbs “soaking wet”. Yet Kerr won two games in that series, going 2-0 with a dodgy defense behind him, and with a 1.42 ERA.  In one game he went 10 innings to get the win; silly (now obvious) errors led to a critical unearned run.

So lowly regarded was Kerr, that Sox players who collaborated with gamblers never even considered including him in the plot.  Even though he was unscathed by the scandal, his career soon also ended after the 1921 season (all eight collaborators finished the 1920 season) – although he made a brief comeback attempt in 1925.

Kerr’s missing of the 1922-24 seasons was also tied directly to Comiskey the Cheapskate.  Feeling like he was owed more money for his performance (he did go on to win an impressive 40 games over the ’20 and ’21 seasons), Kerr sat out and played some exhibition games (for pay) with other teams.  For that, he was harshly banned from baseball by commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis (yes, that was his name … Kenesaw Mountain … his name has direct links to a major Civil War battle … at Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia).

Kerr had a good head for baseball and leadership, making his way into the coaching and manager ranks.  It was later, in 1940, while managing the minor league D-Level Daytona Beach Islanders in the lowest levels of the Saint Louis Cardinals organization, that Kerr encountered a promising young athlete.

Born in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, Stanislaw Franciszek Musial was the fifth of six children born to Polish immigrants. He impressed scouts and was signed to a minor league contract in 1938 with the Saint Louis Cardinals, at the tender age of 18, mostly based on his potential as a pitcher.

By 1940 he was learning the game at the professional level, and playing in the outfield when not pitching, since he showed hitting promise as well.  But all considered him a pitcher first, especially Stan, himself.

Musial’s vision for his future clouded when he suffered a severe injury to his left shoulder while playing outfield for Kerr’s Islanders in 1940.  As Musial was left-handed his future as a professional pitcher seemed unlikely.

Discouraged, depressed, and now with the responsibilities of supporting a wife and a child on the way, Musial wanted to quit baseball and go find a job in a different career. 

To relieve financial and professional pressure, Kerr invited the young Musial family to live with him and his wife.  And Kerr took the opportunity to encourage Musial to focus on his athletic skills besides pitching.

Re-energized and taking Kerr’s mentorship to heart, Musial took to the 1941 season with gusto. He progressed at a startling, almost unbelievable, rate.  Beginning the spring at C-Level (Springfield, WA) based solely on his hitting and raw athletic potential, he was promoted to AA Level just after mid-season.  He did well enough that he earned a brief 12-game call to the Cardinal’s major league team, where he wowed everyone, hitting .426.

Stan “the Man” Musial played his entire 22 season Major League career with the Cardinals. His career numbers – like Williams’ – could have been even better, had he not been called to serve the cause of FFF (Freedom from Fascism); he lost what surely would have been one of the best years of his career (1945) to World War II.  This is easily inferred: in ’44 Musial batted .346, second best in all major leagues; in ’46 he won the batting title at .365. 

More about Musial’s stats, life and career achievement are easily found on the internet.  It’s not just that all of these are so very impressive, it’s also that he is the most beloved, revered and honored Saint Louis Cardinal of all time. 

When I watched Stan Musial play golf in the heat of that humid Tennessee afternoon, I was kind of surprised by what I observed. 

Yes, he played left-handed just like he batted and threw, and – even at nearly 60 years old – displayed a sort of graceful flair and fluidity.  He still had large, strong shoulders and arms.  And a thick muscular neck. Clearly, he was an athlete.  He was not nearly as tall as I expected, perhaps touching six feet; but he had been a giant in my boyhood imagination.  Although he had a bit of a paunch, he insisted on walking. His shirt was mottled with sweat.  He wore no cap, allowing all to see that he still had a full – if somewhat unmanageable – head of dark hair.  He never smiled, and frequently – unconsciously – swept swaths of hair and sweat off his brow. He did not interact much with fans.

It seemed this crazy game of golf was getting to him.  Here he was, a sports Hall of Fame member, struggling with performance in front of fans, in a silly sport; fans who adored him and anticipated success with nearly every shot. 

I felt sorry for Musial. Even though he was famous, highly accomplished, and had records that would last many generations, he was not having fun.  I guess that’s what surprised me most.  He was not having fun. That’s sad.

Maybe if he’d quit baseball and gotten a job a golf country club, he’d have played better that day.  ?

Probably not.  Even I, at roughly the same age, usually mutter to myself throughout a round of golf. 

Until at least next October, that’s a wrap for World Series and Baseball History.

Wishing you all have a wonderful fall and hoping that you all have some fun every day, even if you’re playing golf.

Peace

Joe  Girard © 2019

Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for when there is newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing me at Joe@Girardmeister.com.

Of Disruptors and Keyholes

Recently the brand new Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson, suspended parliament at a moment in history that portends a possible keyhole event: a “Hard Brexit” is about to occur.  Technically the term is prorogue.  That is to say: “Johnson has prorogued Parliament.”  He simply sent them home for a few weeks.  Although not all that uncommon for a new government – it comes shortly after his placement as PM – the timing has made many Brits uncomfortable, to say the least.

One supposes that my writing has been sort of prorogued of late – not much publishing anyhow.  I don’t think many readers are uncomfortable about that. 

You can look back through a keyhole, but you can’t go back through one

I have a pair of terms for events that are so transformational that things can never return to the way they were; not even ways of thinking can return: Wormholes and Keyholes. Either way, when we pass through them – either as individuals, families, communities, cultures, countries or the entire world – a new reality emerges.

A possible alternative to keyhole and wormhole is “Rubicon”; or the full phrase “crossing the Rubicon.”  Way back in 49 BCE, a Roman general named Gaius (of the patrician clan “Julia”) took his powerful and famously successful army across the River Rubicon. When he did, he also created a keyhole through which he, his army, and Roman culture passed and could never return.

Rubicon: Reality was irreversibly changed.  A civil war ensued.  At its conclusion, there was no more Roman Republic, although it had endured nearly 500 years with a slight flavor of democracy.  It was replaced with the Roman Empire, to be led by a sovereign head of state named “Caesar” (the first one being the aforementioned general).

“Crossing the Rubicon” is a term that means total commitment, and no turning back. You’ve gone through the keyhole. Although, for Julius Caesar, there was an strong element of personal choice in the matter. That’s not always the case.

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Using the theme of keyholes, I will touch upon many a quaint and curious story of forgotten lore [1], including brief biographical glances at the lives of three individuals.

These are but three people among countless.  Passing through the same keyhole in history.  An entire nation of millions was transformed by that keyhole, through which nothing – no person and no part of American culture – could return to their previous state … forever transformed. These three people made history because of their transformations – and society’s – brought about by a major disruption to American national culture.

  1. Hattie had a sweet personality and an even sweeter voice.  And she had a quality of magnetic personality mixed with pizzazz, or panache.  Today the name “Hattie” is rather obscure – in fact, it almost completely disappeared in the 1950s and ‘60s.  It was not an uncommon name at all across American cultures in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Hattie Caraway (ARK) was the 1st woman elected to the US Senate, in 1932. Our Hattie was born in Wichita, Kansas, to parents who had been slaves.  Although the name Hattie would later virtually disappear, her own name would not.
  2. Born and raised of pure German descent, Henry hailed from the German neighborhoods on the southside of the great beer-making city of St Louis.  But he usually went by the nickname “Heinie” (or “Heine”), since it was German and rhymed with his last name: Meine.  Of course, it was Americanized to “High-nee My-nee”; you can’t get a much more memorable name.  Nonetheless, he’s virtually forgotten, although Heinie came through the keyhole and left his name in the record books. 
  3. A first generation Italian-American, he preferred to go by “Al” rather than his given “Alphonse.”  Born and raised in Brooklyn, he’d make his name in Chicago. Known for many things – including feeding over 100,000 Chicagoans each day during the Great Depression’s early years –  Al was not known for being very faithful to his wife. That’s too bad, because she was extraordinarily faithful and loyal to him.  At least he was loyal: he treated her well and never spoke poorly of her. That, and his Depression-era food lines, are among the few good qualities we can credit to him.
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On a geological scale, the biggest disruptor to life on earth was almost certainly when the 12-mile diameter Chicxulub Asteroid slammed into the earth at 40,000 kilometers per hour, near the Yucatan peninsula (modern day Mexico) about 66 million years ago.  Scientific estimates of the energy released approached one trillion (1,000,000,000,000) Hiroshima atomic bombs.

The asteroid event is probably the biggest reason, among many, that between 99.9% and 99.999% of the all species that have ever lived are now extinct.

Dinosaurs had ruled the earth; they had for some 250 million years through advanced evolution which tracked the earth’s warming climate. (Consider how far humans have evolved from advanced apes in less than 1/1000th the time).  For most of those many millions of ”dinosaur” years, the earth was generally a very warm, even rather tropical, CO2 rich environment.  Literally, in a very few years (perhaps a handful) all had changed.  The world, relatively speaking, became a frigidly cold “ice box.” 

The asteroid, as agent of disruption, had altered reality so suddenly, and so irreversibly, that the world and its reality was forever immediately changed.  We should be thankful.  That stupendously, mind-boggling cataclysmic event permitted the survival and prominence of tiny mammals – and eventually to us: we humans and our many friends like horses, dogs, cats – over dozens of millions of years.

I should hesitate to even suggest candidates for “disruptors” in the human era – especially in our post-industrial age era.  But, eventually we must get to our three protagonists:  Hattie, Heinie and Alphonse.  Therefore, I submit some examples, starting with —ta da – the internet.  It has spawned on-line commerce and “the sharing  economy.”

The “sharing economy” starts with the simple idea that we, as humans in a free-market economy, have assets that are lying dormant. In economists’ terms: non-performing assets.  Our houses. Our cars. Our time.  The sharing economy idea suggests we can put those assets to work. Over just a very few years, this simple idea has disrupted how we consume, travel, commute and vacation.  Many of us now think of Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, CrowdFunding as powerful and preferred alternatives to “traditional business models.”  The value of Taxi Cab medallions in New York City has fallen by some 85% since their peak value of $1.3 Million in 2013. Entire industries must now behave differently – or die.

The sharing economy has been co-joined on the internet with our lust for connectivity and ease. Amazon has put booksellers out of business. Thanks to the internet, we often now shop in the comfort of our homes, in front of our computers – often clad only in our underwear (if we are dressed at all – sorry for the visual).

Merchandise is delivered to our front door, sometimes within hours – while many old and drab strip malls slowly, silently go vacant and “turn-over”, their dull slots replaced by the equivalent of pre-human mammals that are mostly just cheap “creature comforts”: nail salons, micro-liquor stores, tattoo and/or piercing parlors, micro-breweries, tobacco-friendly stores, massage parlors, pot shops (where legal), second-hand and antique shops, etc. And that’s if the vacant spaces are filled at all.  There is no telling which will survive to coming generations, if at all: evolution, disruption and their effects have their ways of being unpredictable… that is their very nature. [2]

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In American culture, looking back over the past 125 years, or so, I cannot think of any more forceful disruptor – outside of the Internet, the Depression, and the Great Wars – than Prohibition.

Prohibition. The 18th Amendment. The Volstead Act. The culmination of decades of effort by the Temperance Movement, the Women’s Movement, and Cultural Conservatives. 

I’m sort of a fan of Prohibition. Why? It was, in effect, a vast significant social scientific experiment.   It made being anti-government-control very cool.  It made counter-culture cool. It made “shoving it in The-Man’s-face” cool.   For many cultural icons and movements – from the obvious, like craft beer brewing and craft alcohol distilling, to the Beatniks, to Elvis, to The Stones, to Jay-Zee, to tattoos, to piercings, to sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll, sexual licentiousness, the prevalence of Sugar Daddies, and even NASCAR, (America’s most popular spectator sport) – Prohibition helped paved the way.

To me, on balance, those are good things. But every die comes with many sides: it also gave more profit and respectability to the mafia and the underworld. 

Our protagonists: In order of how famous they are today:

#1. In 1913, Young Al dropped out of school at 14, after slugging his teacher.  He then worked odd jobs while falling in with various young gangs of hoodlums.  Eventually, he got connected to the local mobs, and began working his way up the mob ladder – getting a nasty razor gash across a cheek in one episode – before finally getting in so much trouble that he was sent off to a different “branch of the business” in Chicago, along with his wife (the one he was not quite “totally committed” to) and young son.

Propitious timing: Prohibition was about to start.  Chicago is where Alphonse – Al Capone and Scarface to us – made it big. Really big.  Prohibition provided almost unlimited opportunity to make money … either through booze itself or through protection schemes.  Capone inherited the top position of a major Chicago crime syndicate, at age 26, when boss Johnny Torino retired and went home to Sicily.

After various deals and “take outs”, like the 1929 Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, Capone’s gang ruled supreme in Chicago and Cook County. 

Al Capone, king of Chicago ~1926-1931

“Scarface” (a nickname he hated) escaped criminal conviction many times.  But Prohibition Agent Elliot Ness and the government finally got him on income tax evasion; his lifestyle and braggadocio were just too conspicuous during a time such as the Great Depression.  Yes, he daily fed many thousands in the early years of the Depression.  But everything ended on October 17, 1931, when Capone was found guilty and sentenced to 11 years in federal prison.

While in prison – eventually at Alcatraz – Capone’s old cronies in the Chicago mob did quite well.  But he didn’t fair so well himself, even though he was released for “good behavior” after serving only about 7 years of his term.  It turns out his good behavior was probably because he developed advanced dementia caused by syphilis. Evidently it had been attacking his nervous system since his teens – considering that his only son, Alphonse Jr, was born with congenital syphilis.

Capone’s wife, Mae, remained loyal, and took great care of him until his demise, in 1947, only one week after his 48th birthday.  He was probably not aware of that or much else, as he was given to talking to inanimate things and people not present.  Their son Al Jr, an only child – who lived quite deaf since infancy on account of surgery for syphilis-caused infections – changed his name to “Albert Brown” in 1966, to distance himself from the infamy of his father. “Brown” was an alias his father had sometimes used.

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2) In 1895 came Hattie McDaniel into this world. She was the 13th and last child born to Susan and Henry McDaniel, both former slaves. Her father was a freed slave, who fought in the Civil War and suffered the rest of his life from war injuries.

Originally from Wichita, Kansas, the family moved to Ft Collins, then Denver, Colorado seeking opportunity – as Henry had a difficult time with manual labor on account of his war injury – about the time young Hattie was 5 or 6.  There, in school and in church, her phenomenal musical skills were discovered. 

By age 14 she had a professional singing and dancing career … and she also dropped out of Denver East High School.  As feature vocalists for various bands, mostly Blues, Hattie had made something of a name for herself.

In 1930 she found herself in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as part of a traveling theatre troupe on the Show Boat production. Then, disaster:  The Depression struck. The show and tour were abruptly canceled, leaving Hattie and the rest of the cast abandoned … and nowhere near home.

Hattie found employment as a restroom attendant at Club Madrid, a not-so-secret speakeasy run by Chicago gangster Sam Pick, just outside Milwaukee’s city limits, and just across the county line. Why there? Because that jurisdiction was largely rural and had virtually no police force. Prohibition was still in effect. 

Club Madrid was famous for great entertainment, as well as a great stash of alcohols.  It was a place to visit and be seen for politicians, high rolling businessmen and other wealthy gangsters.

Word had gotten around Club Madrid that Hattie was extremely talented; but Madrid was a “whites only” establishment. They kept her in the restroom.  Until one night when an act didn’t show.  Desperate to keep the lubricated and influential guests engaged, Sam brought out Hattie.  She brought the house down … and did so for over a year.  Her income and notoriety soared.

Whereupon her skills as a performer were noticed by Hollywood.  She’d go on to a rich film career of over a decade, most notably as Mammy in Gone With the Wind.  In perfect Hattie pose and poise, she was virtually “playing herself” as the only truly likeable and reasonable person in the entire saga. 

Hattie McDaniel was honored by the US Post Office with her image on a stamp, 2005

For that performance she was justly awarded an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.  Hattie McDaniel was the first Black to receive an academy nomination, and the first to win an Oscar.  Bravo Hattie.

She remained popular, and used that popularity to serve in World War II, entertaining troops and performing at War Bond rallies. 

At the end of the war the role of blacks in America was about to dramatically change. Truman integrated the military with a stroke of his pen.  There was a loud popular cry to end the stereotyping of black characters as obsequious, simple-minded submissives in movies. The cry was heard.  Unfortunately for Hattie, she had already been well typecast into such roles, and her Hollywood career faded.

Not so for radio, and Hattie signed on to play a maid on the nationally popular regular radio show Beulah.  Another first: she was the first black to have a weekly appearance on any media. [3] Her years were running out, however.  Too young and too late she was discovered to have breast cancer, and she succumbed in 1952, aged only 57.

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And #3. Henry “Heinie” Meine is surely the least famous of the three who actually achieved a significant level of fame.  Born in Saint Louis in 1896, he was a sports enthusiast who took to baseball well.  He played a lot of local sand-lot and then semi-pro ball as a young man, mostly as a spit balling pitcher.

By 1920 word got around that he was pretty good – especially with his favorite pitch: the spitter. He’d been noticed by legendary scout Charles “Charley” Francis Barrett, and he was signed to a minor league contract with the St Louis Browns of the American League.  In 1922 he was called up briefly to his hometown Browns and pitched in one single game — a mop up effort in a late season blow out.  Unfortunately for Heinie, the spitball had been outlawed as an unfair pitch; and was now being enforced. His major league career seemed over.

He bounced around the minor leagues for a while, gaining a reputation for a “rubber arm”; he was kind of an energizer bunny, as he regularly pitched 250-300 innings a season during those years in the minors. Finally, Meine just gave up, retiring at the end of the 1926 season after learning he’d be demoted to the Single-A level for the 1927 season.  It seemed he had no path to the majors, especially without his spitball. There were other options: he intended to make money in his beer-happy hometown of Saint Louis running a Speakeasy. Prohibition provided opportunity.

Like Pick’s Club Madrid,  Meine’s “soda bar” was located just outside the city limits, in a German neighborhood that was known for some reason as Luxemburg. His drinking establishment was so popular, he got the nickname “Duke of Luxemburg.”

When other major league teams came to Saint Louis (the city had two teams then, so it was often), Luxemburg was a frequent stop for refreshment.  After a few drinks the players often teased him about being a good minor league pitcher, but not being good enough to make it in the majors.

This was motivation. He’d show them! After a layoff of nearly two years, Meine returned to baseball. He was determined to make it as a “control pitcher”, one who could make the ball move any direction, who could constantly change speeds and hit any spot on the edge of the strike zone.  He became an early effective “junk” pitcher. He didn’t strike out many batters; they just hit soft grounders and popups. After a couple minor league seasons, he was eventually acquired by the Pittsburgh Pirates. 

As a 33 year-old rookie, Heinie Meine made his major league debut in 1929.  Unheard of even in those days.  After two moderately successful and contentious seasons with the Pirates (including missing much time with a bad case of tonsillitis) he set the baseball world on fire in 1931, leading the league in wins and innings pitched. A phenomenal record for a Pirate team that managed only 75 wins against 79 losses that year.

Henry “Heinie” Meine

Meine was a holdout for the 1932 season – one of the first to successfully do so – demanding more money.  Starting the season over a month late, after a contract renegotiation, he still managed 12 wins and nearly 200 innings.

But Meine was now approaching 37 years old.  His rubber arm was wearing out.  Still, he managed 15 wins and 207 innings in 1933, impressive totals for any age in any era. All the league’s pitchers with more wins than Meine were aged 31, or younger.

The next year, 1934, would be his last, as Meine was getting past his prime.  He still put up a winning record, at 7-6, but he knew the end of his career had come. If he’d stayed for just a small part of the next season, he’d have seen a national superstar who was well past his prime have one last unlikely and very dramatically successful day at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field. A very wobbly 40-year old Babe Ruth hit three home runs in one game in late May … the last three he’d ever hit. Then promptly retired a few days later.

But by then Meine had already retired to run his saloon business full time.  With Prohibition over and his reputation for Gemütlichkeit, Meine’s career as saloon keeper was safe for years to come. And with some thanks to Prohibition and the customers who teased him, he had made his place in baseball’s record books.

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Well dear readers, that was quite a ramble. Perhaps even a Keyhole for you.

I was long overdue for an essay and had a lot of thoughts in my head to somehow string together.

I hope you feel fulfilled and inspired, or at least changed for the better. 

Peace

Joe Girard © 2019

Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for when there is newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing me at Joe@Girardmeister.com.

[1] With apologies to Edgar Allen Poe fans.  Lifted almost verbatim from verse #1 of “The Raven.”

[2] Strip Malls have a rather interesting history in the US (and Canada).  Briefly: The preponderance of Strip Malls exploded in the 1950s in North America, along with the expanding post-war economy and our love affair with cars.  Ubiquitous on the edges of urban areas, and within the new suburban areas, they were a “strip” of available business spaces in a single building with parking in front.  Sometimes “L-shaped”, they lined major and semi-major roads, near residential areas, but seldom near central business districts.

