SO YOU THOUGHT BASEBALL WAS ABOUT BASEBALL? – WOW!!!

By Edwin Cooney

The most amazing thing, when one thinks about it, is that America lasted as long as it did – from Thursday, July 4^th, 1776 to Tuesday, May 4^th, 1869 -- 92 years and 10 months -- without professional baseball.  No wonder we fought seven wars during those years; we needed a national pastime of some kind!

Until the spring of 1869, bank clerks, bankers themselves, mechanics, dockhands, and merchants (among others), practiced their professions in cities and towns across America.  However, at about 3 o’clock on sunny spring, summer and fall days, they metamorphosed into baseball players to play for the glory of a newspaper, a bank, a college, or regions of a city.  It was rough but it was fun. Even more, it actually helped sell newspapers. 

Most players belonged to the National Association of Baseball Players (NABBP).  Early in 1869, the NABBP decided to sanction professional baseball. So, on Tuesday, May 4^th, 1869, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, employing Englishman Harry Wright as manager, his younger brother George (the team’s star shortstop) and eight other men (only one of whom, first baseman Charlie Gould, was from Cincinnati) began playing professional baseball.  That day they defeated the Cincinnati Great West, a crosstown rival, 45 to 9.

The Red Stockings would go undefeated in 1869 and, even more impressive, would play games from Boston to San Francisco.  The players were under contract from March 15^th to November 15^th.  The following year they took up where they left off in 1869. They continued to win until they got to Brooklyn and played the Atlantics on Tuesday, June 14^th, exactly 58 weeks to the day after their first victory.  They played eleven innings and lost 8 to 7.  Although they went on to have a record 36 wins and only 7 losses in 1870, by the end of the year, two American realities had taken hold.  First, incredibly, after their first loss the magic was gone.  Cincinnati fans had become fickle and home attendance dropped like a misplayed pop fly.  Second, the team’s owners, who after all were Cincinnati businessmen, became tired of paying baseball players minus a profit on their investment.  (Note: one story I’ve seen reported that the Cincinnati Baseball Company’s profit for their undefeated season was less than two dollars.)  The players were ready to move on to more lucrative environs.  About half of them, including the Wright brothers, went on to Boston.  Even more, they took the name Red Stockings with them.

In 1876, when Chicago entrepreneur William Hulbert founded the National League, the Cincinnati Red Stockings were “born again” but they lasted for only four years as a member of the new league. (Note: in Boston some were calling the Red Stockings the “Red Caps.”) Unlike those who are  “born again” with whom modern America is familiar, the “reborn” of Cincinnati were more the indulgent type than the spiritual kind. They would be expelled from the National League in 1880 because they insisted on serving beer and alcohol at home games and playing baseball on Sundays. 

One hundred and forty-five years after that historic May 4^th game, baseball hasn’t fundamentally changed.  Sure, the bats are lighter, the gloves are bigger -- as are both the players’ salaries and team owners’ profits -- but baseball fans and players, from their willfulness and their superstitions to their egos, are pretty much the same.

In fact, superstition is no small factor in baseball.  There are players who, if they have a good game, will wear the same sweatshirt as long as their luck holds out.  Some players believe that there are only so many hits in a bat or that their bats get tired if they use them too much.  Hughie Jennings who managed the Detroit Tigers between 1907 and 1920 would throw a fit if he saw a cross-eyed batboy or if a black cat ran across the field before a game.  The irony here is that Hughie Jennings was not the typical uneducated dirt farmer or factory worker of his time.  He attended Cornell Law School in 1903 and 1904 and, although he never finished his degree, he passed the Maryland State Bar in 1905 and practiced law during the off-season.

In the 1930s and 40s, the sons of immigrants like Yogi Berra and Joe Garagiola had difficulty convincing hardworking parents that one could make a good living playing baseball.   In his book “Baseball Is a Funny Game,” Joe tells the story that the first time his parents attended a St. Louis Cardinal night game, his father couldn’t understand how the owners could possibly afford to pay the bill for all the lighting in the ballpark.  Joe and Yogi came from “The Hill,” a heavily Italian neighborhood in St. Louis.  In the same book, Joe, who was signed as a catcher by the Cardinals before Yogi was signed as a catcher by the Yankees, also tells of a neighbor who said to him in a very thick accent: “Joey, you’re the first boy what comes from the Hill to get his name in the paper and no kill somebody!”

Today, in keeping with modern “globalization,” players come from all over the world.  In 2012, 243 of the 856 players on opening day major league rosters were born outside the United States.  The Dominican Republic had 95 players, Venezuela 66, Canada 15, Japan 13, Puerto Rico and Cuba 11 each, Mexico 9, Panama 7, Curacao and Australia 4 apiece, Nicaragua 3, Taiwan 2, and Columbia, Italy and South Korea each had 1.  Like their American contemporaries, each spring they leave their home and go far away to cities and a way of life that is both demanding and rewarding.  Some will almost -- but not quite -- make the big time.  Others will be released for reasons both just and unjust.  Still others will become injured and reluctantly return to the bosom of their home to recover and renew their dreams of major league glory.

You and I will listen and watch as a part of us imagines that we’re actually at bat or on the mound.  As we anticipate tomorrow, the memory of all those players, living and dead, from yesteryear are gentle on our minds.

Baseball, which returns each spring like the season, really and truly is about hope and hope is about you and me!  Is there anything more personal than that?

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE BEAT GOES ON!

By Edwin Cooney

Four weeks ago I asked you, the reader, if America might be “fretting herself to death.”  Three weeks ago I followed up with an open search for “the really and truly.”  This week, the beat goes on.

What I’m trying to decide for myself is the value and workability of charter schools.  A few days ago, someone sent me a commentary by Dr. Thomas Sowell asserting that the Obama administration was demonstrating its genuine contempt for minorities, as he claims do most liberals, by limiting the steady growth of charter schools throughout America.  Sowell, a Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University, devoutly believes that those who advocate and administrate programs for the benefit of minorities are more interested in protecting their personal careers than they are in benefiting the poor. As a black man who was raised amidst the poverty of both the South and Harlem during the 1930s and 40s, he is especially effective as an advocate for alternative policies to traditional liberal problem solving

Charter schools are generally established and administrated by private groups contracting with public school districts, states or universities to educate school age students under a system that demands more rigid standards than those that exist under the traditional public school system.  Charter schools currently exist in 42 states and the District of Columbia.  Political conservatives and libertarians are generally their strongest and most enthusiastic advocates. However, they exist and even thrive in locations such as Washington, D.C. and New Orleans, cities heavily populated by blacks, Hispanics and other minority groups.  Students and teachers must meet stricter standards of performance or face removal.  Since the economic, social, and even spiritual welfare of our future is largely dependent on a well-educated, prosperous and peaceful population, political as well as practical administrative matters must be considered.

In order to get a broader perspective on this topic, I contacted a friend of mine who was a public school teacher in the state of New Jersey for over thirty years.  Contrary to Dr. Sowell, my friend whom I’ll call “Big Mickey” asserted to me in a responsive email:

“I believe that whatever helps kids is OK, but not at the expense of others.  Charters act like they are so much better but in reality the difference is very small.  Charters should not be "above the law" when it comes to educating ALL the students, not just the cream, or the quiet ones, or the connected.  They do not belong on public property, in buildings with public schools or using public funds that should go to public education. That is discrimination and theft.  We need to focus ourselves on making public education what it should be, not diverting our energies into these charters that only represent a tiny portion of the population.  If public schools were run the way charters are the results would be the same.  Charters are just a different name for the Private School System.  The efforts of some to discriminate AND SEPARATE has failed in the past and school vouchers have not prevailed.  I believe that charters are just another form of "vouchers" that really detract from our main problem which is how to make education important in this country.  Until we raise the cultural importance (as in other nations) we will continue to fail to really meet the needs of our kids and the American people.”

Big Mickey’s final point, the raising of the cultural importance of education in America, is particularly compelling.  Big Mickey insists that the most vital factor in the education of any student is that student’s parents.  “I might have a hundred students in the three or four classes I taught during a particular school year,” he told me, “but on parent’s nights, I’d be lucky if ten parents showed up for consultation.”

Many physical, emotional, intellectual, and social factors invariably come into play when a free society establishes a single requirement of all of its citizens as America began doing in the 1850s.  The requirement that every child receive a free education began in the state of Massachusetts in 1852.  Not only did the Massachusetts law require every town to establish a school, it required that parents send their offspring to school under threat of fine or even removal of children from their homes should parents fail to comply with the law.

Obviously, the time has passed to begin seriously discussing education reform in the United States.  Dr. Sowell’s concern is not without foundation, but whether teachers ought to belong to unions is a different question from “how can we educate our children and thus most likely guarantee our nation’s future?”

A well-educated citizen is the recipient of America’s greatest gift: justice.  Justice, to paraphrase the great Greek philosopher and teacher Plato, exists when one achieves all one is capable of achieving and is rewarded upon that achievement.

As for the wisdom and value of charter schools, I invite you to advise me.  However, in so doing, please address the education of the whole people, not just the highly capable.

If, however, your conclusion is based on your conservative or liberal ideology, skip it and get back to class where you belong!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

AS THE READER RULES

 By Edwin Cooney

Amidst the celebratory spirit of last week’s column, I offered my view of the world outside my year of personal bliss with three observations, one of which was:

In the year since Saturday, March 9^th, 2013…

George Zimmerman was found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin thus granting the National Rifle Association and GOP/Conservatives a sense of political, legal and moral accomplishment.

That observation brought forth the following response from a reader and longtime friend:

“You should be ashamed of yourself for falsely asserting that the NRA gained "a sense of political, legal and moral accomplishment" in the George Zimmerman verdict. It is unworthy of you. The NRA took no position whatsoever on the Zimmerman case. It did, and does continue, to support the right of Americans to armed self-defense. But it was very careful never to characterize Zimmerman’s shooting of Martin as being lawful self-defense, nor a falling under the protections of Florida law. It consistently reported that that was a matter for Florida courts to decide. However, the anti-gun press took every possible opportunity to try to tie the NRA to the case. Somehow, every shooting becomes the fault of the NRA. I wonder why every criminal misuse of an automobile isn't blamed on the American Automobile Association.  Anyway, I am disappointed in your sloppiness here.”

My friend was right to be critical of my “sloppiness” in not having researched the NRA’s official position on the significance of the Zimmerman case, but his comparison of guns to automobiles was a counter error.  Automobiles, unlike guns, are designed to enhance the conveniences of life rather than for the destruction of life.  It can also be argued that guns, for a long time in human history, were the chief instrument for the preservation and even the nourishment of human life on a day-to-day basis.  Still, my friend’s point that gun ownership and the activities of the National Rifle Association have both become politicized is both valid and accurate.

Hence, my observation about the NRA last week in addition to being “sloppy” was very, very political.  Had I not included the NRA in my argument and pointed the finger only at conservatives, or most conservatives, I might well have escaped my friend’s wrath.  My recklessness, the constant bane of those of us who are budding columnists, was a purely petulant reaction to an ongoing peeve of mine.

My objection to those opposed to gun control isn’t due to my hatred of guns; I don’t hate guns any more than I hate people.  I agree with those who insist that “people, not guns, kill people.”  However, the insistence on the part of most conservatives and many gun rights advocates that progressive or liberal government policies is a legitimate cause to bear arms constitutes, as I see it, little more than political hysterics.

Insofar as I’m aware, gun control wasn’t a national issue during any presidential campaign before 1968.  Its chief advocate was Lyndon Baines Johnson who personally owned a number of guns.  In the wake of the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Americans began asking themselves: “If automobiles, alcohol, food production, medical and legal services, educational and building construction standards, air travel, and pollution levels ought to be regulated for the benefit of the people’s safety, why shouldn’t guns be regulated?”  With that perfectly logical question, the political fat was in the fire!

One of the hazards of political advocacy in 21^st Century America is the right of those with darker and even ulterior motives to attach themselves to legitimate and laudable causes.  Thus American liberalism is invariably linked to socialism and socialists to communists.  American conservatism is linked to fascism and the Ku Klux Klan.  Thus President Obama, who is at most a moderate liberal or progressive, is cast as a socialist or even as a communist when he isn’t being accused of being a Muslim.  President George W. Bush was invariably linked to Nazism and Fascism by many opponents of the second Iraqi war.

The NRA is a legitimate organization made up of mostly well-intentioned American citizens.  However, it is both a political and lobbying group.  As I see it, its primary purpose is business, but its business is primarily pressure politics.  The right to bear arms and to be protected against tyranny is merely secondary to its ultimate purpose which is to keep the sale of firearms as free from government regulation as possible.  It is no more or less patriotic than the ACLU or, for that matter, than liberal causes such as the AFL or the NAACP.

In his latest message to me, my friend and critic asserted that I was entitled to my own opinions but not to my own facts.  He draws a distinction between his support or advocacy of a right and any accountability for the ways in which people invariably use and/or abuse such rights.  Endowed with both a brilliant mind and a powerful intellect, my friend, more than most people I know, has a capacity to compartmentalize cause and effect, applicability versus theory, better than most.  Thus, he sets a high standard for thought and theoretical analysis from which I’ve tried to benefit over the past twenty years.

However, unfortunate as it may be, neither he nor I can escape another painful modern American truth or reality – take your pick.  It’s all about politics which, in most debates, inevitably trumps patriotism or even principle!

As for my journalistic error, only one word applies – oops!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

WHAT’S IN A YEAR?

By Edwin Cooney

Let’s see now – in most years, there are four seasons, twelve months, 52 weeks, 365 days, 8,760 hours, 525,600 minutes and, finally, 31,536,000 seconds in a single year.  Additionally, there’s Super Bowl Sunday, Groundhog Day, Presidents Day (it’s unpatriotic to link the last two special days!), Valentine’s Day, Easter, the opening day of the baseball season, Patriot’s Day, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Labor Day, Columbus Day, the final day of the World Series, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving Day, Christmas and New Year’s Day.  Nuts! I forgot April 15^th -- sorry about that one!  Ah, but there’s even more than that!

Each year is a domain within which we share our being energized by the love and knowledge of those we know and, potentially, by people we have yet to meet.  With the conclusion of each year, there are memories and, best of all, there is perspective!

On Sunday, March 9^th, 2014 at 2:15 p.m. Eastern Time, and 11:15 a.m. Pacific Time, Lady C. and I completed our first year together.  To paraphrase Charles Dickens’ “A Tale of Two Cities,” never was our year the worst of times!  As for “the best of times,” the best of times have been such that they clearly beckon towards even better times ahead!

Lady C. makes no pretense at perfection, but she’s energetic, charming, sweet, interesting, not always predictable, creative, dedicated, loyal, determined, thoughtful, polite, loving… and she just loves lists.  So, that’s my excuse for this list this time.

Ultimately, a year is a measure of time and time is a measure of existence.  Lady C. and time definitely exist and they have lots of things in common.  First, as I mentioned above, time (just like Lady C.) can be unpredictable.  Invariably, both time and Lady C. grant you space to ponder, leisure to consider, and grace when you don’t deserve it.  On other occasions, both time and Lady C. can be impatient and demanding, rigid and insistent.  However, it must be kept in mind that Lady C. is real, a child of nature, while time, for the most part, is merely the intellect’s way of coping with aging – an element that both Lady C. and the rest of us try in vain to ignore!

The days of the years 2013 and 2014 which made up the first 365 days of our union serve to remind us and encourage us.  They remind us of wonderful memories of accommodation and compromise, of visits and presents, of games and events enjoyed together, as well as emotional and spiritual differences -- of promises not entirely kept and of other promises which more than exceeded expectations.  Both of us have places we’d expected to go which we have not visited, family members whom we have not yet met, and dreams yet to be realized.

As for the rest of the world, in the year since Saturday, March 9^th, 2013…

George Zimmerman was found not guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin thus granting the National Rifle Association and GOP/Conservatives a sense of political, legal and moral accomplishment;

The Boston Marathon turned into a second “Boston Massacre” last April;

President Obama, much to the contempt of some people, granted more time for the adoption of “Obamacare” to meet the needs of the people;

The federal government was shut down and re-opened to the satisfaction of few Americans;

The New York Yankees let their star second baseman, Robinson Cano, go to the Seattle Mariners as a free agent;

Prominent Americans such as Shirley Temple Black, homerun slugger Ralph Kiner and former “second lady” Joan Mondale have died. 

All of these events, however we view them, in some small way mark our first 365 days married as they mark the lives of countless others.

For me, our first year has been most grand – way, way beyond my expectations and most assuredly beyond my hopes.  Sadly, I left some of the most precious people I’ve ever known behind in California, but it’s also fair to say that I’ve met and am increasingly coming to know some folks whose presence in our new life is also very precious.

Each year is a culmination of all the events and people we’ve experienced.  Our capacity for reflection can, if we let it, increase our capacity for appreciation of all around us, especially those who are most dear to us.

The 365 days between Saturday, March 9^th, 2013 and Sunday, March 9^th, 2014 have been generous to Lady C. and me.  I suppose we can’t expect every year to be as generous, but we can allow ourselves to be energized by the happy events of 2013 and 2014 that were sanctioned by our mutual love.

Every year is ours and yours, yours and ours.  Every year possesses shades of hope and opportunity because you and I and Lady C. deserve by our very humanness all creation has to grant us.

Still, the question remains: “what’s in a year?”  The answer, as I see it, is: all the days and all the ways we need to beckon forth the promises of each tomorrow!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY 

IN SEARCH OF THE REALLY AND TRULY

By Edwin Cooney

STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS: A few days ago when I called a local transportation agency, the recorded voice assured me, “Your call is important to us!”  I finally made contact with a “real live person” and once we’d finished with business she wished me “a fantastic day” although wishing me a nice day would have been good enough!  Only a few years ago, she’d have wished me something like “have a good one,” I’d have wished her the same and we both would have gone our separate ways. The late S.I. Hayakawa (the conservative GOP United States Senator from California between 1976 and 1982 who was a professional linguist) called this kind of an exchange “the language of social cohesion.” That means it is nice safe language which opens up future possibilities, great and small.

This illustrates the ongoing need for cohesiveness in society.  It’s easy to dismiss these little nuggets of relationship, but once we focus on them, it rapidly brings us to the realization of some of the factors that cause us to do what we do and say what we say.

From the time we’re very young, we are taught the language of social cohesion: saying “please and thank you”, “God bless you” when someone sneezes, and “excuse me” or “pardon me” when someone inadvertently interrupts or makes a social error.  To share, to please and be pleased, and, of course, ”the golden rule” – these are essential staples of our being from almost the very beginning of our existence. 

THE REALLY AND TRULY: Throughout my childhood, the search for “the really and truly” was important, but strangely not an obsession. Its special meaning lay in the fact that others had “real” moms and dads while I had foster parents.  If someone gave me a toy automobile when I was eight years old, I wanted it to be as close to “real” as possible. I’d inquire, was it a Ford, a Chevy or maybe a Pontiac?  When my interest in baseball began at age eight, nine or ten (it evolved), the Yankees were really real because most people either loved or hated them and they were always in that “World Series.” All that was missing, of course, was the rest of the world!  Almost as important was the fact that their Class D Eastern League farm club played in my hometown of Binghamton, New York.  When Elvis came along in 1956, to me he was the “real” rock ‘n’ roller more than anyone else.  Of course I had my own exciting illusions such as witches on Halloween night and Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. (I never really identified with the Easter Bunny, but I loved the candy!)  I decided that Halloween witches and Santa Claus slept the rest of the year.  I accommodated my illusions by enjoying them rather than wondering about them.  If they were illusions, okay, that’s what they were – no argument.  Still, as a youth, that which was real was also true – wasn’t it?  

NOSE-TO-NOSE WITH REALITY: With adulthood, one invariably discovers that reality eludes the principles and ideals adults so often have insisted were vital aspects of “truth”.  In other words, truth and reality isn’t the same thing.  In adulthood, reality surrenders to the demands of a logical, materialistic and self-indulgent world.  What that boils down to is that whatever you decide is real is, in fact, real!  It may be right, it may be wrong; it may be destructive or creative.

When people tell you to “get real!” they are not insisting that you be truthful. It’s a demand rather that you do and see things as they direct you.  Political and religious idealists are particularly strident in their demand that you see and believe as they do.  Political idealists insist that truth exists in conservatism or liberalism, whichever one they are, and only a fool mixes the two (which is exactly what I do!)  American Christians (unfortunately, including President Obama) are constantly asking God to “bless America” ignoring their larger belief that God is the creator of all humanity.  As for the rest of “God’s green earth,” apparently, let it be damned! 

As for my whining inquiry of a few days ago (“Is my call really important?”  “Does this real live person at the other end of the phone really want me to have a “fantastic” day?), the truth is most likely found in Hayakawa’s language of social cohesion.  The “realists” among us insist that what’s real is what’s important.  They point out that that which is present and obvious constitutes reality even if it is constructed of evasion, denial, and well-concealed lies.

If that which is real isn’t really true, then perhaps that which is truly real awaits all of us in a dimension we are presently incapable of grasping.  It may well be that the best aspect of reality is that it isn’t ultimately true!

See ya later. I’m going outside to play now!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY