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NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS OF COOPERSTOWN
Observations from Outside the Lines
By Two Finger Carney (carneya6@borg.com)
#249 SEPTEMBER 22, 2001
STRETCH RUN DIARY
I started this diary two issues ago, on August 28. This time, it occupies the entire issue. But not really -- if you read on, you will find yourself taken back to 1918 (both inside and outside the country of baseball); meeting George Whiteman, the hero of that year's fall classic; then making a visit to 1951 and 1960; and finally, thanx to the archives of NOTES, taking a look at the controversial national anthem.
Trust me, all of the above somehow fit into my stretch run diary -- so you will also see how the pennant races are being followed here in the shadows of Cooperstown.
Unless there is a World Series sweep, we will see our first November baseball this time around. Weather could be a problem in New York, if the TV folks (who are fans of ratings, not baseball) insist on late-night games, as they usually do. We will also see, I think our first Halloween games, and I'm looking forward to seeing if fans show up in costumes.
I neglected to report here earlier that the Utica Blue Sox have apparently been sold, for three million dollars. They will move to Lowell, MA, if the NY-Penn League OKs it -- the problem being the park in Lowell, which is sub-league-standards. A new park is on the drawing board, but cannot be ready by next June. So maybe the Blue Sox will have one last stand in Utica. I have mixed feelings about this. I'll miss the Sox, but not their dullard owners, who have been incredibly clueless about how to market a minor league team. Maybe I'll go to more games in Syracuse and Oneonta, and finally get to Rochester and Buffalo and Auburn and Binghamton.
I think baseball, and writing, has helped me grope my way back to some sort of normalcy. After posting the last issue of NOTES, on September 12, I got an e-mail from Phil Speranza, who edits Behind the Bombers for Yankee fans. He thanked me for giving him something to read, to take his mind off the events we were all swimming in then. I promptly thanked him back, for letting me know that he was OK. Phil lives in New York.
Yesterday I received an e-mail from Linda McCarthy (see NOTES #247; she gave the Moe Berg lecture.) Linda was with the CIA 24 years and often visited the Pentagon. She recently lectured across the street from that scarred building and heard some horror stories. But she is OK, too. That's something.
STRETCH RUN DIARY, 2001
Tuesday, September 18. The break in time was just a week, but the mental shift to return to the pennant races of 2001 is enormous. I had the Mets-Pirates game on my kitchen TV while I was working nearby, and I popped in every so often to see what was happening. I was glad to see my home town rise for this occasion. It was not the hated Mets out there against our Buccos -- it was one of the teams from that city which has been so much on our minds and in our prayer since September 11.
The game was preceded by ceremony, had to be. Everyone needed that, a chance to reflect, pray some more, then sing together, not just the anthem, but God Bless America (they sang it twice in Pittsburgh -- by accident, I think, but no one seemed to mind.) The game seemed so unimportant. I found myself rooting for the Mets -- not because I want them to catch the Braves (altho that wouldn't be such a bad thing), but because I wanted the people back in New York to have something to cheer about. I imagined workers at "ground zero" going about their surreal task, listening to the game. Taking their minds off their job, for a moment here and there, if possible. I had not rooted for the Mets since 1986, but their win last night seemed right.
I tuned in some of the Phils' win over Atlanta, too. And a few batters in the Cards-Brewers game on ESPN. Baseball is back, ready or not, and no doubt it will be weeks or months before some people will be ready.
The 1918 season was cut off abruptly by the "work-or-fight" order of Major General Enoch Crowder, the Provost Marshal General of the US Army. The country by the summer of 1918 was deep in the war, many baseball stars were in uniform, and many fans as well, while there was a general conviction that the war had years to go. Food rationing, Blue Mondays, and long casualty lists had diminished the interest in baseball anyway and the shortened season had provided no buildup of excitement. As a result the series was poorly attended, with empty seats at every game.
-- Robert Smith in World Series (Doubleday, 1967)
No major league team played more than 129 games in 1918, and many played many fewer. The war may have been "over there" but the loss of lives was felt everywhere. The World Series started on September 5 that fall, and was over on the 11th, with the Red Sox defeating the Cubs, 4-2.
World War I started when Archduke Francis Ferdinand was assassinated, causing his Austria-Hungary to declare war on Serbia. England declared war on Germany about five weeks later. The United States declared war on Germany three years later, right around Opening Day 1917. US troops were in France before the 4th of July. Over the next year and a half, American casualties numbered over 320,000, with 116,516 deaths. (That number is slightly below the number killed by the A-bomb at Hiroshima, at the end of the next World War.)
As it turned out, this WW was winding down when major league baseball decided to pull the plug on the 1918 season. The tide had turned by the summer's end, and an Armistice treaty was signed November 11th. By spring of 1919, baseball was back and America was ready to roar into the twenties. Babe Ruth, the pitching star of that 1918 Series, was emerging as a slugger. The dead ball was showing signs of life. WW I was a terrible affair, and baseball helped erase memories of bloody trench warfare. It would take a while for things to really get back to normal (with the repeal of prohibition.) But the 1919 was no doubt warmly greeted.
Baseball had boomed after the Civil War. So the spurt of attendance in 1919 (more than doubling 1918) might have been anticipated. There was another spurt after WW II (1946 attendance did not quite double 1945, but it jumped from 10.8 million to 18.5, and remained high the next three years.) During the Vietnam War, attendance actually rose, with the next spurt (in 1977) due to expansion, like a number of spurts since then.
I'm not going anywhere with this stroll through history, it's just where my thoughts took me tonight. We are, after all, at war. And this time, civilians may be more at risk than the military -- a very crazy war indeed. We are not rushing to sign up, like after Pearl Harbor (although CIA applications are 'way up.) I suppose fans can feel they are part of the effort when they go to the games and look for suspicious characters or for suspicious-looking objects that could be bombs. I do hope that citizens with roots in the Middle East are treated, well, like we all want to be treated, with respect and dignity.
I was intrigued for a long time that Babe Ruth's ancestry has hardly been remarkable. During and after WW I (or II), it must not have been easy to have been of German descent. We not only recall superstar Honus Wagner as German, but as "the Flying Dutchman." But it's not easy to look up Babe Ruth's roots -- try it. Because of what he did, he has gone down in history as a true blue All American. His roots became absolutely irrelevant. (So did Lou Gehrig's.) We just do not think of the Babe as German. Actually, it might have been easier for ballplayers, because so many of the first generations were Irish and/or German.
Time to end this Stretch Run Detour, methinx. Time to go check out tonight's games. It will be good to see, on every roster, players of all kinds of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, out there together, and not worrying about where anybody came from, only about whether they can hit this pitch, make that catch, score the winning run. It's an aspect of MLB that we take for granted -- or used to. And it is one of the best things about the game that is back.
Wednesday, September 19. The Mets completed their sweep of my Pirates today. I was watching the game this evening and channel-surfing between innings, when I caught the final score, and realized that I was watching a replay. So no matter how hard I might have rooted for the Bucs, that 4-2 Met lead would never be lost; I would only see it stretched to 9-2. No fun there. I switched to the Yankee game in time to see Roger Clemens toss a gopher pitch to the Chisox' Paul Konerko; tied at 1. Colorado was comfortably ahead of Arizona. The Braves are not on TBS on Wednesdays; I think that one was tied, too. My morning paper did not carry the boxes from the west, so I'm in the dark about the Giants and Barry. It can all wait till tomorrow, nothing in the country of baseball is urgent anymore.
When I mentioned 1918 to my wife Barbara, she pointed out that something else besides WW I was going on then. The Spanish flu was a worldwide epidemic, and caused twenty million deaths in 1918-19 -- more than WW I. Might have been a factor in that shortened season, altho my encyclopedia says the Americas were hit after the pandemic swept through Europe. In any case, people were avoiding crowded places -- like ballparks. (When I visit cemeteries, I often am struck by how many 1918-19 dates are on the tombstones, and how many families lost several members.)
