Most people can tell you their first identifiable memory, distinct from the amorphous images that preceded it. They can tell what they did, or where they were, or what stood out. I’m lucky; I can place it distinctly in time.
Thursday, October 13, 1960. My father was driving my infant brother and me up Garver’s Ferry Hill toward the house my parents had bought just a week or so earlier. (They still live there.) At 3:35 PM Eastern time, Jim Woods announced as Bill Mazeroski hit a one ball, no strike pitch over the left field wall at Forbes Field to win the World Series. Fifty years ago today.
I had some help with the time. On the wall of The Home Office hangs a photograph taken from near the Pirates’ dugout. Mazeroski is in his follow-through, the ball is in the air, and Yogi Berra is turning to give chase to a ball he’ll never catch. The big Longines scoreboard clock is dead center.
It was announced last month that a full kinescope of the game was found in Bing Crosby’s basement, the only known video recording. MLB will broadcast it (announcers Bob Prince and Mel Allen) and make it available for sale to the public. All I’ve ever seen of one of the greatest games ever played (the final score of the back-and-forth game was 10-9) is the movie newsreels, part of which may well be stock crowd footage. Soon I’ll be able to watch it, and remember, whenever I want.
Sweet.
Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Monday, April 05, 2010
Breathing the Rarefied Air
The Pirates beat the Dodgers today, 11-5. This is the first time the Pirates have been in first place this late in the season in recent memory.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Seventeen and Counting
The Pittsburgh Pirates have had a team in the National League since 1887, and were champions in 1901 and 1902. There was no World Series then; they won their first in 1909, beating Detroit four games to three. Their next appearance was in 1925, when they overcame a 3-1 deficit to beat the Washington Senators. In 1927 they served as fodder for the juggernaut Yankees, considered by many to be the greatest baseball team of all time.
Lean years followed. The Pirates lost 100 games three years in a row in the Fifties, no mean feat when you remember teams only played 154 games a year then. In 1960 they surprised everyone by winning the National League pennant for the first time since 1927, then beat the Yankees four games to three, despite losing by scores of 10-0, 13-1, and 16-3. Bill Mazeroski’s home run in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 won the game 10-9, and is still the only walk-off home run to end a seventh game. Many consider this the greatest World Series game ever played.
The decade of the 1970s were the Pirates’ glory years. They won six division titles and two World Series (1971 and 1979), both times overcoming 3-1 deficits to beat Baltimore. Baseball’s cocaine scandals hit Pittsburgh hard, and the team suffered for it until General Manager Syd Thrift and Manager Jim Leyland put together a team that won three straight Eastern Division titles 1990-1992.
The Pirates have not won as many games as they lost in any season since.
A perfect cesspool of cheap ownership, inept management, and bad play culminated this week in a seventeenth consecutive losing season. No team in any major North American sports league has such a record for futility, and Year 18 is virtually guaranteed by the young and marginally talented roster. The longest World Series drought—33 years, from 1927-1960—will surely be surpassed. (1979 is the most recent appearance.)
Pittsburgh deserves much better. Aside from its five world championships, many Pirate players’ names are spoken with reverence by baseball cognoscenti. Honus Wagner, one of the first truly great players, still considered by some historians to be the greatest shortstop of all time, and one of the original five players in the Hall of Fame. Mazeroski, considered by many to be the greatest fielding secondbaseman ever. Roberto Clemente had 3,000 hits, won four batting titles, twelve Gold Gloves, and was named to twelve All-Star teams. Willie Stargell hit more home runs over the right field roof of Forbes Field than all other players combined.
Now the Pirates are a glorified minor league team, developing players to be traded to teams serious about winning just before free agency escalates their salaries. It’s a shame. They play in a beautiful ballpark, in a city that supports decent sports teams as well as any. The diehard fan base is still there. The farm system has players with great potential, but how many will be allowed to achieve it in Pittsburgh? Current management swears it has a plan, that it doesn’t just want to build a team that can eke out a winning record, but a champion. Nothing we haven’t heard before.
For someone who grew up watching the Pirates in the Seventies, this is hard to take.
