BASEBALL—THE GAME THAT CAME FROM YOU AND ME

By Edwin Cooney

It may be all over by the time you read this since it started last Wednesday night at Fenway Park in Boston. It, of course, is the one hundred and third World Series—which only Americans think has anything whatsoever to do with the rest of the world. (Note: The first modern World Series occurred in 1903, but since there was no World Series in 1904 and 1994, we’re enjoying only our one hundred and third fall classic.)

When the series has ended, a bunch of dreams in Denver, Colorado or a ton of self- satisfaction in Boston will have been realized…or put on hold.

My introduction to baseball was through an uncle, a lifelong Yankee fan. However, my realization that baseball as a game of people rather than merely of players was confirmed for me in, if I say so myself, a rather unique way.

One weekend afternoon in the spring of 1958, I was listening to a Yankee broadcast of a game with the Cleveland Indians. Pitcher Early Wynn, a big no-nonsense 300 game winner, was pitching for the Indians. Although the exact details of what Early Wynn was up to have been lost to my memory, I do remember that Yankee announcer and former Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto mentioned that Early Wynn had typed an article for some publication just using the index fingers of each hand.

Suddenly, Early Wynn went from merely being a major league pitcher to being a real person to me. I was taking typing at the time and knew that “hunting and pecking” as we called it was an inefficient way to use the typewriter. At that instant, I realized that I, a twelve year-old, knew how to do something better than the great Early Wynn. “Maybe,” I thought to myself, “I could actually teach Early Wynn how to type if he would let me.”

Later that year, I also learned that the great Ted Williams hated to wear neckties and that broadcaster and former major league pitcher Dizzy Dean hated school as much as I then thought I did. “Shucks,” Dizzy Dean said, “Where do people get off criticizing my grammar? I only went up to the second grade and if I’d gone up to the third, I’d have passed my old man.”

“Gee,” I thought to myself back then, “baseball is loaded with real guys. I wonder what they’re like off the field.”

Many pleasant hours since 1958 have been spent by me savoring the humanness of baseball players on, near and off the baseball diamond. So, I thought I’d share with you -- in celebration of the World Series -- some of the more poignant activities and interactions I have heard, read, and been told about over the years.

As I was listening to broadcaster John Miller and his sidekick, former major league second baseman and now Hall of Famer Joe Morgan, commenting on the fact that the Colorado Rockies’ starter, lefthander Jeff Francis, was the first Canadian citizen to open a World Series, I thought back to the first World Series in which the Boston Red Sox played the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Red Sox were called the Boston Pilgrims back then.
In the first modern World Series, the newly created American League champion Pilgrims defeated the Pirates five games to three in the best of nine series. Aside from the spectacle of seeing the Pilgrims’ star pitcher Cy Young (his real name was Denton Young) hawking tickets when he wasn‘t pitching, a more obscure name made its momentary prominence. As time went on, Babe Ruth made the home run famous, but very few people today could tell you who hit the first ever home run in the World Series.

His name was Jimmy Sebring, a young left-handed hitting outfielder for the Pirates whose career and life were way too short. Born in Liberty, Pennsylvania on March 22nd, 1882, Sebring joined the Pirates in 1902 and led both the “Bostons” (as the great announcer Ernie Harwell often called the Red Sox) and the Pirates in hits with eleven throughout that 1903 series. In the middle of August 1905, Jimmy Sebring suddenly left the Cincinnati Reds--to whom he’d been traded from the Pirates--to play for Williamsport of the Tri-State league. He won a league-wide championship for Williamsport one year. By the time he returned to the majors in 1909, however, he had lost much of his former ability. Thus, it is likely that 1909 would have been his final season, except that we’ll never know for sure. Jimmy Sebring died on December 22nd, 1909 at the age of twenty-seven in the Pennsylvania town he’d championed. Oh, you may well ask, why did Jimmy Sebring leave “the bigs” right in the middle of his career? His wife was too ill to be left alone for long periods of time and so Jimmy went home to be closer to her. Jimmy Sebring was indeed “quality folks” as they say.

I don’t know that a human life has ever begun on a baseball diamond, major league or otherwise, but it has been terminated on one. Kentucky born Ray Chapman was a fine young shortstop for the Indians. In the summer of 1920, he was leading them to a championship. It was on Monday afternoon of August 16th, when Ray Chapman stepped into the right-handed batter’s box at the Polo Grounds in New York to face the Yankee’s submarine right-hander Carl Mays. (Note: a submarine pitcher is one who throws underhanded like a softball pitcher.) Crowding as close to the plate for what he considered to be to his advantage as usual, Ray Chapman took one of Mays’ pitches on the left temple. The ball bounced back to Mays and he flipped it to first baseman Wally Pip (who would take a day off five years later because of a headache and lose his job to young Lou Gehrig.) Pip started to toss the ball around the infield until he heard umpire Tom Connolly call for a doctor. The Yankees’ physician applied ice to the injury and Chapman was able to rise. With the help of two teammates, he headed for the Indians’ centerfield clubhouse, but near second base he collapsed. One story has it that he awakened enough in the Indians clubhouse to urge that Carl Mays not be blamed for the incident. Ray Chapman died about twelve hours later at St. Lawrence hospital in New York. Perhaps inspired by the loss of their popular shortstop, the Indians went on to defeat the Brooklyn Dodgers (then being called the Robins after their beloved manager Wilbert Robinson) four straight in the 1920 World Series, winning the A.L. pennant. You might ask, was Carl Mays blamed for the incident? Of course he was -- by lots of people.

Most players and fans who are struck with baseballs survive with little notoriety. One exception was Mrs. Alice Roth who was sitting behind third base at Philadelphia’s Connie Mack Stadium on the afternoon of Saturday, August 17th, 1957. The Phillies were facing the visiting New York Giants. Left-handed spray hitting Richie Ashburn, the Phillies popular centerfielder, came to the plate. (Note: a spray hitter is one who naturally and regularly hits to all parts of the field.) When Richie connected (probably with a low and outside pitch, the baseball shot into the stands where Alice Roth, the wife of a Philadelphia newspaper executive, was sitting with her two grandsons. The ball struck her in the face breaking her nose. Time was called while an anxious Ashburn joined other players and officials by Mrs. Roth’s box seat to wait for medical assistance. Once it arrived and the personable Ashburn had expressed his sincere sorrow, the game continued. Settling back into the batter’s box, Ashburn reacted naturally to still another outside pitch. In the stands behind third base, Mrs. Roth had just been assisted onto a stretcher. She probably heard the crack of Richie Ashburn’s bat once again. Whether or not she heard the next crack of the bat, she certainly felt the baseball bounce off the side of her head. Fortunately, Richie Ashburn’s second calling card was a glancing blow. Over the next few days, the mortified Ashburn visited the hospital bringing flowers, candy and his heartfelt best wishes. There were season tickets to see the Phillies and a visit for the two boys to the Phillies’ clubhouse. Generous as these gifts were, they weren’t quite enough for the Roth grandchildren. The Phillies were a lousy team and not worth too many outings, but the boys reminded their grandmother that the Philadelphia football Eagles were very promising indeed. If Grandma attended an Eagles’ workout, she might be accidentally tackled—and those season tickets would be terribly exciting.

Of course, every baseball hero invariably spawns a baseball “bum”. Consider the position of Harry Bright on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 2nd, 1963 when he came to bat in the ninth inning of his first World Series game ever. True, the Yankees had been in the World Series many, many times, but Harry Bright hadn’t. Harry had spent most of his seventeen years in pro baseball in the minors or with the Pirates, Washington Senators and Cincinnati Reds. Now, he was actually in the World Series with the mighty Yankees. However, something was very wrong. The Dodgers’ brilliant young left-hander Sanford (Sandy) Koufax had just tied a record by striking out fourteen Yankees. If the handsome and articulate Koufax struck Harry Bright out, he’d break Carl Erskine’s fall classic record of fourteen strikeouts in a game. Erskine was an old teammate of his. The shadows at Yankee Stadium are especially treacherous during the fall. It was difficult to see pitches from pitchers of only average talent let alone those of young Koufax. Even worse for Harry Bright, practically all of the 65,000 fans in that historic stadium (including many loyal Yankee fans) were yelling for him to strike out to enable Sandy to get the record. So what could he do? Yogi Berra, one of Harry Bright’s own teammates, had once observed that “it gets late out there early.”

One of the more traditionally devastating things that can happen to anyone who works outside of baseball is to be fired from a job. For baseball managers, however, it’s the expected thing. However, those baseball men who are in charge of these things do try to show some tact when they decide to invite a manager to leave his employment. It was June 1958 when Cleveland Indians’ general manager Frank “Trader” Lane – who was so named for his many notorious player deals -- contemplated how he should tell manager Bobby Bragan that he was through as Cleveland’s skipper. The tribe, after all, was twelve games behind the league-leading Yankees. Finally, Bobby appeared and Frank had to say something. “Bobby,” said Lane, “I don’t know how we’re going to get along without you, but beginning tomorrow we’re going to try.”

Baseball’s front office isn’t the only breeding ground for bizarre incidents. They happen on the field, too. One of my favorite stories is about a native of Passaic, New Jersey by the name of Frankie Zak. Frankie played in the majors for the Pittsburgh Pirates for parts of 1944-45 and ‘46. In 1945, Pirates manager Frankie Frisch, a Hall of Fame second baseman, could only take Frankie for a total of fifteen games. What happened to Frankie or what Frankie did to himself on Tuesday, April 17th, opening day of the 1945 season, might explain both men’s frustration. Zak was on first base and Jim Russell, one of the Pirates’ few sluggers at that time, was up. As Cincinnati Red’s pitcher Bucky Walters, also now a Hall of Famer, took his wind-up, Frankie looked down at his shoes and discovered a most unfortunate thing. One shoe was untied. Not wishing to be tripped up while running the base paths, Frankie made the responsible decision. He called time. However, the home plate umpire didn’t see the first base umpire’s time called signal and therefore when Walters went into his wind-up, he was allowed to make the pitch. Jim Russell took a mighty cut at the ball and in no time it sailed over the right field fence for a home run. However, upon reaching first base on his home run trot, Russell to his chagrin was told to go back to the plate because the runner had been granted time to tie his shoe. So, unhappily, Russell went back to the plate and took another hack at another pitch. This time however he got only a single.

Russell later said that he couldn’t stay mad at poor Frankie for very long because he kept apologizing to him all afternoon. Even worse, the Pirates lost that game seven to six and Frankie was the unfortunate goat.

The next afternoon, as Frankie Zak sat, still dejected, in front of his locker, manager Frisch came out of his office and handed him a present. Surprised that his skipper would buy him a present after the events of the day before, Zak excitedly opened the box. It was—you guessed it—a pair of buckle shoes.

“I don’t want to see you calling time out to tie your “blank” shoes again,” Frisch reportedly said to Frankie Zak as he returned to his office.

Late last week, the New York Yankees dismissed twelve year manager Joe Torre by offering him a lot of money in a way he simply couldn’t accept. They offered him five million for the season of 2008 and a million dollars for success if the Yankees won the divisional championship series, a million dollars more if the Yankees went on to win the pennant and a final million if the Bronx Bombers won their first World Series since they beat the Mets in the five games of the 2000 World Series. While most of us might be tempted to take the five million dollars and run, it must be pointed out that most of us wouldn’t be offered anything close to that amount of money. Certainly, Joe Torre has demonstrated to everyone except the Yankee brass that he doesn’t need incentives to win in the post season. However, it has since occurred to me that one of the Yankees most beloved men once actually did something with even less class.

It was August 1956 and the Yankees were fighting for a pennant. They had gotten the chance to obtain Enos Slaughter, an old Cardinal hero, and a still solid left-handed hitter to help them win it. Phil Rizzuto had been a Yankee since 1941 and had won the league’s Most Valuable Player award in 1950. Even more, his play and his personality were a constant inspiration to Yankee players. Admittedly, it wasn’t going to be easy for either general manager George Weiss or manager Casey Stengel to tell Phil that he was being cut to make room for Enos Slaughter. So, they called him in for a “consultation,” inviting him to name the player who should be cut if his team was going to have the best chance to win the American League pennant. When Phil, who was hitting .236 in only 31 games, didn’t name himself as one to be cut, Weiss and Stengel finally had to tell him the real reason they’d called him in for “consultation.”

The Yankees may not have surpassed their Saturday, August 25th, 1956 treatment of Phil Rizzuto last week, but they certainly came close.

Of course, in baseball as in life, there are almost countless incidents of nobility and generosity that very often are not noticed. Back in the late 1960s, California Angels shortstop Jim Fregosi made it his personal business to look after teammate Minnie Rojas and his family after the Cuban born right-hander, who spoke little English, was paralyzed in an automobile accident. Before that incident, all of baseball had also taken care of the great Dodger catcher Roy Campanella who had been similarly crippled.

Baseball, a child of America’s combined desire for entertainment and genius for enterprise, is naturally as well as invariably linked to the people’s most traditional and fondest dreams. If the “BoSox” win the World Series, Bostonians’ three year sense of satisfaction with this generation of Red Sox will be confirmed. Should the Rockies miraculously prevail, a lot of Coloradans’ fondest dreams will surely come true.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY