Notes from the Shadows of Cooperstown
Observations From Outside the Lines |
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NOTE: THE PAGES OF THIS ISSUE ARE SLIGHTLY OUT OF ORDER
THE RIOT OF JULY '99 REVISITED
Corresponding with Tim Wiles, Director of Research at that other library in Cooperstown, I suggested that perhaps the coming of the Woodstock musicfest to the Shadows of Cooperstown, the same weekend that Nolan, George & Robin are to be bronzed, offers a unique chance for baseball to pick up new fans, by combining the two events. Of course, those receiving awards would not be allowed to leave the stage before performing somehow -- anything, harmonica, guitar, or just belt out a song.
Imagine this hallowed trio addressing, in turn, a crowd of half a million ... then perhaps being booed, if they are off-key or too long-winded in their speeches. ESPN dueling MTV for the best interviews ... Nolan Ryan body-surfing all the way to the Otesaga Hotel, while George & Robin are moshing in the mud ... and the Ken Burns Treatment: 30 bands with 30 versions of Take Me Out to the Ballgame, till the fans plead for mercy. I think there is more in this rare convergence of events, so don't be surprised if the topic pops up here again.
NOTES ON LINE, FROM NOW ON
With this issue, NOTES FROM THE SHADOWS OF COOPERSTOWN makes its debut on the 'net at:
http://baseball1.com
That's a "one" after the two "L"s in baseball. This web site is maintained by Sean Lahman of Rochester, NY -- upstate, but too far from C'town to be considered in the shadows. This is a site that is a kind of Alice's Restaurant for baseball fans -- you can get anything you want there. Really -- check out the links!
Here is something important: this site will be the ONLY place you can get NOTES, at least for the immediate future! Some readers may recall I tried an on-line version in 1997, but that didn't work out. I have every confidence that this time, it will.
I am going to aim at two issues per month, so you can look for something new on the first (starting with March 1) and 15th of each month. I'm not sure how long each new issue may be, Sean and I need to work out the logistics a bit more.
FOR NEWCOMERS: Notes from the Shadows of Cooperstown is an eclectic and ecumenical publication of anything and everything baseball. Notes is typically a mix of current events and history, facts and fiction, prose and poetry, along with humor of all sorts, reviews of books, films, baseball on TV and radio, and ranges from the Little League field, thru the minors, to the majors.
Notes has always been somewhat interactive, and readers may meet and befriend a variety of baseball editors. Please direct any comments, questions or other suggestions to Two Finger Carney, carneya6@borg.com. Now ... Play ball!
MORE FUEL FOR THE HOT STOVE
I have annually recommended Joseph M. Wayman's Grandstand Baseball Annual since I first discovered it a few seasons back. GBA 1998 is now available (a bargain at $10.95; PO Box 4203, Downey, CA 90241-1203), and this time around (its 14th), GBA contains several items that appeared here in Notes. It also has six great reprinted columns by Shirley Povich, and many others by very recognizable (especially to SABR members) baseball names. GBA, like Notes, is a mix of everything baseball: book reviews, fiction, stats, opinion, history, the minors -- you name it. And its 250 pages are nicely indexed.
TALKIN' BASEBALL
Just about the best gift for a baseball fan (after a copy of Romancing the Horsehide) is a SABR membership, and it's something I hear about from friends more and more. Now $50, I continue to believe it is not just a steal, but probably the beginning of many new friendships. For hundreds of fans, SABR provides a daily forum via its internet Digest, which is simply dazzling in its variety, humor, expertise, and (most of the time) civility. I have argued before that access to the Digest alone is worth the dues. But then you get the SABR monthly bulletin (where you can advertise your research needs, free), its publications (worth another $50 easy), and invitations to regional and national SABR meetings.
I joined SABR in 1991, and that (as baseball fan Robert Frost might put it) made all the difference. SABR put me in touch with the network of editors who inspired me to start Notes six years ago. What else can I say? For info, contact SABR at their new address: 812 Huron Rd E, #719, Cleveland, Ohio 44115. They have a website, of course: www.sabr.org
SABR's executive director Morris Eckhouse was guest columnist in the Feb 99 bulletin, and he described how he organized a SABR (but open to all fans) discussion group that meets monthly at his local Borders Book Store. Apparently some book stores host and publicize such groups for Civil War buffs and others, so why not a Hot Stove League in your neighborhood? I used to meet regularly for a breakfast of baseball and bagels with a couple of friends (a variation on the theme.)