They provided convenient, if not “drab”, space for respectable businesses like pharmacies, butcher shops, barbers, and sellers of fresh produce and groceries … where everyone seemed to know everyone else and friendly chit-chat was interwoven with business. In an America that no longer exists.

But cars got bigger and ever more plentiful.  Available parking for strip malls was too small. So then came the “Big Box” strip malls, with huge parking lots anchored by one or two major retailers, like Walmart, or Home Depot.  The small strip malls lost business, tenants and most public interest.  Also came the super malls … and strip malls were just so-o-o 1950s and ‘60s.

If not already scraped away, strip malls still exist, but ever more with spaces that are vacant, or populated by the likes of businesses I listed above. Always drab.  Always an eyesore.

[3] At about this time, only about 10% of US homes had televisions. Nearly 100% had radios, and people built their daily schedules around radio shows. By 1960, this had reversed: nearly 90% had TVs, and Americans lives revolved around their favorite shows, on only 3 networks.

Regarding Strip Mall history: One of the better sources I found was here.

Other stuff:

Heine Meine Biography: https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/Heine_Meine/

Popularity of name “Hattie”: https://www.behindthename.com/name/hattie/top/united-states

Young Champ

Guest essay, by John Sarkis

July 7, 1962 – 56 years-ago today, Karen Hantze Susman, a teenaged bride from St. Louis, won the Women’s Singles Championship at Wimbledon. She had also won the doubles title at that year’s Wimbledon, along with her partner, 17-year-old Billie Jean Moffitt. A year earlier, they had become the youngest team to ever win the women’s doubles championship. Moffitt would (of course) become better known by her married name, Billy Jean King.

Karen Susman in July 1962, after winning Wimbledon; and six years ago, at her home, on the 50th anniversary of her victory.

Karen Hantze, a native of San Diego and just eighteen years-old, moved to St Louis, the hometown of her husband, Rod, who had attended Ladue’s Horton Watkins High School before becoming a professional tennis player. Marrying against the advice of her family and friends, she and Rod just celebrated their 56th wedding anniversary at their home in suburban San Diego.

Karen would win three Grand Slam Doubles titles in her short career, but gave up playing competitively because there wasn’t enough money in women’s tennis to earn a living at that time.

Wimbledon didn’t award prize money until 1968. The winner of this year’s Wimbledon Women’s Championship, which is currently underway, will take home 2.25 Million British Pounds, the equivalent of just under $3 Million. Each of the Doubles Tournament winners this year will win 450,000 Pounds, or about $600,000.

[editor’s note: gently edited essay by John Sarkis, a Saint Louis native and retiree, who posts and writes regularly as a hobby about St Louis history]

 

Last At Bat, Good Sport

Three remarkable young women
+ Two unlikely events
+ One selfless decision
=
One unforgettable moment in sports history
Plus two great life lessons

“Being nice matters and I think sometimes our society forgets that.” – Mallory Holtman-Fletcher

Central Washington University is a medium-sized state university of some 10,000 students.  It is a solid school, providing a breadth of education to students for about 150 different majors. It provides fantastic value; it was recently rated by The Economist magazine as providing the most positive economic impact on its students of all colleges and universities in the state of Washington. It offers 17 NCAA sports, usually competing at the Division-II level. You don’t hear a lot of noise from or about CWU; they just go about their job, doing it well and moving along just fine, thank you.

Central Washington University’s Historic Barge Hall

Students and alumni of other Washington state schools often disparagingly refer to CWU as “Car Wash State.”  But CWU, staff, students and grads don’t mind much.  And they don’t retaliate.  It is a respectable school.

Ellensburg, Washington – located just over 100 miles east of Seattle, across the Cascade Range, where the mountains blend into the drier Kittitas Valley, and then to the even drier and flatter semi-desert of eastern Washington – is the host city to CWU.  Ellensburg is a small, functional and well-located town of under 20,000 hearty souls.  Ellensburg is a lot like CWU to me: there is no chest-thumping, no braggadocio, no flash.  Just simple efficiency.  Folks from Seattle and other towns west of the Cascades often like to knock it – sometimes as they breeze past on Interstate-90 – as a nothing, sleepy town.  As the equivalent of fly-over country for road trips.

Due to a fleeting, shiny fleck of personal history, both CWU and Ellensburg will forever occupy a tiny, but special, place in my heart.  A soft spot.  Let’s call that soft spot a piece of cake.

Due to one of the most unlikely series of events (and sportsmanship) in all of NCAA history – if not all of sports history – that Ellensburg/CWU piece of cake now has a nice crown of icing.  Very tasty.

There are a lot of sports that I don’t pay much attention to, except maybe into and through the playoffs when the best teams are playing, and they have something important to play for. NCAA Women’s Softball is one of those sports.  I’ll catch a glimpse when in a sports bar, or channel flipping. Then I’m like a moth around a late-night light: I just can’t help myself. My attention is drawn to the pure athleticism and grace of the players under pressure; the pace of the game; the strategies and the drama.  Perhaps their reflexes are the most impressive.  Pitchers can throw the ball – underhand mind you – at speeds that approach major league pitch speeds.  But the pitching rubber is some 14 feet closer than the majors! What a softball pitcher can make that ball do as it speeds along that distance of 46 feet at 80+ mph is astonishing! The pitches rise; they dip; they slip, and they slide. How do batters even touch the ball?

One thing that always amazes me is the size and physique of so many of the young women.  I’ve always thought that most of the better players could swap uniforms with their school’s football players and you could use them as actors in making a realistic movie about linebackers.

I knew of the following story, and at least one other somewhat similar.  Somehow, I forgot almost completely about it.  But sportsmanship in competitive dramatic moments came up in a conversation with my wife recently, and my non-linear brain pulled up this story and quite a few details.  At first, I contorted my brain to try and recall much more. Well the internet is an astounding resource.  After finding many more details there, including some school records, I was overcome with the urge to write it down.

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When the Western Oregon University women’s softball team traveled to Ellensburg to play a double-header against Central Washington University on April 26, 2008, the teams were neck-and-neck for the season conference title, which would end in about a week.  It was a special day at CWU: Senior Day.  Their seniors were being honored as they would be playing the final home games of their career.

Playing first base for CWU that day was senior Mallory Holtman.  During those last few weeks of the season she was playing through terrific pain.  She really needed two knee surgeries. Those would have to wait; she did not want to let herself or her team down.  She wanted one last chance for a conference championship. She was certainly one of the stars of the team – in fact the entire Great Northwestern Athletic Conference.  At the time she was the conference’s all-time home run and RBI leader; she is still the all-time conference leader in those statistics. At season’s end she was chosen the GNAC Player of the Year, leading it in home runs and batting nearly .400.

Across the infield was friend Liz Wallace, another senior and team leader – also hoping to help lead CWU to the league championship and playoffs. Liz stood second to Mallory at almost every offensive statistic, and she held down the very important defensive position of shortstop.  She had played in almost every single CWU game over her four years there.  The day and the games meant a lot to these young women.

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In 2008, Western Oregon was having one of their best seasons in years.  In fact, their best season ever. They had momentum and they could feel it.  And on that last Saturday in April they had just rolled into town from Idaho, having taken both ends of a double-header from Northwest Nazarene, in Nampa.

Petite and plucky Sara Tucholsky was a senior on that 2008 Western Oregon squad.  She had been through the WOU bad times with good cheer.  [The previous three years the team’s won-loss records were 14-33, 17-32, and a promising 26-25].  And, although she had only briefly been a full-time player –  during part of her sophomore year – she was certainly enjoying being part of this team.  It was a team of extraordinarily deep talent and chemistry. When she got a chance to play, she gave it her all – athletically, energetically and enthusiastically.

At only 5-foot 2-inches tall Sara stood nearly a head shorter than most other players.  Add to that her rather slight frame and she would never be confused for a linebacker, no matter what she was wearing.  This season, as during most of the previous three, Sara played only sparingly, sometimes against a non-conference foe, or – like today – in a double-header during a long stretch of games so that some players could rest.

Western Oregon took game one easily by a score of 8-1, behind star pitcher, team MVP and conference all-star Katie Fleer. (Fleer won 25 games that year).

For game two, Sara was inserted into the 8th batting position and right field.

Her career batting statistics until this day raised no eyebrows.  They were fodder for little conversation.  Her college batting average was a humble .149, and she had but one lonely extra base hit in those four years – a double that fell in way back in her freshman year.  Not only did she not have a single college home run, she had never hit a home run – ever.  Not in high school, not in youth sports.

When Sara’s first turn to bat came up in that second game of a double-header, April 26, 2008, in the top of the second inning, her batting average for that 2008 season was an unimposing .088 – a mere three singles in 34 at bats.  Yet she battled on.

She had diligently taken her turn at regular batting practice; taken advice from coaches; worked on drills.  She exhibited a commitment to improvement when many others would have given up.

With one out and two runners on base Sara now made her way to home plate.  A few jeers and giggles came from the crowd when her lack of height and brawn became evident during her stroll. She gave herself a little pep talk: ignore them, be brave, be focused, don’t give in, do your best, Sara – whatever that may bring.

She dug in to the right-handed batter’s box.  The first pitch was a rising fast ball, about letter high.  A borderline pitch. Sara let it go.  Strike one!

Well, whatever happened next, she told herself, she wasn’t going to let that happen again.

She doesn’t remember where the next pitch was.  Sara simply remembers swinging.

And that’s when the first unlikely event happened.  Sara made solid contact.  Very solid contact. Contact like she had never made before.  Right on the sweet spot.

The batted ball soared out to centerfield and kept going … and going.  The two base runners paused so they could tag up when the ball was caught– Sara certainly couldn’t hit the ball over the fence.  Could she?

She did.  That ball cleared the fence.

While the other runners jogged around the bases to home, Sara – a very jubilant lass – jumped and skipped as she ran to – and past – first base.  In her excitement she initially missed the base.  Every player and fan knows that a ball hit over the fence is not a home run until the batter touches all the bases, in order.  Even though she had never hit a ball over an outfield fence before, Sara of course quickly realized she had missed the base. She stopped. Then she turned around – maybe a bit too quickly in the excitement. She had to return to, and touch, first base.

And that’s when the second unlikely event happened.  Sara let out a short yelp – and crumpled to the dirt. Something was terribly wrong with her right knee.  As it turned out, she had torn her ACL.  She crawled back to first base, practically in tears.

And now the dilemma.  Sara could not be expected to crawl around the bases like that, let alone walk or trot.  The rules of baseball and softball do not permit physical assistance by a player’s teammates or coaches. If so, she would be declared out, and her home run would not be counted. If she were replaced by a pinch runner, it would be a dead ball substitution: The replacement runner would begin the next play at first base, Sara would only be credited with a single, and her run would not count.

After a few minutes of discussion – frustrating discussion between WOU coaches and umpires – there occurred the third surprise event: the unselfish act.  Perhaps not quite as unlikely as the long hit and the sudden crippling injury, but one of the most wonderful decisions and events in sports EVER.

Just as Western Oregon’s coach was about to put a replacement runner at first base for Sara, Central Washington’s star first baseman, Mallory Holtman, asked if she and her teammates could help Sara around the bases.  They conferred with the umpires, who concurred that this would be within the rules. Holtman, joined by teammate Liz Wallace, carried lame Sara the rest of the way around the diamond, pausing a moment at each base and gently lowering Sara so that her left foot could tap second, then third base … and then home plate.  Whereupon Sara was handed over to her teammates.

Three great young women [photo credit: NCAA.ORG and Blake Wolf]

It was now official! Sara had hit a three-run home run!  Those were her only three RBIs (Runs Batted In) for the entire season.  It was, of course, her last at bat in college.  Her improbable hit – and CWU’s extraordinary act of sportsmanship – were the unlikely difference in what turned out to be a 4-2 victory for Western Oregon.

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The idea of carrying Sara around originally occurred to Holtman.  And she had the gumption to approach the umpires and WOU coaches on her own. But she has always brushed off the praise.  She’s always insisted that it’s something anyone could have thought of; and almost everyone would have done.

The event was highly documented and discussed at the time.[1]  The three young women won an ESPY for “Best Sports Moment” of the year that summer.[2]  They all would go on to a few years of notoriety, giving motivational speeches, usually Sara and Mallory, who formed a lasting friendship as a result. The video of their performance is still burned into their memory and that of many sports fans.[3] 

2008 ESPY Winners: Best Moment in Sports

Western Oregon indeed went on to win the conference championship.  It was the school’s first conference championship – in any sport.[4] They were eliminated from the Division II sectionals a few weeks later by another conference rival, Humboldt State (from California).

All three young women soon graduated.  That was ten years ago. They are all now married and, near as I can tell, still live in the Northwest or West.

Mallory Holtman went to graduate school at CWU, became the school’s assistant softball coach, and just over two years later, became the head coach, beating out nearly 50 other applicants for the position, aged only 25.  She recently retired from the demands of that position to spend more time with her family.

Liz Wallace is very involved in youth softball, helping to develop the coming generations of good athletes, and good sports. She also works as a human resources administrator. She’s living the life of a military spouse, so locating her at any time can be difficult. 

Sara works as Area Manager of recruiters and representatives for various therapy services: physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech pathology, etc.  She still gives motivational talks.  She volunteers for various agencies, including Ronald McDonald House.

Sara and Mallory remain friends, although they live about four hours apart.

The two CWU young women [5] — Mallory and Liz — gave us all something to cherish and remember –  whether or not we are sports enthusiasts.  It’s this lesson: We must consider our fellow humans as part of the same team – before we can consider them competitors.

The second life lesson is thanks to Sara: no matter how down you are, no matter how bleak the outlook, you are never defeated if you don’t give up.

To this day Central Washington, Ellensburg and those three very special women don’t brag about it.  That’s class. Actions speak for themselves.

Peace

Joe Girard © 2018

 

Acknowledgement to my good friend Marcy, who helped with proof reading and editorial suggestions. She is a delight. It turns out she rather enjoyed the story for personal reasons as well: her cousin attends CWU. I apologize, Marcy, if any typos, errors, or uneven reading have crept through into the final draft. Your effort, as always and in all regards, is greatly appreciated.

 

Notes:

1)     The umpires were in fact wrong.  NCAA rules did permit a substitute runner in such a rare event to continue running the bases in a dead ball situation such as this. It’s an understandable error, and the sports world is better off for it. The rules have been amended to make this clearer.

2)     ESPY = Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly

3)     Watch a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jocw-oD2pgo

4)     However, as a club sport, the WOU men’s lacrosse team won the non-NCAA sanctioned PNCLL conference that year, 2008.

5)     I almost used “Young Ladies” here and throughout.  It was sort of a title, as in “Lord and Lady”, or “M’Lady” – as they had certainly earned a title.  Upon reflection I was led to conclude the term could be considered disparaging, so used “Young Women” instead.

6)     Box score for the game: http://www.wouwolves.com/custompages/Softball/SCStats/2008/wou41.htm

7) Yes I know that I named an earlier essay Last At Bat, but I couldn’t help myself. So this essay got an appropriate subtitle: Good Sport

 

Some resources:
NCAA: Where are they now?

Sara Tucholsky – An Inspiring Softball Story

Western Oregon Softball historical stats:    http://www.wouwolves.com/sports/2018/1/15/SB_0113093741.aspx?path=softball

 

Baseball: Reflecting on some April History

I guess every baseball fan knows that this past weekend, on April 15, the sport “celebrated” Jackie Robinson Day — the day in 1947 when Jackie Robinson became the first black man to play in a major league baseball game.

I put “celebrated” in quotes, because it is also a muted acknowledgement that baseball’s major leagues shut blacks out of participation for some 80 years until then … much to both their great loss and their fans’ loss.

Last summer my wife and I visited the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City.  I knew many of the names, but seeing them displayed Hall of Fame-style was very powerful.  Rube Foster, Satchel Paige, the two “Bucks”, Buck Leonard and Buck O’Neil, Josh Gibson.

Negro Leagues Baseball Museum entry

Josh Gibson, oh my gosh Josh.  Gibson hit so many home runs, about 800, that fans and sportwriters who had seen them both play often referred to Babe Ruth as “The White Josh Gibson.”  And he accomplished that while playing catcher, without a doubt the most physically demanding defensive position. And quite likely the most mentally demanding, as well. It was with a bit of a heavy heart that Robinson, and those blacks who soon followed, broke into the majors in those years.  Josh Gibson got a brain tumor and eventually died quite young, aged only 35, of a stroke from complications in January, 1947 … just months before Robinson’s first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers.  As the tumor started affecting him several years before — well …. there’s no telling how many more home runs he could have hit.  Or if he’d even made it to the Major Leagues, too.  <Sigh.>

As the current baseball season is already some three weeks old, modern baseball fans might wonder what took the Dodgers so long to play Robinson. Well, April 15th was Opening Day back then.  And anyone watching the weather throughout the Midwest and Northeast this spring will understand why.  Baseball is a summer game and it is pretty stupid to be playing all those games with temperatures in the 20s and 30s and snow flying around — in nearly empty stadiums.  Not to mention making for dangerous travel (lots of team buses back then).

Even with a “later” mid-April start, they pretty much had the entire season wrapped up — World Series and all — by the close of the first week in October; when the weather was usually still quite pleasant.  Compare that to today when the threat of snow and freezing weather is almost as bad at the close of the season (often the first week of November) as it is at the season’s opening.

Baseball is a summer game. How did they do it? Back then they only played 154 games a season (162 now) and had scheduled double-headers throughout the season. Most teams played as many as 25% of their games as double-headers well into the late 1950s. And playoffs weren’t the four or five week elimination ordeal they are now, with nearly one-third of teams making it to the playoffs instead of only two.

I well remember the joy of double-headers as a boy, two games in the hot sun with dad, lots of hot dogs and peanuts, yelling and screaming.  Trying to keep a score card. Watching scores from other games around the country on the outfield scoreboard. Game one in the early afternoon — noonish — and game two only 30 or 40 minutes after the last out of game one, barely long enough to re-chalk and drag the infield — in the late afternoon.  Falling asleep on the way home…. memories.

Well, speaking of history, April 17, 1945 is quite a famous day in baseball history, especially for St Louis Cardinal fans.  I’ve borrowed the following from a post by John Sarkis, who has given me permission to “lift” his work. He writes regularly regarding St Louis regional history.

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April 17, 1945, Albert “Red” Schoendienst played his first game in a Cardinal uniform. The Hall of Fame second-baseman from nearby Germantown, IL would play for the Redbirds for 15 seasons, the New York Giants for two years, and the Milwaukee Braves for four seasons before returning to the Cardinals for three years of limited action. As a player, coach, or manager he wore a major league uniform more than 70 consecutive years, and is currently the oldest living member of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

On that same day native St. Louisan Harry Carabina, who became known as Harry Caray, made his debut as a Cardinal broadcaster. With the Cardinals and Browns sharing Sportsmans Park, the schedule provided that one of the teams would always be home, which allowed Harry to broadcast both Cardinals and Browns home games that season. He became a full-time Cardinals broadcaster in 1947. After being fired by Cardinal owner Gussie Busch, Caray spent 1970 calling Oakland Athletics games, then joined the Chicago White Sox in 1971. After 11 seasons on Chicago’s Southside, he moved to Wrigley Field in 1982. Harry suffered a stroke on Valentine’s Day, 1998, and passed away two days later.

Also on that day, the Brown’s legendary one-armed outfielder, Pete Gray, made his major league debut, getting one single in four at-bats off Les Mueller of the Detroit Tigers. As the MVP in the Southern League, Gray’s contract was purchased for $20,000 from the Memphis Chicks and he was called up as many of the regular major-leaguers were serving in the war. He had his best day in the majors on May 19, playing in Yankee Stadium and collecting five hits and two RBI as the Browns swept the Yankees. He was sent back to the minors when regular players began returning from overseas. Playing left and center field for the Browns, he appeared in 77 games, batting .218 with a .958 fielding percentage. Pete Gray, the only one-armed person to ever play in the major leagues, died on June 30, 2002. His glove is in the Baseball Hall-of-Fame.

(Thanks John!)

[Editor notes.

There have been a very few other players who were similar to Gray, but having most of an arm yet no hand.  Most notably I remember one-handed Jim Abbott throwing a No-Hitter!!

Checking the almanac, the Browns played that game at home.  So Harry Caray called the game. ]

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Joe Girard © 2018

Olympischer Nationalismus

It’s Olympic time again.  The athleticism and elegance have been, so far, most extraordinary.  Most memorable.

Her name is Aliona Savchenko, and I suppose it’s possible to forget her name.  Even her story.

His name is Bruno Massot, and I suppose the same goes for him.  Sigh.

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The modern Olympic games were founded mostly on the energy and vision of Pierre de Coubertin. He sought to improve international relations and harmony through the (supposedly) non-political path of sports competition. It was certainly a beautiful vision; but I’m not sure he’d be quite so happy with how things have turned out.