Lean years followed. The Pirates lost 100 games three years in a row in the Fifties, no mean feat when you remember teams only played 154 games a year then. In 1960 they surprised everyone by winning the National League pennant for the first time since 1927, then beat the Yankees four games to three, despite losing by scores of 10-0, 13-1, and 16-3. Bill Mazeroski’s home run in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 7 won the game 10-9, and is still the only walk-off home run to end a seventh game. Many consider this the greatest World Series game ever played.
The decade of the 1970s were the Pirates’ glory years. They won six division titles and two World Series (1971 and 1979), both times overcoming 3-1 deficits to beat Baltimore. Baseball’s cocaine scandals hit Pittsburgh hard, and the team suffered for it until General Manager Syd Thrift and Manager Jim Leyland put together a team that won three straight Eastern Division titles 1990-1992.
The Pirates have not won as many games as they lost in any season since.
A perfect cesspool of cheap ownership, inept management, and bad play culminated this week in a seventeenth consecutive losing season. No team in any major North American sports league has such a record for futility, and Year 18 is virtually guaranteed by the young and marginally talented roster. The longest World Series drought—33 years, from 1927-1960—will surely be surpassed. (1979 is the most recent appearance.)
Pittsburgh deserves much better. Aside from its five world championships, many Pirate players’ names are spoken with reverence by baseball cognoscenti. Honus Wagner, one of the first truly great players, still considered by some historians to be the greatest shortstop of all time, and one of the original five players in the Hall of Fame. Mazeroski, considered by many to be the greatest fielding secondbaseman ever. Roberto Clemente had 3,000 hits, won four batting titles, twelve Gold Gloves, and was named to twelve All-Star teams. Willie Stargell hit more home runs over the right field roof of Forbes Field than all other players combined.
Now the Pirates are a glorified minor league team, developing players to be traded to teams serious about winning just before free agency escalates their salaries. It’s a shame. They play in a beautiful ballpark, in a city that supports decent sports teams as well as any. The diehard fan base is still there. The farm system has players with great potential, but how many will be allowed to achieve it in Pittsburgh? Current management swears it has a plan, that it doesn’t just want to build a team that can eke out a winning record, but a champion. Nothing we haven’t heard before.
For someone who grew up watching the Pirates in the Seventies, this is hard to take.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
(How Not To) Build a Fan Base
The final father-daughter pre-college activity with the Sole Heir will be a day at the museum of her choosing, followed by a ball game. Today was ticket purchase day, and a reminder if why I don’t go to nearly as many baseball games as I used to.
First stop, the Nats’ web site. You can specify general location by price, and how many tickets. The computer tells you where you’ll sit, and you’ll like it. Take it or leave it. It told me to sit in Section 314, Row H. These seats are just a smidge to the right of home plate, but I’d rather sit a little farther up the line if I could be closer to the front of a section. Too bad for me. Ten years ago you could visit a team’s web site and see the view from your prospective seat. Thirty years ago I walked into Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium and get the specific seats I asked for from a man holding cardboard tickets. Now you can’t even pick a section.
I asked the system for different tickets in the same price range. Section 314, Row H. I sensed a whiff if irritability from my monitor, as though the web site was put out over my audacity in challenging its judgment.
I called the Nats’ ticket office and explained my situation to a (barely) living person. He didn’t seem too enthused, and pretended to be surprised at my inability to choose specific seats. I told him what my tradeoffs were, and he asked what section I wanted to sit in. I said the stadium map does not have section numbers, and I didn’t have a specific section in mind, just somewhere I could sit closer to the front.
“Well, man, you have to give me a section number,” he said.
“No, I don’t,” I said, and hung up.
Back to the web site, where I grabbed my ankles and took the final insult. In order for you, the paying customer, to fully appreciate the convenience of no longer being able to choose your seat, tickets.com charges a $4.50 convenience fee. Per seat. That does not include the $3.50 Order Processing Fee. Nor does it include the $1.75 they charge you to print your own tickets at home. Sum total for two $24 tickets: $62.25, a 30% markup.
Even better, these charges are non-refundable, even if the event is canceled. That’s no big deal for baseball games; they have rain checks. Tickets.com also handles other events, such as concerts. What they’re telling you is, if you happen to have seats for the night Christie Brinkley decides to take Billy Joel back and he ditches the gig, you’re still out the fees. Using our example, that would mean you spent $14 not to go to a concert that didn’t take place. Organized crime has a name for that kind of operation.
