WORLD SERIES #117 — WHAT IS IT TO YOU AND ME?

By Edwin Cooney

The modern World Series between the newly established National and American Leagues began in 1903 and was played between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Boston Americans or, as some called them, the Boston Pilgrims. The winner of that first series was to win 5 out of 9 games.

In 1904, New York Giants manager, the irascible John J. McGraw, had sufficient influence to declare that the Giants wouldn't play the American League champions because, to him, the National League (the senior league) was vastly superior to the "upstart" junior league. However, by 1905, the newly established baseball commission forced McGraw's hand to play Connie Mack's Athletics. As things turned out, McGraw's Giants beat the "upstart" Athletics four games to one. This satisfied baseball's traditionalists that perhaps McGraw may have been right, but by then the demand for an annual "World Championship” series was so overwhelming that the fall classic was a national institution.

The first World Series sweep occurred in 1914 when the “Miracle” Boston

Braves shut out Connie Mack's Athletics four games to "zip." (Back in 1907, Frank Chance's Chicago Cubs had not allowed Hughie Jennings's and Ty Cobb's Detroit Tigers to win a single game, but it couldn't be a sweep because the Tigers tied one game.) In those early days, local expectations were a huge part of the show. This was especially true in Boston where the  Fitzgeralds and Kennedys and a famous colorful bartender named "Nuff said" kept the Irish singing "Sweet Adeline" before and after games.

The 1914 Boston Miracle Braves were exactly that. On July 4th of that year they were in last place, but they went on to win the National League pennant under manager George Stallings. They not only beat the three times champion Athletics under Cornelius McGillicuddy (generally called “Connie Mack” or "The Tall Tactician”) but humiliated him.

By 1921, twelve of the original sixteen major league franchises had played in a World Series at least once. That left the St. Louis Cardinals, the St. Louis Browns, the Washington Senators and the New York Yankees. However, in that year’s World Series (which was played 100 years ago last October 5th, 1921), the Yankees, under the direction of their little manager Miller Huggins and with the help of the mighty George Herman (Babe) Ruth, ignited the team. Founded in 1903, they were originally called the Hilltoppers and later were known as the Highlanders because their original park was atop the highest point in New York City. By 1912, the Highlanders were the New York Yankees and the Boston Pilgrims or Americans had become the Red Sox.

This year, the World Series has the traditional format. The first team to win four games out of seven is the winner. The first two games will be held at Minute Maid Park in Houston, Texas and the three middle games of the possible seven game series will be held at Truist Park, the home of the Atlanta Braves which opened in 2017. Corporations rather than individuals head up both teams. Back in 1921, the Giants were owned by Charles A. Stoneham. His son Horace Stoneham would move the franchise to San Francisco at the close of the 1957 season. The Yankees were jointly owned by Colonel Jacob Ruppert and another colonel with the incredible name of Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston, a former U.S. Army engineer. (The two colonels didn't like each other much and Colonel Ruppert soon bought out Colonel Huston.) Truist Park in Atlanta is owned by a finance company and Minute Maid Field is of orange juice fame.

The year 2021 marks the fifth consecutive year that the Houston Astros have been in post season play. An exceedingly hard and consistent hitting team, they can go a long way with little pitching, but they've also had several of baseball's greatest pitchers on their roster including people like Justin Verlander, Zack Greinke, and Garrit Cole. Their hitting power is awesomely consistent and overwhelming, as often as not. The Atlanta Braves are also hard-hitting, but they are a younger team with only limited post season experience compared to the Astros.

The Braves have been a part of the National League almost from the beginning of professional baseball. Previously, I mentioned the “Miracle Braves" of 1914 who literally came from oblivion to win the National League pennant. They went on to sweep that year's World Series against the veteran Athletics. The team played in Boston through the 1952 season and then moved to Milwaukee where they played the Yankees in the 1957 and 1958 series. They won in '57 and lost in '58. However, many of their players are Baseball Hall of Fame legends including Hank Aaron, Warren Spahn, and Eddie Mathews.

The Astros came into the National League in 1962 as did the Mets. Until 1964, they were called the Houston Colt .45s. The Astrodome (which was built by their owner Roy Hofheinz) was for a time called "the Eighth Wonder of the World."

Both the Astros and the Braves are led by managers who are highly respected throughout the league. The Astros' Johnnie B (Dusty) Baker played from 1968 through 1986 with the Atlanta Braves, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants, and Oakland A’s. As a ballplayer, he was in three World Series with the Dodgers: 1977, 1978, and 1981. His last World Series as a player was his victorious series. As a manager, he's managed the Giants, Cubs, the Nationals, and now the Astros. At age 72, it would be most fitting if he were to win this series. Everyone likes Dusty Baker —  players, opposing managers, umpires and fans alike. Dusty Baker is a native of Riverside, California.

