Category Archives: Baseball

The Zen of the Knuckleball

Posted on by
1

A major league fastball arrives at the plate at a velocity of around 90 to 95 MPH.  To throw a ball that hard requires that a pitcher turn his entire body into a sling, generating power, not just from his arm and shoulder, but also his thighs, knees, back.  Throwing a fastball is a violent and unnatural act, one which puts tremendous pressure on the shoulder, the elbow, the arm. A list of pitchers who have undergone Tommy John surgery, an ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, in which the ulnar collateral ligament is replaced with a tendon from another part of the body, would fill an All-star roster.

The point isn’t just to throw the ball hard.  Imagine trying to hit a baseball with a stick, thrown at top speed from a distance of 60 feet 6 inches.  Sounds impossible, doesn’t it?  But in fact, professional hitters have extraordinary reflexes and fast-twitch fibers and hand-eye coordination, and if you just throw the ball hard, you’ll get clobbered.  The point is to spin the ball, impart movement on it, change speeds, try to disrupt the hitter’s timing.  Put enough spin on the ball, and it slows down, and drops precipitously at the last second–a change-up.  Or you can spin it so it changes direction–a curve.  Or move laterally–a slider.  And there are dozens of deadly variations on each of those pitches.  Splitters and cut fastballs and circle changes and screwballs and slurves.  All attempts to fool a pitcher, to disrupt him.  To throw the ball past him.

And then there’s the knuckleball.The anti-pitch.  Fluky, freaky. This video shows how you throw one–you push the ball out of your hand using your fingertips.  It’s not really thrown with the knuckles at all.  Thrown much softer–a relaxed, easy motion.  The point is to impart as little spin as possible.  Let the ball float up there, acted on by air currents.  Maybe it drops.  Maybe it sails.  As the pitcher, you don’t know where it’s going, and of course, neither does the batter. It looks like the easiest pitch in the world to hit–a batting practice fastball.  And then it jumps around unexpectedly.  The batter takes his best home run swing, and ends up whiffing, looking completely foolish.

It’s kind of a beautiful thing.  The point of a fastball/curve/change/slider pitcher is to control the outcome–you want the ball to cross a tiny corner of the plate, spinning and curving, at a velocity that makes it nearly impossible to hit.  A knuckleball pitcher, on the other hand, trusts to forces beyond his control.  Invisible air currents control the pitch.  Whatever happens, happens, dude.  But, man, can it be effective.  Here’s the great Tim Wakefield against the Yankees, a playoff game in 2003.  Best hitters in baseball completely helpless against a pitch arriving at home at 63 miles per hour.

And now we have a terrific new documentary, Knuckleball! documenting the 2011 season, and featuring Wakefield, in his last season, and R. A. Dickey of the (then) Mets, who emerged from the shadows that year. It makes sense that it would focus on just two pitchers, because throughout the history of baseball, there are really never more than a couple of knuckleballers working at any given time.  Hoyt Wilhelm and Wilbur Wood, when I was a kid. Then it was Phil and Joe Niekro and Charlie Hough in the 70s and 80′s, Bert Hooten after that.  Wakefield came up in ’92, and just retired, and now it’s R. A. Dickey, the new kid on the block.

But when you consider how few of them there have been, it’s remarkable how good they’ve been.  Two knuckleballers, Wilhelm and Phil Niekro, are in the Hall of Fame.  Joe Niekro could be.  Wakefield’s credentials are perhaps just a titch below that standard, but with over 200 career wins, he’s been an extraordinarily effective and consistent pitcher.  For the most part, knuckleballers turn to the pitch out of desperation.  Guys who want a career, and can’t figure out any other way to get batters out, turn to the knuckler, hoping against hope they can master it.  Most can’t. It’s a tricky and difficult pitch to learn how to throw consistently.  But if you can manage it, you can throw it basically forever. You throw so softly, it doesn’t put much pressure on your arm. Phil Niekro pitched ’til he was 48; Wilhelm until he was 50.  Wakefield had a 20 year career.

But they’re also an interesting bunch of guys.  When I was a kid, my favorite baseball book was Jim Bouton’s Ball Four.  The first great baseball tell-all, profane and funny and moving.  Bouton had been a great fastball pitcher for the Yankees, then blew his arm out.  Ball Four describes, in part, Bouton’s attempt to refashion a career by throwing the knuckleball.  He describes the frustration of it–one day, it dances like a ping pong ball in a hurricane, the next day it spins, and gets hit very hard by large hairy men with clubs in their hands. You get Bouton’s love for the game, his dogged determination and grit.  You also get a sense of a locker room, the rude humor, the casual insults, the camaraderie.  Bouton’s also in the doc; who knows how long his career as a knuckleballer might have lasted, were it not for being effectively black-listed by the baseball establishment for writing his book. But the point is that Bouton was a smart, observant, interesting guy, and a fine writer. (After his baseball career finished, he became wealthy by inventing Big League Chew–a bubblegum that looked like chewing tobacco, for kids who wanted to look especially cool.)

So is R. A. Dickey.  He’s also got a book out: Wherever I wind up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball.  It’s a wonderful book, warm and insightful and funny.  I also love his blog.

It makes me think that there’s something fascinating about this pitch, this odd sort of anti-pitch.  Everything about it seems backward.  You control events by losing control of them–you admit you don’t know where the ball is going, and you’re okay with that fact.  It’s pretty Zen, really–I’ll got with the flow here, I’ll let the ball do whatever the ball wants to do. Only some guys can do that, and they tend to be interesting people, unusually thoughtful, outsiders and mavericks.

And then you get in trouble–walk a couple of guys (always a knuckleball possibility), maybe a wild pitch.  (If you don’t know where it’s going, and if the batter doesn’t know where it’s going, then obviously the catcher doesn’t know either!).  A conventional pitcher, in that situation, wants to throw harder.  The pitching coach comes out, says ‘okay, Ace, time to really bear down.’  If you ordinarily throw 93, now is time to throw 94.  You want to spin the ball more severely, catch even less of the corner, really hum it in there.

But not a knuckleballer.  If you try to throw a knuckleball harder, you’ll spin it, and it’ll get hit. A knuckleball pitcher wants to throw the ball softer. Try less to control events.  Trust even more to chance and fortune.  Like I said: Zen.

I love that.  I especially love it as a writer.  When you’re up against a deadline, and facing writer’s block, the temptation is to force it.  You work yourself into a state, you beat yourself up, you go ‘come on, damn it, think of something.  Write.  Now!

It never works.  And I’ve come to realize there’s a real wisdom to knuckleballing.  Maybe the answer, in times of high stress, is to relax. Trust the air currents more.  Let happen what’s going happen.  Leave things, a bit, to chance.

Throw softer.

42: A review

Posted on by
1

In an early scene in 42, the new Jackie Robinson biopic, Harrison Ford as Branch Rickey looks through a whole pile of scouting reports, trying to find exactly the right guy to integrate baseball.  He lingers on Jack Roosevelt Robinson’s file; army officer, college graduate, four sport athlete.  Not as famous as Satchel Paige or Josh Gibson, but a good enough player so that no one could question his ability to play big league ball.  What about his temperment? Too hot-headed?  Then Rickey sees a note in the file, and his face brightens.  “A Methodist,” he crows.  “I’m a Methodist, and so is he.  This is the guy.”

If you’re going to make a movie about a seminal character like Jackie Robinson, it seems to me that the first decision to be made is this: is the movie about the person, or his impact?  In other words, should the movie focus on Jackie Robinson, on his personal life and his struggles and weaknesses and how he overcame them, or on the impact his life had on others, his teammates, opponents, the nation generally?  What this film does is combine the two.  It’s a film about absolute morality, a film that says something like this: you were either for Jackie Robinson’s right to play major league baseball, or you were against it, and that decision was a fundamentally moral one.

And that’s how his Dodger teammates line up.  Dixie Walker (Ryan Merriman) and Bobby Bragan (Derek Phillips) and Kirby Higbe (Brad Beyer) never could overcome their prejudices, and opposed him. (Bragan later recanted, which the film depicts, but it’s not given much dramatic emphasis).  And Walker and Higbe are ‘punished’ for it by Rickey–traded to (shudder) Pittsburgh.  Pee Wee Reese (Lucas Black) and Eddie Stanky (Jesse Luken) come around, take Jackie’s side, publicly support him.  Ralph Branca (Hamish Linklater) is pro-Jackie from the beginning.  And this was all a function of their superior moral sense.