MCCARVER OUT, SEAVER IN
This is one off-season move by the Mets that seemed just plain dumb to me. I'm not objective about Tim McCarver since we corresponded some, and I know he is not universally enjoyed (who is?), but he came to games prepared, and always added something. In the eighties, he unquestionably enhanced my appreciation of baseball strategy. I also enjoyed his books! I'm sure we'll hear Tim more, leaving the Mets is not the end of the line. In fact, when you think about it, the end may well be Cooperstown.
YESTERYEAR'S RADICAL REVISITED
Would you be flattered or insulted if someone described you as a radical? The word comes from the Latin for root (a good baseball word, but not that root), and could be a synonym for fundamentalist, someone concerned with the basics. (Bumper strip seen recently: "Feminism is the radical idea that women are persons.") In any case, rookie author David Stevens chose to call John Montgomery Ward "baseball's radical" -- and after reading his book, I am inclined to agree with that assessment.
Monte Ward (I feel we are much closer now) was one of the key figures in shaping the basic structure of baseball in America. An accomplished pitcher and hitter, Monte was also a lawyer -- who stood up against the establishment that the first Lords of the Realm created. Playing, managing, sometimes general-managing, Ward was also the instigator of the Players League, which rivalled the NL in 1890.
Stevens' biography is impressively researched. Following Monte Ward and his contemporaries, season by season unfolding with great detail, through the 1880s, 90s, and on into "the modern era" -- one is tempted to paraphrase the old Barzun line: whoever wants to know the heart and mind of baseball, had better learn about John Montgomery Ward.
A recent film, Sliding Doors, looks at a turning point in a single life, and wonders how things might have turned out had a small event (like missing a subway train) gone the other way. In Monte Ward's life, there seems to have been a number of such turning points, in the life of baseball. Readers are bound to wonder: IF ONLY the first owners were more enlightened and less greedy ... IF ONLY they respected the players' rights (instead of binding them like slaves via the Reserve Clause) ... IF ONLY the key players held out another season or two, and the PL survived ... IF ONLY the first owners could have agreed on a system of revenue-sharing!
Monte Ward jousted with the owners as a player, as a pioneer league organizer, as a lawyer (mostly winning in the courtrooms), and then came within a hair of being their man for league president! Monte's first wife (Helen Dauvray gave baseball its first World Series trophy) seems to rate her own biography, and maybe his second wife, too. There is little that is ordinary about Monte, who played tournament-winning golf, too.
I closed this book wishing there were more Monte Wards around today, in every profession. And that David Stevens finds more great biographies in baseball's history, as time goes by. Biographies radically different from today's media fluff.
DAY ROAD TRIPPER
For Notes rookies, here is my annual recommendation that you drop a note to Jay Buckley Baseball Tours, if you have any notions about touring ballparks this season. Write Box 213, La Crosse, WI 54602 or call 1-888-666-3510. The '99 brochure says "Coming soon! www.jaybuckley.com Check out our new web site." I am still coming down from a tour I made -- in 1994!
And, I recently discovered Minor Trips, via a complimentary copy of their very informative and interesting eight-page December newsletter. For a sample, drop a note to PO Box 360105, Strongsville, Ohio 44136. MT publishes "an annual ($8) guidebook with schedules that will direct you to games across America and Canada" (every March.) MT can be reached at minortrips@aol.com, and they have a web site, too: http://users.aol.com/minortrips/
STOP-THE-WORLD-I-WANT-TO-GET-OFF DEPT.
I suppose as a fan, I ought to be happy that a few million bucks flowed our way from baseball recently. On January 13, Phillip Ozersky, a 26-year-old research scientist who makes $30 thousand a year, sold the baseball that was McGwire's 70th via Guernsey's auction house at Madison Square Garden.
I think we knew exactly how many feet that ball traveled, soon after Mighty Mark swatted it last September 27, but the price tag was reported variously at (a) $3 million, (b) $2.7 million, and (c) $3.05 million. Only (a) was incorrect; the high bid was $2,7 million, and the "commission fee" was $305,000.