It’s not like people are mugging season ticket holders to get into Nats games. Even after a recent eight-game winning streak they’re on pace for a 57-105 record. Two full-time players have higher batting averages than the Nats’ winning percentage. Their five years in DC have produced one non-losing season, when they went 81-81 in 2005. The owners withheld rent payments for several months last year. The ballpark is nice, but it’s no Camden Yards or PNC Park. Management’s sense of entitlement is beyond unbecoming.
We’ll have fun, because The Sole Heir and I always have fun at a ball game. We’re not going to have so much fun that I make dealing with the Washington Nationals a regular source of sporting entertainment, not with the Bowie Bay Sox fifteen miles from my house. Given the Nationals’ record, it’s not like a AA team will play inferior baseball.
First stop, the Nats’ web site. You can specify general location by price, and how many tickets. The computer tells you where you’ll sit, and you’ll like it. Take it or leave it. It told me to sit in Section 314, Row H. These seats are just a smidge to the right of home plate, but I’d rather sit a little farther up the line if I could be closer to the front of a section. Too bad for me. Ten years ago you could visit a team’s web site and see the view from your prospective seat. Thirty years ago I walked into Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium and get the specific seats I asked for from a man holding cardboard tickets. Now you can’t even pick a section.
I asked the system for different tickets in the same price range. Section 314, Row H. I sensed a whiff if irritability from my monitor, as though the web site was put out over my audacity in challenging its judgment.
I called the Nats’ ticket office and explained my situation to a (barely) living person. He didn’t seem too enthused, and pretended to be surprised at my inability to choose specific seats. I told him what my tradeoffs were, and he asked what section I wanted to sit in. I said the stadium map does not have section numbers, and I didn’t have a specific section in mind, just somewhere I could sit closer to the front.
“Well, man, you have to give me a section number,” he said.
“No, I don’t,” I said, and hung up.
Back to the web site, where I grabbed my ankles and took the final insult. In order for you, the paying customer, to fully appreciate the convenience of no longer being able to choose your seat, tickets.com charges a $4.50 convenience fee. Per seat. That does not include the $3.50 Order Processing Fee. Nor does it include the $1.75 they charge you to print your own tickets at home. Sum total for two $24 tickets: $62.25, a 30% markup.
Even better, these charges are non-refundable, even if the event is canceled. That’s no big deal for baseball games; they have rain checks. Tickets.com also handles other events, such as concerts. What they’re telling you is, if you happen to have seats for the night Christie Brinkley decides to take Billy Joel back and he ditches the gig, you’re still out the fees. Using our example, that would mean you spent $14 not to go to a concert that didn’t take place. Organized crime has a name for that kind of operation.
It’s not like people are mugging season ticket holders to get into Nats games. Even after a recent eight-game winning streak they’re on pace for a 57-105 record. Two full-time players have higher batting averages than the Nats’ winning percentage. Their five years in DC have produced one non-losing season, when they went 81-81 in 2005. The owners withheld rent payments for several months last year. The ballpark is nice, but it’s no Camden Yards or PNC Park. Management’s sense of entitlement is beyond unbecoming.
We’ll have fun, because The Sole Heir and I always have fun at a ball game. We’re not going to have so much fun that I make dealing with the Washington Nationals a regular source of sporting entertainment, not with the Bowie Bay Sox fifteen miles from my house. Given the Nationals’ record, it’s not like a AA team will play inferior baseball.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
The House of Thrills
I saw my first major league baseball game at Forbes Field, which opened one hundred years ago today. Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, Sandy Koufax, Henry Aaron, and too many others to count showed me what a Hall of Fame player looked like in person there. Built at a cost of $1 million, it was the first of the great concrete-and-steel stadiums that were meant to last, and the Pirates played there for 61 years.
Babe Ruth hit his last home run there, over the grandstand roof in right field; he hit three that day. The expansive dimensions in left and center field allowed for the batting cage to be stored on the playing field during games; the bases for the light towers were also on the field. Those generous dimensions helped the Pirates to hit eight triples in the game played May 30, 1925; the record still stands. The distances to the fences made Forbes a pitcher-friendly park, but the enormous gaps created by those deep fences contributed to its lore: in 4,700 games, a no-hitter was never thrown at Forbes.