Chadwick Boseman is terrific as Robinson, as is Nicole Beharie as Rachel Robinson.  Boseman looks like a ballplayer.  He runs bases, swings the bat, fields a grounder, throws, and never once does it seem actorly. In some baseball movies, the players just don’t look right.  (John Goodman as Babe Ruth and Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig come to mind.)  Boseman’s terrific in the role.  He captures Jackie’s fire, his competitive passion, his pride.  This is a fierce Jackie Robinson, not in the least meek and long-suffering, which gives his forbearance when pelted with racist epithets some real power.  Beharie’s great too.  Rachel Robinson was a California girl, from an upper middle-class family.  In one early scene she stares, uncomprehending, at a ‘white’s only’ sign on a restroom door.  Rachel Robinson has to be a thankless role–the virtuous, loyal spouse–but Beharie (and Brian Helgeland’s screenplay and direction) create a woman of humor and intelligence, who seems at times rather bemused by this odd racism thing.  (And who makes a point of hiring a white caregiver for Jackie Jr.).

And Harrison Ford is tremendous.  Gruff and uncompromising, Rickey seems perpetually outraged at the vicissitudes of a racist backlash he nonetheless completely anticipated.  It’s a crafty performance–his moral outrage perfectly calibrated for each exigency.  It’s valuable to remember that Jackie Robinson didn’t just decide one day to try out for the Dodgers, any more than Rosa Parks didn’t just decide one day she didn’t feel like riding in the back of the bus.  Both acts were more than just morally subversive–they were carefully calculated.

In the best scene in the movie, Jackie is subjected to absolutely unremitting racist abuse from Ben Chapman (Alan Tudyk–say it ain’t so, Wash!), in a game in Philadelphia.  In a tight pitchers’ duel, Robinson struggles at the plate, and with every pop to short, Chapman lets him have it, n-word after n-word.  Finally, Eddie Stanky leaves the Dodger dugout and confronts Chapman, offers to fight him, even. (I assume this actually happened, and it made me happy: scrappy little Eddie Stanky, all 5’8 and 170 of him, was the one Dodger most likely to punch out the other team’s manager).  Chapman backs down, and in an interview afterwards, says to reporters that he didn’t think his language was out of line.  After all, he calls Hank Greenberg a kike, and Joe DiMaggio a wop and what’s the big deal?  But in Tudyk’s performance, there’s this glimmer of fanaticism; you can see this isn’t just about routine bench jockeying; he hates what Jackie Robinson stands for.

And look, I don’t question for a second the central premise of this movie. Obviously, racism is just flat out evil, and obviously Jackie Robinson had an absolute right to pursue his chosen profession.  Every year, Major league baseball honors the Robinson legacy by having every player, on April 15, on every team, wear 42.  This is right and proper and fitting.  And I do consider Pee Wee Reese, a guy from Kentucky, heroic, when he put his arm around Jackie, a gesture of solidarity, in a game in Cincinatti when the abuse was starting to really rain down.  And I think it’s awesome that Stanky nearly punched out Ben Chapman, and that Ralph Branca (however awkwardly), told Jackie that he should just go ahead and shower with the white players, that it was no big deal.

And it’s a good, inspiring movie.  I liked it.  My wife, who doesn’t like baseball, liked it too.

I just wish. . . .

Okay, Pee Wee Reese and Eddie Stanky were good guys and Dixie Walker and Kirby Higbe and Bobby Bragan were bad guys, and I get that, and don’t disagree.  But wasn’t this, in part generational?  Pee Wee was 28 in 1947, an established young star.  1947 was Ralph Branca’s rookie year, and he was also the best pitcher on the team; his job unthreatened.  In 1947, Dixie Walker was 36, near the end.  Kirby Higbe was 32, a hard-drinking Southerner, from South Carolina.  His autobiography, The High Hard One, is terrific, a rolicking memoir of Depression-era baseball, as well as an alcoholic’s confessional.  It seems a shame to see a complex and interesting man relegated to the role of ‘racist villain’.  Dixie Walker became a highly respected hitting coach, especially known for his work with Jimmy Wynn, a great black player for Houston. As for Bobby Bragan, he was one of those guys hanging on by his toenails to a big-league job, a 29-year old backup catcher, who batted .190 in 1947.  He had to know what Robinson meant to a guy like him–an influx of black talent, competing for one of the 400 major league jobs.  If Robinson succeeded, Bragan had to think his career would be over–and that’s also what happened.  Roy Campanella joined the team in 1948, and the job he took was Bragan’s.

I am glad that the film makes a big deal of Wendell Smith, the reporter for the Pittsburgh Harold-American, a black newspaper, who Rickey hired at 50 dollars a month to be Jackie’s friend, confidant, chauffeur and amanuensis.  Smith was every bit the pioneer Jackie Robinson was, excluded from press boxes, typing game stories with a typewriter on his lap in the stands.  But what the film does not say is that Smith had been agitating for baseball integration for years, nor that he was the man who recommended Robinson to Branch Rickey.

In fact, Branch Rickey broke the color barrier for many reasons, some of them moral and religious to be sure, but also because he wanted first access to the black talent pool that would follow baseball’s integration.  And while he certainly paid Jackie and Pee Wee the same salary, he didn’t pay either of them all that much.  Owners didn’t, back then.

In other words, the baseball fan and historian in me sees the potential for ten much more nuanced and interesting films about Jackie Robinson.  Which is not to say that the film we have isn’t a good one, or an important one, or an inspiring one.  I liked it immensely, loved the performances, love the importance of Jackie Robinson in our history, which the film does get pretty well right.  The fact that other, maybe better films kept peeking out around the corners doesn’t negate what this one accomplished.

 

 

RIP: Marvin Miller

Posted on by
Reply

Marvin Miller died yesterday, at the age of ninety-five.  Sports Illustrated’s Jay Jaffe wrote a great obituary, arguing for Miller’s inclusion in the Baseball Hall of Fame.  SI on-line, in their Truth and Rumors column, also discussed free agent pitcher Zack Greinke, who is in demand from a number of teams despite asking for a contract paying something in the neighborhood of 150 million dollars, 25 million a year for 6 years. And on the news this morning, I saw protests outside Walmarts. These three stories are not unrelated.

The three most significant men in baseball history are, in my opinion, Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson and Marvin Miller.  This is not a controversial opinion; in fact the old Dodgers’ announcer Red Barber was the first to suggest it. In 1919, baseball was nearly destroyed by the Black Sox scandal, when eight members of the World Series losing team, the Chicago White Sox, were discovered to have thrown the series–played badly on purpose, paid off by gamblers.  The game’s popularity dropped–attendance collapsed.  That same year, Babe Ruth was sold to the New York Yankees.  Ruth transformed the game, changed it from a game where a good team might hit 35 home runs in a season, to a game where one player might hit 50.  Ruth’s charisma, his energy, his inspiring (if largely fictitious) personal narrative–poor kid from an orphanage makes it big, devotes his time to impoverished and ailing children–his oversized personality and appetites made him America’s greatest celebrity.  The biggest name in the biggest media center.  It saved the game–even a rotten team like the old St. Louis Browns would budget around the 8 home games a season where Ruth’s Yankees would sell out their stadium. As for Jackie Robinson, breaking the color barrier allowed baseball, however gingerly, to begin to move beyond racism, just as the country was poised to start to do the same. A color-blind America remains a work in progress, but Jackie’s courage remains at the heart of one of our greatest inspirational and aspirational narratives.

Marvin Miller’s role remains more equivocal.  He never played the game; he was a labor economist.  He was elected executive director of the Major League Baseball Player Association in 1966, and in his sixteen years at its helm, made it the most successful labor union in the country. Which brings me to Zack Greinke.

Greinke is a very good young pitcher.  He’s now a free agent–before Miller, baseball players were not accorded the right to free agency.  Any team that wants to sign him can do so, and several teams are rich enough to bid for his services.  The price will start at 25 million a year, and will likely go up from there.  If he wants to play, and live and raise his children, in New York, or Boston, or Philadelphia, or Chicago or Los Angeles or Arlington Texas (the most likely suitors), he will have the opportunity to do so.