Baseball was not an "essential occupation" in 1918, so when the "work or fight" order was declared, ballplayers went to war. This meant an influx of replacement players, to keep the games going. The Red Sox called up 35-year-old George Whiteman, to fill in for Babe Ruth in the outfield when Babe was on the mound, which was not much in 1918, just twenty games. As one of the top southpaws in the AL the previous three seasons, Ruth had been getting about forty starts (going 18-8, 23-12, and 24-13 -- some of the lesser-known stats we link with Ruth.)
George Whiteman, from Peoria, had a cup of coffee (three games) with the Red Sox in 1907, and half a pot (eleven games) with the Yankees in 1913. He'd have retired with a .302 average (0 HR, 3 RBI) if WW I had not thinned the ranks of MLB in 1918. George got into 71 games that summer, and batted .266, and got a homer to tell his grandkids about. And -- he got into a World Series.
Now I'm borrowing from "Little Guys" in October's Game by Paul Adomites (Redefinition, 1990; this series of books produced eleven wonderful volumes before stopping production, disappointing many subscribers, like me.) Baseball Magazine called George Whiteman "a veteran player whom unkind fate has exiled for years to a minor role in obscure leagues."
George W. rose to the occasion in the earliest-ever World Series. "Looking more like a pulling guard on a sandlot football team than a left fielder, he made sizzling catches when they mattered most and smacked key hits." Taking on the Cubs, the Red Sox took Game One 1-0; George Herman Ruth tossed the shutout, and the Other George moved the game's only run into scoring position.
He drove in Boston's only Game Two run in a 3-1 loss. In Game Three, he scored one of Boston's two runs in a 2-1 win. He also robbed the Cubs' Dode Paskert of a HR, beating his long hit to the bleachers. Baseball Magazine: "Whiteman ran, and galloped, and when tired of galloping, ran some more."
In Game Four, Whiteman walked and scored in a 3-2 win at Fenway. (I thought that this was the Series I was rooting for all this summer, Wrigley/Fenway. But it wasn't, the Chicago games were played at Comiskey, because it had a larger capacity. Travel was kept at a minimum -- war going on, you know. Three in the Windy City, next three or four in Beantown.)
In World Series, Robert Smith notes that before Game Five was played, the players of both clubs held "indignation" meetings and elected reps to protest the new divvy that cut the second- and third-place clubs into the receipts from the first four WS games. Remember, the fan turnout was low anyway, and so were the ticket prices (hoping to lure more fans in.) The players "were already griped at having to leave Comiskey, where attendance was picking up," to play in smaller Fenway Park. The protest was duly noted but the National Commission did not give in. The unhappy players took the field for Game Five an hour late, "with a few hundred extra police on hand to prevent the predicted 'riot'."
In Game Five, the Cubs had runners on second and third with one out in the first inning, when Whiteman robbed Paskert again, turning his liner into a DP with his grab and throw to second base. He tossed out a runner trying to score from second in the sixth inning. But the Cubs stayed alive behind Hippo Vaughn's shutout, 3-0.
Then came Game Six, "played before the smallest crowd yet [15,238], the local fans having turned against the ball players for their 'greed' and 'commercialism' in wanting to take home almost as much money from the series as the club officials did" (Smith.) Scoreless in the third inning, George Whitehead "smacked a line drive that right fielder Max Flack charged but couldn't handle." Two runs scored. Flack was charged with an error, even though the hit was "a fierce blow that [Flack] couldn't holds on to" (Smith.)
Down 2-1 in the top of the eighth, the Cubs sent in a pinch hitter, Turner Barber. He looped a Texas leaguer to left. George Whiteman "charged in recklessly, even though a miss would put the tying run in scoring position, and made a diving shoestring catch. He turned a full somersault, wrenched his shoulder, and had to leave the game. He was replaced by young Babe Ruth" (Adomites.)