I’m also not sure how or when the Olympics became so nationalistic.  I personally find all the nationalistic shouting a bit embarrassing and – considering Baron de Courberin’s vision – a bit shameful. It pains me to hear of nations’ medal counts, and the focus on athletes’ nationalities.

In the first few modern Olympics – 1896, 1900 and ’04 – athletes competed only for themselves, and perhaps their local sports clubs. Like “The Milwaukee Swimming Club.” There was clearly no nationalism.

So, how did it start? Perhaps the first inkling came at the 1908 London Olympics.  The Games had first been awarded to Rome.  But Italy was struggling and in recovery from a massive eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 1906.  The games were reassigned to England.  It was the third consecutive time that history had contrived to put the Olympics in the same city as the World’s Fair.  In those days the World’s Fair was a much bigger deal than it is now; much bigger than the Olympics.  They almost didn’t survive.

In those early years, when the Olympics were held alongside the World’s Fair (1900 in Paris; 1904 in St Louis), it was often not clear to spectators and competitors what sort of event it was. An Olympic event, an Olympic demonstration, or even a World’s Fair competition? Decades afterward, Margaret Abbott went to her grave never knowing that she had won an Olympic Championship in 1900, as discussed here: Olympic Lyon and Abbott.

That’s when the first “Parade of Nations” in an Opening Ceremony occurred. It seems to have been a pageantry and marketing ploy to make the Olympics standout against everything else going on around.

In that “parade”, the American flagbearer Ralph Rose – a shot putter and giant of a man at over 6’-5” and 250 pounds – refused to “dip the flag” as the American contingent passed before King Edward VII. Throughout the games the British judges and referees were perceived by many to be more than a bit biased against the American athletes.  So petty.

I suppose some flames of healthy patriotism will naturally spill over into blatant nationalism.  Consider the Cold War, and the heavy, boot heeled Soviet oppression behind the Iron Curtain, and especially upon the states of Hungary and Czechoslovakia – the brutal suppression of pleas for freedom there in 1956 and ’68. Or anti-colonialism, as teams from around the world competed against, say, the United Kingdom.

On the other hand, thumping of chests over medal counts, and hoping for a victory by someone – an otherwise nameless and faceless person – who wears the colors of your country, or the country of your ancestors, strikes me as out of bounds.  Strikes me as unsportsmanlike and well outside of what Baron de Courberin envisioned for all of us.

And worse, shouts of “U-S-A!! U-S-A!!”, accompanied by fanatic flag waving, bring, for me, visions of 100,000 Germans singing “Deutschland über Alles” in Berlin, 1936, under countless Nazi flags, their right hands extended in salute to their Führer. All this as German athletes – whether they ascribed to the Nazi political philosophy or not; and many did not – racked up victory after victory.

Even with Jesse Owens and “The Boys in the Boat” participating, a united pre-war Germany overwhelmingly “won” the medal count at the Summer Games in ’36. There were plenty of opportunities for nationalistic and enthusiastic German sports fans to throw out their right hand, show off their Nazi tolerance – if not complete sympathy and allegiance – and shout “Deutschland!!!!”

(Of course, Norway easily “won” the medal count in the ’36 Winter Games, hosted also in Germany, in beautiful Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria. For some reason the IOC allowed the same country to host the winter and summer Olympics in 3 of the first 4 Winter Olympics.  The only exception was 1928, when Amsterdam hosted the Summer Games; clearly The Netherlands was an inappropriate Winter Games host. The games were held in St Moritz, Switzerland.  Then, both Olympics were suspended for ’40 and ’44 for WWII. After that, each has been hosted in separate countries. Since 1994 they are not even in the same years)

The games are for the athletes and their performances are for us to admire.  Period. The end. Unless you are from very, very tiny Liechtenstein, I don’t see any need for particular pride for a country’s medals.  [Per capita, Liechtenstein has certainly won the most medals in Olympic history.  At a population of under 40,000 they have gained a total of ten winter games medals, two of them gold, over the years.  Astounding. If the US had won at the same rate, they’d have about 90,000 medals, all time. “We” have fewer than 300 Winter medals; and only 28,000 if you tally Summer Games – which are heavy on track and water events and in which Liechtenstein has never seriously competed.)

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Aliona Savchenko is a world-class figure skater.  At age 35, she is “ancient” compared to many of her competitors. As her name suggests, Aliona Savchenko is Ukrainian, competing for that nation in the Salt Lake 2002 Olympics, as well as the Goodwill Games.  Before that she won the pairs competition Nebelhorn Trophy “for the Ukraine” in 1999.

A new coach and a new partner led Savchenko to move to Chemnitz, Germany.  After initial struggles, they soared to German and European prominence.  She earned German citizenship and won bronze medals at the 2010 and ’14 Olympics (in Vancouver and Sochi).

Again, she changed partners and coaches, hoping to beat the “biological clock”, and perhaps give gold one last shot. 2018 would be her 5th Olympics. Her new partner was a Frenchman, from Normandy, Bruno Massot.

Yet again, after initial struggles with a new partner and coach, the team blossomed, earning the German championship and gaininig world recognition.  However, their participation on the great world stage was hindered: As nationals from two different countries, they could not be a team, unless the native’s country would permit it.

Of course, France would not simply let Massot skate for Germany; they eventually made him pay 30,000 euros for a release.  Blatant blackmail if you ask me. The French say they let him off easy: they first asked for 100,000. But the Olympics would be something different.  How much would that extortion cost? So, Massot applied for German citizenship. It was approved just last November.

So here we have Germany – who will long be remembered for their ancestors’ hateful attitude and treatment toward outsiders – long be remembered for their horrible occupations of France and Ukraine – long be remembered for Nazi atrocities – today accepting over one million Middle Eastern Refugees.  And now accepting a mixed French-Ukrainian figure skating team as their own.

Massot is a strong, powerful and graceful skater.  Six feet tall and solid muscle.  Savchenko is a bit of a “doll” at a full foot shorter.  But all five feet of her is dynamite.

Savchenko & Massot: Beauty, elegance, grace and athleticism

Of course, they won: a Ukrainian and a Frenchie ironically competing under the German flag. Sorry to repeat: It was Savchenko’s Olympic fifth try — with two different countries and three different partners. That’s persistence.

When the final scores for the Russian team went up (the last team to skate), and it was clear Savchenko and Massot had won, the bronze-winning Canadian team – led by the adorable and ebullient Meagan Duhamel – rushed over to congratulate and hug them. Yes, there were tears of joy all around – they don’t call it “kiss and cry” for nothing – and for a moment I felt like joining them in a “tissue moment.”

Yes!! This! This is what the Olympics should be about.  We don’t care which countries win the events; or the most medals.

The athletes are showing us what it is about.  Breaking down barriers.  Ignoring international boundaries.  Ignoring politics.  And simply admiring the human spirit… in ourselves and in each other. And demonstrating what that spirit can lead athletes – what the human spirit can lead all of us – to accomplish. Isn’t that why we loved and remember Nadia Comaneci?

Tomorrow the women’s teams from Canada and the US will compete for the gold medal in hockey.  Personally, I win (and lose) either way; I have allegiances both ways.  And, yet, I’m sure that after a very hard-fought re-match they will sincerely hug and congratulate each other.  And many will probably cry.

And that will be in keeping with the hope, spirit and intent of Baron de Courberin. Or, in other words: something we can all aspire to.

As to the French? Well, we will be in Caen — Bruno Massot’s home town in Normandy — later this spring. My guess is they will have a plaque or a sign up, trying to steal away a little of Bruno’s glory. And M. De Courberin will toss in his grave.

Thanks for reading

 

Joe Girard © 2018

 

 

 

 

Last At Bat

Situation:
Archrivals in a World Series game; two outs in the 9th inning. The score is close. Tensions very high. Emotions bare.

A wily veteran strides confidently to the plate. His steely eyes are focused. All of his life and long professional All Star career have prepared him for this moment, which is most certainly destined — one way or another — to go down in shining unforgettable sports history.

He is seemingly unaware of much of the situation, which includes a screaming over-capacity crowd in the major leagues’ most famous stadium: often called “The House that Ruth built.” Most of the 64,519 attendees want him to fail, screaming their desire.

He steps into the left-handed batters box to go up against a pitcher who is otherwise little-known. A pitcher who seems destined to not be long remembered. A pitcher who is at the end of a moderately successful year, yet in the midst of a mediocre career. A pitcher whose last appearance on a baseball mound, just a few days ago in this same World Series, was an unmitigated disaster, rather than as pitcher for baseball’s proudest team in one of their most important games.

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First Pitch:

The right-handed pitcher, a career starter, does not even use a windup. He gets his sign, nods, takes a single long stride and throws his cut fastball, falling awkwardly toward first base after delivery.

It fades outside.  The veteran holds his swing.  BALL ONE.

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The Batter

This moment, this kind of circumstance, was exactly the situation for which Dale Mitchell was now standing at home plate.  He’d been acquired by the Brooklyn Dodgers on July 31 — just over two months ago — to add experienced hitting savvy to their pennant run, and to their possible World Series roster.

Mitchell’s professional career was outstanding, if not also a bit unlikely. Except for these last 10 weeks, he’d spent all his Major League career with the Cleveland Indians.

If any statistic stands out over his career, it is the near impossibility of striking him out.  In 4,358 plate appearances over 11 years Mitchell struck out only 119 times, and astounding 2.7% rate, and placing him in 7th place all time in most unlikely to strike out.  Ranked against all batters with over career 100 plate appearances, Mitchell was approximately in the 99.9th percentile for least likely to strike out.

But Mitchell’s career was far better than simply not striking out.

He broke in with the Indians in September 1946 – after three years’ service in the Army in WW2 in Europe – and put up a .432 average in the season’s final 11 games.  For the next 7 years, as a full-time player, he batted over .300 … and was a 3-time American League All Star.

A few stats that should get any baseball fan’s attention.

  1. For the years 1946-1960 only two players had better career batting averages than Mitchell: Hall of Famers Stan Musial and Ted Williams.
  2. In 1949 Mitchell put up more than twice as many triples (23) as strikeouts (11) … that’s a scant 11 K’s in 685 plate appearances!!

World Series experience?

Dale Mitchell, career .312 hitter.

In 1948 Mitchell was among several stars – including Hall of Famer Lou Boudreau – who led the Indians to a Series victory over Boston (Braves) … after defeating the other Boston team (Red Sox) in a one game playoff to break the AL pennant tie.

In 1954 the Indians won an astounding 111 games (out of only 154 games in a season back then) for a winning percentage that might be the best forever – a prodigious .721! They lost the series to the New York Giants.

However, at the start of that 1954 season Mitchell was moved to the bench as part of an Indian youth movement; he got mostly only pinch appearances.  Still, he hit .283 and struck out only one time in 69 plate appearances; half his already extremely low strike out rate.

Loren Dale Mitchell was born in the west central plains of Oklahoma to tenant farmers in 1921. With farms spread far and wide, he had no one to play baseball with – except occasional toss with his dad, who bought a used lefthanded first baseman’s glove for his son to practice with.

At age 10 he survived being struck by a car while walking home from school on a country road, breaking his collar bone and suffering deep gashes on his face – and a severe concussion.

Through these years his family endured the Great Depression and the worst of the Dust Bowl.  They were among the toughest Okies; they stayed.

Besides his dad and 15-year older brother, Dale had few others to learn and play sports with. This changed when he went to Cloud Chief High School, where a mere 160 students came from a huge agricultural Dust Bowl-swept school district.  Here his athletic prowess stood out. He earned 12 letters in three sports over four years: in baseball, basketball, track. Not just a local star, Mitchell set the state record in the 100-yard dash at a state meet, a fleet footed 9.8 seconds, a record that stood for many years.

Mitchell’s accomplishments caught the attention of the University of Oklahoma.  So off he went to study and refine his baseball skills, at OU. There Mitchell developed his proficient hitting style – focus on contact and line drives, spraying the ball to all fields. After his sophomore season, when he hit a very impressive .420, he was drafted into the Army Air Force.  The next three years were spent in Europe – where he served as quartermaster, helping the allies free Europe from fascism.

Returning home to Oklahoma – to meet a 2-1/2 year old son he’d never seen – he completed his education and college baseball career in a phenomenal season – he set the University’s single season Batting Average at an astounding .507 … A record that still stands today.

Jobless, in need of money with a wife and young son, Mitchell sought out the AA minor league affiliate of the Cleveland Indians, in Oklahoma City.  They signed him.  Soon, his performance caught the attention of the mothership, and in September 1946 Mitchell was called up to the majors.

L Dale Mitchell: War veteran, survivor of the depression and dust bowl, survivor of getting plowed into by a car as a child pedestrian … and a long major league career of frustrating pitchers with his bat control, great eye and superb eye-hand coordination.

Yes, he was uniquely qualified to be at the plate at this golden moment in baseball history.

Second Pitch:

Working quickly, the pitcher gets a sign for a curve ball.  He nods, steps and slips a nasty pitch at the bottom of the zone.  Again, Mitchell does not swing.  The umpire puts up his right hand. STRIKE ONE.

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The Pitcher

Of all the pitchers, in all of major league baseball, over all of time … the man standing on the pitcher’s mound this sunny October afternoon was surely one of the least likely to be in this moment.

His name was Don Larsen.  Today, until now, in Game 5 of the World Series, he had faced 26 batters.  None of them made it to first base. Only Dale Mitchell remained between him and baseball immortality … a Perfect Game.   Not just a Perfect Game – 27 up, 27 down – but a Perfect Game in a World Series game.

Maybe if it were Whitey Ford or Don Newcombe this moment could be at least a little bit believable.  But Don Larsen??!!

Don Larsen. Off balance delivery. First pitch, game 5, 1956 World Series. Copyright Time-Life/Getty Images

Larsen’s career was far from impressive.  It was mediocre, and it was pretty much otherwise unnoticed.  His career stats are nearly feeble.  His lifetime win-loss record was 81-91 (and this included several seasons with the powerhouse Yankees).  Heck, as recently as 1954 he lost 21 games in one single season.

He walked an average of 4.4 batters per game, and struck out only 4.9 per game. [1] Not only are these rates fair to poor for any era of the game, the ratio of 1.1 strikeouts per walk is among the very poorest of any pitcher with a resume of over a few seasons.

And yet … 1956 had been a relatively successful year for Larsen. Bouncing in-and-out of the starting rotation, he managed a 11-5 record … going 4-0 in four starts in September.

The sweet taste of this past September was severely soured by his performance in Game 2 of the series, three days ago, across town in Brooklyn. He didn’t make it out of the 2nd inning, walking four, striking out zero, and giving up 4 runs.

With the series tied at two games apiece this was a critical home game.  One the Yankees could not afford to lose. Now, just three days after pitching horribly, Hall of Fame manager Casey Stengal called on Larsen to pitch game 5. Fans and sports writers were amazed.  What was Stengal thinking?

He had a hunch about Larsen.

Don Larsen. He’d had faint glimpses of success.  But never, ever greatness.

Now he was looking at immortality.

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Third Pitch:

Still working quickly – staying in rhythm – the sign is for a fastball.  The one that Larsen’s been getting to fade away all game.  He nods, steps and fires.

The wily veteran Mitchell takes a swing, trying to poke it to left field.  He whiffs!  STRIKE TWO.

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The Umpire

“Babe” Pinelli certainly knew baseball.  He knew its ins and outs; he knew every angle; he knew every rule; he knew its history.  He was at the end of a respected 21-year umpiring career.

Before that he had an on-and-off 10 year career in the Major Leagues, up and down on the roster, mostly with the Cincinnati Reds.  For four years (1922-25) he was their regular third basemen, and compiled a very respectable .293 average over those seasons.

Perusing his statistics, it’s easy to surmise that he did – perhaps – think rather too much of his abilities.  He was caught stealing 80 times out of 151 attempts.  During his prime (’22-’25) he was caught 72 times out of 130 attempts.  This is a very, very poor success rate.

Born Rinaldo Angelo Paolinelli, Babe grew up hanging around the wharfs in San Francisco. “Babe” was well respected among players.  He was regarded as fair (he had the gumption to call strikes on the more famous “Babe” – Babe Ruth – when Ruth was at the end of his career and attracting thousands of fans to stadiums wherever he went, and Pinelli was at the beginning of his umpiring career).  And players regarded him as pleasant; was generally considered one of the least likely to throw a player out of a game, regardless of how loudly they protested.

And yet, he was fully aware of the situation, the potential for history, and his place in that history.  This is, of course, hearsay, but Pinelli confided later to players that if he had a chance to make this a Perfect Game, he was going to take it.

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The Catcher.

Behind the plate, in front of Pinelli, is the Yankees’ catcher, Larsen’s catcher. He is one of the most well-known and famous names and people of all time – inside or outside of baseball.  He is Lawrence Peter Berra, affectionately known for all time as simply “Yogi.”

Certainly, one of best all-around catchers and athletes of all time, Yogi knew the game.  Yogi knew hitters. Yogi knew pitchers. Yogi knew how to call a game.  If anyone, besides providence or the almighty, oversaw this game, it was Yogi. He knew exactly how to help a pitcher “work” a batter.

Of his countless famous quips, Yogi said: “It ain’t over till it’s over.”  This game was not over, yet. Yogi studied the batter, Mitchell, closely.  He knew Mitchell well from his 10 years with the Indians in the American League. He knew how to “work” Mitchell.  Now, … if only Larsen could deliver.

Fourth Pitch:

With the count one ball and two strikes, Larsen suddenly breaks his routine for the first time all afternoon, finally showing some stress.  He removes his hat.  He wipes his brow.  He paces around the mound, pausing to gaze at the outfielders, and the fans beyond. Yogi shouts some encouragement.

Larsen stops pacing, and climbs the mound. Deep breath. Toeing the rubber, he looks in to Yogi.  Switching speed again.  Another curve.  A nasty one.  But Mitchell is tough, and he fouls it off. Still ONE BALL and TWO STRIKES.

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The Batters Eye.

Have you ever been to, or watched, a baseball game and wondered why there are no seats in straight-away centerfield?  Or, if there are seats, they are covered with a dark tarpaulin?

It’s been a well-accepted fact since the 1890s that batters can see a pitched ball better, and sooner, if the background behind the pitcher is a flat, consistent, simple dark color.  Today, post about 1960, all ball parks have the “batters eye.”

But this was not always the case. Nor was it so in Yankees Stadium on this day, October 8, 1956.

Game 5, 1956 World Series. No Batters Eye in Center Field. Lots of white shirts. Copyright Frank Hurley.

I’ve reviewed old pictures, and it appears that it was customary to remove the batters eye when there were large crowds, and uncover the centerfield seats.

It’s well known that enough fans in the batters eye would don white shirts when the visitors were batting, and dark shirts when the home team was batting, to give the latter an unfair advantage.

Photos show that, across town, in Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, the Dodgers used the same tactic during the Series.  One wonders why there weren’t more no hitters – and Perfect Games – in those days.

Fifth Pitch (the Final Pitch):

As Larsen waited for a new ball (the previous pitch was fouled off), the outfielders moved a few steps to their right, toward left field. A pretty good indication a fast ball is coming.

Mitchell is wise, catches the small shift, and suspects the fade fastball — the one that runs away from him is coming.  He is correct.  It is the fade fastball.

At this point history diverges.  There are many different assessments as to what truly happened.

According to Mitchell – and several of Larsen’s Yankee teammates in the field – the pitch was higher and probably more outside than any other pitch called a strike that day.

Video shows that Mitchell started to swing, but checked up, stopping short of committing.

Umpire Babe Pinelli was working his last game ever behind the plate at the end of a 21-year major league career.  What a way to go out – as the umpire who called a perfect game in the World Series.

He was not going to miss this opportunity.

Up went his right hand.  Out came some words that sounded like “Strike Three! YER OUT!!”

Some say Mitchell did not check his swing. Other say it was a poor strike three call. Others, that it was a good call.  The record books say it was a called strike three.

Catcher Berra, who, from the only surviving video, was likely already halfway up out of his crouch to catch the high pitch, jumped up and ran to hug Larsen.

Yogi Berra jumps into Don Larsen’s arms moments after the Perfect Game

Mitchell turned to protest the call, but Pinelli was already gone!

Larsen, Mitchell and Pinelli are all answers to famous baseball trivia questions.  Larsen is the unlikely hero.  Mitchell (and many say Pinelli too) is the goat.

I’ve watched the video a few times and it’s just too grainy.  And the film frame rate is wrong, so it seems to be going too fast.  Also it’s from an unfamiliar angle: from up high and not quite directly behind home plate.

But I’m going with what some Yankees on the field said, as well as Mr “Contact-Hitter-Who-Almost-Never Strikes-Out” Mitchell said himself. That pitch should probably have been called a ball. He should have been able to see at least one more pitch.

From experience I can say that (1) yes, umpires make mistakes; and (2) sometimes they can also get caught up in the moment.