Should a professional baseball player, a young man in his mid twenties, make that kind of money?  Shouldn’t our country value school teachers or firefighters or military personnel or librarians or playwrights more than we value athletes?  Doesn’t it suggest misplaced priorities, that Zack Greinke be compensated so well?  Shouldn’t we, as a nation, pay teachers more, and pay right handed starting pitchers less?

Well, what about small businessmen?  What if Greinke had devoted his energies and imagination to something other than baseball?  What if he’d invented a new cell phone app, or developed the code for a really nifty video game? Mark Zuckerberg was younger than Greinke when he developed Facebook–do we resent Zuckerberg’s remarkable youthful success?

And it’s helpful to remember what the world of professional baseball was like before Marvin Miller was named director of the MLBPA.  When I was a kid, I collected baseball cards.  You may not get the allure, but for a ten year old kid, there was incredible magic in a small cardboard card with a list of numbers on the back and a picture of Ted Kubiak on the front.  Or best of all, Oscar Gamble. And on the back of each card, in addition to player stats, they included some humanizing detail.  Usually it was their off-season job.  Generations of fans knew Richie Hebner not as a power-hitting third baseman, but as a guy who worked as a grave digger when he wasn’t playing ball. Couldn’t make ends meet otherwise.

One of my favorite baseball books ever is Jim Bouton’s Ball Four.  His salary negotiations, and his frustration and anger over asking for pay raises from employers who held all the cards and who had no interest in dealing fairly with him was one of the main themes of the book.  As fans, we thought our ballplaying heroes were as rich as they were talented, but it simply wasn’t true; a guy like Bouton, who blew his arm out as a youngster, kept pitching through terrible pain because he needed the money. I remember superstar players were part of the ‘$100,000 club,’ a salary stratosphere reached only by a Willie Mays or a Mickie Mantle.  Guys who now have to make a living signing baseballs at fan events.

Bouton also described how unified team owners were against Marvin Miller’s election.  Miller was called ‘a communist.’  Players were pressured to vote against him.  Told he, Miller, would destroy baseball–would destroy their livelihood.  And Marvin Miller’s election was pretty close to unanimous. The players knew.  They knew that baseball’s reserve clause left them in something darn close to indentured servitude.  Well-compensated servitude, for some, perhaps, but servitude nonetheless.  Baseball players could also be traded without having any say in it.  Just told, that new house you just bought in LA?  Guess what, you’ve been traded to Atlanta.  Good luck with the move.  It was tough on marriages, tough on families.  Bobo Newsome, a pretty good old pitcher, was traded sixteen times in his fabled career. Sixteen times, forced to move from a city where he’d begun to set down roots, to a place where he knew no-one.

So what did Marvin Miller do, as head of the union?  He listened, mostly.  He met with players, and heard their stories. He answered their questions, asked a few of his own.  He empowered the players.  The strikes of ’72, ’80, ’81 (and the subsequent bruising work stoppage of ’94-95, after Miller’s tenure had ended) were not his idea–they were player initiated and player driven.  Marvin Miller helped them realize just how strong they really were, just how much power they actually had.  Free agency followed, salary arbitration, and, of course, much improved pay.

Baseball players–and other professional athletes, who formed their own unions after seeing what Miller was doing for baseball– are small businessmen; for each player, his talent is the commodity he offers for sale. What is a baseball player worth?  Well, whatever the market says he’s worth.  The baseball union isn’t communism, as so many owners, baffled to see their powers diminish, were fond of calling it.  It’s capitalism in action, and it’s altogether a good thing.  Do some professional athletes squander their money?  Sure.  It’s a free society, and the ability to hit a baseball does not automatically equate to a talent for money management.  Capitalism can get messy.  Aren’t we constantly reassured by the Right that messiness and inequality are to be expected?

Now Walmart is facing employee discontent, because Walmart pays poorly. So what do we make of Costco, Walmart’s biggest competitor.  Costco pays $17 dollars an hour.  Costco’s CEO makes $350,000 a year.  And Costco has the lowest employee turnover rate, and the lowest losses to employee theft, in all of retailing.

The greatest period of economic growth in our nation’s history came just after WWII; the Truman/Eisenhower/Kennedy years.  Those years were characterized by a very high marginal tax rate (the highest tax rate was 91%) and very strong unions.  And yes, perhaps a post-war period of economic expansion was inevitable, but that was a  post-war time; Europe was shattered, Asia weakened, which meant the US had fewer competitors than now, but also very few customers internationally.

Marvin Miller was a unique figure among labor leaders, heading a group of uniquely talented athletes who were almost preposterously underpaid.  But today, baseball player salaries are huge.  A star often makes hundreds of millions of dollars over his career–heck, a utility infielder can retire a multi-millionaire.  And baseball isn’t the most popular US sport–it’s at best third most popular, after the NFL and the NBA.  So those high salaries, union driven, are destroying the game, right?  Not in the least.  Major league baseball has, as a corporate entity, never been more profitable.  The Dodgers were just sold to a group of investors: purchase price, from Magic Johnson’s ownership group?  Two billion dollars plus.

It goes further.  Right now, in the off-season, baseball fans are glued to their favorite fan websites: who are we going to sign?  What will that portend? Talented young athletes, capable of careers in either baseball or football or basketball are increasingly choosing baseball–longer careers, better pay prospects.  Prosperous ballplayers are bringing their money home, revitalizing impoverished neighborhoods in the Dominican Republic and Mexico and Venezuela.

Baseball’s current prosperity is because of, not in spite of, its strong union. I suggest the same will become true of our overall economy.  We need more Costcos, fewer Walmarts.  There are still lessons we can learn from Marvin Miller.

 

July 12, 1968, Cincinatti.

Posted on by
5

I played Little League baseball.  I was terrible at it, but I played.  I was skinny and clumsy; I couldn’t field or throw; I could hit a little.  Mostly I played right field, which is the position where they put guys who can’t field or throw. And clumsy; OMG clumsy, you don’t know clumsy unless you could see me at the age of 12. (And at 14, I was even clumsier).  Mom says that once, on my way from the bench to my position, I tripped and fell three times. A woman behind her in the bleachers said ‘who is that big awkward kid?’  My Mom was too embarrassed to admit she knew me.

I did have one triumphant game, though.  Our first baseman was Davey Williams, the coach’s son.  And one game, Davey mouthed off at his Dad, who promptly benched him.  We didn’t have anyone else on the team who could play first, except for Marc Lunsford, who was pitching.  Coach Williams looked down the bench, settled on me, sort of shuddered a little bit. Closed his eyes, as if in terrible pain. Probably threw up in his mouth a little.  And then, with a resolute look of desperation, sent me out to play first base.  First.  Base.  The infield.  Where a batted ball might actually come my way.

First player hit a ground ball to short; our shortstop fielded it cleanly, threw to first.  I caught the ball, tagged the base.  Routine play, handled routinely, but I felt like I’d won the Gold Glove.  Later, same game, I came up to bat.  It was a close game; we were up a run.  I swung hard, singled to right center, knocked in a run.  It was the best day of my life, up to that point.  Later, I even stole a base.  Still not sure how.

I was easily the worst player on the team, but it was a very good team; sponsored by Kinser Lumber, if memory serves.  Marc Lunsford was our best player.  He later became quarterback of our high school football team, then was recruited by Arizona State, where he started at QB for three years.  Marc was our best shortstop and pitcher, but we also had Jamie Foutz, another terrific pitcher, and Terry Phegley, our team leader and catcher, a tough competitor, also a bully and a thug.  But he was good at baseball; I’ll give him that, though he stole my lunch every day in 6th grade.  Plus, of course, Davey Williams, a good hitter when he wasn’t mouthing off.  Coach Williams told us that if we won City, he’d take us to a Cincinatti Reds game as a reward.  And we did, and he did.