It was George Whiteman's last catch in the majors. WW I ended, and he was back in obscure leagues. George took home $1,100 (if he was voted a full share) -- the WS pot was sliced up not only with the runner-up teams, but with "war charities" (Smith.) It will be interesting to see if this seasons' post-season pots acknowledge the various established disaster relief funds.
The 1918 World Series doesn't get much publicity. Probably few of us have ever heard of George Whiteman, who went 5 for 20 in the Series -- four more hits than Babe Ruth got -- and was sensational in the field. It was not a popular Series, what with the war, the Spanish flu, and then, of all things, greedy ballplayers. (The protest by the Cubs and Red Sox may have set the stage for the fixing of the next World Series.)
Another Stretch Run detour has come to its end. I'm heading back to the TV to see what I've missed.
Thursday, September 20. With the first series of the week almost over, the fortunes of several teams have swiftly risen or fallen. The Phils have taken three from the Braves, and if they win tonite's game, they will take over first place. Sometimes .500 ball in late September means you are still in contention, and the Mets, with their sweep of the Pirates, are now there.
The Astros have dealt a crippling blow to the Giants' hopes by taking three straight at Pac Bell. The Cardinals also swept (the Brewers) to keep pace, but the Cubs have slipped back some, even though Kerry Wood tossed a two-hit ShO yesterday.
Fortunately for the Giants and Dodgers (who were swept three by the Padres!), the Diamondbacks dropped two of three to the Rockies. The four-game series between AZ and LA starting tonite (if my schedule is correct) will be crucial for both teams, and they'll go at it again three more times next week.
I caught the final Giants-Astros game today, by luck -- it was on a station that usually doesn't carry baseball, and at an odd hour (dinnertime in the east -- it ended in time for Jeopardy!) Ten-inning losses are hard enough to swallow, but in the stretch, they must feel chokingly painful. I was in and out of this game, and heard nary a mention of Barry Bonds.
Inexplicably, I found myself opening tonight Jules Tygiel's Past Time. Chapter 7 begins by noting that at 3:58 PM on October 3, 1951, Bobby Thomson launched the most famous home run in baseball history. Tygiel quotes George W. Hunt, who wrote in 1990, "It was likely the most dramatic and shocking event in American sports and has since taken on the transcendent historic character of Pearl Harbor and the Kennedy Assassination. Anyone alive then and vaguely interested can answer with tedious exactitude the question: 'Where were you when you heard it?'"
And then Tygiel tells us how this event got its famous name. "On the day after, the NY Daily News, recalling Ralph Waldo Emerson's patriotic hymn, called Thomson's hit 'the Shot Heard 'Round the Baseball World.' A NY Times editorial dubbed it 'the home run heard 'round the world.' The two similar phrases merged in the popular memory, forever celebrating Thomson's triumph, in Emerson's exact phrase, as 'the shot heard round the world.'"
I was five in 1951 and don't recall hearing anything on October 3rd. But baseball fans by the millions did hear it, thanks to radio (in Europe and Asia it was on Armed Forces Radio), and thanks to Russ Hodges, the emotion of the moment was perfectly framed for a lasting memory. (I could argue here that Mazeroski's homer was more dramatic, because it not only ended a World Series, but meant a tremendous underdog victory over the dynastic Yankees. But I will refrain.)
I suspect that others have already used the phrase, "The shock heard 'round the world," to describe the events of September 11. I don't think either Thomson's or Mazeroski's home runs will ever be recalled like those events will be. I watched Maz' HR on a department store TV, and again that evening on the national news, but then not again for months or years. But we all watched, were forced to watch, over and over again and for days, those hijacked plans slamming into the twin towers in NY City, the terrible wreckage at the Pentagon, and the fragments of the fourth plane strewn over Pennsylvania fields. And we knew the whole world was watching with us, as it never will be for any baseball game or Superbowl.