Possibly the most famous home run ever hit cleared the left field wall on October 9, 1960, when Bill Mazeroski took Ralph Terry deep to win Game 7 of the World Series. New Yorkers may vote for Bobby Thompson’s “Shot Heard Round the World,” but Thompson’s Chinese home run at the polo Grounds only won a pennant; Maz’s 400-foot shot won the World Championship. (I may be a little prejudiced myself, as Maz’s homer is my oldest conscious memory, as a four-year-old listening to the game in the family car.)
Forbes Field is gone now, abandoned in 1970 for the late, unlamented Three Rivers Stadium, which was in turn razed when the Pirates moved into PNC Park in 2001. The University of Pittsburgh’s Posvar Library now stands on much of the old Forbes Field site. Pitt has done its best to preserve Forbes Field’s heritage. A line of bricks running along the Schenley Drive sidewalk shows where the left field wall used to be. A plaque marks the spot where Mazeroski’s homer run left the yard. The bricks extend across Roberto Clemente Drive to the last remaining section of the ivy-covered wall; the 435-foot marker is still visible.
Maybe the best tribute is in the library itself. Home plate is about where it used to be, prominently mounted in the floor, encased in acrylic. The covering has to be replaced periodically, as students facing difficult exams slide into home for luck. The House of Thrills (as announcer Bob Prince called it) is gone, but its traditions grow even after its demise.
Babe Ruth hit his last home run there, over the grandstand roof in right field; he hit three that day. The expansive dimensions in left and center field allowed for the batting cage to be stored on the playing field during games; the bases for the light towers were also on the field. Those generous dimensions helped the Pirates to hit eight triples in the game played May 30, 1925; the record still stands. The distances to the fences made Forbes a pitcher-friendly park, but the enormous gaps created by those deep fences contributed to its lore: in 4,700 games, a no-hitter was never thrown at Forbes.
Possibly the most famous home run ever hit cleared the left field wall on October 9, 1960, when Bill Mazeroski took Ralph Terry deep to win Game 7 of the World Series. New Yorkers may vote for Bobby Thompson’s “Shot Heard Round the World,” but Thompson’s Chinese home run at the polo Grounds only won a pennant; Maz’s 400-foot shot won the World Championship. (I may be a little prejudiced myself, as Maz’s homer is my oldest conscious memory, as a four-year-old listening to the game in the family car.)
Forbes Field is gone now, abandoned in 1970 for the late, unlamented Three Rivers Stadium, which was in turn razed when the Pirates moved into PNC Park in 2001. The University of Pittsburgh’s Posvar Library now stands on much of the old Forbes Field site. Pitt has done its best to preserve Forbes Field’s heritage. A line of bricks running along the Schenley Drive sidewalk shows where the left field wall used to be. A plaque marks the spot where Mazeroski’s homer run left the yard. The bricks extend across Roberto Clemente Drive to the last remaining section of the ivy-covered wall; the 435-foot marker is still visible.
Maybe the best tribute is in the library itself. Home plate is about where it used to be, prominently mounted in the floor, encased in acrylic. The covering has to be replaced periodically, as students facing difficult exams slide into home for luck. The House of Thrills (as announcer Bob Prince called it) is gone, but its traditions grow even after its demise.
Monday, April 06, 2009
The Sobotka Corollary to the Yankee Principle
The New York Yankees have been, and continue to be, adamantly against revenue sharing in baseball. They have by far the largest revenue base, and the largest payroll. What the Yankees, in their New York hubris, fail to grasp is they need the other teams to be competitive. Eventually even New Yorkers would look elsewhere for entertainment if the American League evolved into a baseball version of the Harlem Globetrotters and Washington Generals.
The same is true of the economy as a whole. Capitalism has been very, very good to America. The churn of companies rising and falling is accepted as part of the cost of doing business. Regulation of business is viewed as a necessary evil by most, pure evil by others. Entrepreneurial spirit is valued above all else, unless the government can be talked into underwriting some expenses.
What is too often forgotten on Wall Street and K Street is that not everyone can be a tycoon. I’m not talking about those who try, but fail: you pays your money, you takes your chances. I’m talking about the people who, for whatever reason, choose not to play. People who are content to put in their forty hours, go home, and play with their kids. Pay for their home and retire without having to worry if the price of dog food will starve them.
A pure capitalist sees these people as having no value. They’re weak, and exist only as overhead to slow the engine the entrepreneur is trying to drive. This is why ardent laissez-faire capitalists are ultimately mistaken. Deluded, even.
Not everyone can be a titan of industry, even if they wanted to. Someone has to actually build the cars. Unload the ships. Mine the coal. Even as our economy becomes more service based, we still need people to work retail sales, repair appliances, and cut hair. Cops and fireman and teachers aren’t nice to have; they’re critical.
To a capitalist, these people are overhead, a drag on the bottom line. Yet automakers sell a hell of a lot more cars to these folks than they do to business owners. The board of directors of Consolidation Coal aren’t going into the mines any time soon, and it’s a safe bet Rick Wagoner couldn’t hook up a transaxle if his life depended on it. The entrepreneurs provide vision and, we hope, leadership, but it’s still the people fixing potholes and washing windows who actually get these things done.
I’m not so naïve to believe this is going to change anytime soon; money talks. But until there’s some fundamental recognition of the value of the non-capitalist in a capitalist society, we’re going to end up where we are now every thirty to eighty years, no matter how smart the Masters of the Universe like to think they are. I’m not advocating class warfare, though it may sound like it to some. I’m not even pushing for common courtesy. It’s just common sense.
(Explanation of the title: Season Two of The Wire dealt with the loss of stevedore jobs on the Baltimore Harbor. The union leader was named Frank Sobotka.)
The same is true of the economy as a whole. Capitalism has been very, very good to America. The churn of companies rising and falling is accepted as part of the cost of doing business. Regulation of business is viewed as a necessary evil by most, pure evil by others. Entrepreneurial spirit is valued above all else, unless the government can be talked into underwriting some expenses.
What is too often forgotten on Wall Street and K Street is that not everyone can be a tycoon. I’m not talking about those who try, but fail: you pays your money, you takes your chances. I’m talking about the people who, for whatever reason, choose not to play. People who are content to put in their forty hours, go home, and play with their kids. Pay for their home and retire without having to worry if the price of dog food will starve them.
A pure capitalist sees these people as having no value. They’re weak, and exist only as overhead to slow the engine the entrepreneur is trying to drive. This is why ardent laissez-faire capitalists are ultimately mistaken. Deluded, even.
Not everyone can be a titan of industry, even if they wanted to. Someone has to actually build the cars. Unload the ships. Mine the coal. Even as our economy becomes more service based, we still need people to work retail sales, repair appliances, and cut hair. Cops and fireman and teachers aren’t nice to have; they’re critical.
To a capitalist, these people are overhead, a drag on the bottom line. Yet automakers sell a hell of a lot more cars to these folks than they do to business owners. The board of directors of Consolidation Coal aren’t going into the mines any time soon, and it’s a safe bet Rick Wagoner couldn’t hook up a transaxle if his life depended on it. The entrepreneurs provide vision and, we hope, leadership, but it’s still the people fixing potholes and washing windows who actually get these things done.
I’m not so naïve to believe this is going to change anytime soon; money talks. But until there’s some fundamental recognition of the value of the non-capitalist in a capitalist society, we’re going to end up where we are now every thirty to eighty years, no matter how smart the Masters of the Universe like to think they are. I’m not advocating class warfare, though it may sound like it to some. I’m not even pushing for common courtesy. It’s just common sense.
(Explanation of the title: Season Two of The Wire dealt with the loss of stevedore jobs on the Baltimore Harbor. The union leader was named Frank Sobotka.)
Thursday, March 26, 2009
The Church of Baseball
Apparently Michigan’s economic crisis has ended, because folks there now have time to argue about the starting time of the Tigers’ home opener. Detroit’s first home game is April 10, which is Good Friday. All thirty teams play that day, but only the Tigers have a game that starts during Holy Hours. (1:05 pm)
Time is our most finite and egalitarian resource; everyone gets exactly the same amount every day. Tough decisions have to be made. If personally attending the first of eighty-one Tigers home games is more important to you than observing an arbitrarily decided upon religious observance, dress warm. That’s why it’s a day game. Early April evenings in Detroit can get goddamned cold. (Pun intended.)