On the bus trip to Ohio, some of us sat in the back and did jello powder.  That was our drug of choice.  You bought jello (you know, the powder you add water to to make jello), and put it in a baggie, then you’d wet your finger in your mouth, dip it in the jello, lick it off. It was sweet and sticky and, for some reason, against the rules.  Grandview Elementary School was death on jello dipping, and teachers were always checking your fingers for that tell-tale stain. But the boys’ bathroom had this industrial strength corrosive soap powder that was great for eradicating jello stains; also for removing the top layer of your skin. I never did get caught. Did I succumb to peer pressure, break a school rule?  You bet I did. You had to.  Guys would sort of saunter up to you and say, “do you . . . dip?  I’m carrying.”  And he’d pull out a baggie of jello.  A challenge. You either licked and dipped, or you were despised as a weenie and a dweeb.  Me, I certainly dipped. I even became a dealer. Charged fifty cents for a baggie of jello, which I stole from my Mom’s pantry.

Re-reading this post, it occurs to me that my Mom comes across badly, which I feel terrible about.  My Mom’s great.  But I know I baffled her terribly; always bugging her to buy more jello (which somehow mysteriously disappeared from the pantry), and asking for three sandwiches every day for lunch, not knowing that two of them went to Terry Phegley and Charles Robinson, the school bullies.

See, I was a good kid, a university professor’s son, an A student, on the rare occasions that I turned in my homework.  I was the quiet kid sitting in the back of the class, reading.  I wasn’t a trouble-maker, not really.  I didn’t spend recess like most of the other kids did, clipping off grasshoppers’ heads with a toenail clipper, to watch headless insects hop.  I was on the school’s safety patrol, an honor I loathed.  A few favored kids were chosen by the principal for safety patrol, which meant that you got this white belt-with-shoulder-strap thing you were supposed to wear, especially at recess. The purpose of the belt thing, I now realize, was for the convenience of the school’s bullies, to let them know who should be beaten up first. As a safety patroller, if I saw kids breaking school rules, I were supposed to narc on them.  Turn them in.  I never did, of course, but it didn’t matter; the belt was enough to get you thoroughly thrashed. I had to do something, so I became a hard-core jello dipper. And jello trafficker.

So, anyway, we jello dipped in the bus to Cincinatti, and then got to the ballpark way early, so we could shag flies during batting practice.  It was amazing, to run around on the field of a big league ballpark.  The Reds were playing the San Francisco Giants, and all my teammates were Reds’ fans.  Above all, we wanted autographs.  We’d brought our gloves (essential anyway for shagging flies), and our sharpies.  Of course we had sharpies.  They were a new thing back then (first marketed in 1964), but they were perfect for autographs.

My teammates and I saw Pete Rose, and ran over, to get his autograph.  Rose was the Reds’ best player, already an All-Star, already a household name.  He was just 27 that year, and as beloved a player as could exist.  Pete hustled.  Pete cared.  Pete played hard all the time.  And we saw him, just rubbing down his bats as I recall, and we asked for his autograph.  Me, Davey Williams and Jamie Foutz.  And Pete signed their gloves.  My turn, and I don’t know, but it was probably the jello stains on my fingers or something, but he turned away.  And I said something, like ‘But Mr. Rose. . .”, something plaintive and probably annoying–I could be a real whiner–and he turned back, said a bad word and then: “kid, get lost.”  As though he’d decided he didn’t like me. Personally.

I did not want to cry. I was a baseball player too, you know, and baseball players don’t cry.  Tom Hanks said.  But I wandered off, and, yeah, I was in fact crying, my teammates all off wherever.  And this shadow fell over me, and I looked up, and this big black guy put his hand on my shoulder.  And he said, “Kid, what’s the matter, man?”  And it was Willie McCovey, the Giants’ first baseman.

And he invited me to the Giants’ dugout. And he introduced me to his friends.  Willie Mays; I met Willie Mays, and he smiled at me, and said ‘say hey,’ and he signed my glove.  And Jim Ray Hart, the great third baseman.  And Hal Lanier, the shortstop, nicest guy of the bunch.  And I met Gaylord Perry, and he signed my glove, and I met Juan Marichal, and Ron Hunt and Dick Dietz and Jesus Alou, and their rookie right fielder, Bobby Bonds, a great player who had a son, turns out, even better. And they all signed my glove. Which my Mom threw out when I went on a mission seven years later.  But that’s okay.  I know what happened.

Anyway, I was there, in the Giants’ dugout.  And I obviously couldn’t stay there, so I finally left and found my teammates, and sat with ‘em, and they all rooted for the Reds, and I rooted for the San Francisco Giants, quietly, on my own.  I’m pretty sure this is the box score.  I know the game was in Cincinatti, and both Willie Mays and Willie McCovey hit home runs, and I remember Jim Ray Hart hitting two.  I also remember the game was shortly after the All-Star game that year, and I knew it was in mid-July.  I also knew better than to cheer aloud.  I remember maybe wanting to cheer for Pete Rose to strike out or make an error, but he didn’t play, I remember; he may have been injured. But I wanted, more than anything, for my guys to win, for Willie McCovey, who was kind to me, to get a hit.  I did jump up when he hit his homer.  And Terry Phegley looked at me and said, “what’s your problem?  He’s on the wrong team.  Hey, guys, Samuelsen doesn’t even know which team to root for!”  And I got made fun of.  The worst players on good teams always get made fun of.

But he was wrong.  I did know who to root for, and why I was rooting for them.

The San Francisco Giants have been my team ever since.  I was smart enough to marry a girl from San Jose, so whenever we go to visit her family, I’m able to sneak in a game.  And they play in a ballpark with a statue of Willie Mays in front, and the ocean just past right field, an inlet called McCovey Cove.  And this year, Gaylord Perry and Juan Marichal threw out the first ball in the World Series.  Which, for the second time in three years, we won.  They won.  We won.  They are my team, and always will be, ’til the end of my days on this planet.  Willie McCovey was kind to a sobbing child, an unattractive skinny awkward child with weird stains on his fingers.  And got his friends to sign a glove with a Sharpie.  How can I repay him, except with my lifelong loyalty?

And last night, we won the World Series.  And once again, I discovered how good a simple baseball game can make you feel.

Doing the little things: World Series, Game 2

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s a shocker; I’m rooting for the Giants to win the World Series.  I mean, heck, they’ve been my favorite team for forty plus years now: figured I’d stick with ‘em for the Series.

As I’ve previously noted, I’m perfectly aware that rooting for a professional sports team is absurd.   And yeah, it’s arbitrary, especially when a kid from Indiana, currently living in Utah, just, like, decides that the San Francisco team is the one.  And over the years, my allegiance to the Giants has been sorely tested. Take the ’79 team, for example. (The shortstop that year: Johnnie Lemaster.  Affectionately known as Johnnie Disaster).  Or ’88.  Or ’05. Some real stinkers in there.

What made the 2010 World Series winning Giants so special was how unexpected it all was.  The previous WS champs were way back in 1954, when I was negative two years old. Good teams since, even three World Serieses; ’62, ’89, ’02.  Now we’re back in the World Series, one of the most unlikely Series’ teams in history.

First round of the playoffs: we played the Cincinatti Reds.  The Reds are really good, scary good, great hitting team with terrific pitching.  First round series are best 3 of 5, and after we lost the first 2 games in San Fransciso, we had to win 3 straight in Cincinatti.  And they hadn’t lost 3 straight at home all season long.  And, game 3, their starting pitcher, Homer Bailey, allowed 1 hit.  One. Uno.

But we won. Fought and scraped and Ryan Vogelsong pitched like a mensch, and we got a run on a hit batsman, a walk, a bunt, and a fly ball, and then finally got Bailey out of there, and won in 10 innings, on a Reds error. And then won two more to advance.

Second round of the playoffs: the Cardinals.  Lost 3 of the first 4 (in a best of 7 format), and had to sweep the last 3 games to pull it out.  And did.  Right now, this Giants team has faced 6 games they absolutely had to win to stay alive in the playoffs.  They’ve gone 6-0 in those games.  They’re tougher than a two dollar steak, harder to kill than Rasputin.  They’ve climbed out of more graves than Bela Lugosi.

Last night’s game, though, gives some idea why this team is so hard to beat when it counts.  If you value good old American competence, quiet confidence, back to the basics, savvy, skill, moxie, old school fundamentals, ‘git ‘er done proficiency, then you’ll like this Giants’ team. Here’s Tom Verducci, of Sports Illustrated:

If the Giants win the World Series by playing like this, this will be the first official World Series DVD that will be released as an instructional video. They turn every double play that needs to be turned, run the bases with speed and smarts, make every play on defense, don’t walk people and, even when they miss cutoff men, have people in the right spot and execute flawlessly.