Sports can break down barriers between people, they have that capacity to unite cities or wider followings. (Some of the best descriptions I've read of Maz' HR were written by fans who were far away from Pittsburgh, but still caught up in the event.) There are no strangers in the cities that celebrate the clinching of pennants, or victories in the World Series (or Superbowl or any major championship.) People will dance in the streets -- as they did after each World War ended, I am told.
The sports of this fall, baseball and football, are carrying a heavy burden. They need to go on, as our own jobs, our weddings and funerals, our lives must go on. Despite everything, and also because of everything we are all feeling.
Today I read about Roger Clemens getting his twentieth win -- he's lost just once this season -- and I immediately thought not of the record or anything else baseball, really. I just thought how great that was for citizens of New York, especially those in the recovery effort. Something positive to talk about, to celebrate, even when they are so far from celebration. The last thing I wanted this October (and now November) was another Subway Series. But now I wouldn't mind that much at all. The Yankees will be in the post-season anyway, that's guaranteed, and I am glad for that right now. It will be interesting to see how my feelings on this may shift, as we move away from September 11.
Friday, September 21. Apparently I just plain missed Barry's 64th in yesterday's Giants' game. For some reason, the news in this morning's paper brought to mind the old Sgt.Pepper song, "When I'm 64," and it's still rattling in my brain tonight. I am rooting for Barry to get six or seven more.
Barb and I ate dinner out this evening at a terrific little local Mexican restaurant, Casa Too Mucha, and (mid-meal, for us) the owners passed out songsheets, then led everybody in a singing of God Bless America. I'm a fairly Stoical person (altho I cried when Harvey Haddix lost his perfect game in 1959), but this brought tears to my eyes. We skipped a movie after, because I was sort of interested in the national telethon (OK, the Mets-Braves game, too.) President Bush's speech last night has focused things better, and September 11 is another day behind us.
As I drove around town today, I listened to former poet lauriats on NPR, and guys who want airplanes to have bomb-proof cockpit doors and to be fueled with hydrogen, which will not fireball. As I process these words, it has taken the Mets a long time to get their game underway, and I suspect no one at Shea Stadium cares. Those fans sang God Bless America, too. I learned that song as a toddler, because we had it on a roll for our player piano. (You younger folks can just look that up.)
Which reminds me of something I wrote back in NOTES #66, May 16, 1994 -- seems like a good time to reprint it:
WHERE-IS-IT-WRITTEN DEPT.
The answer: Julio Iglesias, Donnie Osmond, Van Cliburn, Stan Musial & Richard Hayman, Branford Marsalis, the Philadelphia Boys' Choir, and The Hit Men With Donnie Iris. Please remember to put your response in the form of a question. If you guessed "What is Stan Musial doing in this lineup?", you were wrong. "If you guessed "Who performed the national anthem at 1994 Opening Days?" -- you were right. And if you wagered wisely, you're back tomorrow.
With this I bring up a topic we haven't touched here before, and I want to recommend Baseball Weekly's Pete Williams' column on it ("Oh, say can we just skip all this improvisation?") in the May 4-10 issue, pg 71. Pete bemoans the length of the anthem, in some renditions, and the way some performers render it unrecognizable. The anthem "at least in theory, is supposed to be a solemn moment of reflection, a brief period to honor" war veterans, says Pete. But too often, it is the performer who gets our attention.
"No one was sure what Jose was singing -- whether it was the anthem or 'Ramblin' Rose.' And a lot of narrow-minded people equated his performance with hippies because he carried a guitar and wore dark glasses."
-- Ernie Harwell on Jose Feliciano's anthem, 1968 WS
in Voices of the Game
But it's not always the star-spangled performers. In Baltimore, fans yell "Oh!" at the start of the last verse -- caught me by surprise.
Pete wants a "universal version" of the anthem to be used throughout baseball, but to me, that's like having all the parks and concession stands the same. (When Nat Allbright re-created games for radio, he made them more authentic by using Gladys Goodding's organ version for games out of Brooklyn, band music for Pittsburgh, and "in Milwaukee, everybody sang it" -- Voices of the Game, p 139.)
