The Game

FOREWORD

The history books tell us that the first professional baseball game was held on May 4, 1869, as the Cincinnati Red Stockings eked out a 45-9 win. No doubt the first baseball story was told on May 5. No sport, not basketball, not football, not hockey, has the oral tradition of the national pastime. And like any good oral tradition, it has been passed from generation to generation. Baseball stories, in one form or another, are as much a part of our game as the infield fly and the rosin bag. In this book they come in all sizes and shapes – short stories, essays, expressions, rules, jokes, and slang – to name just a few.

The first Baseball Balladeer in my life was one Vincent Edward Scully, known to three generations of fans as Vin. For baseball ignorant Southern Californians, he was a Godsend. Far more than their voice, he was their teacher. Now the game that had been thousands of miles away was as close as your transistor radio or the am in your car. He gave Los Angeles the who, what, when, where, and most importantly, the why. He studied at the foot of a master [Red Barber] and is acknowledged as the best in the business. And I know this how? He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame…43 years ago! For nine years I was lucky to be his producer. I called him The Doctor for his PhD in baseball. Try explaining the balk rule to the man who taught you half of what you know about the game.

Buzzie Bavasi

When I began covering the Angels, I got to know Emil Joseph Buzzie Bavasi. If you looked up character in the dictionary, it would say, see Buzzie. In the ‘40s, he was Branch Rickey’s top lieutenant and had a hand in breaking baseball’s color line as well as dealing with Vero Beach in the acquisition of Dodgertown. He became General Manager and earned a reputation as a shrewd and tough negotiator. Buzzie loved to tell the story about his contract haggling with a certain player [still alive, so no names]. He had a fake contract with a very low salary created for that guy, the team’s best player. He left it on his desk and excused himself for a moment, convinced that the player would take a peak. Needless to say, when he returned, the negotiations ended quickly and in Buzzie’s favor.

He had been schooled in and ultimately taught the Branch Rickey way of playing the game, stressing fundamentals, nurturing talent, and the importance of a strong farm system. In the years we worked together, I never once overheard a conversation when he wasn’t at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a story or anecdote. He lived for baseball and lived to talk about it.

In 1985, I began working with Bob Starr. Bob, or as we called him Bobo, was the broadcaster’s broadcaster. He could do play-by-play for anything – baseball, football, your kid’s hopscotch game…anything. Bobo was a graduate of the KMOX School of Broadcasting.

Bob Starr

KMOX was the famed St. Louis radio station that produced Harry Caray, Jack and Joe Buck, Buddy Blattner, Joe Garagiola, and Bob Costas, among others. Bobo had that smooth, midwestern style, and on the air, you’d swear he was talking just to you.

I once shared a golf cart with him for a round, four hours well spent looking for my ball [as usual] and listening. He loved to tell stories, some on himself. While playing 18 holes on an off day, Bob had a heart attack. Upon arrival at the hospital, the doctors asked if he was in pain. Yes, he replied, in my backside. Mystified, the doctors went over the test results. A physical examination revealed that the patient still had his pants on. The source of the pain was two Titleists in his back pocket. How we miss Bobo.

The average baseball fan may not recognize the name Jack Lang, but every player knew him and loved it when he called. Jack was, for twenty years, the executive secretary of the Baseball Writers of America, and, if he telephoned you, it meant that you had just won the Cy Young Award, or the Most Valuable Player Award, the Rookie-of-the-Year or had hit the Baseball Lottery, induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame. His vocation was sportswriter – a New York beat writer- and for forty years, he was one of the best.

I met Jack in 1987. We had been hired by Victor Temkin to do sports licensing for MCA/Universal. It was there I discovered his sense of humor, his humanity, and his encyclopedic knowledge of the game.

Jack Lang

Tom Seaver and Jack Lang

We would speak on the phone almost every day for an hour. Five minutes would be devoted to business, the remaining fifty-five given over to talkin’ baseball. I firmly believe that I could have put the phone on speaker, turned on a tape recorder, left the room, and returned thirty minutes later to find another chapter for this book.

In 1997, we took a production crew to his home for an interview. It was the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s entry into the major leagues, and who better to discuss it than the man who covered it. Jack lived in the little village of Ft. Salonga on the north coast of Long Island, [Vin used to refer to him as the Squire of Ft. Salonga] in a modest house with an office on the side. The office contained a desk, two chairs, and enough baseball memorabilia to open a museum. The whole place could have been shipped, as is, to Cooperstown.

Buzzie, Bobo, and the Squire are gone and, believe me, this book would have been much easier to write if they were still here. We still have Vinnie – long may he reign. If there is such a thing as a sub-dedication, this book is dedicated to them. They and countless others had a hand in writing it. I have tried to fashion a work with something for everyone, from the hard-core fan to the young people just learning about our game. In so doing, I’ve run the gamut all the way from baseball history to baseball jokes. I hope you enjoy it and hope it adds to your love for The Game.

"Now wait a minute,

let me see if I’ve got this straight.

You are going to pay me

to go to the ballpark?

Where do I sign?"

Steve Orlandella

OVERTURE

Most baseball fans can tell you the moment when they first fell for the game. My lifetime love affair began when I was not quite six years old – at a very special place.

It all started on a cold, dreary day in the summer of 1985. By then, I had seen most of the historic landmarks and monuments in my town. I had toured Paul Revere’s house, walked through Faneuil Hall, paced the deck of the USS Constitution, and stood where the Minutemen made their stand, the hallowed ground of Lexington Green. Heck, my grandmother lived in the shadow of the Old North Church. There was only one place left. Having seen all the shrines to American independence, it was time to see the shrine to American baseball – The Palazzo Yawkey. Fenway Park.

My father got tickets and off we went to what was then 24 Jersey Street, now 4 Yawkey Way. The tickets were not a tough get. The era of 900 straight sell-outs was twenty years away. I remember it like it was yesterday – walking through the tunnel, into the light, seeing that flawless field and the monstrosity in left. They had me at hello.

It was a dreadful day. Thunder, lightning, both games rain-delayed, and the home team losing both ends of the doubleheader to Jungle Jim Rivera and the White Sox. Rivera, a family friend, had dinner at my grandparents’ house two months earlier. Halfway through the second game, my father asked me if I wanted to leave. I refused. Even then, I knew this is where I was supposed to be.

What did I learn that day? First, hot dogs taste better at the ballpark. Second, my father knew a lot about baseball. And, last but not least, I learned the name of the tall, thin fellow playing left field, Theodore Samuel Williams. I can still recall my dad saying, watch him, he’s the best. When you are six years old, you believe your father knows everything. In this case he did. So, I watched, and on that day, I saw the sweetest swing I would ever see and the greatest hitter who ever lived. The Obsession was born.

Fast-forward 28 years. It was my first season, producing and directing baseball for television. After you have spent a season traveling with a ball club, you can take most of what you think you know about the game and chuck it out the window. The whole thing is amazing – the Ringling Brother’s Circus, packed aboard a chartered jet instead of a private train. Hitting streaks and batting slumps, shut outs and blow outs, late buses and later luggage, knuckle balls and fast balls, hotel bars and on occasion, Gentlemen’s Clubs, RBI’s and ACL’s, double plays and double steals, kids chasing autographs and women just chasing, San Francisco on Wednesday and New York on Thursday, fast balls and wild pitches, Scully and Torre, Jaime and Pepe, breakfast at 5am, dinner at midnight, and the cities. Walking down to the Ohio River in Cincinnati, or over from the excellent light rail in St. Louis. Baseball spoken here. The wonderful Herald columnist Mel Durslag said it best, In the summer, when the weather is right, it all sings.

He was talking about Fenway, but it also plays at Safeco and Wrigley. My sister worked her way through college at the Union Oyster House in Boston. She observed, "when the Sox are in first place, the customers leave bigger tips." Obsession enhanced.

So, this is our game, and it belongs to all of us. I think about my high school pal Joe Klinger, five hundred miles from Chavez Ravine, and his beloved Bums. And, my friend Cathy Karp, enduring being two thousand miles from Wrigley Field and her Cubbies. Joe Buttitta, living twenty-five hundred miles away from 161st & River Avenue, and his [damn] Yankees. I think about myself, three thousand miles from the Jewel in the Crown that sits at 4 Yawkey Way. And about my dear wife, preparing for another season of sturm und drang, secure in the knowledge that in this whole wide world, her only rivals are 25 guys in white cotton and grey polyester. The Washington Post’s Thomas Boswell titled his magnum opus on the game, Why Time Begins on Opening Day. Well, Boswell had it right. It does, indeed. Hope may not spring eternal, but eternal hope arrives every spring. If you haven’t guessed, I am a Red Sox fan. I was destined to play center field in Fenway Park, but as the result of some horrific pre-natal mistake, I got Fred Lynn’s body and he got mine. That said I shall try to retain my objectivity and treat the teams and players fairly, even – may God help me – the Yankees. As the man not in uniform aka the umpire would say, Play ball!

"I see great things in baseball,

It will take our people out-of-doors,

fill them with oxygen,

give them a larger physical stoicism,

tend to relieve us from being

a nervous, dyspeptic set,

repair those losses

and be a blessing to us."

Walt Whitman

"Rounders"

CHAPTER 1

HOW DID WE GET HERE?

Abner Doubleday

Inventing the Game

The earliest known mention of baseball in the United States was a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, ordinance banning the playing of the game within eighty yards of the town meeting house. No one can say for certain what they were playing up in the Commonwealth, but it’s unlikely it bore any resemblance to the modern game.

There was a popular notion that the game was nothing more than the English bat & ball game called Rounders. It was, and it wasn’t, but baseball’s attempt to get at the truth sent the path of history way off track. Baseball, proclaimed Baseball Executive Albert Spalding, was fundamentally an American sport and began on American soil. To settle the matter, a commission was appointed. Three years later, the commission delivered its report. The document stated that Abner Doubleday invented the game. Doubleday, a Civil War hero, was at the very least surprised, I never knew that I had invented baseball. The report was a complete fiction, but to this day, many believe that Abner was the father of baseball.

A much better case can be made for Alexander Cartwright. The first team to play baseball under modern rules was the New York Knickerbockers. The Club was founded on September 23, 1845, as a social club for the upper middle-class men of New York City.

Alexander Cartwright

In 1845, Cartwright and a committee from his Club drew up rules that converted this playground game into a more elaborate and interesting sport to be played by adults. Part of their mission was to eliminate any vestiges of Rounders. The original fourteen rules were somewhat similar but not identical to the English sport. Three exceptions devised by Cartwright included the stipulations that the playing field had to be laid out in a diamond shape rather than the square used in the British game, foul territories were to be introduced, and finally, the practice of retiring a runner by hitting him with a thrown ball was forbidden. Baserunners are forever grateful. Cartwright is also credited with introducing flat bases at uniform distances, three strikes per batter, and nine players in the field.

The first clearly documented match between two baseball clubs under these rules took place on June 19, 1846, at Elysian Field in Hoboken, New Jersey. In this match, the Knickerbockers were edged by the New York Nine. The score was 23 to 1. [Let me see if I understand this, they let you make up the rules, and you still lose 23-1?] Clubs started playing the game in and around New York City. By 1851, the game of baseball was becoming establishment. In fact, enough so that a newspaper report of a game played on Christmas Day referred to it as a good old-fashioned game of baseball.

In 1868, the first ballpark, the Union Grounds, opened in Brooklyn. During this time, Clubs in New York formed an association and modified the Knickerbockers Rules. In 1869, the first openly professional baseball team was formed. Earlier players were nominally amateurs. The Cincinnati Red Stockings recruited, paid salaries, toured nationally and did not lose a game until June 1870.

The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, was formed in 1871, and for six years, succeeded in controlling the game and organizing several new Clubs. There was a fly in the ointment. The N.A. suffered from a lack of strong authority over Clubs, unsupervised scheduling, and unstable membership. And, what was the entry fee for a new Club in the Association? Ten bucks.

On February 2, 1876, the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), was formed. The Senior Circuit was founded with eight charter members, only two of which still exist. The Chicago Cubs – who entered the league as the White Sox – and the Atlanta Braves – formerly the Boston Red Stockings – are all that remain.

The story that the Cincinnati Reds – originally the Red Stockings and later the Red Legs – is the oldest continuous team is a myth. In 1880, Cincinnati was expelled from the League for rule violations. A new organization joined the NL two years later. So, when you hear that the Reds had the honor of opening the season a day early because they were the first team, you will know that it’s a crock!

The first game in NL history was played on April 22, 1876, in Philadelphia between the Athletics and the Boston Baseball Club. The visitors won the game 6–5. In the next four years, the Athletics, along with franchises in New York, Hartford, St. Louis, and Louisville, either folded or were kicked out. In 1883, the New York Gothams – now San Francisco Giants – and the Philadelphia Phillies began National League play. Rival organizations, including the American Association, the Union Association, and the Players League, would each try and eventually fail to supplant the National League.

As the 20th century approached, the League had problems. In Boston, a fire started by fans spread through the town and damaged a hundred buildings. This, in part, led to many cities banning baseball on Sunday. The second and potentially bigger concern was the American League (AL).

The National League at first refused to recognize the new League, but reality set in as talent and money were split between the two Leagues and soon stifled financial success. After two years of contentious negotiations, a new version of the National Agreement was signed in 1903. This meant formal