The umpire is always right.  So … on October 8, 1956 Don Larson threw the only No-Hitter – and Perfect Game – in World Series history.

Box Score, Game 5, 1956 World Series — the Perfect Game

Larsen and Mitchell afterward.

Don Larsen enjoyed his life of celebrity … even as his career faded into less than mediocrity.  He’d always been known as sort of a funny and fun-loving guy, willing to tip a glass and break team curfew. He even ended up pitching with the Chicago Cubs in one of their truly horrible years.

Larsen was also a military veteran, giving up two years in the prime of life, to serve in the Army during the Korean War.

Later in life he tried his hand at several careers, from liquor to paper peddling. Evidence and stories suggest he was not very successful.

Of all coincidences, Larsen was in attendance at David Cohn’s Perfect Game for the Yankees, in 1999, throwing out the ceremonial first pitch to – of all people – Yogi Berra.

Still among the living, Larsen recently sold his Perfect Game uniform to help pay for his grandchildren’s college educations.

——–

Mitchell invested almost all his playoff and bonus earnings during his professional baseball career into Oklahoma real estate near his home town.  After his ball career he developed these holdings into a successful oil and gas business.

His success drew the attention of Martin-Marietta, and he was recruited to be VP and run their concrete division.  He retired from there in 1985 to live in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

The University of Oklahoma opened a new baseball park in 1982, named for Mitchell: the L. Dale Mitchell Baseball Park.

He remains the all-time batting average champion for the University of Oklahoma, and was enshrined in the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame in 2005.

He maintained his “innocence” on that final pitch until his death.  He refused all interviews and media orchestrated “truce” reunions with Larsen for years afterward. “I ain’t going to talk about a fake strike out.”

Mitchell passed away in January, 1987 – aged only 65 – of a heart attack.

Baseball is America’s Game, and I wish it could bring us together again.

Joe Girard © 2017

[Feel free to comment below or Email Joe.]

[1] actually these strikeouts and walk rates are per nine innings pitched

Other stuff

  • Although this was the last At Bat in Game 5, Mitchell had one more at bat in the deciding Game 7.  He made an out and the Yankees also won that game. Mitchell retired after the 1956 season.
  • Pinelli umpired two more games — games 6 and 7 of the Series — but not behind home plate.  He then retired.
  • October 8 is also the day the Great Chicago Fire started (1871), as well as many other horrific fires across the Midwest.  In Peshtigo, Wisconsin up to 2,500 died.
  • Let’s give Larsen his due respect.  On that Dodgers team was Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges, Duke Snider, Roy Campenella, Jim Gilliam.  A great line up … and all had a good year in 1956.
  • Jackie Robinson also retired after the 1956 season.

Brains

“Football combines two of the worst things in American life.
It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.”
― George F Will

 

Brains are a mystery.  Mysteries within mysteries.  It reveals its secrets slowly and after great effort. But there are natural experiments that allow us to comparatively easily peel back one or two layers of this exceptionally exquisite enigma.

One natural experiment is the cumulative effect of extreme brain trauma on its health and performance. These trauma events can come from a variety of causes.  Some are accidental; some are on purpose. For me it was mostly from surviving two very violent car crashes.

Although the first crash was arguably more violent (see Driving Alive), it was the second that “did me in.” That one was just over three years ago.

Here is an update.  I still get brain “phenomena.” It is very confusing to suddenly get zaps and swirls and illogically migrating headaches.  They come and go without warning; some appear sharply and cruelly.  Some fade in and fade out.  I rather prefer the “faders”, but I have no control.

Sometimes I just don’t feel human.  At those times I don’t want to be around people (not the usual extrovert Joe), and I don’t want to be around Joe, myself.  I smile when I should look contemplative, and scowl when I am happy or content.

Sometimes I wonder why I’m even alive. I know that’s not logical; but that’s just how it works.

I cannot possibly imagine the consequences of additional brain shakes.

Well, actually I can.  We are seeing the consequences in Football. The effects on middle-aged (or younger) men who have withstood multiple brain shakes is staggering.

Love or hate George Will, but he writes thoughtfully and (usually) readably about a wide array of topics.  Last weekend he wrote a column about football and its long term effect on players’ brains.  It’s not pretty.  Granted, Will has obviously and openly favored baseball over football for quite a while (see quote).

Good Brain Bad Brain — This combination of photos provided by Boston University shows sections from a normal brain, top, and from the brain of former University of Texas football player Greg Ploetz, bottom, in stage IV of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. (Ann Mckee, Md/ASSOCIATED PRESS) <Credit given; please don’t sue me>

 

Still, he speaks truth.

From 1900 to 1905 some five dozen young men died — mostly on the field and 19 in 1905 alone — while playing football.  [1] A national outcry induced none other than President Theodore Roosevelt to call the governing bodies and prominent leaders of the sport together to, literally, save the game.

The result was some of the changes that make it a more exciting game today.

Today, September 5, 2017, we celebrate the 111th anniversary of the first forward pass.  Accomplished by St Louis University, when playing Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Back in the day when scores were often in the single digits, St Louis played a much more wide-open style, and ran up an 11-0 record that year, cumulatively outscoring their opponents 407–11. [This at a time when touchdowns only tallied 5 points].

Another major rules change: 10 yards were required to make a first down. Previously it had been 5.

The game changed; the uproar faded a bit — although some fatalities continued, albeit at a lower rate. Yes, they added pads and helmets. But arguably the most important changes, cited above, opened the game to make it much more exciting.

Football MUST adjust to the revelations that repeated head knocks literally ruins brains — and lives.  We cannot have men checking out on their families, friends and their own lives at middle age, or younger. Followers of Colorado University football should also hearken to the warning of the early demise of one of their greatest players, and Heisman Trophy winner, Rashaan Salaam.

History shows that intelligent changes can make the game both safer AND more exciting.

Wishing you spiritual and mental peace,

Joe Girard © 2017

 

Footnote

[1] death count 1900-5: http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/The-312/May-2012/A-Brief-History-of-Football-Head-Injuries-and-a-Look-Towards-the-Future/

Can’t Touch This

This essay is for lovers of baseball and history.  Or rather: lovers of Major League Baseball history. We’re going to look at some of the most unlikely of baseball games in history: the No Hitter.

In baseball a Hit is when a batter strikes the ball such that he makes it safely to at least first base without benefit of a defensive player making a mistake (an error) or a play where he could have retired the batter, but chose not to (a Fielders Choice).  The definition of a No Hitter has always been a bit in flux, even though it sounds simple enough. What if the game is shortened to 5 innings because of rain?  What if the home team wins with only 8 At Bats, so the losing pitcher only has to pitch 8 innings (yes, a pitcher can throw a No Hitter and lose; I recall Andy Hawkins doing so).  What if the game goes into extra innings?

Here I’ll briefly present 3 of the most famous No Hitters in professional baseball history

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1. The Double No Hitter, May 2, 1917.

It was in the early days of Wrigley Field, which then was known as Weegham Park, an edifice that stands as a monument to the history of the game, complete with brick walls and ivy covering much of them. A horrifically bloody war raged in Europe with apparently no end; the US had just joined the fray.  Baseball provided an excellent distraction.

The Cincinnati Reds’ Fred Toney was up against the Chicago Cubs’ Jim “Hippo” Vaughn.  Toney had started his career with the Cubbies.  Playing first base for the Cubs that day was the famous (or infamous) Fred Merkel, the man who — as a 19-year old rookie with the Giants — made a baserunning mistake so pivotal it is still known as “Merkel’s Boner” and led to the Cubs’ appearance in the 1908 World Series … which the Cubs won (their last world series win for 108 years, until 2016).  Playing Right Field for the Reds was none other than Jim Thorpe, the 4-sport superman (fifteen if you count an NCAA Championship in Ball Room Dancing and the Gold Medal in the Olympic Decathlon)

Through nine innings both Toney and Hippo Vaughn had pitched No Hitters. The score was 0-0. Vaughn had allowed only one baserunner, on an error.  Toney had walked two, but allowed no hits.

In the top of the 10th inning, with one out, the Reds’ Larry Knopf stroked a clean single to right field, breaking up Hippo’s No Hitter.  He advanced to third base on the second Cub error of the game, by center fielder Cy Williams.  With two outs the Greatest Athlete of the 20th century came to the plate: Jim Thorpe.  Thorpe hit a dribbler half-way to third, in no-man’s land (to use a WWI term). Catlike, Vaughn got to the ball; but he determined that the super speedy Thorpe would beat his throw to first. Vaughn made a snap throw to home plate, where he had a chance to catch Knopf running home.  Unfortunately, Cubs catcher Art Wilson was anticipating a throw to first.  Vaughn’s throw bounced off his chest protector.

Thorpe was credited with a hit and the game winning RBI.

In the bottom of the 10th, Toney completed his No Hitter.  Toney only had 3 strikeouts the entire game (reminiscent of Cubs’ Ken Holtzman’s No Hitter in their love/pain season of 1969, when he completed one of only two No Hitters in MLB history with exactly zero strikeouts).

Finial Score: Reds 1.  Cubs 0.  [The single run was unearned, because of the error that put Knopf at third]

The official attendance for that game is listed at a mere 350.

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2. More than Perfect is not enough: May 26, 1959

The most remarkable of No Hitters is the Perfect Game. In a Perfect Game the pitcher goes through a game without allowing a single baserunner. No one gets on base by hit. Not by error. Not by walk. Not by Hit Batsman.  Not by Catcher Interference.  27 consecutive batters retired without reaching first base. There have only been 23 perfect games in all of baseball history; out of nearly a quarter-million total games (and two teams per game), that means that a Perfect Game is a very rare accomplishment, indeed. Very rare.

Or is it?

The year was 1959.  The Eisenhower-Nixon administration was in office.  The Civil Rights movement was just beginning to bud, from Branch Rickey’s brave move to get Jackie Robinson into the Major Leagues in 1947, to the seeds sown by Truman’s integration of the military in 1948. Brown v Topeka Board of Education was 1954; Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat in 1955. In 1957 a showdown in Arkansas between governor Orval Faubus and President Eisenhower led to the integration of Little Rock Central High.

The times they were a-changin’. The French had given up in Indochina … leading to a concern about communism there that would lead to cataclysmic cultural clashes in the US just a few years later.

Communism.  The great red scare.  Eisenhower had significantly shrunk the headcount of the US military, hoping to save money and lives by investing in the deterrence of nuclear weapons.  Nuke tipped missiles. The Soviet Union built them bigger and faster. “Duck and cover” was standard domestic training.

Baseball again provided the drama for a great distraction.

The Milwaukee Braves were a very good team in 1959. In 1957 they had won the World Series over the mighty Yankees, 4 games to 3.  In 1958, a World Series redux led to the Yanks winning 4-3.  When 1959 ended, the Braves tied for the NL pennant with the Dodgers, only to lose a mini-playoff series for a possible third straight WS appearance. The Braves were good. Very good.

The Pittsburgh Pirates were a budding powerhouse.  1959 would prove to be their first winning season since 1948; and springboard them to their surprising World Series appearance in 1960, where they would shock the sporting world — and the Yankees — with a 4 games to 3 victory, with Bill Mazoroski’s historic walk-off home run. [The only time a World Series game 7 has ended with a walk off home run]. But that was in the future.

This May night Harvey Haddix was perfect for the Pirates. Through 9 innings it was 27 up and 27 down. No Baserunners.

Unfortunately for Haddix and the Pirates, the Pirates scored no runs…. although they did eke out 10 singles against the Braves’ pitcher, Lew Burdette.

After nine innings the score stood 0-0.

Haddix pitched the 10th inning. Perfect. He pitched the 11th and 12 innings.  Perfect again. No Baserunners. All outs.

Unfortunately, the Pirates scored zero runs also, while Burdette continued pitching for the Braves.

Harvey Haddix came out to pitch the bottom of the 13th inning, the score still tied 0-0. He and Burdette had each already thrown well over 150 pitches, unheard of in the modern era.

The Braves’ slight second baseman, Felix Mantilla (man-TEE-ya), led off, hitting a groundball to third. The throw beat Mantilla, but it short-hopped first baseman Rocky Nelson (what a great sports name) in the dirt, and he couldn’t “pick it.” The Braves had their first baserunner, benefit of a Pirates’ throwing error.

The next batter was lefty Eddie Matthews, one of the greatest home run hitters of all time (512 total).  But Haddix was also lefty, and — as such — had a huge advantage over Matthews with his devastating assortment of breaking balls.  Matthews bunted Mantilla over to second.  [Championship teams do these sorts of things].

One out and Mantilla was on second.  At least the No Hitter was intact.

The next batter was also a great home run hitter: Hank Aaron.  Discounting Barry Bonds steroid-assisted numbers, “Hammerin’ Hank” Aaron stands as the greatest home run hitter of all time.

The Pirates chose to walk Aaron. One out, runners on first and second.

This brought up Braves 1st baseman Joe Adcock. At the time, Adcock was one of the most feared hitters in the league.  Adcock once hit four home runs in a single game, in 1954; a record that has never been broken, although tied some 15 times. Also, back in 1954 Adcock, had hit a line drive off Haddix that struck him in the kneecap so severely that it forced poor Harvey to permanently alter his pitching delivery.

With Mantilla on 2nd and Aaron on first Adcock hit a blast to deep right center field.  As there was only one out, Mantilla waited near second base to tag up.  Aaron took off for second. Adcock cruised to first, watching to see where his mighty blow would end up. Pirates Right Fielder Joe Christopher, a late inning replacement, went to the wall and leapt.  Mantilla tagged up and Aaron, thinking that Christopher might have caught the ball, paused.

As it turned out, the ball cleared the fence for an apparent game ending walk off Home Run.  Aaron, now apparently aware of what happened, leapt for joy — and celebrated as Braves players left the dugout to swarm the infield.  But the game was not technically over.  Adcock kept running, and passed Aaron somewhere just past second base.  At this point Mantilla was heading home.

The very alert second base umpire Frank Dascoli called Adcock OUT; it is not permitted to pass a preceding baserunner, regardless of where the ball is. But as a dead ball award, Mantilla and Aaron were permitted — once made aware of what was going on — to continue on to home plate. The final score was 2-0; Haddix had lost.

Later the scoring was altered.  Since Adcock could not be awarded a home run, Aaron’s run was nullified.

The official MLB final score was Braves 1, Pirates 0.  Adcock was awarded only a double for hitting the ball over the fence.

One can only imagine the chaos that would have ensued had there been two outs when Adcock passed Aaron.  Or if Adcock had passed Aaron, then Aaron passed Mantilla on the bases. That would have been the 3rd out, and — as Mantilla might not have touched Home Plate yet — could have kept the score at 0-0.

Considering that the Braves were a powerhouse team, playing at home … Harvey Haddix had probably pitched the most fantastic, amazing, unbelievable game of all time: Twelve innings of perfection. Sports writers and historians usually agree.  And, yet, he lost.

==>

3. Perfect beats really, really good: September 9, 1965.

This is a game that I might have listened to.  At least part of the game.  The loveable losing Cubs were in their losing hey day.  I had been a fan since my dad took me to Wrigley Field one hot August afternoon in 1961; I saw Billy Williams hit a home run (1961 Rookie of the Year) and I was fan of him and his sweet swing ever since.

The Dodgers were a powerhouse then, mostly on the strength of a phenomenal pitching staff, which was led by the incomparable Sandy Koufax.

On this September evening, in Chavez Ravine’s Dodger stadium, probably the most unlikely and memorable pitching duels of all time took place, at least in the modern era.

Koufax was up against the Cubs’  Bob Hendley, a mediocre pitcher of the era, who compiled a lifetime record of 48-52.

Lyndon Johnson was in the White House — this  time on his own, not as the guy who was VP when Kennedy was assassinated — having won the 1964 election in a landslide … mainly by portraying Barry Goldwater as an unstable warmonger.  Yet Johnson was now fighting two very expensive — and doomed to fail — wars. His War on Poverty eventually cost the country trillions of dollars, and left the country divided, with a higher poverty rate, lower literacy rate and lower marriage rate than before.

More devastating was Indochina.  After the Gulf of Tonkin incident (or non-incident, depending on your reading of history), Johnson convinced the Congress to begin expanding the US engagement in, what we would come to call, the Viet Nam War.

Civil Rights continued moving forward in fits and spurts.  In 1964 the Civil Rights Act became law … and Dr Martin Luther King, Jr was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Civil Rights Act was challenged, and upheld, in the Supreme Court in Heart of Atlanta Hotel v United States: hotels everywhere would now be required to provide lodging to non-Whites.

Dr Timothy Leary was experimenting with, and publishing papers, on the uses and benefits of psychedelic drugs such as LSD.  By the next year he was an icon of America’s tidal wave of counter-culture, preaching us to “turn on, tune in and drop out”, and “question authority.”

Not all Americans agreed with Johnson, the wars, the Civil Rights movement or Dr Leary.

Yet baseball, the ancient game of pastoral settings with no time line and green grasses, unites us.

Back to the game. By the bottom of the 5th inning, both pitchers — Koufax and Hendley — had perfect games: no base runners.

The speedy Lou Johnson was playing outfield for the Dodgers and was in the run of a few good years in his career.  He had come up with the Cubs, and would play some his career’s twilight seasons a few years later in right field with the Cubs. [Johnson was subbing for the injured Tommy Davis, one of the most feared power-and-average hitters of the day. He had won the batting title two of the previous three years, but he had suffered a season-ending injury that spring].

Johnson, batting 4th, led off the bottom of the 5th inning with a walk on a borderline 3-2 pitch. When Cubs’ catcher Chris Krug caught it, he framed it a moment, and then pegged the ball to third — standard routine for a strike out with no one on base. But Krug was wrong; it was ball four.

Hendley’s perfect game was over.

That brought up Ron Fairly, a good batsman, known for handling the bat well (not striking out often).  Fairly bunted a ball that Hendley was able to get to quickly.  Thinking he had a play on Johnson at second base, Hendley rushed a bit and bobbled the ball. He recovered though, and threw Fairly out at first.

Johnson was now on second base with one out. Sensing that Hendley might be a bit shaken, he took off and attempted to steal third base on the very next pitch — the first pitch to rookie Jim Lefebvre. Cubs’ catcher — Krug — apparently also a bit startled, threw the ball over the third baseman’s head, up the Left Field line. Johnson popped up and trotted home. [Cubs third baseman was eventual Hall of Famer, Ron Santo].

Dodgers 1 — Cubs 0.

And that’s the way the game’s score would eventually end. The Dodgers scored the game’s only run without benefit of a single hit.

Hendley still had his No Hitter until the bottom of the 7th.  Lou Johnson — that guy, again — hit a blooper into short Right Field near the foul line.  No one could get there, although second baseman Glenn Beckert nearly did, and Johnson ended up on second base — a clean double, although not pretty.

Hendley ended up pitching a one-hitter.  And losing. On an unearned run.

The one hit he gave up was poorly hit … and did not figure in the scoring. Baseball can be so cruel —- a metaphor for life in many ways.

Although there have been 23 Perfect Games in MLB history — including this one by Koufax — this one stands out as the best performance by far by the opposing pitcher.

Oddly, Koufax and Hendley had a rematch five days later, this time in Wrigley. The Cubbies won, 2-1.

Peace

Joe Girard © 2017

 

 

 

 

[1] Box score and game description, Vaughn v Toney, 1917.  http://www.baseball-almanac.com/box-scores/boxscore.php?boxid=191705020CHN

[2] Box score, Haddix’s “Perfect Game.”  http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MLN/MLN195905260.shtml

–> Harvey Haddix, the greatest game ever pitched; http://www.baseball-almanac.com/boxscore/05261959.shtml

–> in a rare and desperate 9th inning relief appearance, Haddix was the wiining pitcher in that famous 1960 game 7 Pirates World Series victory.

[3] Box Score.  Koufax perfect, Hendley nearly so.  http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN196509090.shtml

 

 

Modest Proposals for American Football and Elections

Somethings need to change.  And I’m not shy about making some suggestions from an “originalist” point of view.

American football and American elections are dying. Let’s make some changes.

Football first.  The games are too darned long. And unnecessarily violent.

Does anyone remember why there is a two-minute warning?  Well I’m old enough to remember that the remaining time shown on the stadium clock was unofficial.  It was just the best guess of a skilled guy up in the booth.  Imagine the home team driving for a winning score with 30 seconds left.  They could try for a field goal, or try to get a little closer and score a touchdown.  And then — shockingly and suddenly — the head referee blows his whistle and announces the game is over. They never got a chance to do either one.  The game — just — ended. Because the time on the stadium clock was unofficial.

The two-minute warning was just that: a warning.  The stadium clock might show 1:32, or 2:32, left in the game.  But no worries, the head referee would stop the game, walk over to each head coach, and announce that there was precisely two minutes remaining. Plan accordingly. Then the game would resume.

Now, decades later, the two minute warning is just a chance to sell more commercial time.  It’s a waste of fans’ time. And a free time out for the team that should probably lose anyhow.