"The crowd always gets my adrenaline going. I still get goose bumps when the crowd sings the National Anthem or when I hear the roar before the first pitch."
-- Vin Scully, in Voices
In The Whole Baseball Catalogue, Neil Cohen writes that while the anthem may have been played at games as early as 1917, it wasn't until the megaphone gave way to the PA system, in the late 1930s, that the practice became daily, and the patriotic salute was cemented into place by WW II. Cemented by tradition, however -- not by any law.
STAR-SPANGLED QUESTIONS
However, baseball mirrors life, and often traditional cement is harder to drill through than the legal stuff. The late Ewing Kaufman, owner of the Royals in 1972, found that out quickly, when he announced that the anthem would not be played "except on Sundays and special occasions, because so many people were not showing the proper respect when the anthem was played" (Cohen). 124 letters and 75 emotional phone calls later, Mr K. changed his mind.
"Macy's and Gimbels don't play the Star-Spangled Banner when they open their doors every morning."
-- Ken Smith in The NY Daily Mirror
Although there is no law that forces teams to play it (I suppose leagues have rules or guidelines), a Missouri legislator once tried to introduce a law that would ban all but the traditional version. Remember the 1985 "Can you top this?" anthems of the all-Missouri World Series: Reba McIntyre, Melba Moore, Glen Campbell, the Oak Ridge Boys, Jennifer Holliday, Lou Rawls, and the Gatlin Brothers. As Neil Cohen notes, it wasn't clear which style offended the politico.
When we tackle The Anthem Problem, we are treading in the rapids of political correctness. Words must be chosen with care, lest we be swept away, head over heels. Grab a life-jacket.
The old British drinking song is, like the flag, a symbol, so when we question its place at the ballpark, we aren't discussing music. If some people are irked by the variations on the theme, you know they'll be ticked if alternate themes are allowed, even the least offensive God Bless America. Hey, that's change!!! Yes, it is.
I thought about this issue long and hard a few years back, at the conclusion of that remarkable, but somehow yet unpublished book, Dear Patrick, and here's what I wrote then:
The fans cheer the long hit, the clutch strikeout, the leaping stab of the ball in flight. The outcome of the game, the Series. All we ask for in return is a tip of the cap, a thank-you from the player on behalf of the sport, because we make it possible.
We, the people. Familiar words to keep in mind, while the National Anthem leads off each game. Sometimes I wonder about why it precedes every game, and not just each series or each season. But I guess that it's good to be reminded that past wars also made it possible for baseball to thrive as a profession in this land.
When we stand side by side for the Anthem, Pat [my son], let's be thankful, as we check which way and how hard the wind is blowing. That the banner yet waves o'er a land of free fathers and sons.
* * * * *
Saturday Morning, September 22. Things tightened up nicely yesterday in the NL. (The Yankees' and Mariners' and Indians' leads all shrunk a notch, too, but nobody is worried over there.) I watched the Mets rally to beat the Braves, going back and forth between the game and the telethon. That's what PIP (picture-in-picture) is for. I was struck by how many performing artists were unrecognizable (and they were not wearing numbers so you could look them up in your scorecard) to me and my wife. At Shea Stadium, I recognized all the ballplayers. Piazza's homer to pull out the win was the perfect touch to an emotional evening at that ballpark.
The Phils had eked out a 1-0 win earlier, so they moved on up to a half-game out. Out west, the D'backs pounded the Dodgers, but the Giants broke their skid and kept pace, with a 2-0, Barry-homerless win.
Facing off with the Astros -- they'll do it again next weekend, as will the Mets-Braves and Dodgers-D'backs -- the Cubs won a biggie, and won big. Time will tell if it gives them the momentum to catch the Astros. They will have to catch the Cardinals first, of course -- St Louis won again. The Cards will play the Astros at Busch, the last three games of the season.
I think I'm starting to root for several divisions to end up tied. The necessary playoff will guarantee November baseball.