Three plays, last night.  Second inning: Madison Bumgarner, our absurdly talented 23 year-old pitcher, starts the inning by plunking Prince Fielder, the Tigers’ first baseman. Fielder likes to lean over the plate; Madbum tried to back him off with a fastball in, and got it a little too far inside.  The Tigers’ next hitter was Delmon Young.  He ripped a double down the left field line.  Here’s the play. A few points:

First, our left fielder, Gregor Blanco, is a 29 year old career minor leaguer, who has been bouncing around looking for a job his whole life, basically.  He’s fast, a terrific fielder, a great bunter, but he’s not much of a hitter; he starts for us because Melky Cabrera crashed and burned.  You can see on the video; he overruns the play at first, but recovers incredibly quickly.  There’s been a lot of criticism of Gene Lamont, the Tigers’ third base coach, for sending Prince Fielder home on that play, but he saw Blanco overrun the ball; he can’t have anticipated Blanco’s fast recovery.  Blanco’s throw was off-line; he’s supposed to hit the shortstop with that relay, but Marco Scutaro, our second baseman, was exactly where he’s supposed to be, backing up Brandon Crawford.  Scutaro had a tough throw, too.  Prince Fielder’s a big guy; a lot of the time, that relay throw hits the runner in the back.  But Scutaro threw it to the front of the plate, instead of straight to home.  And Buster Posey, our catcher, made a perfect swipe tag.  The whole thing is just a perfect example of fundamental baseball.

Second play came in the 7th inning.  Miguel Cabrera, the Tigers’ best hitter, starts the inning off with a great at bat, fouling off several pitches before Madbum just missed with a slider outside for ball four.  So, leadoff guy on first, no out, in a tie game.  Prince Fielder then hit a hard ground ball up the middle.  Bumgarner fielded it cleanly, then waited just a second before making the throw to second.  Now, that double play, the 1-6-3 double play, is a tough one; I see it get screwed up a lot.  The pitcher’s throwing to a moving target, the shortstop, coming across second.  But Bumgarner, first, didn’t rush the throw.  He waited until Brandon Crawford, our shortstop, was in position.  Then he threw it to the third base side of second.  So Crawford could catch the throw, tag second for the out, and have the bag between him and the sliding Cabrera.  I know, it was just a routine double play. But this Giants’ team executes.  They make those plays.

Tom Verducci’s story focuses on Gregor Blanco’s perfect bunt, which set up the first run of the game.  It was, indeed, an exquisite bunt, if a little lucky.  But I want to focus on Hunter Pence’s at bat in the 8th.

So, 1-0 game, bottom of the 8th.  The Tigers are an excellent hitting team, and I think most Giants’ fans were worried about the 9th inning.  Our closer, Sergio Romo, is one of the goofiest guys in baseball, and one of the most awesome.  He’s famous for this thing he does, when one of his teammates is being interviewed, of sneaking behind the guy and making faces, ruining the interview.  Love the guy.  Anyway, he’s good, but a 1-0 lead is worrisome.  You just had this feeling; another run would put this away.

So, bases loaded, one out.  A fly ball with score a run.  Hunter Pence batting.  We traded for Hunter back in July, and he’s one of the most interesting guys in baseball.  He does everything wrong: he runs funny, throws funny, bats funny.  Only Hunter would do this.  I was worried last night, though, because he swings at a lot of bad pitches. A strikeout in that situation would not be good.  But he hung in there, fouled off pitch after pitch.  And finally, he did his job; just lifted a normal, routine fly ball to center, to score that much needed insurance run.

That’s the Giants.  They hit fewer home runs than any other team in baseball this year.  But they led all of baseball in . . . sacrifice flies.  They execute, they’re fundamentally sound, they’re a team built on guys who do their jobs.  I love that kind of competence.  They’re my team, and I’m rooting for them to win.  But they’re a team that’s easy to like.

 

 

 

Lance Armstrong

Posted on by
Reply

So the big sports news this week has been Lance Armstrong, seven time winner of the Tour de France, and therefore the greatest cyclist in history, and the evidence that, despite his protestations to the contrary, he cheated.  Doped.  Took performance enhancing drugs.  This week’s Sports Illustrated laid it all out there.  Based on an investigation by the USADA (US Anti-Doping Agency), the case made in SI is thorough and damning.  I think it’s safe to say that the ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ standard has been met here, at least in the court of public opinion.  I don’t think think there’s much doubt that Armstrong built his success on a foundation of PEDs.  And thus comes the recommendation that the UCI, the Union Cycliste International, strip him of his titles.

SI‘s story points out something rather interesting; the difference between US and European attitudes about doping.  It’s quite a bit like the difference in attitudes towards the sexual philandering of politicians.  Francois Hollande, the current President of France, for example, is quite open about his mistress, Valerie Trierweiler, who was, also openly, mistress to Patrick Devedjian, minster of finance in the government of Nicholas Sarkozy.  This despite the fact that all three were married to other people.  But nobody in France thinks anything of it.  It’s all considered no big deal.  Uh, we Americans don’t see it the same way.

But in France, it’s just expected that the winner of the Tour de France was doing, well, whatever, steroids and human growth hormone and blood doping and whatever. You can’t win that race if you don’t.  Or couldn’t. Bradley Wiggins, this year’s winner, says he didn’t dope, and protocols have been beefed up to the point that he probably didn’t.  But was this true in the past? As SI quotes five time Tour winner, Jacques Anquetil, “You’d have to be an imbecile or hypocrite to imagine that a professional cyclist who rides 235 days a year can hold himself together without stimulants.”

SI‘s story suggests the same.  Armstrong cycled as part of the United Postal Service team, a hand-picked cadre of top flight cyclists, all of whom doped, and all of whom have now come clean about doping.  The cyclists against whom he competed all doped as well.  The evil genius in all this, Dr. Michele Ferrari, was an expert on the newest methods of doping and masking agents, and a close advisor to Armstrong’s team, but he consulted with many other riders as well.

The language the American sports media uses to describe the use of PEDs tends towards the moralistic: cheating, a fraud, doping. (I just did it too, calling Dr. Ferrari an ‘evil genius.’)  But how can an action be ‘cheating’ if everyone in the sport is doing it?  How can administering prescription drugs be illegal if they’re prescribed by a doctor?

Lance Armstrong has always seemed like an immensely competitive guy, a guy who is so driven to win, that no other considerations seem to matter much to him. The guy he reminds me of most in all of sports is Michael Jordan.  They’re both guys whose need to win almost seems pathological. I had a friend like that in high school.  Real average guy, Tony, not all that big, not all that fast.  He was a running back on our football team, and when the game was on the line, you basically couldn’t tackle him.  He just wanted to win more than anyone else on the team.

The language of sports suggests that’s a good trait to have.  We talk about guys giving 110%, we quote Vince Lombardi (‘winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing’), we give massive props to guys who lay it all on the line, who leave everything on the field, who want it more than the other guys.  Sports is the ultimate meritocracy, and merit means effort, especially if it leads to winning.  Is there a dark side to sports success?  Of course there is.  But we don’t emphasize it much. Sometimes, when we look at the battered body of a retired sports hero, we notice how a guy we once admired, even sort of worshipped, can’t climb stairs anymore, can’t remember the names of his children.  Or we see them give up.  End it.  Pace Junior Seau, requiscat Dave Duerson.

But our favorite sports narrative ever is the guy who just flat out won’t quit, the guy who absolutely must win, no matter what, regardless of cost.  Kirk Gibson hitting a game winning World Series home run on one leg.  Kerri Strug sticking the landing on a broken ankle.  Michael Jordan barfing on the bench, every time out, then willing his team to victory.

And Lance Armstrong, cancer survivor, and seven time winner of the Tour de France.

Barry Bonds set himself the task of becoming the greatest hitter the game of baseball had ever seen.  He allowed no other consideration to intrude on his pursuit of that goal. Lance Armstrong committed himself to the goal of becoming the greatest cyclist in history.  He refused to let any other factor dictate his fate. He made it.  They both made it.  Now they’re both reviled as cheaters.