Brian Gerald Snitker, a native of Decatur, Illinois, is in his fifth year as the Braves’ manager. Never a major league player, Snitker is an organization man. He began as a player in 1977, catching and playing first base. Apparently, he decided early that his ability to coach or teach would be far more valuable to the Braves' organization than his playing ability. Snitker's son Troy was drafted by the Braves in 2013 and is now an Astros' hitting coach. (As the late, great Mel Allen would say, how about that!)

As mentioned above, the Braves were World Series participants in 1914 (Miracle Braves), 1948 (Boston Braves), 1957-58 (Milwaukee Braves), 1991, 1992, and 1995 (that year they were the champions of baseball), and 1999 as the Atlanta Braves. As for the Houston Astros, the last time they played in a World Series was in 2005 as champions of the National League. That year, the Astros were swept by the Chicago White Sox, four games to zip. They were transferred to the American League in 2013. Thus, the 2021 World Series is being played by two former National League teams: now, how about that!

As to what it all means, for you and me it may only be of passing interest, but for the Snitker family, the outcome is truly personal!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY 

THANK YOU GENERAL! NOW IT'S UP TO US TO LIVE UP TO YOU!

By Edwin Cooney

In less than 24 hours after General Powell's passing, something of a miracle occurred. Men and women, Republicans and Democrats from both houses and aisles of Congress, were remembering former General, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and citizen Colin Powell with both admiration and gratitude.

Although as dedicated to American military superiority and as interested in America's successful engagements in international affairs as Generals MacArthur and Dwight Eisenhower were, like the latter, General Powell was a moderate in the application of American prerogatives. When he was George Herbert Walker Bush's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1990 and ’91, he privately asserted that Saddam Hussein should be kept in office. Publicly he stated that our military objective in Iraq was to isolate Saddam Hussein's army and then proceed to kill it. After being appointed Secretary of State by George W. Bush (whom he used to call Sonny), he originally thought it was necessary to maintain Hussein in office due to the likelihood that Saddam's successor could be much worse. Nevertheless, following 9/11, Secretary of State Powell became convinced that the Iraqi leader possessed “weapons of mass destruction.” He therefore went before the United Nations on Thursday, February 5th, 2004 and declared that given the existence of such weapons in the wake of 9/11 it was necessary to occupy Iraq and remove Hussein from office. Subsequently, when it was discovered during our invasion of Iraq that no such weapons existed, Secretary Powell decided that it was time for him to go.

General Powell was neither personally or professionally flawless, a reality he never sought to hide. He later told broadcaster Barbara Walters that he considered that U.N. speech a stain on his public record.

Politically, Colin Powell was registered first as an Independent, but during the 1990s he reregistered as a Republican. In 2000, although he was inclined to support the presidential candidacy of Senator John McCain, General Powell was significantly highly regarded enough to address the GOP convention that would nominate George W. Bush and later to be appointed by President-elect Bush to be Secretary of State. He was the newly elected president's first announced cabinet member and, in view of the controversy surrounding Governor Bush's election, General Powell's appointment strengthened the new president's political legitimacy. "We're a political nation," Powell once observed. "There's nothing dirty about it!”

From time to time, Citizen Powell's political choices pleased and disappointed the partisans of both parties. His almost instinctive desire to support John McCain originally displeased the George W. Bush camp and some Conservatives were likely unhappy that his address to the 2000 Convention urged Republicans to support programs for the education and betterment of children and minorities. Having decided in 1995 that he lacked the drive to campaign for the presidency, he nevertheless felt obligated to announce his support for Senator Barack Obama two weeks before the 2008 election despite his personal high regard for Senator McCain. Although he never left the GOP, he would vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and for Joseph Biden in 2020. Of Donald J. Trump, Secretary Powell's judgment was harsh. "He's a national disgrace and an international pariah!” said the 4 star general.

Colin Luther Powell's death is indeed sad. However, the bipartisan and biracial approval and admiration of what he accomplished and achieved indicates that there remains a spark of national pride and even unity in these fifty states that once upon a time were united under the Union flag — but never under the Confederate flag!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

WHICH IS THE SUREST ROAD TO PERFECTION: DEMOCRACY OR MERITOCRACY?

By Edwin Cooney

As most of us learn in grade school, you and I live in a democracy. The leaders are elected and even appointed to high office by a majority in either the state or national electorate.  Federal executives and judiciary members  are confirmed by most voting members of the Senate and sometimes by the House. Over the years, especially in these days of increasingly political polarization, some are advocating that our leadership should be both elected and appointed by merit rather than by favor. Thus the question above: ought we to be a democracy or a meritocracy?