More wastes of time.  TV timeouts.  Team A scores a touchdown.  What happens? TV timeout. Then there is a kickoff.  What happens after the kickoff (which is usually a boring touchback) … another TV timeout.  That’s about 5 minutes of wasted time for a score.

Plus, most punts are followed by several minutes of TV timeouts.  Yes, TV and commercials pay those insanely stupidly high salaries.  I guess that’s why there’s Tivo; to tolerate those 4 hour games.

If you’ve ever been at a football game, you’ll notice all these awkward moments when the teams are just standing around for several minutes.  What’s up? They are waiting for the TV commercials to end. That’s one of the main reasons real Football fans (read: soccer) just don’t “get” American Football.  All that standing around time; all those commercials.

I have more ideas, but will stop with this.  Who really cares if the receiver gets two feet in-bounds? That concern leads to more replay reviews, which can take several minutes a piece.  Go with one foot, like college.  It leads to more scoring, more offense and a faster clock.  That’s what fans want anyhow.

Here’s another one, but not so much about wasted time.  When a player commits a personal foul he should get red-carded, like in soccer.  Then his team must play with only 10 players (or less if more players commit such an egregious foul). Ok, maybe it’s like hockey and it’s only for two or five minutes.

Dead ball personal fouls completely mess me up.  Apologies to non-football people, but consider the following situations.  Team A punts to Team B, who returns the ball a few yards after a tackle. It’s first and 10.  After the play is over, a player from Team B commits a flagrant personal foul for a 15-yard penalty.  Why is it not then first and 25 when the offense comes on?  Nope, first and 10.

Also I’ve seen where team B’s offense converts a first down, and then there’s a dead ball personal foul.  The ball is moved back 15 yards, but it’s first and 10.  Why?  Penalize the malicious penalty. The current process is going way too easy on violence.

Politics and elections have gotten way too divisive.  Yet, the electorate has told us something. Mrs Clinton received 48% of the popular vote; Mr Trump 46%.  We are divided.

Yet Mr Trump won 58% of the electoral votes.

The problem is not the Electoral College system, per se, but the way most states choose to allot their Electoral College votes: winner take all.  Even if the winner gets less than 50%!  For example, in my home state of Colorado, Mrs Clinton took 48% of the popular vote, Mr Trump only about 43%. And yet Mrs Clinton was awarded ALL 9 Electoral Votes (although at least one “faithless” EC voter from Colorado tried to cast votes for someone other than Clinton; and were thrown out by the Colorado Secretary of State).

As Electoral College voters are not permitted to vote their conscience in most states, and the division of votes in most states clearly does NOT reflect the balanced concern of the voters, I make the following suggestion.

Simply: award each states’ Electoral College votes according to how that state votes on a pro rated percentage basis. Assigning only whole numbers of votes, and using the Girard-system, this past US presidential election would have ended up: Mrs Clinton, 261 votes.  Mr Trump 261 votes.  The remainder would have gone to Gary Johnson (14), Jill Stein (1) and Even McMullin (1).

For example: Instead of ALL California’s 55 votes going to Clinton, Trump would’ve gotten 18; Gary Johnson 2; and Jill Stein 1. Further, amazingly, in Wyoming Clinton would’ve gotten 1 vote, and another 3 in Alabama and 7 in Georgia.

In such a situation where no candidate receives a clear majority (270 required out of 538 total) the House of Representatives must decide among the top 3.  Almost certainly they would have eventually chosen Trump. But he would’ve had to negotiate with the likes of Paul Ryan, and he certainly would have been much less of a braggart about his “electoral landslide.” (In the final actual tally, Trump had 304, and Mrs Clinton 227.  There were 7 “faithless electors”; 2 fled Trump, and 5 left Clinton).

Speaking of the House of Representatives, I have one final modest proposal for these bi-annual elections as well.  We all know that many Congressional Districts are highly gerrymandered by political parties to give themselves as many seats in congress as possible. And we know that many Representatives have been in their seats for decades.

Here is my proposal. It has two parts.  First, award a state’s seats proportionally.  Suppose a state gets 10 Congressional Seats. Each party submits the name of 10 candidates.  There are no districts. There is no gerrymandering — at least for CD (Congressional District) seats. Award the seats just like for the presidential electors.

And here is the kicker.  Pick the “winning” names randomly from the original slate.

For example: In Colorado the seats would have been awarded 3 Democrat, 4 Republican and 0 Independent  (the same as the final turned out). Now the excitement starts: Have a lottery show!!  Pick the names from ping pong balls.  No more safe seats.  Even if your party wins 6 out of 7 seats, there is no guarantee that your #1 candidate gets picked. Eventually a de facto term limit kicks in.

Have fun with that.  And it’s all constitutional!!

The two-party system, with entrenched and loud-mouthed politicians, will certainly kill us.  I could at least have football as a distraction as we swirl down the toilet bowl, but they need to fix that too!

cheers

Joe Girard (c) 2017

 

On Paternal Ancestry

On Progeny and patrimonial lineage

A Girl named Poppy

CNN has been sporting quite a few interesting documentaries recently: Steve Jobs, Life Itself (Roger Ebert), the Sixties, the Seventies, The Black Panthers. Last month they aired a different kind of documentary; it was comprised of a dozen or so “shorts.” Each segment was a story by one of their news anchors on the topic “The Person who Changed my Life.”

Unfortunately, I did not see most of the segments. I did see the one by Poppy Harlow. I was moved by whom she identified as “the person who most changed my life”, and the story she told about him and their relationship. That person was her father, who died when she was still a young teen. It’s a very good production video of a touching story; a success story that is both likely and unlikely.

Poppy Harlow: CNN Anchor

Poppy Harlow: CNN Anchor

Likely: we all “like” to think that success can, in most cases and in some way, be traced from a parental influence. Unlikely: Poppy’s career turned out to be nothing like her father’s. You can watch the video here. Poppy Harlow: The Person who Changed my Life.

It reminded me of several other stories that I’ve been holding onto for no particular reason, except to maybe share them here. I won’t say these are similar to Poppy’s story, but they are not all that different either. I will limit them to a total of a mere three segments. (And a very brief fourth follow-up).

  1. “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!”
    – Howard Beale (Network) –> watch the
    Mad as Hell Scene.

If you haven’t watched the iconic 1976 movie “Network”, then watching the scene via the link above is probably all you need in order to get an excellent cultural reference. It applies as much today as ever. It will probably always be “timely.”

Peter Finch as Howard Beale: "I'm as Mad as Hell! And I'm not gonna take it anymore!"

Peter Finch as Howard Beale: “I’m as Mad as Hell! And I’m not gonna take it anymore!”

Peter Finch’s (1916 – 1977) portrayal of crazed news anchor Howard Beale in “Network” earned him an Oscar: the Academy Award for Best Actor. The award was posthumous; he died suddenly – age only 60 – of a heart attack January, 14, 1977, two and a half months before that year’s Academy Awards ceremony. He was the first person to be awarded an Oscar posthumously for an acting performance.[1]  

Finch’s award for “Network” was no fluke. Before that he had earned five BAFTA awards for Best Actor (that’s British Academy of Film and Arts). He was also nominated by both the British and American Academies for several other prominent awards.

The effect of Finch’s patrimony is difficult to ascertain, but it is very interesting to investigate.

Australian George Ingle Finch had a very successful career as a chemist. Among his achievements: developed an improved catalyst for synthesis of ammonia; conducted groundbreaking research into solid state physics, surfaces and thin films, electron diffraction, electron microscopy; and the electrical ignition of gases. In 1944 he was recognized with the Hughes Medal of the (British) Royal Society. He was president of the esteemed Physical Society of London 1947-49. And yet, this is not what he is most known for, nor (probably) his greatest effect on young Peter Finch.

In 1914 Finch the elder was in London, where he was doing research at the Imperial College of Science and Industry. That’s where and when he met Alicia Fisher, daughter of a Kent barrister. Soon after World War I broke out he was assigned to the Royal Field Artillery. Sometime shortly after the start of his military service, in 1915, George and Alice were wed. [As an Australian he was still a subject of the crown, and duty-bound to serve].

While George was away, Peter was conceived. He arrived September 28, 1916 – with George obviously still away. Officially named Frederick George Peter Ingle Finch – perhaps in a way to honor Alicia’s absent husband – he went through most of his life as Peter.

When George returned there were some accounts to settle. He soon divorced Alicia and, with his sister, took full legal custody of Peter. Shortly thereafter young Peter was sent off to France to live with relatives, where he was mostly reared by George’s mother – Peter’s putative grandmother. In the meanwhile George had some dreams to fulfill. He wanted to be a mountain climber.

Those were still the days of the great British adventure; adventure as experienced by, and performed by, the privileged gentry. Yes, the British gentry, of which Finch was certainly not a part. Sailing the world, going to the Yukon gold rush, safaris in Africa, climbing mountains – these were things done with as much creature comfort as possible. Often smoking cigars, dining on quail and herring, sipping brandy, while attired in tweed – that was how to adventure. At least the British gentry’s mode.

That was not how to attack a beast like Everest. Finch joined the Alpine club and set out to join three attempts to make the ascent of Everest in the 1920s with the much more famous climber, the legendary George Mallory.

Finch was an outsider, a colonial farm boy. He had done some climbing in the Alps while studying in Zurich before getting his post at Imperial College. For the Himalayas he brought oxygen canisters, which came in at a hefty 16kg for eight hours supply. On the second British Everest attempt in 1924, Finch was allowed on the ascent team; he made the highest effort on Everest to that date, over 27,000 feet. (Everest tops out at 29,028 ft; that’s 8,848 m). He might well have summited, had he not felt compelled to assist an enfeebled novice companion back to safety.

Finch was, in the eyes of many experts, the best technical climber of his time, despite it being merely a hobby, and he not being a gentlemen. He was sneered upon as a country boy, a colonialist, and an outsider who would “cheat” by using oxygen. He was left off the other two ascent attempts.

In the end, Finch was right. [2]

And in the end, it’s hard to know his influence on his “son”. When Peter was 10, George fetched him up and took him back to Australia. Peter always knew that George openly denied that Peter was his biological son.[3] He also knew of his “father’s” attempt at Everest, and his contributions to science – although George was never much recognized for either until later in his life, when Peter was already well on in his acting career.

The younger Finch’s career started out as bumming across Australia during the Great Depression with a traveling troupe, picking up odd acting roles. During World War II he served in the Army, manning an anti-aircraft gun to fend off Japanese during the bombing of Darwin, and serving in the Middle East.

He didn’t let the war slow him down much: he produced, directed and acted in plays for the troops. When the war was over, his career only delayed a bit, he hit the ground running, took every opportunity, worked hard, and became one of the most famous actors of all time: British, Australian, or, of the world.

  • 2. “Tell yer uncle why there ain’t no snow in California”
    — “Don’t look at me! I didn’t take it!” – Cousin Peal and Jethro (Beverly Hillbillies)

 

1960s sitcoms. They were corny. Some were corny and popular. Among them, “The Beverly Hillbillies” was regularly the top rated TV show in America. During its eleven year run it was only occasionally bumped from #1, usually by The Ed Sullivan Show.

The adorable Donna Douglas, who played Ellie Mae Clampett on the show, passed on about a year ago (January, 2015) at age 82, leaving Max Baer, Jr (Jethro Bodine) as the last living member of the cast.

Both skilled and successful actors, Douglas and Baer would end up with constricted acting careers, as they were so very type-casted by their successful roles on Beverly Hillbillies. [Although Douglas made a 1959 pre-Hillbillies recording in The Twilight Zone episode “The Eye of the Beholder”, wherein she played a woman undergoing a surgery to have her appearance fixed so that she would look more normal. The surgery was a failure: she was just as beautiful after the bandages were removed. The episode was not shown until 1960. — Yes, Donna Douglas, even as Ellie Mae, was inherently beautiful.]

As a Beverly Hillbillies side note and question: can anyone provide an accurate description of the familial relationships between Granny, Uncle Jed, Ellie Mae, Jethro, and Aunt Pearl? (Whom did I forget? Was some sort of incest implied?)

Hopelessly typecast, Douglas more or less gave up acting when the series ended in 1971 and moved on to a successful career as a Gospel singer and inspirational speaker.

Baer, however, did not give up the camera.

Sports enthusiasts might recognize the name Max Baer as a former World Heavyweight Boxing champion. A big brute of a man, with a literally deadly right hand, Max Baer, Sr was indeed the Heavyweight Boxing Champion. That would be “Jethro’s” real life father.

Max Baer, Sr was one-quarter Jewish – acquired from his half-Jewish father. Although he rarely practiced Judaism, he eventually decided to embrace it as a public gesture, nonetheless.

Baer broke into worldwide recognition as a champion contender just as Adolf Hitler assumed the German chancellorship, and ultimately the dictatorship, of Nazi Germany. He became a bona fide contender when he beat the great German boxer, Max Schmeling, in June 1933. Schmeling was a recent (although not current) heavy-weight champion. He was the reigning German Heavyweight champion.

Max Baer, Sr, in his Star of David embroidered boxing trunks. I think this is the fight with Max Schmeling

Max Baer, Sr, in his Star of David embroidered boxing trunks. I think this is the fight with Max Schmeling

Baer was disgusted by the warmth and favoritism shown by the Jew-hating Hitler and the Nazi party apparatus toward Schmeling. Baer was willing to make a public statement, and so he began wearing a very prominent Star of David on his boxing trunks for matches. He started wearing the Star for the match against Hitler’s favorite, Schmeling. And he continued to do so. He was wearing the Star of David embroidered trunks when he won the World Heavyweight Title a year later, June, 1934, when he defeated the then current title holder, Prima Carnera.

And he was wearing the Star, 364 days later, when he lost the title in The Cinderella Match against Irish-American New York longshoreman, James (Jimmy) “Cinderella Man” Braddock.

Unfortunately the otherwise terrific movie about that fight (The Cinderella Man) casts Baer in an extremely negative light. However, it was based partly on fact: Baer considered part of the job of boxing champ to be an entertainer, and he could be pretty darned silly when in that role. The movie played up the goofy and obnoxious role-playing of Baer (in an obvious shallow attempt to get viewers to appreciate underdog Braddock all the more). The movie also failed to prominently show Baer’s trunks, and their plainly visible Star of David. (Blame that on the producer, Ron Howard — Opie).

Shortly after Baer Sr’s boxing retirement, World War II broke out for the United States. Baer served as a physical conditioning trainer for the US Army Air Force. He continued to sporadically act in films (he had started in 1933) and served as celebrity referee for boxing matches.

In November 1959 Baer was in Hollywood for several television commercials (they were done “live” in those does – very few 2nd takes). While shaving at the Roosevelt Hotel, Baer felt a chest pain. He called the front desk, asking for a doctor. They told him they’d send a “house doctor” right up. Ever playful, Baer replied: “No dummy, I need a people doctor.” In hospital later that morning he was joking with doctors when … a second attack hit him. “Oh God, here I go …”

He was only 50 years old. (I am often humbled by how people achieved so very much … and then died … far younger than I am now). His son Max Jr would be making his first appearance on TV in just a few weeks, under contract with Warner Brothers, with whom he would eventually star in The Beverly Hillbillies. Baer, Sr is rated #22 in Ring’s list of all-time boxers. He is among a very few boxers who’ve won by knock-out over 50 times. Two deaths are attributed to his mighty right arm. He was devastated by each.

Max Baer, Jr -- as Jethro Bodine on Beverly Hillbillies

Max Baer, Jr — as Jethro Bodine on Beverly Hillbillies

Max Jr’s career after the Beverly Hillbillies remained in the entertainment industry. Hopelessly typecast by his role as Hillbilly Jethro Bodine until 1971, his acting career was largely over. After that he wrote, produced and directed movies, including “Macon County Line”, in which he also played a rare serious role. That movie made $25 million for an investment of just over $100,000 – a record ratio that lasted until the Blair Witch Project (1999).

He also had the idea of turning popular songs into movies. It was Baer, Jr who came up with turning Bobby Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe”, a hit ’60s song, into a cinematic feature. [The lyrics are below… if you’d like to follow along while listening).

In retirement, Baer continues to make a few TV appearances and has long been attempting to develop a casino in Carson City on the Beverly Hillbillies theme. It has been fraught with legal issues and odd competition.

 

  1. Do I dare
    Disturb the universe?
    In a minute there is time
    For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
    – The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

William Greenleaf Eliot died January 23, 1887 in St Louis, Missouri. He founded the first Unitarian Church west of the Mississippi in 1837, at the corner of 4th and Pine – perhaps 1000 ft from where the famous Gateway Arch has stood since 1964. Outgrowing that location, in 1852, Eliot led the congregation in building and moving to a larger worship space at 9th and Olive. This is only a few blocks from where the stately Post Office and Customs House, and the Library, would be built decades later; those still stand. In 1880, Eliot again led the building of a new Church, at Locust and Garrison. This site was on the Register of National Historic Places. It unfortunately suffered a devastating fire in 1982, and was completely razed in 1987.

St Louis Unitarian Church -- on National Register of Historic Places, until its demise

St Louis Unitarian Church — on National Register of Historic Places, until its demise

That’s just the beginning of William Eliot’s curriculum vitae and significance to St Louis. He’s most notable for founding Washington University in St. Louis (initially called Eliot Seminary). He was influential and critical to founding many civic institutions, including: the St. Louis Public School System; the St. Louis Art Museum; the Mission Free School; the South Side Day Nursery; and the Western Sanitary Commission that provided medical care and supplies during the Civil War. He also contributed to the development of the Colored Orphans’ Home, Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home, Memorial Home, Blind Girls Home, Women’s Christian Home, and many other charitable institutions.

When Ralph Waldo Emerson visited St. Louis, he had the opportunity to meet Eliot and subsequently called him “the Saint of the West.” Besides founding Washington University in 1853, Eliot donated generously to its construction and served as chancellor from 1870 to 1887.

In 1859 William Eliot founded Mary Institute, a school for girls which he named after his daughter, who had died very young. It is now part of the co-educational Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School (MISLCDS).

Same Church, after the tragic fire.

Same Church, after the tragic fire.

It’s hard to know the further effect he had on American culture and literature. In fact, his effect on world culture and literature. Why? William Eliot was also the grandfather of Thomas Stearns Eliot, who was born the year after William’s passing. Going by his initials, T.S., Eliot is renowned in his own right as one of America’s and the world’s most acclaimed poets, essayists, playwrights and literary critics.

It’s hard to imagine young Thomas, spending his youth going between St Louis and New England (due to family ties in the Boston area) and not being very aware of his grandfather’s contributions to society. Frail as a child, “Tom” turned to literature, embraced it, and found inspiration in fellow Missourian, Samuel Clemens.

I’ve read, recited and committed to memory quite a bit of verse over my many decades. Poe, Frost, Longfellow … even Lewis Carrol. And yet, somehow, I’ve not connected much with Mr Eliot the younger. As an aerospace engineer and amateur historian, perhaps I can be forgiven.

As a sop to fellow enthusiasts of the 1904 World’s Fair: As a teen, young Tom attended the Fair – it was in his hometown, after all. The 47-acre Philippines Igorot “village” living exhibit inspired him to write some short stories and poems. This experience also probably influenced his decision to pursue anthropological studies at Harvard – where his grandfather’s name still stood large. [4]

Yes, perhaps I can be forgiven for not taking to Eliot’s writings. T.S. eventually turned away from much of what his grandfather was proud of. In 1910 he moved to Paris; then, in 1914, to England. And there he stayed. He eventually gave up both his Unitarian faith and US citizenship, becoming both Anglican and a subject of the crown.

T.S. Eliot won the Nobel Prize for Literature, as a British subject, in 1948.

  1. Depression Youth; Military Service

My wife and I think of, and talk about, our fathers quite often. They had a lot in common. Both grew up in humble households during the Great Depression. It’s easy to see that this helped make them thrifty, resilient and loyal. They both served in the US military in the ‘40s, Audrey’s dad in the US Navy – in fact a Pearl Harbor Survivor; my dad in the occupation of Japan. It’s easy to see how this helped mold them into the prototypical “Greatest Generation” male: the strong quiet type; able to lead and command; yet equally capable of following and taking orders: organization men. They each loved their family and country dearly, loyally, sincerely … yet often from a reticent and in-charge position and point-of-view.

For the rest of their lives, they felt it was a duty to stay very informed on current events, and they loved to encourage discussion that swirled around world events – including past and current.

I have no idea how our three children’s lives will play out … hopefully very long after we are gone. I’d like to think that there is something of the following in them, and that – in some way – part of it comes from their parents. Just as we received something in this regard from our parents:

  • Inner Strength and Self-Discipline
  • Loyalty and Love
  • Kindness and Compassion
  • Service and Simplicity
  • Living in the Moment
  • Honesty and Humility
  • Graciousness and Generosity
  • Patience and Perseverance
  • Forgiveness and Fortitude

 

Obviously no one is perfect. I certainly am not; neither is my wife. Neither were our fathers. Still – we cling to the positive influences and traits … and gently release the rest. Life is too short to be concerned with anything else.