I get that it’s not as simple as saying that Armstrong cheated in a time when cheating was rampant.  I get that cyclists who would much rather not have jeopardized their health by using steroids were essentially forced to go along with the crowd, quite possibly to their own detriment.  SI‘s story describes a cyclist named Christian Vande Velde, who Armstrong put on the Postal team, who didn’t want to dope, and the pressure Armstrong put on the guy to go along with the other guys on the team.  Let’s say Vande Velde develops health problems relating to HGH or something.  Could his illness be blamed Armstrong? In a sense, yes, I suppose so.

But if the UCI takes away Armstrong’s medals, if it declares that Lance Armstrong did not win the Tour de France from 1999 to 2005, wouldn’t it be saying something absurd?  He did win those races.  He was the greatest.  Those are the historical facts.  I suppose some kind of sanctions might have some deterrent value, might prevent future riders from doping.  But don’t re-write history.  Contextualize it, explain it, but what happened, happened.

Grown-ups make choices, and live by the consequences of those choices.  Lance Armstrong chose to endanger his health in pursuit of a goal.  I’m uncomfortable with all the moralizing.  If a sport, or sports federation, chooses policies to protect the health and well-being of its participants, then yes, rules should be established, consequences defined. But both major league baseball and world-class cycling chose to bury their heads in the sand. Lance Armstrong was the most exciting, charismatic athlete ever to choose cycling as a career.  Cycling profited, both materially and in terms of publicity, from his success.  He also inspired millions of cancer patients with his story (incomplete and falsified though it was).  I’m uncomfortable with a current PED witch hunt that ignores those realities.

 

Baseball: the Morality play

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s Johnny Carson’s definition of happiness.  It’s late at night, you’re on the street, it’s raining, you’re cold, tired and miserable.  You see a cab, you hail it.  Instead of stopping for you, it splashes a puddle all over your pants. . . . then runs a red light, and crashes into a police car. That’s happiness.

Karma.  Justice.  Take that.

Baseball’s about the stories.  We all have stories, we all know the stories.  Baseball is oral history; funny stories, stories of redemption and retribution.  Tommy Lasorda has one.  When he was a kid, his favorite player was a guy named Buster Johnson.  He wanted his autograph: goes to a game, waits at the player entrance, Buster Johnson comes out, and young lad Lasorda hands him a ball to sign, and a Sharpie.  And Buster Johnson looks over his head and says “Take a hike, kid.”

Years pass (as they do in moral, instructive stories), and Tommy Lasorda grows into a pretty nifty left-handed pitcher.  He signs a contract, is playing in the minors, and is pitching pretty well in his first game.  And the announcer says: “Now batting, Buster Johnson.”  The same guy.

First pitch, a fastball right at Johnson’s head.  Next pitch, nearly takes a knee out.  Next pitch is thrown behind his head, at which point, Buster Johnson, fed up, charges the mound.  A donnybrook ensues.  So after the game, Buster Johnson comes over to Lasorda’s locker, and says, aggrieved, “Kid, do I know you?  Did I ever do anything to you?”  “You wouldn’t sign my ball!” says Lasorda.

So last night, Giants/Cardinals, Game Two of the NLCS (National League Championship Series), the playoffs. Cards won last night; must win game for our boys.   Third inning.  Matt Holliday of the Cards is on first.  Ground ball to shortstop, and Brandon Crawford flips to Marco Scutaro at second.   And Holliday slides.  Okay, the clip’s only four seconds, but you can see clearly where Holliday starts his slide: he’s past second base before he even begins it.  It’s a take-out slide.  He’s trying to take out the second baseman so he can’t throw to first for the double play.  As it happens, Scoots did make the throw to first, but just barely not in time.

That’s an illegal play, BTW.  In that situation, your slide has to at least touch the bag.  You can’t just aim your body at a guy.  But it rarely gets called, and didn’t last night.

Scutaro crumples to the ground, clearly in agony.  My first thought was that his career was over.  It looked like Holliday had destroyed his knee. (X-rays were negative; he gets an MRI today). He lay there, finally got up, gingerly limped around.  In obvious agony, he signaled to Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy that he was okay, he could play.

Tough, close game.  Tied, 1-1 going into the fourth.  The Giants score a run to move ahead, then load the bases with two out.  Marco Scutaro comes to the plate.  Singles sharply to left.  And Matt Holliday boots it, allowing three runs to score.

Okay, as morality plays go, it’s maybe not so much.  It did feel good.  I mean, a routine fly ball to left that Holliday let bounce off his head or something, that would have felt like genuine karmic revenge.  Holliday’s error basically meant that a 4-1 lead turned into a 5-1 lead.  But we’ll take it.

Scutaro was in enough pain that Bochy took him out in the 6th.  His replacement, Ryan Theriot, played for the Cardinals last season.  He came up in the 8th, and hit another two run single to put the game away.  So that was cool too.

I love this stuff, though, the neatened narratives.  Of course, I know that A followed by B doesn’t imply that A caused B. But in an artificial field of play like baseball, coincidences can look awfully karmic at times.

 

Superstitious

Posted on by
4

So I’m a Giants fan, right, and we’re (well, they’re) in the playoffs, playing the Reds, best 3 out of 5. (Hang in there through all this baseball stuff, BTW.  I’m getting to the fun stuff directly.) The first two games played in San Francisco, the last three, in Cincinatti.  Anyway, we lost the first two games, at home, and headed east knowing we had to sweep three games on the road to advance in the playoffs. Odds are against us, backs to the wall, pick your cliche.  So before game 3, Hunter Pence got up in the locker room and gave a speech.  Sort of shouted it, actually.  Big inspirational ‘we can do this, guys’ kind of speech.  Giants go out there, and got one hit over 9 innings off Homer Bailey.  And the Reds go out in the first and get four hits and a wild pitch.  But a brilliant throw by Buster Posey cut down Brandon Phillips going first to third on the wild pitch, and somehow, Ryan Vogelsong hung in there, held the Reds to just one run.  And in the third, we got a hit batsman, a walk, a bunt and a fly ball and scored the tying run.  In the tenth, Posey got a hit (our second hit of the game), and then Hunter Pence, his legs cramping up so bad he couldn’t stride, fouled off like six pitches then drilled a single to left, hobbling to first.  A passed ball and an error scored our second run, and we won, 2-1.  Brilliant baseball game, and one we had absolutely no business winning, until we did.

So, tough pitching, some clutch hitting, some opportunistic baserunning, that’s how we won. But the guys on the team also credited Pence’s pre-game speech. Hunter Pence hasn’t even been on the team that long.  But we got him in July on a trade, and he’s been a good player on bad teams; this is his chance to shine, and he knows it.  I love Pence anyway.  He throws funny, he runs funny, and he swings the bat funny; how can you not love the guy.  And now add ‘public speaker’ to his resume.

So last night, he did it again. Another inspirational speech. Another unlikely win. Pence has to do it every night now; the team insists. The guys are also all wearing the same clothes they wore to the park the day before, and the day before that, even though they’re getting kinda grody. (Tim Lincecum helpfully suggested that changes in underwear would be permitted.) You don’t want to mess with the magic.

The Giants won the World Series in 2010.  And you can say it was a team with brilliant pitching and just enough clutch hitting, beautifully managed by Bruce Bochy.  But the guys know it was actually the thong.  Aubrey Huff’s wife got him a red thong, and he started wearing it under his uni. And that’s why we won; the thong.  Apparently by the end there, it was pretty gross, pretty gamy.  But, again, he also couldn’t stop wearing it. Obviously. (It was either the thong, or Brian Wilson not shaving).

I’m not remotely superstitious. I’m a rational, twenty-first century, science-loving, PhD holding intellectual. Not superstitious at all.  Nosireebob.

Hah!

I’m a theatre guy.  Who am I kidding; I’m massively superstitious. Don’t walk under stage ladders.  Never say ‘good luck’ to a fellow actor; always ‘break a leg.’  Close the house one night a week, so the ghosts can use it.  Say ‘merde’ under your breath, before entering for any dance number.  I do ‘em all.

For one thing, I will not, will not say the name of the Scottish play in a theater. Okay, Macbeth.  The Scottish play.  That one.  It’s haunted. It’s cursed.  People die in productions of the play.  Theatres do the play, and then close.  Famously bad productions have wrecked careers.  It’s especially cursed if you don’t cut Hecate; she’s a minor character whose appearance on stage brings particularly bad ju-ju.