If the religious observance is more important in your pantheon of values, don’t go to the game. Either way, don’t expect the world to change its rotation because there’s something about the current format you don’t like.
Fortunately, modern technology has provided a reasonable solution: DVR the game, and watch it after Holy Hours have ended. (Would that make them Unholy Hours?) It’s just for such elegant compromises that God has allowed man to evolve to the point where such things can be invented.
Me? I’d go to the game, with nuclear-powered underwear. As the lovely Annie Savoy pointed out in the classic movie Bull Durham, there ere 108 beads on a rosary, and 108 stitches on a baseball. Coincidence?
I don’t think so.
Time is our most finite and egalitarian resource; everyone gets exactly the same amount every day. Tough decisions have to be made. If personally attending the first of eighty-one Tigers home games is more important to you than observing an arbitrarily decided upon religious observance, dress warm. That’s why it’s a day game. Early April evenings in Detroit can get goddamned cold. (Pun intended.)
If the religious observance is more important in your pantheon of values, don’t go to the game. Either way, don’t expect the world to change its rotation because there’s something about the current format you don’t like.
Fortunately, modern technology has provided a reasonable solution: DVR the game, and watch it after Holy Hours have ended. (Would that make them Unholy Hours?) It’s just for such elegant compromises that God has allowed man to evolve to the point where such things can be invented.
Me? I’d go to the game, with nuclear-powered underwear. As the lovely Annie Savoy pointed out in the classic movie Bull Durham, there ere 108 beads on a rosary, and 108 stitches on a baseball. Coincidence?
I don’t think so.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Behind the Scenes at The Home Office
Watching Game One of the World Series last night, the Spousal Equivalent, weary of my constant carping about Tim McCarver's "expert" analysis, finally asked if there was anything he could say that would satisfy me.
“Sure,” I said.
“What?”
“My heart! My heart!”
“Sure,” I said.
“What?”
“My heart! My heart!”
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Some May Little Note Nor Long Remember August 22, But She Will
She opened by not just passing her driver’s test on the first try, but getting a license photo she likes. Granted, she photographs well, but she’ll learn as time goes on that the Maryland MVA hires photographers who were fired by the Department of Corrections for taking unflattering mug shots.
Next came another special occasion: her first major league doubleheader. Seeing two games for the price of one is a cherished memory of my adolescence. Twin bills are rare now, unless they clear the yard after Game One so they can resell the seats for Game Two. Seeing two games for the price of one was a new experience for her. She was jazzed.
I had planned to watch at least part of the games so we could compare notes. I turned on the game, saw they were losing 14-3, and went upstairs to read before chancing Game Two.
Five minutes later the phone rang.
SOLE HEIR: Are you watching the game?
ME: I was going to, but I saw it was 14-3,
SOLE HEIR: Well, it’s 16-3 now. (Uproar drowns out voice. I hear her shouting to her mother, “Was that a grand slam?”) They just hit another grand slam. It’s 20-3.
She called back between games to ask if I could find out whether losing 30-3 was a record. (It was, for the American League. In the National League, where they still play real baseball as God intended for it to be played, the record for runs in a game is 36.)
She drove herself to school the next day on three hours sleep. Not easily daunted, she called me Friday morning to ask about the dinner out I promised her for passing her test.
“Am I limited to the usual list of restaurants?” she said.
“What do you have in mind?” I said, visions of Morton’s or The Palm dancing through my head.
“How about
So we went to the game again Friday night. And the Os lost again. She went back today with her mother, as her birthday gift for a friend. They lost all four game she saw this week. That means it will be at least the day after tomorrow before she starts politicking to go to another game. I say this with great confidence, because the Birds are off tomorrow.
That’s my girl.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Inside Baseball
Craze likes it when I teach her little things about sports that deepen her appreciation of the game we’re watching. This conversation took place Sunday night, when ESPN gave us a shot of Gary Sheffield in the on-deck circle.
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