And I wish the same strengths and virtues for you and yours.

Peace

Joe Girard © 2016

email joe: Email Joe (for addition to email list, or discussion not related to this post.  Comments can be added below)

 

Footnotes:

 

[1] Heath Ledger duplicated this sad/happy circumstance, passing on before he could be receive the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as The Joker in 2008’s Batman sequel “The Black Knight.” Ledger died from a prescription drug overdose (likely due to abuse from ongoing viral infections and insomnia issues). Ironically, both Ledger and Finch were Australian. Ledger was only 28.

 

[2] The air pressure at 28,000 ft elevation is only one-third that at sea level. That means 67% less oxygen for the lungs while working severely hard at steep ascent grades. Famed Kiwi Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, were the first humans to summit Everest, in 1951. They used supplemental oxygen, as have the vast majority of those who’ve successfully achieved the full ascent.
The first summit without oxygen was not until 1978. In 2013, a total of 658 climbers attained the summit; only 9 did so without oxygen. There were also 8 deaths.

 

[3] Finch’s biological father was Wentworth Edward Dallas “Jock” Campbell, an Indian Army officer. Alicia Fisher Finch later married Campbell in 1922. (what’s with the Brits and all those middle names?)

[4] The St Louis 1904 Exposition was huge. Hyuge. Just the Igorot Village living exhibit was larger than many famous World’s Fairs … e.g. The complete 1962 Seattle World’s Fair (which gave us the Space Needle and the Monorail) was only 32 acres … vs the Igorot village at 47 acres … the whole 1904 Fair covered nearly 1280 acres (two square miles)!

Final notes: You can watch The Twilight Zone episode online (The Eye of the Beholder). It’s easier to listen to Bobbie Gentry singing Ode to Billie Joe … one of my favorite Ballads (right up there with “West Texas Town of El Paso.” If you do, here are the lyrics so you can follow along.

 

 

And just for grins….

Ode to Billy Joe

(written, sung and performed by Bobbie Gentry)

It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day.
I was out choppin’ cotton, and my brother was balin’ hay.
And at dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat.
And mama hollered out the back door: “y’all, remember to wipe your feet!”
And then she said, “I got some news this mornin’ from Choctaw Ridge.
Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge”

And papa said to mama, as he passed around the black-eyed peas:
“Well, Billy Joe never had a lick of sense; pass the biscuits, please.
There’s five more acres in the lower forty I’ve got to plow”
And mama said it was shame about Billy Joe, anyhow;
Seems like nothin’ ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge.
And now Billy Joe MacAllister’s jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge

And brother said he recollected when he, and Tom, and Billie Joe
Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show.
And wasn’t I talkin’ to him after church last Sunday night?
“I’ll have another piece o’ apple pie; you know, it don’t seem right.
I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge
And now ya tell me Billie Joe’s jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge”

And mama said to me, “Child, what’s happened to your appetite?
I’ve been cookin’ all morning, and you haven’t touched a single bite.
That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today.
Said he’d be pleased to have dinner on Sunday, oh, by the way …
He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge,
And she and Billy Joe was throwing somethin’ off the Tallahatchie Bridge”

A year has come and gone since we heard the news ’bout Billy Joe.
‘n’ Brother married Becky Thompson; they bought a store in Tupelo.
There was a virus going ’round, Papa caught it and he died last Spring,
And now Mama doesn’t seem to wanna do much of anything.
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin’ flowers up on Choctaw Ridge,
And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

 

 

Morton: Hart to Smith


By 1950, the effervescent consumption potential of the world’s largest single national economy — the United States economy — had been restrained like over-carbonated champagne in a bottle for two decades. At first the role of cork was filled by The Great Depression, then the Second World War, and finally, by massive demobilization of the armed forces, and conversion of industry from war to a peace time economy.

That cork was creeping out, the bubbly about to spew forth. One way that was beginning to occur was manifest in the strong desire to live outside of the urban jungles; to move outside of the cramped, dirty confines of cities like New York, Chicago, St Louis. And yet, not move so far away that they couldn’t commute to the jobs that stayed in the cities … that is, commute via that great symbol of personal freedom of the era: the automobile.

In metropolitan areas where open available spaces were relatively close, brand new planned suburban communities sprang up in land that was previously agricultural, or wooded, or simply empty. The prime example of this was the Levittowns built by the  Levitt Company  in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Some large cities had established communities – usually small simple towns or hamlets – that were only close enough to be suburbs when highways and expressways were built to ease motor transportation to and from the cities.

Welcome to Morton Grove (Illinois)

Welcome to Morton Grove (Illinois)

One of these towns was Morton Grove, Illinois, located some 14 miles or so North-northwest from Chicago’s central Loop. The Eden’s Expressway – which was soon incorporated into the Interstate Highway system as I-94 a few years later – ran north across Cook County, and by 1951 connected Morton Grove to Chicago.

In the decade of the 1950s the population of Morton Grove more than quintupled, from about 4,000 to over 20,000 by 1960. I was one of those “newcomers”; so were my parents, soon followed by two sisters. Just a few months before my birth, in September 1956, my parents bought a humble, tiny ranch home in one of those planned neighborhoods. It was my first home, my sisters’ first home, and the first home my parents owned.

Morton Grove’s population has remained relatively flat since then; I suppose we are part of the reason for that too. With a fourth child now in tow, we moved at Christmastime, 1962, to a suburb of Milwaukee.

The area that would become Morton Grove was first settled by whites of European descent in the 1830s by Germans and English. The population remained low, about a hundred or so, until 1872, when a spur of the Milwaukee Road Railroad came, thanks to the vision of New York businessman and financier, Levi Parsons Morton. The grateful residents named their locale after him.

[Morton would go on to serve as Vice President of the country, getting elected in 1888 with president Benjamin Harrison. Oddly, Morton would be much better remembered than he is – even better than the town that bears his name – had he accepted an earlier offer to run for Vice President with James Garfield, in 1880. For, in September 1881 Garfield was killed by deluded assassin Charles Guiteau. Morton would have ascended to serve as 21st president; instead it was Chester Arthur.]

After the railroad came, the Morton Grove area began to attract a few more settlers, and commercial businesses, including the Poehlmann Brothers greenhouse company. They achieved worldwide attention and acclaim when their Poehlmann Rose won First Prize at the 1904 World’s Fair, in St Louis. This would not be the first star Morton Grove sent to St Louis.

The community had grown to about 500 when it was formally incorporated as a municipality, the Village of Morton Grove, in 1895.

____________________________

A couple years before I arrived, another lad moved to Morton Grove, adding to its ’50s boom. James “Jim” Warren Hart was born just north of Chicago, in Evanston, in 1944. His father died when he was only seven. His mother remarried and they moved in with his stepfather in nearby Morton Grove. A bit on the small side for a football player, his stepdad encouraged him to give it a try – even forcing him out of the car on one occasion to partake in a junior football skills competition. Jim first started playing football as a freshman at Morton Grove’s high school, Niles West. A competitive athlete, Jim earned letters in baseball and track, although, conspicuously, not in football.

Undeterred, Southern Illinois University offered him a scholarship to play football. A small school that competed in lower divisions at the time, Jim was their quarterback for most of the years 1963-65, amassing, at that time, a school record 3,780 passing yards.

Coming from a small school, playing a short, weak schedule — and with a losing record — it was no surprise that Jim was undrafted by any National Football League team. He signed a contract to try out with the nearby Saint Louis Cardinals.

Jim Hart, St Louis Cardinals (Displayed under the Fair Use Doctrine).

Jim Hart, St Louis Cardinals (Displayed under the Fair Use Doctrine).

In sports, it is as near a certainty as possible that undrafted free agents don’t make the team in the NFL, especially at quarterback. Jim made the team.

___________________________

Jackie Smith was born in 1940, in southern Mississippi, in tiny Columbia (thirteen years later Walter Payton was born there). As a boy, his family moved a few miles south, across the state line to Louisiana, to another small obscure town, Kentwood, LA.

It was at Kentwood High School that Jackie ran track; he began trying out for football as a sophomore. Due to injuries, his entire high school football career amounted to a mere five games. Most of the time, he admitted later, his play was so goofy that the other teams never knew what he was doing. He didn’t learn any fundamentals of the game.

He was recruited to run track at Northwestern Louisiana State University (now Northwestern State University). They could only offer him a half scholarship. If he played football too, he could get a full scholarship. So he played football.

He did not have an impressive college career, but he displayed enough speed and determination that he impressed a Saint Louis Cardinals scout. They took a chance and drafted him in the 10th round in 1963. 10th round draft choices have as much chance of making the team as an undrafted free agent. Jackie made the team.

________________________________________________

By 1967, Jim Hart had worked up from sixth string to starting quarterback for the Cardinals. Jackie Smith was the regular tight end. Two unheralded athletes, with unimpressive football backgrounds, competing at the highest level of football.

Jackie Smith, St Louis Cardinals

Jackie Smith, St Louis Cardinals (Displayed under the Fair Use doctrine)

For eleven seasons they played together, putting up electrifying numbers. During this period they helped transform the game of football. With contemporaries like quarterbacks Johnny Unitas and Joe Namath, and other tight ends like Mike Ditka and John Mackey, they showed how exciting and entertaining a more wide-open style of offensive football could be.

Unfortunately, Saint Louis often had poor talent teams in that era, but with a wide-open air attack that thrilled fans (they were then known as the “Cardiac Cards”) the league saw what football could be. At that time receivers were mauled at the line of scrimmage, their legs often cut from under them at the line. Quarterbacks were regularly severely roughed well after the ball was thrown. Tight ends were for blocking.

Jackie Smith was strong enough and fast enough to block linemen and linebackers. Yet with his track speed he could get open, and with his soft hands he could catch passes. With his physical and mental toughness he punished defensive backs who tried to tackle him. This is the prototype of tight ends we know 40 and 50 years later, but it wasn’t always like that.

For three successive magical seasons, 1974-76, under head coach Don Coryell and his “Air Coryell” approach, the Cardinals won 10, 11 and 10 games; at that time the regular season was only 14 games. Still, the Cardinals only made the playoffs two of those seasons, and never won a playoff game with either Hart or Smith on the roster.

Jim Hart was inducted to the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 1998. He was a four-time All Star and NFL Offensive Player of the year, in 1974.

Jackie Smith is in the NFL Hall of Fame, the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame, and the St Louis Walk of Fame. He was a five-time All Star.

If and when you watch a football game these days, and you see receivers getting open off the line, tight ends catching passes, when you see a defensive holding call on a receiver, when you see a roughing-the-passer call, know that this goes back to the Smith-Hart era, and other similar brave players of the ‘60s and ‘70s, who showed how fun and exciting a wide-open game could be – even when they got physically punished for doing it. It wasn’t until later that rules were changed to protect players and promote this more exciting style of football.

_______________________

I guess if there’s a moral it’s that your past doesn’t define your future. And anyone – anyone – can change the trajectory of history. Sports can be a great metaphor for life that way.

A corollary is that when choosing teammates, when hiring to fill a position, — and you have the long term in mind — choose for potential and heart, not for how impressive the resume looks now.

If there’s a second moral, I guess it’s that Americans’ appetites for excitement and freedom in life (cars, travel, suburbs) are reflected in their desire for excitement, creativity and freedom in sports, however they choose to enjoy them.

Wishing you peace and bravery. If you can have only one, pick bravery.

Cheers,

Joe Girard © 2015

 

[1] Jim Hart went back to Southern Illinois for several years to serve as Athletic Director, after a short career as a sportscaster. He remains married to his wife, his college sweet”hart”, for nearly 50 years.

[2] At the time of his retirement, Jackie Smith was the NFL’s all-time leading receiver for tight ends. He was only the third tight end inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame, after Ditka and Mackey. He’s led a quiet retirement, and started a small business building one-man fishing boats.

[3] This essay is a (very rambling) response to Adam’s comment to an earlier essay: Week in New England, and a Quandary

[4] The Cardinals moved to Arizona in 1988. The current NFL franchise in St Louis is the St Louis Rams.

[5] Morton Grove lies within Niles Township, and is/was part of the township’s school district.

That’s the $pirit!


That’s the $pirit!

Guest Essay.  By John Sarkis 2015 ©

October 17, 1974 — 41 years ago this month, The Spirits of St Louis basketball team played their first home game, marking the return of professional hoops, after the St Louis Hawks had moved to Atlanta in 1968.

Logo — Spirits of St Louis, ABA basketball franchise

Logo — Spirits of St Louis, ABA basketball franchise

I could mention the team’s budding young stars, as well as their misfits, or how it helped launch the career of their play-by-play broadcaster, recent Syracuse University student Bob Costas [1]. But in the stories I write, I try to tell of lesser known facts, that most aren’t aware of. So this isn’t so-much about the team, but rather, their owners. And what most — not only in the sports world, but throughout all businesses — consider to be the best business deal of all time.

Many who are younger, or aren’t basketball fans, might not remember when there were actually two professional basketball leagues operating in the United States, the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the American Basketball Association (ABA). The ABA was started in 1967 as an attempt to end the NBA’s monopoly on professional basketball, and at the time, posed a significant challenge to the NBA’s dominance. ABA team owners started an all out salary war by offering young players larger contracts than their NBA counterparts could afford, and introduced new ideas since adopted by the NBA, like the three-point line and the All Star Game dunk contest.

Brothers Ozzie and Daniel Silna were sons of Latvian immigrants who had settled in New Jersey in the 1930s. Their father ran a textile business which both brothers later took over, until they sold the company in the early 1960s. Ozzie and Dan then started their own business that eventually became one of the largest manufacturers of polyester in the world. Dan Silna, a lifelong basketball fan, attempted to purchase the Detroit Pistons for $5 million, but their offer was rejected. So instead, they purchased the ABA’s Carolina Cougars in 1974, moved the team to St. Louis, and renamed them the Spirits.

At the time, most ABA teams sensed there would be a merger with the NBA, and by moving the team to St Louis, the largest market without professional basketball, the Silnas felt this enhanced their chances of joining the enlarged league. But with attendance averaging about 2000 a game, and the highest salary structure in the sport, the team was losing money.

After the 1975-76 season, four of the former ABA teams were absorbed into the NBA, but St. Louis and the Kentucky Colonels weren’t included. Kentucky owner John Y. Brown took a $3 million settlement. But the Silnas bargained for more. To keep the St. Louis owners from fighting the merger in court, the NBA and the St. Louis team owners forged what turned out to be an incredible deal. The Silnas agreed upfront to a $2.2 million cash payment, and a one-seventh share of the TV revenue from the four ABA teams going in the NBA – the New York Nets, Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers and San Antonio Spurs. These payments would be made “in perpetuity”, meaning – FOREVER.

At the time, the TV contract was worth almost nothing. But with the sport growing in popularity, broadcast rights are now in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

They have no association with the sport, and most don’t even know who they are. But for nearly 40 years, the Silna Brothers have walked to their mailbox nine times a year to pick-up checks from the NBA totaling nearly $300 million.

Always a thorn in the side of the NBA, they have repeatedly tried to reach a cash settlement with the brothers, and last year, an agreement was reached. It was reported that the NBA would give the brothers a one-time cash payment of $500 million, to end the contract. [2]

_________________________________________________________________________

John Sarkis posts regularly at the Facebook page for “St. Louis Missouri. History, Landmarks & Vintage photos”
John is a native Saint Louisan, is retired, and now lives in Kirkwook, Missouri, a suburb of Saint Louis.

editor note [1] — Bob Costas did not earn a college degree, dropping out of Syracuse university, first to do broadcasts for the Syracuse Blazers, a minor league hockey team. His drop out was complete, when, at age 22, he got the opportunity to do play-by-play announcing for the Spirits.  A native of New York city, born and raised, he also considers St. Louis warmly as his co-hometown.  [St Louis Magazine, July, 2013: Q&A with Bob Costas, by Wm. Powell –> http://www.stlmag.com/Q-A-A-Conversation-With-Bob-Costas/]

[2] Silna-NBA Deal reached: http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/nba-silna-brothers-settle/2014/01/08/id/545903/

Olympic Lyon and Abbott

Olympic Reigns

Next August 6 through 21 the 2016 Summer Olympics (Officially: “Games of the XXXI Olympiad”) will be contested in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — which is a bit weird, since it will technically be winter in Rio. This is consistent with other summer games held south of the equator. The 1956 games in Melbourne – the southernmost city to host the games – were held in November and December, Australia’s spring.  The 2000 Sydney games were played in the 2nd half of September, bridging winter and spring.

Toward the end of the Rio games the world is guaranteed a new Olympic champion in an old sport.  When the gold medal is awarded the moment should be extraordinary in a most unusual way:  It will likely represent the longest running Olympic championship reign to ever come to an end. And it might well remain that way forever.

I’d forgive you if you’re thinking of Usain Bolt (100-m, 200-m) or Michael Phelps (any number of swimming events) – but they might well win again, and their reigns would not end.

Think farther back.

You get points if you thought of Rugby, which has not been an event since the Paris games of 1924 (the “Chariots of Fire” Olympics).  That year the United States won the gold medal and Olympic championship, successfully defending the crown they had won in the 1920 Antwerp games. Rugby comes back to life for the 2016 Rio Olympics for both men and, for the first time ever, for women.  Even if the US men’s team manages to qualify for the tournament, it is highly unlikely they will successfully defend their 92-year running Olympic title. So, there will be a new champion, and that reign will come to an end.

Still, quite a few other Olympic events have been dormant even longer.  Some will almost surely never return, so those reigns will last for as long as there are records.  The Tug-of-War, a 5-time Olympic event from 1900 to 1920 (there were no games in 1916, due to the Great War), was won twice by teams from Great Britain, including the final championship, in 1920.

Two sports even more unlikely to make an Olympic re-appearance were last contested in Paris, in 1900: (1) Live pigeon shooting (won by Belgian Leon de Lunden), a ghastly, messy, bloody affair; and (2) Obstacle Course Swimming, won by Australian Frederick Lane.  We can safely assign the Olympics’ longest reigns to these men, … forever.

————————————-

Back during the Edwardian Era, in 1904, Saint Louis hosted the Olympics, prying the games away from Chicago well after the Windy City had been deemed the host city by the IOC and USOC (International and US Olympic Committees).  The short story of this Olympic host-city purloin starts with the award to Saint Louis the honor of hosting the 1903 World’s Fair, which they dubbed “The Louisiana Purchase Exposition” — to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase.

But wait: 1903? The extent of the fair was enormous — it covered 1,270 acres and had over 1,500 buildings, including more than a dozen Palaces (just the Palace of Agriculture enclosed over 23 acres, equivalent to more than 17 football fields).  Yes, so enormous that the year of the Exposition was pushed back a year, to 1904.

At this point, the aggressive and ambitious leaders of the Exposition, led by accomplished and beloved President of the Fair, David Rowland Francis, lobbied hard (again) to host the 1904 Olympic Games, now to be concurrent with their World’s Fair. At this point Chicago had long since defeated St Louis for the honor of hosting the Games.

Francis was well-connected financially and politically: he had previously served as St Louis’ mayor, Missouri’s governor and as Secretary of the Interior during Grover Cleveland’s second term. Not just bluff and bluster, the Fair’s leaders credibly threatened to dilute the Chicago Olympics by simultaneously hosting World’s Fair Exhibition Games if their request was denied.  Eventually the IOC and USOC acquiesced.  Saint Louis got the games. Most events were contested just west of the fairgrounds, on the campus of Washington University, which was (and is) just outside the St Louis city limits.

The 1904 Saint Louis games of the III Olympiad were nothing like the extravaganzas we’ve come to expect over the past 50 years, or more. Now the games are over-hyped, over-marketed, and absurdly over-nationalistic. The Olympics then were still in their infancy.  They were innocent, simple, often poorly organized, and decidedly non-nationalistic.  Due to this simplicity, innocence and under-hype — and partly due to St Louis’ location deep in the American heartland — there was discouragingly low participation in the games.

Besides the Olympics, there were many athletic events held during and in conjunction with the Fair, and historians have had some difficulty ascertaining just how many events were actually Olympic events, and how many athletes, too. Adding to the confusion, there were Olympic Games that were more like demonstration events: the handicap games (where time or distances were added and subtracted based on athletes’ abilities, as in golf or bowling handicaps) and the very non-politically correct Anthropology games.

According to “1904 Olympic Games, Official Medals & Badges” (Greensfelder, Lally, Christianson, Storm) only twelve nations participated in what we’d call official Olympic “medal” events, and only 673 contestants.  For comparison, in the 2012 London Olympics, there were 204 nations and nearly 11,000 athletes represented.

A huge majority of the athletes were from the United States: 539 of the 673. A further 52 athletes were from Canada. In any event, the athletes did not represent their own nations anything like today; they represented themselves and their local sports or swim clubs. No national anthems; no flag waving.

