Category Archives: baseball

Baseball, hot dogs and American culture

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It would seem downright un-American not to note the opening of baseball season. Even in the face of evidence that the NFL has overtaken baseball as the nation’s favorite athletic theater; that the NBA and March Madness have (literally) soared to new heights; that soccer has shouldered its way solidly into our sports culture; that doping stars have revealed a contemptible underbelly in all competitive sports….baseball hangs in there.

It can be argued that baseball has become over-romanticized and soaked in nostalgia even as the modern game is burdened with maddening statistical over-analysis and Major League ballparks regularly bludgeon fans with artificial noise incompatible with the game’s pastoral roots.

As a barometer of where The American Pastime stands in the 21st Century, roughly half of the students in my Hofstra sportswriting class each semester typically confess to preferring other spectator sports.

And yet, baseball is unquestionably in our DNA. A strong magnet to some, possibly just white noise to most, but always there through the long season from late March into November. Throughout our lifetimes, really.

When I was 6, I pleaded with my reluctant older brother to attempt hitting my not-so fast ball, and when his subsequent line drive struck me flush in the mouth—requiring the early extraction of a couple of baby teeth—it was a harbinger of my inauspicious baseball career, essentially concluded after Little League days. But it was not the end of my attraction to the sport, somewhere between fandom and appreciation.

Maybe it’s the eloquence of professional observers such as recently retired Los Angeles Dodgers announcer Vince Scully, with gems of narrative detail such as his call of the ninth inning of Sandy Koufax’s 1965 perfect game, that demonstrate baseball’s hold on us. (Google “Vin Scully Sandy Koufax perfect game” and enjoy 11 minutes of vivid drama.)

Or maybe it’s recognizing the truth in New Yorker Magazine veteran Roger Angell’s description, upon accepting the Hall of Fame writers’ award in 2014, that baseball “has turned out to be so familiar and so startling, so spacious and so exacting, and so easy looking and so heartbreakingly difficult that if filled my notebooks in a rush.”

Consider that American slang is loaded with baseball language. A ballpark figure. Batting 1.000. Grand slam. Out of left field. Step up to the plate. Ruthian. And that American popular culture is littered with baseball references. When Philip Roth tweaked the ongoing search for the “great American novel,” that theoretically perfect crystallization of the country’s spirit and identity, by calling his 1973 book “The Great American Novel,” he made it about baseball.

In a 2012 essay in the New York Times, “What baseball does to the soul,” Irish-born writer Colum McCann related the experience of a Yankee home run in a pivotal playoff-game as “a moment unlike any other, when you sit with your son in the ballpark, and the ball is high in the air, you feel yourself aware of everything, the night, the neon, the very American-ness of the moment.”

Afghan-American writer Mir Tamim Ansary, born in Kabul but raised from his high school days in the U.S., wrote that it wasn’t until he was in his 60s that he finally came to understand baseball by seeing it in terms of “the classic American Western….waiting for something to happen” and realizing that “if you care” about the result of each pitch, “it’s the purest possible definition of suspense.”

Quite naturally, baseball was the backdrop for the 1950s Broadway hit, “Damn Yankees,” for a retelling of the Faustian bargain. In the 1968 song, “Mrs. Robinson,” Simon and Garfunkel ask, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”

It was baseball’s prominence in society that amplified one of the great advances in civil rights: Jackie Robinson. Abbott and Costello’s “Who’s on First?”—sometimes called the best comic routine of all time—of course is baseball shtick. And, through his creator Charles Schulz, the inimitable Charlie Brown once said, “A hot dog is better with a baseball game in front of it.”

So, play ball.

 

The non-Cuban Cubans who made black baseball history

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It’s Spring-like somewhere. And, really, this is an ideal time to conflate the passing of Black History Month with the approaching baseball season—even here in cold, cold Babylon Village, on the South Shore of Long Island, N.Y.

Especially here. This is where—more than a century ago—a staff of waiters, bellhops and porters at a fading resort, the Argyle Hotel, formed America’s first black professional baseball team. That was the summer of 1885—62 years before Jackie Robinson’s Major League debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The Aug. 22, 1885 edition of Babylon’s South Side Signal reported that a game on the Argyle grounds, between the National Club of Farmingdale and the Athletics of Babylon, was won by “the employees at the Argyle Hotel,” 29-1.

Formed by Argyle headwaiter Frank Thompson, they became known as the Cuban Giants, so named by a white New Jersey promoter who soon bankrolled them for Harlem Globetrotter-style tours. The name may have been based on the racial realities of the day—that white crowds would sooner pay to see Latinos than blacks play ball. Or maybe the result of the sporting press, known at the time to euphemistically refer to blacks as Cuban, Spanish or Arabian. Or perhaps became the team’s manager, Stanislaus Kostka Govern, was a native of the Caribbean.

In his 1995 book, “Complete History of the Negro Leagues,” Mark Ribowsky wrote that, in spite of “reams of attention in the press….it takes a leap of the imagination to believe that anyone who came to see them perform was really conned” by the Cuban ploy.

Less clear is whether the players originally were paid (top salary: $18 a week) to provide entertainment for hotel guests or, in fact, had baseball as their primary jobs.

A 2005 book, “Out of the Shadows: African-American Baseball from the Cuban Giants to Jackie Robinson,” edited by Bill Kirwin, said Thompson recruited players from as far away as Washington and Philadelphia. And Jules Tygiel, the late historian of black baseball, wrote that the team toured the East in a private railroad car and consistently drew sellout crowds—and was such a success that there was a handful of imitators. The Cuban X Giants in New York, Page Fence Giants from Michigan, Lincoln Giants from Nebraska.

At the time, base ball (two words in the American vocabulary then) was becoming the nation’s No. 1 spectator sport, and the Cuban Giants were a powerhouse, winning all 10 games against white competition in 1885 and proclaimed the “world colored champions” of 1887 and 1888.

(Babylon Historical and Preservation Society)

A story in the black Indianapolis Freeman newspaper soon reported that the Cuban Giants had beaten “the New Yorks” two straight games and that “the St. Louis Browns, Detroits and Chicagos, afflicted with Negro phobia,” declined challenges to play the Cuban Giants—“unable to bear the odium of being beaten by colored men,” the paper said.

By the 1890s, the Cuban Giants periodically counted on their roster such widely acclaimed players as Frank Grant, considered by baseball historian Robert Peterson to be the best black player of his era; Sol White, called by black sports historian Art Rust, Jr. the best long-ball hitter of his time; and Bud Fowler, memorialized in Cooperstown as the first black man to be paid by a white baseball team (and there were several for the barnstorming Fowler).

At the time, Babylon was past its peak as a booming resort destination triggered by the arrival of the Long Island Rail Road in 1867, when New York city’s summer crowds and other tourists made their way to nearby Fire Island. The Argyle, funded by a syndicate headed by LIRR president Austin Corbin and built on the former estate of railroad magnate Electus B. Litchfield, was the last of a dozen hotels in the village. Among the Argyle’s investors was the son of the Duke of Argyll; thus its name.

(Babylon Historical and Preservation Society)

(Babylon Historical and Preservation Society)

But it never was more than one-third occupied, fell into disrepair by the 1890s—even as its employees began to rule the base ball world—and was razed in 1904. Some of its wood lives on in homes situated on the hotel’s old grounds, on the West bank of Argyle Lake—which had been a large mill pond during the resort’s existence.

In 2010, a plaque—remembering the Cuban Giants—was erected on the approximate site of the team’s playing field. There is a home plate next to the marker. That is covered by snow for now. But it’s Spring-like somewhere, just as sure as there is baseball history right here.

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To Alex Rodriguez: Sorry, that’s been done

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Surely this latest Alex Rodriguez mea culpa is a variant of the old Pete and Repeat joke. Rodriguez apologized and what was left?

Not belief.

His hand-written letter “To the Fans” is a virtual echo of his Feb. 9, 2009 press conference, when Rodriguez belatedly denied his own denials of steroid use six years earlier. Properly contrite, he assured then of a road-to-Damascus conversion, welcoming the world’s judgment of his righteous actions going forward.

Repeat.

In his missive this week, Rodriguez segued quickly from taking “full responsibility for my mistakes” to declaring himself “ready to put this chapter behind me.”

If that doesn’t remind everyone of Yogi Berra’s redundant old line about revisiting déjà vu, it certainly conjures Oscar Wilde’s “Importance of Being Earnest.” You know, the play about protagonists maintaining fictitious personae to escape burdensome social obligations. About pretending to be a person other than oneself.

Repeat.

In 2009, Rodriguez buttressed his apology by insisting he had sworn off doping before joining the Yankees in 2004. And here (in my Newsday report below) was steroid expert Terry Todd’s immediate and, it turns out, thoroughly reasonable reaction:

“Anytime anyone says something like that to me, I’m always very skeptical.”

A former Olympic weightlifter who founded the center for physical culture and sports at the University of Texas and whose research includes hundreds of interviews of steroid users over several decades, Todd said then that Rodriguez “damn sure could have been taking testosterone” right up to his pubic 2009 confession.

In fact, we learned soon enough, Rodriguez damn sure was still doping at least up to 2013, when the Biogenesis scandal further slimed him. Too, there was the question, Todd said, of whether a former user of performance-enhancing drugs continues to be “advantaged over someone of equal ability and talents who never has taken any drugs at all. Most of the people I’ve discussed this with, who have wide experiences with steroids, seem to believe that you do have an advantage that never goes away.”

The theory is that, since ability in any sport is to some degree psychological, when a new level of performance is reached while doping, that new standard is “no longer a bridge too far in your mind,” Todd said. “And the fact these drugs took you to that place you couldn’t have gotten to on your own, just the fact that your muscles handled this new speed or weight means, in a physiological way, you have created perhaps subtle changes in your muscle structure, in the tendons and ligaments, that did not completely dissipate.”

To Todd, not only is that argument logical but, more to the point, “there definitely are personality types who, once they’ve experienced improvements in strength or muscle size that is greater than they felt they could have gotten [without steroids], they feel this [stronger, larger person] is them. And they are loathe to give that up.”

Sounds like our boy.

Adding to that toxic mix is whether fans can abandon their own addiction—to embracing a winner, no matter his methods. For all the talk-radio bluster now skewing toward making Yankee Stadium a No-A-Rod Zone—a reminder that Rodriguez is a truly exasperating presence for reasons beyond doping—it is worth remembering the 2013 season, when Rodriguez, playing through his pending suspension, was lustily cheered whenever he produced with his bat.

I was there, too, in early 1999, when the Knicks made a controversial trade for the disgraced Latrell Sprewell, who had been forced to sit out the previous season for attempting to choke P.J. Carlesimo, his coach with the Golden State Warriors. The very week of that Knicks’ transaction, then-Madison Square Garden president Dave Checketts called Sprewell “the poster boy for bad behavior in the NBA,” and there was plenty of sentiment among Knicks’ followers that they wanted nothing to do with a bad actor such as Sprewell.

Then, in his first game as a Knick—an exhibition against the Nets—Sprewell scored 27 points. Garden fans showered him with two raucous standing ovations and, during a practice session open to the public the next day, Sprewell was the most sought-after player for autographs and adoring chit-chat.

No wonder the border between admirable athletic feats and personal goodness appears so fuzzy to a fellow like Rodriguez, the object of praise all his life for his on-the-field skills. While he certainly takes his baseball performances seriously, his continuing doping regimen—even as he was serving as a spokesman for the Taylor Hooton Foundation’s campaign against steroid use, cautioning young players against demon drugs—established his conviction that his only obligation to the public is to hit the ball over the wall. Using whatever means available.

So he has again declared himself clean and enlightened. An ongoing joke, right? A gotcha riddle. Pete and Repeat…..

 

 

 

 

 

Stop godding them up

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The nice feature on former Yankee pitcher Jim Abbott’s 1993 no-hitter, aired this week by the Yankees cable network, is a good starting point to discuss an old conundrum in sports journalism—how a highly visible athlete’s inspirational feat too easily can be interpreted as a morality play.

That Abbott, who was born with only one hand, could overcome what he called his “situation” to pitch in the Big Leagues—let alone throw a no-hitter—marvelously demonstrated the power of the human spirit. A motivating, heartening triumph. It did not necessarily establish Abbott’s superior moral fiber.

Don’t misinterpret that. From all reports—including my own brief contact with Abbott six years before his pitching gem—he earned a reputation as a bright and decent man, roundly liked by his peers and easy for any spectator to root for. In 1987, still pitching for the University of Michigan, Abbott was named to the U.S. National team, which positioned him to compete in Havana, Cuba, as the Cold War still raged. He called that experience, and another shortly thereafter at the Pan-American Games in Indianapolis, a “great way….to close the gap of understanding between ourselves and others.” He was 19 at the time.

During the Americans’ series in Cuba, Abbott’s leaping stop of a Cuban batter’s infield grounder, and his in-one-motion throw for the putout—all with his one hand—had Cuban fans “on their feet,” he said then, “going crazy, buzzing for about five minutes.” Abbott was an instant sensation there, and even shook hands with Cuban president Fidel Castro.

When Abbott was asked, during the Pan-Am Games, what the football coach at his college—a certain taskmaster named Bo Schembechler—would think of a Wolverine shaking the hand of a Communist leader, Abbott’s good-humored (and insightful) answer was, “Actually, there is a very similar presence between the two men. Fidel’s much bigger. About 6-4 and real wide. But there is a tough-guy, dictator sort of presence about both of them.”

And no judgement beyond that. So here’s the point: What so impressed those Cuban fans about Abbott’s athletic skill, the same ability that thrilled Yankee fans in 1993, realistically must be kept in a “love the win, not the winner” perspective.

In a post for Indiana University’s sports journalism center Web site a couple of years ago, veteran sportswriter Dave Kindred told of long-ago sports editor Stanley Woodward advising a young Red Smith (on Smith’s way to becoming the first sports journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize), “Stop godding up the players.” That jocks have an ability—much envied, for sure—to hit home runs, shoot three-pointers and evade tackles does not automatically make them better people. They still are just people.

Think of double-amputee Oscar Pistorius, whose fairly miraculous Olympic races on carbon-fiber prostheses made him the self-described “fastest man on no legs” and overturned the definition of “disabled.” Or O.J. Simpson, not only a football superstar but (personal experience here) among the most accommodating and respectful of interview subjects during his playing career—and wildly popular among teammates. Or Lance Armstrong, outrageously dominant on a bike and enormously life-affirming to fellow cancer survivors.

It turned out that what those folks could do on the playing field was no window on the soul. And reminded that, if we’re not careful, we set ourselves up with counterfeit idols.

Just as true, though: Jim Abbott’s story indeed was thoroughly uplifting.