Sammy's 66th went for a paltry $150,000 the same night -- even though this was the FIRST ball to become a 66th HR! Hank Aaron's 755th received an offer of $800,000, but its owner judged that to be too low. The SportsTicker story I read noted that the owner was former Milwaukee Brewer groundskeeper Richard Arndt, who was fired by the Brewers in 1976 when he kept the ball. Arndt says the Brewers docked his final paycheck $5 for the ball. Boy, I bet the Brewers are upset now -- they could have docked their employee $800,000!
No, they couldn't, because no one would have believed, in 1976, that anyone would pay that much for a baseball.
Someone also tried to sell a baseball that was billed as Mickey Mantle's 500th -- until Mickey's widow called to say she had that ball in her trophy case. Can anyone imagine The Mick picking up a random baseball and scribbling "My 500th home run" on it? Well, I'd like a professional's opinion. Pete Rose's.
All of these price tags make absolutely no sense -- outside of the world of collectors and true believers. Revise those old Perry Como lyrics: "Catch a falling star ball and put it in your pocket -- so your kid can go to college!"
#184 FEBRUARY 1999
SIGNS OF SPRING
"Pitchers and catchers" is a phrase as welcome as a January thaw that bares driveways and sidewalks, and shrinks heaping snowbanks to knolls of ice no more formidable than a pitcher's mound. The winter that was such a late arrival here in the shadows has been very manageable -- so far. More to come, no doubt, but the magic words have been heard, "pitchers and catchers," and that means "Play ball!" is not far off, and its warmth will get us through whatever else winter has up its frozen sleeves.
Since signing off in December, with the concluding chapters of Casey's Call, I have not been entirely idle. I have made many revisions of the chapters that appeared here in Notes, and begun seeking a publisher (or agent.) The biggest change -- for those of you who actually read the thing -- was moving the time line back, so that "the Crash" (of baseball, and then the culture) occurs in 2002, and the "present" of the novel becomes 2099, a neat century away. I confess that moving the Crash to 2002 was motivated in part by the increasingly insane free agent signings of this off-season ("Kevin Brown" may someday be a symbol for fiscal irresponsibility); partly by the Y2K virus (which will cause a Crack, paving the way for a Crash); and partly by the fact that 2002 will be the next showdown between the Lords of the Realm and the Players Association. The next golden opportunity to do real damage to baseball, unless, of course, some lessons were learned in 1994. Scant evidence of that so far.
When it comes to free agent signings, Pirate fans like myself are not just on the sidelines, we are not even in the ballpark. Having a new park in Pittsburgh may make it more comfortable to watch the team play, and will help the team some economically, but the Pirates will remain Have-nots until MLB solves that problem of the uneven playing field -- a problem that threatens to rob the game, for many fans, of the fun of hope.
I have to admit, however, that there probably has never been a spring when some teams, realistically, had little shot at winning a pennant. Leagues, including some "major" ones, have folded while struggling to correct the problem. In my rookie seasons as a Pirate fan, optimists dreamed of a "first division" finish: fifth place looked terrific to "perennial cellar-dwellers." So I am less upset about the prospects, than about the system that will force the small-income teams to lose their best players, simply because they cannot afford to pay them what they are due. A good title for a play: Damn Large-Income Teams.
Notes from My Winter (Continued)
I have also gotten in some good baseball reading lately (more on that later), and I spent the five days before the Superbowl in Florida. It was my father-in-law's 80th birthday, and his wife, sons and daughters surprised him with a party that seemed to last three days. I have mentioned Alf here a few times, mostly because he has told me on several occasions that he was, quite by accident, at Yankee Stadium for Roger Maris' 61st home run. Last month, when Joe DiMaggio was again in the news, Alf said that he'd seen DiMaggio play a number of times. So the part of the story, that Maris' 61st was the only ML game Alf ever saw, turns out to be not true after all. Ah well.
SPEAKING OF DIMAGGIO...
I cannot believe the media has spent so much time since October asking "where have you gone, Joe D?" It seems especially ironic, since DiMaggio was (as others have noted) baseball's Garbo -- not speaking much English helped for a while. And he has been jealous of his privacy since he left the game -- OK, marrying Marilyn was not the best way to keep a low profile, but everybody makes mistakes. Frankly, I do not care a bit about Joe's health, nor do I expect him to bother about mine. If he rallies and tosses out the first ball at Yankee Stadium (with Yogi Berra squatting to catch it), fine. If not, fine.
CROWDS IN THE SHADOWS
With the as-expected election of Nolan Ryan, George Brett and Robin Yount (sorry, Mr Fisk, wait'll next year) to the Hall of Fame (with more to come), the weekend of July 23-25 looks like an all-timer for pilgrims to baseball's mecca. I believe motels in Cooperstown and its shadows began to book solid as soon as this trio hung up their spikes, five seasons ago.
Now it appears that the 30th Anniversary Woodstock Concert will be taking place that same weekend, about an hour north, at the former Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, NY (known to Notes readers as the proposed site for the theme park, Ballpark USA.) The juxtaposition of these two national events means the NY Thruway and other roads in central NY will be clogged, and while the Woodstockers may not be competing for motel space, there are sure to be confrontations on the highways between them and the pilgrims. With less than six months to plan, well, perhaps another Crack is on deck!
OTHER ROAD TRIPS
I am planning to attend the April 16-18 SABR/Cleveland State University conference for baseball writers (and maybe a game at Jacobs Field) this spring, and hope to see some of you there. I'm also looking forward already to a visit next September from James Floto, editor of The Diamond Angle, as he pilgrimages this way.
ABOUT THOSE LAST TWO PAGES...
Six springs ago, when Notes was born, I was reluctant about publicity. When I got any, in Baseball Weekly or in any of the magazines or newsletters where "stuff" from Notes appeared, I invariably received inquiries from potential subscribers. Most of these, I turned down, although there have always been a few non-editors among Notes readers (besides my relatives and friends) who "subscribed" by donating postage stamps or whatever.
With the debut of NOTES on line, I no longer need to fear publicity! So all my editor friends, with whom I have been exchanging NOTES -- some for six years now! -- please, feel free to mention the internet address of NOTES on line, and direct your readers there, for an occasional dose of NOTES.
I don't know if my name will remain at the top of the list of columnists, but I pledge here and now to remain above Peter Gammons. (I think new kids on the block bat lead-off.)
A WORD OF THANKS TO SEAN LAHMAN
It's a sign of the times, I guess, that much can be accomplished by people who never actually meet or talk on the phone or even correspond much in the US mail.
Last May, I "met" Sean Lahman via the SABR Digest, on the subject of Pete Rose. After visiting his archive, I sent Sean some material that had been in Notes, and things developed from there. I continue to recommend visitors to Sean's site to look at his "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions About Pete Rose" --
http://baseball1.com/bb~data/rose
I am looking forward to meeting Sean in person -- either when he next pilgrimages to Cooperstown, or when I next visit my daughter in college at Geneseo, just south of Rochester.
For now, I thank him for making this transition of Notes not only possible, but "easy" for this "textmeister" who is still a rookie when it comes to the internet. I hope the addition of Notes to his site brings many new visitors, including all of the readers of "the old Notes" whose encouragement, feedback and friendship has made doing Notes so much fun over the seasons.
EXTRA INNINGS
Something strange is in the air this spring. Something I don't think I've sensed before. It's this: a feeling that last season was so good -- that 1999 is somehow doomed to be a disappointment. It's not just me, I've seen this expressed by some syndicated columnists, too. It's out there.
But I've found the antidote. Namely, the movie (plot) Abner in Love, in which a young sporting man discovers that by getting a gang of guys and gals together and daily improvising on the old English game of rounders, he finally comes up with what we know today as Town Ball. Abner's romance with the game grows with each innovation, each little tweak of the rules, until he is at last hopelessly in love with the game. But there's more: others follow Abner (not his real name), and each help fine-tune things some, until at last there's baseball, Ray, and -- OK, the women got lost somehow, but that can be fixed later. Anyway, if you can't find Abner in your local theater, settle for Shakespeare in Love, and you won't be disappointed. Because it's an exercise in once upon a time, in imagination, and in mixing up history and myth, fact and fiction -- you get the idea.