The delicious aspect of this question is: who ultimately controls the "ought" of the issue. George Washington, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and the rest of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention debated and decided during that hot Philadelphia summer of 1787 that a democracy, largely due to its flexibility, was preferable to any other form of government.

Alexander Hamilton and John Jay tended to favor a meritocracy as did other future Federalists in the eventual Washington Administration. John Adams and Alexander Hamilton (who came to heartily dislike one another) essentially believed in government by "the better born and educated" where as men like Madison and George Mason favored government open to the wisdom of the farmer and small merchant. Ultimately, we became a democracy primarily due, I think, to the lack of practicality in meritocracy.

I'm convinced that the call to government by meritocracy is a call for government by, of, and for people of perfection. The question therefore is: who are these people and where do they live?

My friend “Albany Steve,” a gentleman of considerable principle and integrity, appears to be leaning toward preferring government by men and women of merit as opposed to government by pure politics. However, as I see it, there are several exceedingly serious flaws in government by men and women of merit.

The first and most fundamental issue is: who decides who is sufficiently meritorious to deserve trust in a potential meritocracy? Back in the late 1780’s, only General George Washington was unanimously regarded as possessing sufficient merit or worthiness to select a government worthy of governing this newly independent and free republic. (Note that by the close of his presidency, President Washington wasn't quite as meritorious as he was at the outset of his two administrations.)

Second, what values, beliefs and principles ought men of sufficient merit hold to be trusted with the cares of public office?

Third, as Albany Steve points out in his message to me, James Madison in Federalist Paper #51 writes: "If men were angels no government would be necessary.”

Fourth, while there are men and women possessed of above average judgment, principle, and integrity, as I see it, no one is sufficiently gifted with an adequate amount of judgment and principle to be labeled “perfect.” Any student of the Bible reminds us on a regular basis of the imperfection of humankind. Hence, as I see it, meritocracy demands a higher degree of perfection than the Bible acknowledges humans of possessing. Even more to the point, people admire perfection in arts, crafts, and athletics, but they tend to resist and even resent intellectual and spiritual perfection.

Political polarization isn't so much a question of differences of values and principles as it is a question of who gets to apply various aspects of judgment. Back in 1976, for instance, the GOP platform said that the whole matter of abortion rights ought to be left up to the individual states. Another significant political and social change can be found in the fact that at one time states' rights was a fundamental principle of the Democratic Party. States' rights and less government have become GOP principles today.

Today, rather than celebrating our right to see things differently, we glory in charging each other with extremism. Have you ever heard a liberal talk about the “moderate right”? Have you ever heard a conservative refer to the “near left”?

Many years ago, I put the above distinction to my friend Ken from Alameda, California, a strict conservative. He finally decided that the only near or moderately leftwing personages he'd ever heard of were his wife Nancy, me, and — get this — Jesus Christ. How's that for political judgment!

In 2021, we're more interested in accusation than we are in accommodation. Today, presidential candidate George Washington would be judged more as a slave owner than as either a general or administrator. President Washington demonstrated in his farewell message his lack of both intellectual and moral judgment when he criticized political parties without advocating a better way to select future leaders. After all, he didn't even suggest that we should become a meritocracy as Albany Steve appears to soon be ready to advocate!

Hey, Albany Steve, I just compared you to George Washington while Alameda Ken once compared me to….OH, NEVER MIND!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE DAY SOVIET RUSSIA GOT US AND THE U.S.A. "ALL SHOOK UP!”

By Edwin Cooney

Nineteen fifty-seven was an amazing year — one of my favorites growing up. Rock’n’roll radio was really taking off. Elvis was certainly king but Pat Boone, Fats Domino, Paul Anka, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Everly Brothers, and, surprisingly, Harry Belafonte's calypso music dominated pop music. For ladies, soft woolly sweaters, poodle skirts, and, for men, white sport coats and black slacks were the fashion. Automobiles sported tail-fins and cigarette smoking was as "in" as hot rod racing. Ike and Dick Nixon were in the White House. 

Friday, October 4th, 1957 separated the second and third game of the 1957 World Series between the New York Yankees and the upstart Milwaukee Braves. The teams were tied in the series, one game apiece. Suddenly, that Friday, even baseball's World Series took second place in the hearts of many (although not mine!) when Moscow radio announced that a satellite had been launched into space and would orbit the earth every 98 minutes. In geopolitical or in American  language, a nation of “slave laborers” had outstripped a nation of free men and women in such a way as to almost immediately endanger America's national security. After all, millions of Americans wondered if the Russians could launch a satellite that contained primarily equipment, how long would it take them to launch an atomic bomb orbiting the earth which at the very least would make Nikita Khrushchev and Communism the master of all humanity?

The Russians, of course, denied such an intention, but they certainly gloried in the political prestige their scientific breakthrough awarded them. Huge changes in the United States military, in technology, in high school and university syllabuses were the result of that little Russian satellite.

Sputnik, which is Russian for "fellow traveler,” was the size of a beach ball (about 23 inches) and weighed 80 pounds.  It lacked the information-gathering capacity of even the United States’ Explorer 1 which only weighed 31 pounds, but it packed a political and social wallop to our national psyche that wouldn't be matched until 9/11.   

As a student of history, I can name two types of dates. First there are memorable dates which excite, sadden or even disgust us. Then, there are dates that are both memorable and affect our self-perception and future attitudes and policies in both our domestic and foreign affairs.

Declarations of war both reflect who we are and stamp our future as a nation. Here are some dates of lasting significance:

On Friday, June 18th, 1812, we declared war on Great Britain. 

On Wednesday, May 13th, 1846, Congress declared war on Mexico. 

On Friday, April 12th, 1861, Confederate forces drove the Union Army out of Fort Sumter thus opening the Civil War. 

On Friday, April 6th, 1917, Woodrow Wilson signed Congress’ Declaration of War on Germany and the Central Powers of Europe. 

Finally, on Monday, December 8th, 1941, FDR signed Congress's Declaration of War on Japan. (Note: on Thursday, December 11th, 1941, Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States in response to our war declaration on Japan as part of his “Axis.”)  

So devastating have declarations of war been that no president has recommended and no Congress has adopted any such presidential request in the nearly 80 years since. The Korean War was called a "police action" and the first Gulf War was called an “authorization.”

Other dates of lasting significance include December 8th, 1941 (Pearl Harbor Day); August 6th and 9th, 1945 (our atomic response to Pearl Harbor Day); June 26th, 1950 (when President Truman asked the United Nations to resist North Korea's invasion of South Korea); Monday, May 17th, 1954 (when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Brown vs. Board of Education which determined that separation of the races in education was not equal); Tuesday, April 12th, 1955 (the tenth anniversary of FDR's death which was the day that the Salk Polio vaccine was announced); Wednesday, March 1st, 1961 when John Kennedy signed an executive order calling for the establishment of a Peace Corps; Tuesday, October 8th, 1963 when JFK signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Great Britain and Soviet Russia; Friday, July 2nd, 1964, the day that Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights bill which would change mores and domestic political alliances; and Monday, January 22nd 1973, the day that the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision on Roe v. Wade, constitutionally sanctioning abortions. Of course, on Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, we were attacked by Al-Qaeda. Finally, there’s January 6th, 2021 when President Donald Trump authorized and sanctioned treasonous activity against the Congress and Constitution of the United States.

By Thursday, October 26th, 1957, the batteries of Sputnik One were drained and by Saturday, January 4th, 1958, the Soviet''s first satellite had been destroyed after losing power and drifting back into Mother Earth's atmosphere.

On Saturday, January 31st, 1958, the United States launched Explorer 1, a much smaller satellite which contained more sophisticated instruments. The race to the moon had begun in earnest. Fortunately, all humanity has benefited with the scientific and medical advances although too often the venture has been hazardous.

The batteries for Explorer 1 finally ran out on Friday, May 23rd 1958, but it remained in orbit until Tuesday, March 31st, 1970.

As the French, our original allies, might say: Long live the memory of Friday, October 4th, 1957!

One more thing. If you know a date that was equally or even more significant than the ones I mentioned above, you’re perfectly welcome to offer it!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY    

SUDDENLY, ALONG CAME LYNDON!

By Edwin Cooney

Friday, November 22nd, 1963 was, of course, the day Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson became President Johnson. However, Wednesday, January 20th, 1965, known nationally as Inauguration Day, was the day the big 6 foot 3 inch, 210 pound Texan became everyone's master.  In LBJ's mind, it may well have been Lyndon Baines Johnson's Liberation or Freedom Day. His lifelong ambition to be elected President of the United States was a reality. He was master of Vice President Hubert Humphrey, of House Speaker John McCormack, and Senate leaders Mike Mansfield and Everett Dirksen, the latter his frequent after five p.m. drinking companion. He was clearly boss of numerous former Kennedy associates including Robert McNamara, JFK's "brilliant" Secretary of Defense, and, of course, Secretary of State Dean Rusk. He had even gotten more votes in the State of New York than had Robert F. Kennedy, someone he truly and deeply despised! He was bigger physically, politically and rank-wise than most. Everyone, even social and fiscal activists, had to check first with LBJ to assure the legitimacy of their interests and even their handling of them.