Years ago, I was doing summer stock, and we were doing Alan Ayckbourn’s play, Bedroom Farce.  One of our actors didn’t believe in the Mackers curse.  We were discussing it in the dressing room, and he mocked those of us who do believe in it.  “Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth,” he said.  (I still shudder at the memory.)  He was playing a character who was confined to his bed; his costume was pajamas.  So that very night, he was lying in bed in his pjs, and a ginormous beetle–I’m not kidding, one of those 9-inch, South American jobbers–crawls into bed, up his leg, through the fly of his pajamas, up his chest, through a button on his pj top, and, just as the lights went up, bit his chin.  There he is, on-stage, lights up, with a beetle attached to his face.  His lines flew out of his head, and he just lay there, terrorized, in silence. No one on stage to give him lines.  Finally, he was able to brush off the bug, and stammer something incoherent, but it was a traumatized half minute.  So don’t tell me there’s no such thing as a Scottish play curse!
I mean, seriously, it’s a real thing.  It killed the boy actor who was the first Lady MacB.  It nearly killed Olivier.  Killed half the cast and crew in a John Gielgud production. (Well, it killed the costume designer). And, yeah, okay, it’s a dark play, which means dim lights, with lots of stage combat–plenty of scope for accidents.  But. Come on.  Still. It’s Macbeth.   Bad kismet.
I think part of the problem is that it’s a devilish (rimshot!) hard play to produce.  I mean, it’s got those marvelous witches, and they’re so much fun, you pretty much think you have to use them a lot. But the more you use them, the more it looks like they’re controlling the action of the play, which in turn diminishes Macbeth’s volition.  He becomes a pawn of witches, not a dynamic character making strong (albeit evil) choices. 
I directed it once, a production at my daughter’s school, when she was in fifth grade.  She was a witch, and a darned good one, for an eleven-year-old.  My favorite moment came when she said the line “by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”  But the poor kid playing Mackers was having costume issues, and didn’t enter.  So she sidled up to the wings, and gave him his cue again, louder: “by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes!”  Again, no appearance by Macbeth.  So she went straight to the wing where he was to appear, and shouted: “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked–and stupid–this way comes!”  Enter Macbeth, red-faced. 
Not sure he ever forgave her. 
If by chance, you do say ‘Macbeth’ in a theater, there’s a cleansing ritual you can perform.  You have to leave the theater, turn around three times, spitting (some say over your left shoulder, but I’ve never insisted on that detail), saying either a swear word or reciting a line from some other Shakespeare play, and then knocking on the stage door and humbly begging the other actors to let you in. Essential, though, that you do it right, and don’t mess around.  That’s the thing about superstitions.  If you don’t take them seriously, the consequences can be severe. Stevie Wonder can say ‘superstition ain’t the way’ all he wants to.  But why tempt fate? 
 

A People’s History of Baseball

Posted on by
Reply

I kinda hate the phrase ‘revisionist history.’  It suggests illegitimacy.  Like, there’s an actual factual ‘real history’ that everyone knows and agrees to, and then there’s some sort of politically correct ‘revision’ of real history, which right-thinking folks probably shouldn’t pay much attention to.  Sorry, no.  There’s just history, our understanding of which constantly changes as new evidence is uncovered or as our interpretation of history causes us to reappraise evidence that’s always been there.  As James McPherson once put it, “revision is the life-blood of historical scholarship.’  Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States is a brilliant example of first-rate history writing, telling the story of America from the perspective of workers, women, Native Americans, African-Americans, immigrants. It’s a wonderful book, but it would probably be somewhat unintelligible to someone who doesn’t already know quite a bit about American history.  It’s intended as a counterweight, a response to book shelves groaning under the load of history books about statesmen and politicians.

So building on Zinn, we now have Mitchell Nathanson’s A People’s History of Baseball.  Basically, what he’s arguing against is, well, this. James Earl Jones great speech in Field of Dreams.   Baseball is innocence and honor and goodness, baseball is America’s pastoral dream, baseball is father’s and sons playing catch.  Baseball is America.

What Nathanson points out is that baseball is a commercial entertainment enterprise, and always has been. The myth of baseball was carefully constructed and maintained for the benefit of owners, some pretty ruthless business people guarding their bottom line.  It was in their interest to preserve the myth of owners as benevolent public servants, patriotic American sportsman, acting in the best interest of a nation in need of the kind of healing only baseball could provide.  “For money they have, and peace they lack,” says James Earl Jones, in those marvelously rounded tones.  Owners, like Ray, the Kevin Costner character, will provide them that peace.  And the people will hand over their twenty bucks happily, in order to achieve it.

Now, I actually think it would be worth twenty bucks to see a magical baseball field in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, watching Tris Speaker and Lefty Grove and Honus Wagner and Shoeless Joe Jackson play baseball.  I think that would be wicked awesome. I’ve happily forked over my twenty (and a lot more), to see Buster Posey and Tim Lincecum and Marco Scutaro play and they’re not even dead yet.  I like baseball.

But I also recognize that the American myth of baseball is pretty well nonsense.  Nathanson’s right about baseball’s owners, a group of elderly dinosaurs who through most of baseball history were as greedy as they were incompetent.  Most owners, protected by their preposterous anti-trust exemption (and further insulated by two of the most nonsensical Supreme Court decisions in history: Federal Baseball Club v. National League (1922), and Flood v. Kuhn (1972), could make a profit every year without actually being good at their jobs.  The Curt Flood decision is truly amazing, with 8 pages of rhapsodic mythologizing from Harry Blackmun, quoting Casey at the Bat and other extra-illegal irrelevancies.  But that’s the kind of fairy tale that people believed in, and it’s the reason the Kansas City Athletics, for example, could draw tiny crowds, trade all their best players to the Yankees every year, and still operate in the black.  They felt no responsibility to their fans, didn’t market the game at all, made no effort to construct a winning team, and yet such were the vagaries of baseball ownership that they still could be profitable. Owners built a clearly illegal reserve clause into player contracts, treated ‘em like dirt, and convinced the public that professional ballplayers should be grateful for the opportunity to play and that any effort on their parts to fight for anything like fair pay was, basically, Bolshevism.

Nathanson does a nice job of exploding some favorite narratives.  One is the myth of Saint Branch Rickey.  Baseball maintained a de facto color bar for years, refusing to allow African American players to play major league baseball.  When the first commissioner of baseball, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, died, it became clear that the main institutional impediment to integration was gone.  According to the myth, Branch Rickey, the Dodgers’ owner, had always been appalled by the treatment of African-Americans, and had wanted to integrate for years.  In ’46, he found ‘the right player’ to accomplish it–a genuinely great player, but also a guy with the courage to not fight back.  Jackie Robinson fit the bill, and became the first black major leaguer in 1947.

Well, maybe.  But Rickey was, in every other sense, a conservative.  He certainly had never shown the slightest interest in civil rights in any other arena in life prior to ’47.  Essentially, Nathanson suggests, Rickey figured out that if he signed the first black player, he would have first pick of all the black players trapped in the Negro leagues.  It was about talent acquisition, not morality.  He was seeking a competitive advantage.  And while Robinson was a brilliant player, and an incredibly courageous civil rights pioneer, in fact baseball’s approach to integration was piece-meal, uncertain, and very very slow.  Baseball integrated, but at ‘all deliberate speed.’  Within fifteen years of Robinson, baseball teams seldom had more than 2 black players; a superstar, and his road roommate.

Every chapter in Nathanson’s book deals with one particular topic; there’s a chapter on Robinson and integration, one on ownership, one on the labor movement and the Player’s Association, and so on. I especially enjoyed his chapter on sportswriters, and their willing participation in the mythologizing of baseball.  Nathanson points to Bill James as the pioneer of contemporary baseball writing; as the antidote to Grantland Rice et al.  I love Bill James, and think he’s a genuinely seminal figure.  In fact, the last quarter of Nathanson’s book is essentially a valentine to Bill James.  But Nathanson’s description of James’ work misses four points.

First, James was also an important figure in baseball’s labor movement.  He worked closely with player agents negotiating contracts, especially when it came to salary arbitration.  In one of the earliest collective bargaining agreements, players won the right to arbitration.  Players would submit a salary figure, the owners would present their proposed salary, and an impartial arbitrator would decide between them.  The rules meant that the arbitrator could only choose one of the two numbers before him; he couldn’t split the difference, say.  And players figured out pretty quickly that their arb had a much better chance of winning if it was supported by a Bill James statistical profile.

Second, James probably did less to explode the myth of baseball than other writers did, especially such players’ autobiographies as Jim Bouton’s Ball Four.  Nathanson completely ignores Bouton (and other books, like Jimmy Piersall’s Fear Strikes Out and Ted Williams’ My Turn at Bat).  I’m not sure baseball’s had a more influential book than Ball Four.

Third, (and this is a huge omission) Nathanson ignores James’ crusade to free the minor leagues.  Baseball isn’t just the story of the major leagues.  For every major league player, there are ten professional ballplayers who never make it to The Show.  Well, why should minor league teams be completely enslaved, completely subservient to their major league masters?  I live in Utah; Salt Lake has a good team.  They’re in the Anaheim Angels’ system.  I know, if it’s late August, and Salt Lake’s in a tough pennant race, the Angels are perfectly capable of ‘calling up’ Salt Lake’s best player, if only to bolster their bench.  Well, I like the Salt Lake team; I don’t give a hoot about Anaheim.  Major league baseball clearly engages in restraint of trade, and because of its anti-trust exemption, nobody calls ‘em on it.  Except one writer: Bill James.

Fourth, Bill James is also a first-rate baseball historian.  And yet his Baseball Historical Abstract (absolutely the first book you should read if you’re interested in baseball history), is never mentioned by Nathanson.

So I like Nathanson’s book a lot.  It’s passionately written, and I learned a lot from it, and it caused me to re-think some issues relating to my baseball fandom.  It’s also a flawed book in many ways, less revolutionary than I think Nathanson imagines it to be.  I’d love to see someone else pick up on its ideas and expand them.  If you know a lot about baseball, it’d make a nice supplement to your baseball library. It’s a good book about baseball by a guy who likes Bill James a lot.  Well, me too.   I just sort of hoped it would be more than that.

 

 

 

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2013 nominees

Posted on by
3

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame just announced its slate of fifteen nominees for possible 2013 induction.  And for the first time, we get to vote! Yay!

I love Halls of Fame.  Some years ago, our family took a trip to upstate New York, to see my brother in Ithaca.  While we were there, my sons and I decided to take a little trip down the road to Cooperstown, and had a great time.  The plaques, the displays, the gift shop.  Best of all, we went to lunch in a local Pizza Hut, and at the next table was Dave Winfield and his family. A great day.

Obviously the Baseball Hall of Fame has made some silly selections over the years (Travis Jackson, yes, Alan Trammell no? Seriously?) and is about to become even more irrelevant, when Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens become eligible and are turned away.  But at least in baseball, there are objective criteria that can be evaluated.  Yeah, it’s kind of subjective, who is ‘great’ and who is ‘less great,’ but baseball does have a database of statistics that can be consulted.  But for Rock and Roll, it’s all subjective.  Who is great, who is influential, who changed the world?  Selections tend to reflect the prejudices of the electors, and the Hall of Fame was the brainchild primarily of two men: Jann Wenner, and Ahmet Ertugun. The editor and founder of Rolling Stone Magazine, and the founder of Atlantic Records.  So for many years, artists who Rolling Stone liked, and who recorded with Atlantic had a huge leg up.  Hence the induction of Bobby Darin.

And also, the reason why such prog rock legends as Yes, Jethro Tull, The Moody Blues, Emerson Lake and Palmer and King Crimson have not been inducted.  The lack of prog rock inductees, by the way, is a question about which the Hall of Fame gets very very defensive. Testy, even. Let me just say that the complete exclusion of prog rockers from the R & R HOF seriously calls into question the Museum’s historical judgment and expertise, and basically turns what could be an important research institution into a sad sad joke, especially when their defense of that decision basically boils down to ‘come on, prog rock sucks and everyone knows it.’

Ahem.

Anyway, this year we get to vote, and I’m going to, and you should too (the link’s right up there at the top of this blog), and here are your choices, with commentary intended to influence your choices.  And . . . go.

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band.  Tough call.  Born in Chicago is a great song. They basically had two wonderful albums, played at Monterey Pops in ’67, and, famously, at Woodstock.  To me, that’s too thin a resume.  Pass.

Chic.  Here’s their biggest hit.  That’s a great guitar riff, some nifty bass playing.  Otherwise, it’s pedestrian. Atlantic records is seriously overrepresented in the HOF, as is disco.  Pass.

Deep Purple.  Way way way more than just “Smoke on the Waters,” a great song in its own right.  Give Woman From Tokyo a listen and tell me that’s not a great rock and roll band.  A wildly enthusiastic vote: yes.

Heart.  Feminist pioneers, Ann and Nancy Wilson wrote ballads and hard rocking anthems and everything in between, sang their hearts out on everything, and are still doing it.  Their first hit, “Crazy on You” was in ’76, their latest album, Red Velvet Car, was released two years ago, and is as good as anything they’ve ever done. For proving that even older women can rock, an enthusiastic yes to Heart. About frickin’ time.

Joan Jett and the Blackhearts.  I’m torn. Crimson and Clover is a great record. It’s also a cover.  Most of her greatest hits were.  And were the Blackhearts even her best band?  Weren’t The Runaways more important, more influential?  Joan Jett, on her own, is a maybe.  For now, I’m voting no.

Albert King.  Another great blues guitarist.  Another Atlantic Records nominee. I’m a bit on the fence, but this recording of “Born on the Bad Side” pushes me towards yes.

Kraftwerk.  Yay!  Lots of synthesizers!  Pass.  (But . . . they influenced Depeche Mode!) Pass.  (They were historically significant) Pass.  No, no, and no.

The Marvelettes.  Another Motown girl band; like those aren’t overrepresented in the HOF.  There’s a reason they were overshadowed by the Supremes and Martha and the Vandellas.  They weren’t as good.  Pass.

The Meters.  I’d heard of these guys; knew they were an R&B band that influenced guys like Sly and the Family Stone.  Thought I’d give their music a listen.  And they’re not bad. But I’m not sold, and funk is seriously over-represented in the HOF.  So no.

Randy Newman.  I’m seriously torn here, not because I don’t adore Randy Newman, (how can you not?), but because I’m not sure what he does really is rock, per se.  He’s a brilliant satirist and stylist, and he’s also been honored many times over, like six Grammies, two Oscars, three Emmys.  On the other hand, there’s this.  Pass, but it hurts.

NWA.  I’m not sure where ‘rock and roll’ ends and ‘rap’ begins, but NWA is incredibly important: see this.  Easy call: Ice Cube and Dr. Dre should be in the HOF somewhere, so why not in Cleveland.  Yes.

Procol Harum.  A Whiter Shade of Pale is a genuinely great song.  Not sure there’s enough beyond that to merit inclusion.  No.

Public Enemy. See everything I wrote about NWA above. “Fight the Power” argues for yes.  And I’m sort of astonished they’re not in yet.  I’m voting no, however, for a purely idiosyncratic reason: the subsequent public career of Flava Flav.  Come on, doing stupid reality shows has to carry some cost, right?  I’m comfortable letting them wait a year.  No.

Rush.  Seriously, watch this.  “Today’s Tom Sawyer, he gets high on you, and the space he invades, he gets by on you.”  Whisper it quietly: Rush is prog.  Don’t let the R&R HOF hear you when you say it, though.  Absolutely, 100%, Rush should be inducted into the Hall of Fame.  Rush and Heart are the easiest votes on this list.  Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!! (Hint, by the way.  Uh, Close to the Edge? Fragile, Relayer?)

Donna Summer. Seriously, Donna Summer’s not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?  Of course, she should be.  No question about it. On the other hand, she did record this.  So as a ‘recorded MacArthur Park’ penalty, I’m comfortable if she waits a year.

So there’s my list: Rush, Heart, NWA, Albert King and Deep Purple.  Oh, and Rush.  Also: Rush. We’re allowed five votes: those are mine.  So go vote!  Early and often!  Help put these five great artist/bands into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame!

Did I mention that one of the choices is Rush?