George Seymour Lyon was one of those 52 Canadians – a businessman from Toronto, born and raised near Ottawa.  Although already 46-years old, he arrived with the confidence of an accomplished and natural athlete.  As a young man, he had held Canadian national records in the pole vault and as a cricket batsman. And he had demonstrated prowess in baseball, lawn bowling, and rugby. There is a lot of river ice in Canada in the winter: Lyon was accomplished at hockey and curling as well.

With great physical conditioning, concentration, and demonstration of eye-hand coordination in baseball, hockey and cricket – Lyon had begun playing golf relatively late in life, at age 38. By the time he showed up in Saint Louis, in August, 1904, he had already won an astounding three Canadian National Amateur championships (’98, ‘00, ’03 – he would go on to win a total of eight such national championships, the last at an astonishing 56-years of age).

Seventy-Five contestants were entered for that Olympic Golf tournament.  All but three of those seventy-five were from the US; the other three – including – Lyon, were from Canada.

The site for the golf matches was the nearly brand new course at Glen Echo Country Club, completed in 1901, just outside St Louis, in Normandy, Missouri. Well, actually, almost all courses in the New World were nearly brand new: Shinnecock Hills on Long Island was the first course in the US, built in 1891.  Chicago Golf Club, in 1894, was the first course west of the Appalachian Mountains.

Glen Echo Clubhouse, 1904. Converted from the Hunt Mansion. Normandy, Missouri

Glen Echo Clubhouse, 1904. Converted from the Hunt Mansion. Normandy, Missouri

The 1904 Olympic golf competition was an absolutely grueling competition, by any standard.

Day #1 was a 36-hole qualifier.  Players with the low 32 scores qualified for an elimination match play tournament: 36-holes each day. The finalists would have to play five more consecutive days.

Needless to say, Lyon qualified for the tournament, and over the period of 6 days he played 12 rounds of golf (two to qualify, and five 36-hole elimination matches), defeating men much younger than himself along the way, to win the championship and the gold medal.  Ever the athlete, he celebrated by walking on his hands through the clubhouse after the award.

Lyon’s is the only gold medal ever to be awarded in golf, since golf has not been an Olympic event since then, and the St Louis Olympics were the first games to award gold, silver and bronze medals for first, second and third places. [The winner of the 1900 Olympic golf tournament, American pro George Sands, one of only 12 contestants, was awarded a silver medallion, after a stroke play tournament of only 36 holes).

George S. Lyon, the only Olympic Golf Gold Medalist (until 2016, in Rio).

George S. Lyon, the only Olympic Golf Gold Medalist (until 2016, in Rio). Defending Champion for 112 years.

Olympic historians may well disagree that George Lyon is the longest reigning Olympic Golf champion.  It turns out that the 1900 Paris Games (also simultaneous with a World Exposition) held an obscure 9-hole golf tournament for women.  Conducted 30-miles outside Paris in Compiègne on a course laid out within a horse racing track – and so poorly organized that the ten contestants had no idea they were competing in the Olympics – the tournament was won by a 24-year old American, Margaret Abbott, with a score of 47 strokes. To underscore their ignorance of the significance of the event, many women showed up to play in high heels and rather tight skirts. I wonder what those heels did to the greens?

Since there was no women’s golf competition at the 1904 games (perhaps they decided that 12 rounds of golf in 6 days was too much), Abbott stands as the longest reigning Olympic golf champion.

Abbott, born in India, had learned golf after moving to America at the Chicago Golf Club.  She was in Paris with her mother at the time of the 1900 Paris Olympics and Fair to study art. She heard of the tournament and entered matter-of-factly.  In fact, her mother also competed in the event, finishing 7th – the only time in Olympic history that a mother and daughter have competed in the same event.

Fifty-five years later, at the time of her death, Abbott still had no idea she was an Olympic Champion.  At the end of the tournament she was awarded only a porcelain bowl.  As the games’ significance grew through the decades, Florida University professor Paula Welch spent 10 years tracking down her family and let them know they were descended from an Olympic champion. 1900 was the first Olympics with women’s participation; so Abbott is the first American woman, and 2nd woman overall, to win an Olympic championship. (England’s Charlotte Cooper had won the women’s tennis tournament just hours earlier).

In 1902 Abbott met and married humorist Peter Dunne while in Paris.  She also won the Femina Cup, precursor to the French Women’s Golf Championship.  Quite a year.  They then moved to New York, when, it seems, her competitive golf career came to a quiet end, partly due to a nagging knee injury she suffered in a bicycle fall as a child.

Margaret Abbott on golf course, circa 1904

Margaret Abbott on golf course, circa 1904

I can’t find what happened to Abbott’s porcelain bowl, but we do know that somewhere through the years Lyon’s gold medal somehow got lost.  His family and the Canadian Olympic Committee have pleaded for a new official medal to be issued, but it has been denied.  A duplicate medal hangs on display at the Rosedale Golf Club, in Toronto, only about 35-minutes from Canada’s Golf Hall of Fame, in Oakville, Ontario, where Lyon was inducted in 1971.

Lyon was also named to Canada’s Olympic Hall of Fame (in 1971) and to Canada’s Sports Hall of fame in 1955, coincidentally, the same year that Abbott passed away. (Lyon had died in 1938). If you wish to visit and achieve a two-for-one: Canada’s Olympic and Sports Halls of Fame are located in Olympic Park, in Calgary, Alberta (site of the 1988 Winter Games).

George Seymour Lyon's 1904 Olympic Golf Gold Medal

George Seymour Lyon’s 1904 Olympic Golf Gold Medal

Well, either way, the longest Olympic champion reign to come to an end will be in Rio de Janeiro in the golf competitions.  There will be both a women’s and a men’s Olympic competition for the first time in more than a century — and a gold medal for each. It would be nice if there will be tributes to Abbott and Lyon when it happens.

Peace, and … Fore!

Joe Girard © 2015

 

Notes:

  1. a biographical book (and possible movie) is coming out on George Lyon soon.  You can find out more here: http://www.georgelyon.ca/
  2. Lyon also entered 15 Canadian Senior Golf Championships (Presumably for seniors, from age 50 to 64).  In those 15 years he compiled a most amazing record: He won 10 times and finished runner-up 4 times.
  3. The Normandy, MO school district includes Ferguson, MO.

Acknowledgments: Thanks go to my wife Audrey and to Max Storm (Founder of the 1904 World’s Fair Society and co-author of the 1904 Olympic book cited) for reading and re-reading this and for making editorial and structural suggestions.

 

Miscellaneous resources:

http://www.womengolfersmuseum.com/Famousgolfers/AbbottMargaret.htm

http://www.georgelyon.ca/search-for-gold/

http://www.ottawacommunitynews.com/sports-story/5806459-richmond-born-george-lyon-only-olympic-gold-medal-winner-in-golf/

the search for Margaret Abbott, by Paula Welch: http://library.la84.org/OlympicInformationCenter/OlympicReview/1982/ore182/ORE182s.pdf

http://www.stuffmomnevertoldyou.com/blog/olympics-female-gold-medalist/

 

  • Chicago loses the 1904 Olympics: http://library.la84.org/SportsLibrary/JOH/JOHv12n3/johv12n3k.pdf

 

Simply Degenerate

Date line: April, 2015.

My wife and I made a little getaway to Missouri this past February. If you’ve been there in winter, there’s a good chance you’ll understand why I often call it “the state of Misery.” Anyhow, en route from Saint Louis to Hannibal we spent time in the formerly not so well-known — but now very well-known — community of Ferguson, Missouri.

Two rounds of riots there in 2014 resulted in multiple cars and buildings being burned. Businesses were ruined. These riots were the aftershocks from (1) the killing of Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson, and (2) the Saint Louis County Grand Jury’s decision to NOT indict said police officer Darren Wilson.

Ferguson Brewery, Ferguson, MO

Ferguson Brewery, Ferguson, MO

We found the community of just over 20,000 to be really quite delightful. Churches and grocery stores and homes of all sorts: like you’d expect anywhere else. We stopped in at the Ferguson Brewing Company, a cheery micro-brewery with a full kitchen and pub menu. There we enjoyed lunch and a beverage. The place was hopping, and the beers we selected were hoppy too. The patrons were mostly pale faced, but scattered about were ebony and ivory-skinned customers, even sitting at the same tables.

We made it a point to drive through the sections of town where buildings and been torched – destroyed by fires from the riots. Laundromats, liquor stores, auto parts stores, restaurants. Pretty much without rhyme or pattern, concentrated mostly in two different parts of the city. Actually, some destruction spilled over into nearby Dellwood, MO.

We stopped at the spot where young Mr. Brown was killed. Even in February, six months after the shooting, there was still a memorial to him there, on Canfield Drive, near Copper Creek Court.

We felt it important to spend some time there: to contemplate the location and its significance. It’s only a few blocks from the Ferguson Market, on Florrisant Avenue.

[What city has TWO major streets near each other with the same name? In this case “Florrisant.” Oh yeah, Atlanta. Almost every other street is named

Michael BrownMemorial, Canfield Dr, Ferguson, MO

Michael BrownMemorial, Canfield Dr, Ferguson, MO

Peach Tree.]

The Ferguson Market is where the petty theft – and physical abuse of a 120-lb weakling store clerk by 290-pound Mr. Brown – occurred that resulted in Officer Wilson locking onto a young man of Mr. Brown’s description. That theft occurred about 10 minutes before their most unfortunate fateful rendezvous.

This was all brought freshly to mind for me a few weeks ago during the NCAA basketball tournament. March Madness.

“What?”

Right. The College basketball national championship tournament. Why? Because white people riot too, and for really, really stupid reasons. Over and over again.

Kentucky was the odds-on favorite to win the championship. Basketball is religion in Kentucky. The Lexington-based school has won 8 National championship titles, including as recently as 2012. They’ve been runner up twice, including 2013, and National semi-finalists, an additional four times, to my counting at least, including 2011.

That’s a pretty impressive record, given that there are, oh, I don’t know, something like 400 colleges and university basketball teams competing at the Division-I level.

But this year they lost to Wisconsin in the National semi-final match. Which means if there are 400 schools, their basketball team is better than 398 of them. So what did their fans in Lexington, Kentucky do after the semi-final match? They rioted. Burned cars. Trashed buildings. Barricaded the streets. Fought Police.

Really? — Really.

And this is nothing new. Last year, 2014, Kentucky made it all the way to the National Championship game and lost to Connecticut. Guess what?

The fans in Lexington rioted.

Ah, precedence.

In 2012 Kentucky made it to the National semi-final. That time they defeated in-state super-hated arch-rival Louisville. Kentucky won the game. Win? They won? Yes, they won.

The fans in Lexington rioted.

Two nights later Kentucky was in the National championship match and won, defeating Kansas. This time another win!! A National Championship. Oh the glory.

The fans in Lexington rioted.

More precedence.

Back in 2011 Kentucky was defeated in the National semi-final by Connecticut (a bit of a nemesis) …

Yes, you guessed it …

The fans in Lexington rioted.

You know. Just the basic stuff. Burn cars. Tear down light posts. Throw rocks at police. Vandalize buildings. Mug passers-by.

You’d think the police and city fathers in Lexington would be a bit wise to the whole thing by now.

What is weird is that the fans are mostly well-lubricated white people rioting because the mostly black student athletes performed so well that their expectations were that they would win a Nation championship … or else. Or else what? We’ll riot either way.

In 2013 Kentucky’s record was not good enough to even get into the championship tournament (a fate that befalls the vast majority of teams). So, Kentucky pretty much sucked that year … at least by Kentucky standards. Guess what? NO RIOTS! Go figure.

White people rioting for stupid reasons (or no reason) is nothing new. Even in my current “home” metro area – Denver, CO – fans rioted when the Colorado Avalanche won the NHL’s (National Hockey League) Stanley Cup in 1996. Sure this was the first major championship in Colorado. That warrants a riot. (#sarcasm).

The next year the football Broncos won the Super Bowl. No riot. But then they won their second straight Super Bowl, 1998, … more riots. Really? Yeah. Let’s get really pissed and burn some sh*t. No riots when the Avalanche won the Stanley Cup again in 2001. A whiff of sanity.

They don’t riot for no reason in Milwaukee. Or in the whole state of Wisconsin.

I do remember the summer riots of 1967: Barricades in the street. Our humble suburb blocked off at the municipal city limits. Restrictions on gasoline sales: it had to go right into auto tanks; not into portable tanks. People who wanted to mow their lawn (pre-electric mowers) had to bring the grass-cutter right to the gas station.

A permanent scar on our country and on our memory. Newark, NJ, 1967

A permanent scar on our country and on our memory. Newark, NJ, 1967

It was a time of tremendous social unrest – upheaval – and Milwaukee was not spared. Those ’67 riots were not senseless or without reason. They were tied in with the civil rights movement, disappointment with lack of progress from the ’64 Civil Rights Acts, and the move toward freedom of expression, and of course the anti-war movements of the ‘60s. There were a shocking 159 riots in the United States in 1967. One Hundred and Fifty-nine. Mostly race related, they broke out in LA, Cleveland, Minneapolis, everywhere it seemed. The most violent were Detroit and Newark. Too vivid. Too vivid. I remember this gruesome Life Magazine photo from the Newark riots. Burned into my RAM.

The causes, racial participants, locations and provocateurs of these riots were far ranging. From Encyclopedia.com:

“… the year 1967 ended with a final act of violence in late October, when antiwar protesters from around the country moved on Washington, D.C. Those who gathered at the Lincoln Memorial on 21 October were largely white, largely middle class, largely educated, and formerly mainstream in their politics. But, when U.S. Army units met them with fixed bayonets, they took to the streets of the capital in an out-break of destructive rioting and constructive confrontation, and 650 were arrested.”

Fixed bayonets for those expressing freedom to assemble? Freedom of expression? Hell yeah, riot. We don’t turn the military on the public in the US. Riots!

Still, I don’t think that places like Wisconsin or Minneapolis have experienced totally pointless riots, like Lexington. And Denver. Maybe I’m wrong. But I doubt it.

I’ll get in trouble for this, but I can’t help but wonder if this behavior doesn’t carry some sort of genetic pass-me-down from each area’s ancestral settlers.

Wisconsin was mostly settled by the “quiet disciplined” sort. Mostly Germans. Many Poles and Norwegians. Some English, with their stiff upper lips. Work hard. Don’t make a fuss. Stick to your own business and do it well. Get it done and move quietly along to the next thing. “Don’t rock the boat” type of settlers.

Early Irish and Scottish immigrants to the New World were largely unwelcomed by the English and moved west, settling in the rugged Shenandoah and Appalachian Mountains. When the Cumberland Gap popped open they began moving into the territory that would become the states of Kentucky and Tennessee.

I’m not calling the Scots and Irish “rioters” (in fact, I love them, their culture and sense of humor), but they probably don’t have a reputation for spontaneously breaking into (a) drink, (b) song, (c) dance, and (d) fight for no reason. Germans, Poles, Norwegians … they just don’t do that. Ok, maybe they do the drinking part. ☺

Before I get in any more trouble, I’ll close with saying that Wisconsin lost in this year’s (2015) NCAA championship match to Duke University – after defeating Kentucky in the semi-finals. I’ll admit to being partial, but there were many questionable calls during the second half. It seemed that every 50/50 out-of-bounds ball was awarded to Duke, and Wisconsin frequently fouled Duke players with their chins, foreheads and eye-brows.

Nevertheless: There were no riots.

Wisconsin fans did not riot when they beat Kentucky in the semi-final, nor when they lost to Duke in the final.

For emphasis: Last year, 2014, Wisconsin made it all the way to the semi-finals, losing to Kentucky (by one point!, 74-73).

There were no riots.

Meanwhile, in late 2014, while overwhelmingly mostly peaceful riots were going on around the entire country in sympathy with the mostly peaceful protests in Ferguson, something weird was going on in Keene, New Hampshire. Keene State College – mostly white, upper class privileged kids – had their annual Pumpkin Festival.

Yes. You guessed it. … Riots broke out.

Riots broke out.

Drunken brawls. Random fires and mayhem. Burned and overturned cars. Vandalized buildings.

The media are deluding us.

Well, New Hampshire is the “Live Free, or Die” state.  Love the motto.  Hate the riots.

Wishing you peaceful, riot-free and headache-free spring, summer and fall.

Peace,
Joe Girard © 2015

[1] Encyclopedia.com: 1967 Riots. http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3401803621.html

Curly

Memories, by Joe Girard: June 4, 1976

Besides being hairless, Curly’s head was big and round, just like the rest of him.  Really big. Except for his ears and mandatory facial features, it looked rather like an oversized cue ball.

What the National Basketball Association lacks is March Madness.  Contrast the anti-climactic NBA tournament with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament and it feels like a dud. The NCAA has a championship tournament that has tens of millions of people betting on filled-out brackets – with quintillions (ok, let’s say zillions) – of possible outcomes. And it’s over in a couple of exciting weeks. Most of them are pulling for at least one of small, even tiny, schools like Butler, Gonzaga, Villanova or Marquette.

No, instead the NBA’s championship tournament dawdles into June – trying to milk as much money as it can from TV and markets where teams have not been eliminated.  Instead of March Madness they have June Jive. By then, the thrill is already gone for everyone but the die hard fans.  It’s baseball season.  It’s golf season.  It’s camping and hiking and climbing and rafting and canoeing season.  The kids are out of school.  It’s travel season.

June, 1976.  I had recently finished my sophomore year of college at Arkansas State University.  My buddy Jim Price and I had already sworn off the NBA in general.  However, we were fans of underdogs like the Phoenix Suns – who were an almost brand new franchise – that had made an unlikely and unexpected run to the NBA finals that year.  We shared a dislike of perennial dominant teams – like the Boston Celtics, who were the Suns’ competition in the championship best of seven series. The Celtics had won the NBA championship something like twelve of the previous sixteen years. Oh, puke.

Now it’s the fifth game of the finals, and the under-powered Suns have somehow managed a 2-2 split.  Jim and I are hoping they can make something happen in Boston – in “the G-ah-den” – in front of what seemed like a zillion crazy, frantic, yelling Celtic fans. We watched on TV at my family’s house.

It was a miserable first half for the Suns.  I think they were down 20 points somewhere around halftime.  Discouraged, Jim and I turned off the tube and headed out to get something to eat, then go down across the county line to get some beer.  (Jonesboro, Arkansas, where we lived, was a “dry” county – Craighead county).

The closest liquor depot to us was in Truman, with several establishments just south of County Line Road.  Probably an hour after we turned off the tube, we ambled into Curly’s, a simple, low-cost, Quonset hut looking sort of place.

As expected, there was big round Curly, behind the counter.  Besides being hairless, Curly’s head was big and round, just like the rest of him.  Really big. Except for his ears and mandatory facial features, it looked rather like an oversized cue ball.

Curly’s back was toward a small crowd of customers, maybe four or five. They are all watching the TV.  Jim and I grabbed a case of cheap, cold beer and sidled up to the counter.

Curly still is turned away from the counter, and he’s still looking at the TV.

On the TV the Phoenix Suns and the Boston Celtic are playing basketball – on the G-ah-den’s distinctive parquet floor.

We elbowed in (since no one seems to be buying anything) and I said to Curly rather meekly (I’m only 19 … I’m not supposed to be in there): “Are they showing the game’s highlights?  There couldn’t be many highlights.  Phoenix got smoked.”

Curly turned slightly.  The twist of his head and the tone of his voice implied anger and frustration: “Overtime.  Double Overtime.”

Boston is clinging to a small lead with about one minute left in the second overtime.

Wow.  Jim and I have missed a tremendous Phoenix comeback.  Led by Paul Westphal, whom they had ironically acquired by trade from Boston in mid-season, they are still in the game, although trailing, 109-106.

But Boston cannot get it done.  At every turn that goes for Phoenix and against Boston, big, round ol’ Curly either grunts, yells a profanity, or swings at the air. This is Curly’s joint, and the small crowd seems to be populated by Boston fans.

Clearly I am in the wrong place.

Somehow Phoenix manages two unlikely buckets, and, with about 5 seconds remaining, they take a one point lead. 110 to 109.

Curly is furious.  Boston takes a time out. The “G-ah-den” crowd is quiet. Jim and I are smugly grinning away, wordlessly sighing our approval.  Curly takes notice.

The crucial moments:

The Boston Celtic’s aging superstar, John Havlicek, now 36 years old, takes a pass and finds a seam to his left; he tries a leaning runner from the left side of the lane while awkwardly lunging off the wrong foot – and it goes in!  The buzzer sounds and everyone except the Suns goes CRAZY in the G-ah-den. Boston wins, 111-110.

Except … something is wrong.  The referees are getting all the fans off the floor to re-start the game. They’ve decided that there is one (that’s “1”) second left in the game, and Phoenix had called a time out. “Mr. Clueless” Brent Musberger is mystified (no surprise).

That’s when Curly said it.  This is exactly what he said, in a smug, defiant, slow, jowly, Arkansas drawl: “Well, no matter what, I’d bet 100-to-1 that Boston wins this game.”

Hmmm. I thought. I shuffled a bit. Then I consciously poked Jim in the ribs with my right elbow while conspicuously pulling out my wallet and extracting a single George Washington adorned piece of cabbage. With Jim’s and the crowd’s attention on me, I slowly, yet flamboyantly, laid one dollar on the counter right next to Curly, with a loud “AHEM.”

Curly noticed almost immediately.  He didn’t carry a wallet.  He pulled out a huge neatly rolled-up wad of bills that he kept in the front pocket of his overalls. Then he slowly counted out five Andy Jacksons and laid them on top of my one-spot Washington.

$101 is on the counter for all to see.

At that point it’s announced that Phoenix called a Time Out; that’s how the clock stopped. But they had no Time Outs remaining.  That’s a Technical Foul.  The Celtics’ JoJo White sinks the free throw, and Boston is now ahead 112-110.  If possible, Curly’s cueball face and demeanor look even more smug.

But Phoenix still has one second left.

_____________________

Near the “top of the key”, the Suns’ Garfield Heard caught the inbounds pass as he turned, and jumped, and tossed an unlikely high arcing shot toward the basket in one continuous motion.  The ball kissed off the back of the rim and slithered  through the net as the buzzer sounded.

Tied at 112!

This would be Triple Overtime.  And through the rest of the game, at least five more minutes of overtime, there was a neat stack of cash on the counter as we all stood there at Curly’s Liquor Barn, eyes fixed on the little 12-inch black-and-white television.

Heard’s buzzer-beater shot has been called “the shot heard ‘round the world.” (“heard”, get it?). That’s saying too much and shows disrespect to the opening of the American Revolution at Concord’s Old North Bridge. However, it’s not exaggerating when that game is called “the greatest game ever played in NBA history.”

Even though two of Boston’s stars had already fouled out – Paul Silas and “cry-baby” Dave Cowens –  Phoenix lacked the firepower to finish the upset.  They made it close, but Boston won in Triple Overtime, 128-126.

We paid for the beer.  It was good.

I lost one dollar, had a lot of fun, and will forever have a fun story to tell.

Joe Girard © 2015

 

Notes:

[1] US Highway 63 between Jonesboro and Truman now by-passes the center of Truman.  It looks like most of those little liquor establishments like “The Cotton Club” and Curly’s are out of business. Curly’s building still stands … abandoned.  See photo below (courtesy of Google streetview).

Cur;ly's, 2015.  Thanks to Google StreetView

Cur;ly’s, 2015. Thanks to Google StreetView

[2]  In 1992-93 the Phoenix Suns had their best season ever, led by new coach Paul Westphal – his first season as a head coach. After an impressive 62-20 regular season record, they made it to the finals again, only to lose (4 games to 2), to the Michael Jordan-led Chicago Bulls (the Bulls’ first “Three-peat”).  Since entering the league in 1968, the Suns have only made it to the NBA finals these two times, and have never won a championship.

[3] After writing the essay, I found this YouTube video of the last 19 seconds of the second overtime.  My memory is pretty good, although I’d forgotten about a fan attacking head referee Richie Powers. I was also wrong about how the clock stopped; it stops when the ball goes through the hoop.  The timeout (in exchange for a technical foul) was a clever tactic sometimes used to get the ball to mid-court for the in bounds pass.

Of Flubs, Boners and Chance

These are saddest of all possible words:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds.
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double –
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
== Franklin Pierce Adams, 1910

 

This past week those lovable losers, the Chicago Cubs, celebrated the 100th Anniversary of the opening of their historic home stadium, Wrigley Field. In classic Cubs’ style, they collapsed in the 9th-inning, losing a large lead to the Arizona Diamondbacks – the only Major League team at the time with a worse record than the Cubs in this young season. The Cubs have the ignominious record as North America’s professional sports franchise with the longest duration without a championship: 105 years, and running. This year the tally will surely increment to 106.

1060 W. Addison, Chicago, IL (Wrigleyville)

1060 W. Addison, Chicago, IL (Wrigleyville)

It might come as a surprise to baseball fans that the Chicago Cubs had fantastic teams in the early 1900s. They made it to three consecutive World Series – 1906 to 1908 – winning twice. Those Cubs of yore lay claim to the most famous double play combination in history. Simply stating the names – Tinkers, Evers, Chance – conveys an image of a well-oiled defensive machine, brutally turning double plays to snuff out potential rallies. In the dead ball era most games were low scoring, and hence most games were very close. Effectively turning base runners into double play outs could have a devastating emotional impact on the opposition.

So often did the Cubs, and their double play trio, dash the pennant and World Series hopes of the New York Giants that Franklin Pierce Adams, a columnist for the New York Evening Mail, wrote the poem above. [1]

Let us go back now, to 1908, when the Cubbies won their last championship, and consider how little Johnny Evers found a new and clever way to squash the Giants’ pennant hopes: he used his head, the rules of baseball, and applied them at a critical moment that involved one of the biggest base running mistakes in baseball history.

From the Official Rules of Baseball

Definitions: A FORCE PLAY is a play in which a runner legally loses his right to occupy a base by reason of the batter becoming a runner.

How a run scores: A run is not scored if the runner advances to home base during a play in which the third out is made … by any runner being forced out.

As the 1908 season wound down, the Cubs were two-time defending National League pennant winners. They were involved in a tense and tight race with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the New York Giants.

In a late season game with the Pirates, the Cubs appeared to have lost on the last play of the game by a score of 1-0, when, with two outs and runners on first and third, a base hit fell in the outfield.

In that era, in the excitement of the moment for such “walk off” singles, the runners on first or second base would not advance to the next base … it being deemed not necessary since the winning run was scored when the runner touched home plate.

This day in Pittsburgh, September 4, Johnny Evers, the Cubs’ wily and wiry second baseman, was not deterred. He retrieved the ball, stood on second base and appealed to umpire Hank O’Day, who had not yet left the field. The winning run should not count, claimed Evers, since the runner on first did not touch second: this was the third out and the result of a force play.

Johnny Joseph Evers, Cubs scrappy 2nd baseman

Johnny Joseph Evers, Cubs scrappy 2nd baseman

Upon considering the situation, facts and the rule as Evers explained, O’Day agreed with Evers. But O’Day claimed he did not see whether or not the runner touched 2nd base and, since an umpire cannot call an out he did not see, allowed the run to count. The Pirates won the game.

The Cubs and Evers made quite a stink about this. There was some talk amongst league directors (this was the days before a commissioner), rules committee and umpires. Although it was generally agreed that rules are rules and should be enforced as such, this position was not flowed to all teams and players uniformly.

Two and a half weeks later, September 23, with just a few games left in the season, the Cubs were in New York to play the Giants. They were tied for first place in the National League at the time.

That day the Giants regular first baseman, Fred Tenny was ill. Giants’ Hall of Fame manager John McGraw inserted Fred Merkle into the lineup. At the time Merkle was the youngest player in the Major Leagues, at 19-years old. He had never started a Major League game before.

In the bottom of the 9th inning, the score was tied: one run apiece. The Cubs had scored when Tinker slashed a gapper to right field. Today this would be a stand-up double. In the old polo grounds the ball rolled and rolled. Tinker scampered all the way around for an inside-the-park home run.

Spacious outfield at the Polo Grounds Ball Park allowed line drives in gaps to roll a long way.

Spacious outfield at the Polo Grounds Ball Park allowed line drives in gaps to roll a long way.

The Giants had scored in the classic small-ball fashion of the era. A single. An error. A sacrifice. A single.

Both starting pitchers were still in the game, very common for that era. For the Giants future Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson was pitching a great game. For the Cubs, lefty Jack Pfister – he of the wicked curve ball – was on the mound.

Not nearly as well-known today as Mattewson, in 1906 Pfister recorded one of the lowest ERAs ever by a rookie, 1.51. His career ERA of 2.02 stands as the third best ever for anyone who’s pitched at least 1,000 innings.

Classic Matthewson photo, 1907

Classic Matthewson photo, 1907

During the season Pfister had damaged an epicondyle tendon in his left arm – undoubtedly due to the strain from throwing so many of his devastating curves. In the heat of pennant race, Pfister continued pitching … and throwing curve balls. During the game his damaged tendon became dislocated.

Still, he continued pitching, needing to be escorted off the field between innings … so severe was the pain.

In the bottom of the 9th, Pfister had to stop throwing curve balls. With one out and Art Devlin on first base after a single, Moose McCormick hit a double-play ball to Evers at second. However, Devlin got a great jump on the pitch — correctly guessing that Pfister was too tired to make a throw to first base and hold him close.  Devlin was able to take out Tinker at the pivot, thus avoiding the double play (which would have reversed the classic line as Evers-Tinker-Chance). McCormick was now on first, with two outs.

Next up was the young Fred Merkle, who had only 47 plate appearances all year until then. He slashed a single to right field, allowing McCormick to get all the way to third base.
With the winning run on third base, the Giants and their 30,000 fans in the stadium – with many more watching from Coogan’s Bluff beyond the outfield – could sense a dramatic and critical victory over the visiting rival Cubs.

Fans standing on Boone's hill, beyond outfield, at Polo Grounds, September, 23,1908

Fans standing on Boone’s hill, beyond outfield, at Polo Grounds, September, 23,1908

Giants’ shortstop 24-year old Al Bridwell stepped into the left-handed batter’s box and wasted no time … hitting a line drive to center field on the very first pitch, getting a fast ball as he expected.

McCormick danced home, scoring the winning run. The Giants and their fans raced onto the field, celebrating the dramatic victory. Oh the joy!

Again, Johnny Evers was not about to give up. As fate would have it, Hank O’Day was also the umpire that day. Evers got O’Day’s attention and made sure he knew that Merkle had not touched second base, and hence the play was not yet over.

At this point, the various stories diverge. Some have Tinker retrieving the ball. Some Evers. Some Chance. Some say the ball was lost and Evers got a ball from O’Day’s ball bag.

Regarding the upshot, all stories agree. Evers had the ball, standing on second base before Merkle (who was dancing with his teammates and fans on the field) had touched second base. O’Day declared Merkle out, the result of a force play. This was the third out, hence the run did not count.

Fred Merkle, 1908

Fred Merkle, 1908

With such pandemonium in the Polo Grounds, there was absolutely no chance to clear the field and resume the game before darkness set in.

Consequently, the game was declared a 1-1 tie. Both the Cubs and Giants protested. The Cubs wanted a forfeit, since the behavior of the Giants’ fans precluded any chance to continue play. The Giants’ various claims included tradition, that O’Day had not actually seen the play and that Evers did not hold the actual game ball at second base. All appeals were denied. The tie stood.

At the end of the season, the Giants and Cubs finished atop the National League, with identical 98-55 records. The odd team out were the Pirates, oh-so-close, at 98-56: only one-half game behind. (ties were not counted). [6] [7]

A single extra Giants-Cubs game would be played, extending the season for these two teams.

The Make-up Game

The make-up game was deemed a replay of the September 23 game, so it was played at the Polo Grounds on October 8 — the day after the season ended. The Giants again called upon Christy Matthewson. But he turned them down. His arm was “dead.” He had pitched 390 innings, started 44 games, and pitched 3 complete games in the last week – the Giants were forced to play 10 games in the last 8 days of the season on account of rain outs. [2] [3] [4]

The Cubs again called on Pfister. With his dead arm and damaged tendon, he did not get out of the first inning, failing to retire a batter. He was replaced by Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown – who had lost a finger and mangled several others on his throwing hand in farm accidents as a youth.

Mordecai Brown's right (pitching) hand

Mordecai Brown’s right (pitching) hand

Thanks to Pfister’s ailing arm, the Giants jumped out to a quick lead. But, in front of 40,000 screaming Giants fans, the Cubs rallied, “Three Finger” held the Giants in check, and the Cubs won the game 4-2, and went on to the World Series.

The Cubs went on to again crush Ty Cobb’s Detroit Tigers in the World Series, four games to one. This was the first re-match in Series history; the Cubs had defeated the Tigers 4-0 the previous year.

Of all the reasons the Cubs made it to the 1908 Series – and won it! – is the most famous base running blunder in baseball history: now known as “Merkle’s Boner.” The Cubs have not won a World Series since that year. Whether this is on account of the demonic “Curse of Merkle’s Boner”, the poem of Franklin Pierce Adams, playing so many day games in a hitter friendly stadium, or carrying the heavy burden of a history of failure, it doesn’t matter; they remain America’s Lovable Losers.

Aftermath and ironies:

  • All together, and as a trio, Tinker, Evers and Chance were voted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame on the same ballot in 1946.

  • Evers and Tinker hated each other. In 1905 they had ceased talking, except on the field when absolutely necessary. In 1926 Chance, dying of cancer, called them to his bed together. A modicum of peace was reached.

  • Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1949.

  • Both O’Day and Evers would go on to manage the Cubs in later years.

  • Merkle went on to have a long career, an additional 14 years, including a stint with the Chicago Cubs.

  • Adams’ poem seems to have done the trick. McGraw’s Giants went on to win the pennant in 1911, 1912 and 1913 (although the Cubs did win the pennant in 1910, the year of the poem’s penning).

  • The record of Cubs futility is astounding. They did make it to the World Series 6 more times, losing each time.  In a 7th visit to the series in the (WW2 caused athlete-depleted) year of 1945, they got close: losing 4 games to 3 to, the Detroit Tigers. But they have not been World Series Champions since 1908. And they’ve not even been in the Series since 1945.[5]

 

Peace

Joe Girard © 2014

Footnotes:
[1] “Baseball’s Sad Lexicon”, New York Evening Mail; July 12, 1910; by Franklin Pierce Adams. Originally titled: “That Double Play Again.” It was re-published on July 15 under the title that it is still known by today. It is often referred to by its refrain: “Tinkers to Evers to Chance.”
[2] http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/mathech01.shtml
[3] 1908 NY Giants game records: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teamstats/schedule.php?y=1908&t=NY1

[4] Matthewson’s 1908 Season is often called the best season ever by a pitcher. He led the Majors in ERA (1.43), wins (37) and even saves (5), as he had 12 relief appearances to go with his 44 starts. http://voices.yahoo.com/christy-mathewson-1908-greatest-season-ever-1975418.html

[5] http://www.baseball-reference.com/postseason/1945_WS.shtml

[6] New York Giants 1908 Season record: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teamstats/schedule.php?y=1908&t=NY1

[7] Chicago Cubs 1908 Season record: http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teamstats/schedule.php?y=1908&t=CHN

[a] Gonfalon, definition; Oxford Dictionary: “A banner or pennant, especially one with streamers, hung from a crossbar.” http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/gonfalon

 

Bibliography
[100] http://www.1907cubs.com/tinkers-to-evers-to-chance.php

[101] Fun little essay on Merkle, his boner, his career and more details of the Sept 23, 1908 game.

JD: Tiger Bee

John D Rockefeller is widely regarded as the wealthiest American ever.  In 2013 US dollars, he would be worth nearly 700 Billion dollars.  In other words he could have bought and sold pipsqueaks like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet … at the same time.

He made his fortune by being the founder, CEO and principal shareholder of Standard Oil, regarded as the largest “Trust” (i.e. monopoly) of all time.  By integrating as many operations as possible – from drilling, to refining, to distribution – he drove down costs and squeezed virtually every other competitor out of business.  He was a viscous businessman, and laid claim to being “the most ruthless American.”

He made his initial stake as a profiteer during the Civil War, selling liquor to Federal troops.  By the time he left management of Standard Oil in 1897, he had also gotten himself well established in the profitable businesses of railroads, steel and banking.  And oddly enough, he also became an avid golfer rather late in life.

He also had become one of the most generous philanthropists of all time.  A Baptist, he had always tithed to his church.  He gave away additional money into the hundreds of millions of dollars (10s of Billions in today’s dollars), founding Chicago University and helped the formation of dozens of schools in the education-starved South for Blacks, including Spelman College in Atlanta, for Black Women.    His total gifts were estimated at over $500 Million, not adjusting for inflation.

Generations of Rockefellers have rode his wealth-horse to political prominence.  His great-grandson, John D. Rockefeller IV (“Jay”) is stepping down as senior Senator from West Virgina (D) after serving as governor.   Grandson Winthrop Rockefeller was governor of Arkansas (R) during the ‘60s, showing unpopular but unwavering support for the Civil Rights movement.  Nelson (another grandson, Winthrop’s brother) was governor of New York (R) and eventually became vice-president under Gerald R Ford, Jr. – oddly, back-to-back vice-presidents who got to that office without a single electoral vote.

“Trust busters” were after Standard Oil since the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, and in 1911 they had their way.  The Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil must be broken up into many parts.  We recognize many of them today:

Standard Oil of New York later became Mobile.

Standard Oil of California became Chevron.

Standard’s Atlantic subsidiary was merged with Richfield Oil giving Atlantic-Richfield Company: ARCO

Standard Oil of Indiana became American Oil Company (AMOCO), now part of BP.

Finally, Standard Oil of New Jersey, the biggest bloom, became simple SO, or ESSO, the phonetic spelling of “S.O.”, for Standard Oil.

Interesting history for ESSO, and it will provide a slow transition to this essay’s conclusion.  When ESSO granted franchises, they were way ahead of their time for allowing Blacks to buy their franchises, becoming independent businessmen.

In the 1930s to 1960s the United States was still full of Jim Crow laws, racial prejudice and bigotry, and Blacks never knew where they would be welcome – South, North or West.  Never really knew where they could get a clean, safe room, a good meal or good local information.  ESSO gas stations – especially the Black owned stations – became distributors of The Negro Travelers’ Green Book.  This was a handbook meticulously prepared by Victor Hugo Green for the benefit of Black travelers, giving valuable insight into how to safely travel the US coast-to-coast and be received as full human beings.

“There will be a day sometime in the near future when this guide will not have to be published. That is when we as a race will have equal rights and privileges in the United States.”
– Victor Hugo Green [one supposes he was named for the French author, but I found no verification]

In the mid-40s, as the country came out of World War II, ESSO sought a marketing symbol and slogan that would personify America’s new found world stature and her citizens’ readiness to seize opportunity.  They chose the symbol of a Tiger and marketed for decades with “Put a tiger in your tank.”EssoTiger

Some clever observers remarked that, instead of a Tiger, they should have chosen the Bee, which would have personified the business practices of the recently-deceased founder.   Get it?  Instead of the ESSO Tiger there would be the ESSO Bee.  JD Rockefeller had a soft generous side, but he was definitely a SOB.

Esso later became Exxon, and still later merged with Mobile, one of the other SO spinoffs.  When Tigers became threatened species, Exxon stepped up to help fund tiger preservation efforts.

Speaking of tigers.  This week the sporting world turns its attention to Georgia, where the US Masters Golf Tournament will be played in Augusta, near the South Carolina border, on one of the world’s most famous and florally beautiful golf courses.  And the most attention will be layered on the world’s (once again) number one rated player, Eldrick Woods, who coincidentally goes by the nickname “Tiger.”

Tiger Woods

Woods pounds his club into the ground

Tiger is an SOB.  He drops F-bombs all over the golf course, throws his clubs, mutters profanity, declines to give autographs, and — oh yeah —  maintained a stable full of beautiful concubines to cavort with, while  married to one of the world’s most unbelievably beautiful women, who was also the mother of his children.

 

tigerangry2

Wood Flings his club

 

Still, he had “sort of” apologized. He had pledged to clean up his act.  Promised to come back.  Well, he’s back, but he hasn’t cleaned up his act.  Still an SOB.

His recent Nike commercial, released as he broke again to #1 in the world, says enough.  What does Tiger say?  “Winning takes care of everything.”

Tiger throws his putter on the green

Tiger throws his putter on the green

Really?  Tiger is 37-years old and still a very sorry excuse for a man.  Winning does not take care of the F-bombs and club tossing, especially in front of children.  Winning does not take care of your failures as a man, as a human being.  It does not take care of all the cheating when you are the father of young children.  Winning does not take care of being a jerk.  It does not take care of throwing your driver into the crowd.

I used to hold out some hope for Tiger.  He founded the Tiger Woods Foundation.  Not anymore.  I’m now among the Tiger anti-fans.  I hope he shoots 30-over par this week, misses the cut, swears at reporters, throws a club in the air that hits him on the head harder than now ex-wife Elin ever tried to whack his sorry ass with that wedge back in November, 2010.

He hasn’t grown up by now, and he’s not going to.  He’s no role model, no Victor Green.

But he’ll probably win and make himself and Nike a zillion more dollars.

Either way, I guess I’ll watch.  Golf is a game of gentlemen, except for the likes of Eldrick “Tiger- SOB” Woods.

On a positive note: Here’s a toast to the gentlemen, the philanthropists and Victor Greens of the world.

Until next time fellow travelers, I wish you calmness and goodwill.

Joe Girard © 2013