His political experience was born in the 1930s when he was an assistant to Texas Congressman Richard Kleberg. By 1935, he'd been appointed chairman of the Texas branch of the National Youth Administration. In the spring of 1937, he was in Congress due to a special election he narrowly won. In 1948, he won the Democratic Senatorial Primary over Governor Coke Stevenson by just 87 votes out of a total vote of 9,888,000 Texans. Henceforth, he would be known as “Landslide Lyndon!”

His judgment of people and situations was such that he instinctively knew who he should befriend or show deference, and who he could afford to bully and thus control. He kept records of birthdays, anniversaries, instances of favor and instances of defiance. LBJ often quoted his father Sam Johnson, a state legislator, who told his eldest son: If you can't walk into a room and immediately tell who is for you and who is against you, you're in the wrong business.

As I listened to him beginning on Wednesday, November 27th, 1963, I heard more of a demanding than a  commanding voice, far from JFK's New England/Harvard eloquence. In the coming months, there were stories of how LBJ begged and wheedled Chief Justice Earl Warren into heading up the commission assigned to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy. As for his treatment of Robert Kennedy, understandable as that might be in view of their mutual dislike, it nevertheless seemed cruel and unpresidential at the time.

As the 1964 presidential campaign unfolded, as a partisan Republican, Barry Goldwater, seemed to me to be determinedly principled while Lyndon Johnson seemed purely opportunistic. Only with time and events did I begin to learn what it might have been like to grow up and become a truly progressive politician in the South. How Lyndon Johnson pulled it off is an amazing story.

He began by systematically befriending southern leaders such as House Speaker Sam Rayburn, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Richard B. Russell of Georgia, John McClelland of Arkansas, Robert Kerr of Oklahoma and J. William Fulbright, also of Arkansas. LBJ often referred to President Franklin D. Roosevelt as "my second daddy!" (Interestingly and, I believe, significantly, I've neither heard nor read of any special relationship LBJ developed with South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond.)

LBJ was essentially a New Dealer who was devoted to using government's resources to alleviate poverty, misery, disease and ignorance, not only from the United States but from the world community as well. A number of historians these days have come to believe that one of  President Johnson's goals in Vietnam was to demonstrate to everyone that New Deal-style democracy was the ultimate and permanent answer to world Communism and despotism.

Over time, I began to understand and even sympathize with LBJ's goals although his methods were ultimately ineffective insofar as world New Dealism was concerned.

Many were shocked by Johnson's transformation from a typical Southern segregationist who would vote for poll taxes and oppose anti-lynching bills into a civil rights leader. By 1965, he had shepherded three civil rights acts through Congress breaking the House Rules Committee's stranglehold on civil rights issues, a deed President Kennedy had been unable to accomplish. He accomplished this by campaigning to have a majority of House members sign a discharge petition which, if passed, would take the bill out of the jurisdiction of the House Rules Committee. Congressman Howard Smith, the Rules Committee chairman, began to give way as House members began to steadily sign the discharge petition. Subsequently, Smith, a lifelong segregationist from Virginia, was forced to allow his committee to consider the Civil Rights bill which was passed by the House of Representatives on January 30th, 1964. This movement on LBJ's part began on the nights of November 26th and 27th,1963, LBJ's fifth and sixth days as president. When advised to move slowly on civil rights legislation, LBJ is said to have responded: What the hell is the presidency for!

What's below is Lyndon Johnson's explanation of what compelled him to become a civil rights president. He had obviously waited for the right time and set of circumstances to pull it off. I only wish I could transmit the sound of his voice as he stood before Congress and told this story on Monday night, March 15th, 1965.

"My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas in a small Mexican American school. Few of my students could speak much English and I couldn't speak much Spanish. My students were poor and they often came to school without breakfast, hungry! And they knew, even in their youth, the pain of prejudice. They never seemed to know why people disliked them. But they knew it was so, ‘cause I saw it in their eyes! I often walked home late in the afternoon after the classes were finished wishing there was more that I could do. But all I knew was to teach them the little that I knew hoping it would help them against the hardships that lay ahead. And somehow, you can never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the face of a hopeful young child! I never thought then in 1928 that I would be standing here in 1965. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students and people like them all over the country. But now I do have that chance. And I'll let you in on a little secret. I intend to use it!” 

I believe he meant every word. Absent in his presentation of that story was his traditional whining and pleading tone.

As Johnson spoke those words, I was still in that place of spiteful ignorance incapable of a capacity for genuine discernment. I was not only ready, but even anxious to believe that LBJ surely had something to do with President Kennedy's assassination. Only gradually was I even capable to grasp what Lyndon Baines Johnson was really and truly all about!

Where are you as you evaluate people, their motives, and the events they oversee? Hopefully, you're ahead of where I once was!

Lyndon Baines Johnson these days rates in my top ten presidents, just below Theodore Roosevelt and just above Woodrow Wilson.

When I think of LBJ these days, there is lots to inspire and admire. There's even much to love! The fly in the LBJ ointment is that too often there was little to like!

Still, with all that can legitimately be criticized, especially the Vietnam War, America is better off than it otherwise would be if he hadn't been our president!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

 

ROGER MARIS — HE LOVED THE GAME — HE HATED THE FAME!

By Edwin Cooney

Yes, indeed, the cost of fame is sometimes higher than the actual achievement, effort or money. Sometimes the price is your very individual dignity. On Wednesday, September 20th, 1961 (exactly 60 years ago today), Roger Eugene Maris of Hibbing, Minnesota and Fargo, North Dakota  hit home run  Number 59 and barely missed Number 60, thus falling short of Babe Ruth's season home run record from 1927. Back in July of 1961, Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick, a personal friend and former ghostwriter for the Babe, ruled that both Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle would have to hit 60 or 61 home runs in 154 games in order to be recognized as the new single season home run king of Major League Baseball. That was the last time the number of games would be an aspect of official record keeping. (The most stark example of this is that 13 years later when Henry Aaron hit his 715th home run thus breaking the Babe's career record, baseball rightfully ignored the fact that Henry Aaron had 12,364 career at bats while the Babe had only 8,399 at bats for a difference of 3,965 to "Hammering Henry’s" advantage. (Most modern baseball record holders have a “games played” advantage over their predecessors!)

Nineteen sixty-one was a fresh new year throughout America. We had a new young President, Jack Kennedy, and his lovely wife Jackie. Despite crises in Cuba and Berlin, despite the evil and godless Khrushchev, things were getting freer and perhaps a bit easier in America. Winston Churchill was still alive and in Parliament in Britain, Elvis was out of the army singing and making movies, The Beatles were performing in Germany  and the Yankees were still pennant contenders even though they'd just lost the 1960 World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Unlike George Herman (Babe) Ruth, Roger Maris was not naturally lovable! Roger was shy and often moody. He hated to talk about himself or his achievements. Maris came from a somewhat dysfunctional Minnesota and North Dakota family. An outstanding high school athlete, he considered playing football for coach Bud Wilkinson's University of Oklahoma Sooners but decided after visiting the college that he could earn much needed money almost immediately in professional baseball. Initially turned down by the Chicago Cubs, Maris’ next stop with his dad Rudy, Sr., was Cleveland and there they hit pay dirt!

Roger was about 6 feet tall and weighed around 200 pounds. He possessed a strong right throwing arm akin to those of Rocky Colavito (a Cleveland Indians teammate) and Roberto Clemente of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Even more, Roger Maris possessed a quick left-handed bat. His swing was short and quick and he had power to all fields, although much of it, as a left-handed hitter, was to right field — which was vitally important at Yankee Stadium with the low four foot wall being only 296 feet from home plate! 

Roger was a pretty typical Midwestern boy. Like The Babe, his family roots were in the Roman Catholic Church and the Democratic Party. The family's name was originally spelled "MARAS" until Roger substituted the second A with the letter I because he was sensitive to the altogether too typical and deliberate mispronunciation of his last name by fellow players, unfriendly fans, and members of the press. He was tall and muscular, with short blonde hair and hazel eyes. (Some said he looked facially a little like Elvis Presley minus the sideburns.) Although he had typical baseball ambitions to win a World Series, Roger would have been content to never go to New York City in search of big time fame. However, on Friday, December 11th, 1959, the Kansas City Athletics, to whom he'd been traded by the Cleveland Indians in June of 1958, sent him to the New York Yankees. To Maris, the differences between the two teams were as stark as the definition of success. Most important, in K.C. a player could develop on his own. In New York, players were not only pressured but too often followed by detectives to ensure their behavior and Yankee worthiness. In Kansas City, the press was benign while in New York, it was anything but! The truth was that Maris was content in Kansas City. The team, after all, was improving and he was a vital part of that improvement. His home was in Raytown, Missouri, a suburb of Kansas City. There he resided with his wife Patricia Ann (Carvel) Maris, two-year-old Susan, and one-year-old Roger, Jr. However, New York was where much of baseball's money and World Series success was, so, with misgivings, Roger joined the Yankees.

Roger Maris would spend seven seasons in New York from 1960 through 1966. In the first two seasons, he hit exactly 100 home runs, 39 in 1960 and 61 in 1961.

In 1960, Maris got a mere taste of big time fame when he hit 39 homers, second to Mickey Mantle's league-leading 40, and batted .285 with 112 RBIs. Roger Maris is one of only a few players to hit a home run in his first World Series at bat.

Maris's 61 homers, .269 batting average and 142 RBIs, important and significant as they ultimately were insofar as his earning power was concerned, constituted the shallowest part of his season. The unfortunate substance of his season was his discomfort with the press and their discomfort with him. He'd patiently answer questions about how he hit or the conditions under which he failed or succeeded, but he hated personal questions such as those having to do with his marriage. One reporter wondered if Roger "played"" while on the road. When Maris responded that "I'm a married man," the reporter is said to have responded to Maris saying: "I am too, but I'm not a radical about it!” Maris found questions like that presumptive and offensive. During the season, Roger and Mickey got a room with teammate Bob Cerv who had been a star with Maris in Kansas City in 1958. Near the end of the season, the pressure was such that Maris was losing handfuls of his hair. At the close of the season Maris was, for the second time in two seasons, the American League's Most Valuable Player. In addition to his 61 homers, he carried the Yankees through the 1961 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds. There would be a meeting with President Kennedy. He also received the diamond-studded Hickok Belt as Outstanding Professional Athlete of the year 1961. The following February, Maris signed a contract for $72,000 and, along with Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra, starred in a forgettable movie called "Safe At Home!” However, at about that time, all the glory suddenly stopped.

Reporters grew tired of Maris and he grew tired and even less cooperative with them. Old-timers such as Rogers Hornsby, the great National League batting star and Ruth contemporary, called Maris a “bush leaguer” and wrote stories about his rudeness toward fans and, even worse, toward children. (A young boy was reported to have asked Maris for his "John Hancock” on a baseball and Maris wrote that name. Reporters who witnessed that incident failed to report that Maris got the ball back and signed his full name to it.)

Maris had respectable years in 1962 and 1963 and, again, in 1964, but in 1965 he hurt his hand and was almost nonproductive for the rest of that year. Even worse, Yankee doctor Sidney Gaynor reported to Yankee General Manager Ralph Houk that he could find nothing wrong with Maris's hand. So, for the first time in his athletic life, he was suspected, to his resentment of "jaking." Additionally, as Mickey Mantle's career began to end and Yankee officials and fans began celebrating "The Mick", Maris's reputation began to plummet into press and fan contempt. Finally, on December 7th, 1966, the Yankees sent Roger Maris to the Saint Louis Cardinals for a journeyman third baseman, Charley Smith.

Roger Maris's temperament and background were ultimately unsuited to New York as was the stardom his achievements during the first two years earned him. Years later, contemporaries generally agreed that one of the reasons Roger Maris couldn't entirely enjoy his success was due to the fact that his older brother Rudolph, who'd been the superior athlete of the two brothers, had suffered a polio attack in 1951 that ended all likelihood of athletic success. Roger would often insist that his older brother was the superior athlete and family and friends agreed that Roger could never be really comfortable with his success.

During the late 1970s and into the 1980s, due to the efforts of Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, Roger Maris, New York fans, and even the press would make peace. In 1978 and in 1984, Roger Maris would return to Yankee Stadium to the cheers of fans to be recognized and, in 1984, to have his Yankee Number 9 retired. Still, fame, at its warmest and most profitable, was beyond Maris's capacity to enjoy. Hence, even those who loved him best (me included) are forced to admit that he spurned his fame up until April 13th, 1978 when he and Mickey Mantle raised the Yankees World Championship flag at Yankee Stadium.  

On Saturday, December 14th, 1985 at age 51 Roger Maris died in Houston, Texas of lymphoma cancer also known as Hodgkins Disease.

The date of his death was the same as teammate Elston Howard who died on Sunday, December 14th, 1980. Yankee teammates Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Johnny Blanchard, Bill Skowron, and Bobby Richardson braved the below zero temperatures of Fargo, North Dakota, where Maris was raised, to pay tribute and to bury him. Later that month, services were held at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, attended by George Steinbrenner and former President Richard M. Nixon who was especially attentive to Roger Maris's grandson who was in attendance.

Roger Maris didn't exactly ignore fame as he certainly derived much, although not all of the pecuniary benefits available, but the heart of fame is fickle and even jealous and Maris certainly failed to properly nurture it as fame inevitably demands.

His career statistics will, and perhaps shouldn't, be enough to put him into baseball's Hall of Fame. However, if you ask me, it's hard to identify Roger Maris's achievement of hitting 61 home runs in 1961 as being less famous than most achievements that are glorified in baseball's Valhalla!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY   

A LONG WEEKEND 50 YEARS AGO!

By Edwin Cooney

Edith Rachel Gassman, my best friend ever, was a quiet dignified lady. However, she was especially quiet that Friday, September 10th morning when she picked me up to take me back to Attica for the weekend. The first thing she told me upon entering my college room that morning was that a prison riot had occurred the day before and that a group of prisoners in defiance of warden Vincent Mancusi had control of Cell Block D. She told me further that two of our neighbors, Frank and Joe, were hostages of the rebellious prisoners. We hardly knew either Frank or Joe despite the fact that they lived on both sides of us — Frank lived just to our right and Joe lived to our left about three houses down the block. Edith grew even quieter when my reaction didn't match her sense of invasion and disquiet. She and her late husband had lived in Attica since the 1940s where they raised daughter Sharon and son Michael. Mr. Gassman had died in 1961 and Edith had become a house parent at the New York State School for the Blind in nearby Batavia, New York. That's where we met in the fall of 1963 and a year later she invited me to join her family as sort of a son. That was the core of our relationship from 1964 until her death in 2010. Thus, Attica didn't quite mean the same to me as it did to Edith. She also told me that a guard who had been injured on the day of the takeover and who eventually died, Billy Quinn, had been one of her Cub Scouts back in the 40s or 50s, although they were never really close personally.

Upon arriving in Attica that Friday, there was a certain expectancy of trouble that was about to visit either the town (the population of which was approximately 2,500 citizens) or the prisoners. The prison population was 2,243 uneducated, young and angry Blacks and Puerto Ricans. According to Heather Ann Thompson's book "Blood In The Water," 40% were under 30, 77% came from cities, 80% had not graduated from high school, 63% were Black or Puerto Rican, and two thirds had been incarcerated before although that didn't mean that they were all hardened criminals. Many, as Ms. Thompson points out, had been transferred from more heavily populated prisons downstate due to their angry temperament and the overcrowded populations of downstate prisons. In other words, rather than building larger prisons downstate, the population problem was kicked upstate by the Department of Corrections as, no doubt, ordered by the governor.

Most people I knew, family included, heartily wished that the prison with its population of "criminals and perverts" lived elsewhere. As for me, I didn't care so much that they were in Attica. I was simply sorry that they had screwed up and hoped they would realize the error of their ways, and simply get through their sentences and get back home where they could be happy citizens once again. (I was still young and naive enough that living happily ever after was what could and should be everyone's fate!)

As the weekend passed, Atticans saw prominent newspaper men such as Tom Wicker from the New York Times, famous lawyers like William Kunstler, and Herman Schwartz, Assemblymen named James Emery and John Done, as well as a Congressman named Herman Bedillo enter their lives and ultimately judge community mores. They didn't much like it!

Throughout Saturday and into Sunday, I listened intensively to local radio and television. Saturday night, Bobby Seale of the Black Panther party flew in from San Francisco to offer his party's support to the rebels, but it turned out to have no substance. Neither Elijah Muhammad nor Lewis Farrakhan were willing to assist the prisoners in a substantial way. Meanwhile, lawyers William Kunstler and Herman Schwartz were doing all they could on behalf of the prisoners. Everyone, me included, was praying and hoping for the freedom of the correction officers who were hostages.

Whether Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller would or should make a personal appearance was both an open and debatable question. One of the most vivid moments of the weekend for me was when Michael Smith, Sr, father to correction officer Michael Smith, a hostage, said: “I don't care whether Rockefeller comes here or not, because I wouldn't walk across the street to even look at him, but he has an obligation to end this situation." That generally summed up most everyone's feelings. What was the cause of the riot was a matter which would have to be faced, but the ultimate feeling was to get it over with.

So, at 9:46 a.m. on the morning of Monday, September 13th, 1971, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller did exactly that. Consequently, ten hostages lost their lives, not because prisoners cut their throats and castrated one of the men (as the governor for some time believed), but because the supposed "sharp shooters" weren't such sharp shooters. (Happily, both Frank and Joe survived the crisis.) Author Heather Ann Thompson's book "Blood In The Water: The Attica Uprising in 1971 and its Legacy" tells the story and outlines its consequences in great detail.

A day or two after the re-occupancy of the prison, I heard Lawyer William Kunstler tell an audience: Nelson Rockefeller is a downright murderer! Now, when I call him a murderer, I am libeling him — and I dare him to sue me!

At the close of that historic weekend fifty years ago, I believed that "Rocky" had made the right, although agonizing, decision to re-occupy the prison. Yet, in the wake of Mr. Kunstler's public libel of the governor and no response from Mr. Rockefeller, I had to take Kunstler's charge seriously. I still continued to like and even admire Nelson Rockefeller through his Vice Presidency and up to his subsequent and morally untidy death on Friday night, January 26th, 1979.

Time and events have changed my perspective. Back in 1971, my mind and heart were very impressionable. I was still very much an establishment Republican. After all, that was my environment and, subsequently, my mind set.

I wonder if I'm less innocent than I was back in 1971 or if I'm merely differently innocent today?

I'll leave it up to you to decide!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY