watching the game

Literature, the New York Mets, and the Tug of Baseball

 

 

A paper presented at The 50th Anniversary of the New York Mets

Hofstra University ~  April 28, 2012

________

 

 

 

Judy Johnson, Hall of Fame, 1975.  

“Sure-handed third baseman from the sandlots of Delaware.  A key player in the  Negro Leagues.   Good instinctive base-runner . . . line drive hitter with an excellent batting eye; a smart, soft-spoken and well-respected player, an athlete whose intelligence set him apart." 

 

 

If I were a professional ballplayer, these are attributes I'd hope to display. William Julius Johnson.   Judy.   What an honor to bear his name. 

But I’m not that Judy Johnson.  I’m an English teacher, ordinary fan, mother of three children who love baseball.  One of those kids slept peacefully in my arms on a long escalator ride to the top of Candlestick Park in August 1986.   My firstborn son was six weeks old, and I had to show him the game, and the visiting team.  I had to show him my Mets.

Three summers later we sat in  95-degree heat, 8 rows from the tippy top of Shea Stadium, all sticky with Dove Bar and beer.  My boy was with me on the night that Number 8 kept Game 6 alive.   When it was all over, I jumped up and down on the bed  -   “They won! The Mets won!”  -  and twirled my baby around the room, screaming,  “I can’t believe they won!”   

A few months later that tiny child spoke one of his first words:  Mookie.  

I cannot boast vast quantities of baseball knowledge or memorabilia, but a few Mets items have taken up residence in my home:  a plastic chip-and-dip plate in the shape of a baseball glove molded in orange and royal blue. A 3x3 black-and-white photo of Ron Hunt, snapped on April 12, 1965.  He’s walking back to the dugout on a dreary opening day.  Few fans are in the seats at Shea.  We’re two hours early, Dad and I, and my  sisters, ages 5 and 7.  

On my writing desk, a ball signed by Tom Seaver, another by Ed Kranepool, together with an 8x11 portrait of Cleon Jones, his arms outstretched, body leaning forward, knees slightly bent, eyes looking up, hands coming together – and his graceful signature in bright blue permanent ink.  

I own an exquisite library full of books - classical, English, American, postcolonial; Dante, Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare; the OED complete 13-volume set, precious editions of Austen and Woolf, a slim folio signed by T.S. Eliot. Prodigious intellects lend gravitas to my collection:  the Jameses, both Henry and Bill, plus those of a different order: Kiner’s Corner; Straw;  The Bad Guys Won; Wherever I Wind Up; The Complete Game, by Ron Darling; Great Moments in Baseball, by Tom Seaver,  Miracle Man, Nolan Ryan;  Ya Gotta Believe! and 100 Things Mets Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die. 

I like the fact that John Donne keeps Tug McGraw company on my shelf.    I need the words of baseball.  I feel this as an intellectual and spiritual need, romantic and physical. 

I’ve followed the New York Mets for 50 years.  How can this possibly be?  How can I be older than a ball club?  I’ve endured longer than Shea Stadium did (by a decade), a fact that saddens and amuses me . . . .  

Rooting for the Mets as a child in the 1960s was a perfect way of preparing for life’s and baseball’s disappointments, failures, losses, and dysfunctions. Long before I heard the cliché, I understood viscerally that baseball is a game of failure, because I lived that truth with the early Mets. They taught us not to set the bar too high, until along came an expertly coached team of men who showed us the difference between mediocrity and grandeur.  I rooted for the Mets because they were my dad’s team.  Their abysmal debut season 40-120 felt like a huge win to me, because I’d discovered an amazing game at the tender age of 7 and delighted in every part of it. 

Baseball didn’t begin with souvenirs, t-shirts, and a lot of food; it started with names, sounds, and rhythms in our home.  It began with words. 

My father was a Dutch Reformed minister who worked 7 days a week and many evenings too, but when he came home and spent time with me, baseball asserted itself as language, and this is how the game felt most real. My dad spoke two languages, scripture and baseball, his words rooted in love, with phrases that became deeply embedded in my young psyche:   “3-2 count,” Love is patient and kind . . .  “in the cellar,” my rock and my Redeemer . . .  “6-4-3 double play,”  and the Word was made flesh.   

The game’s magical vocabulary - metaphor and idiom, syntax and rhythm, diction both poetical and crude – was the highlight of our daily conversation, a joyful mode of thought, a language that I loved.  While learning to speak English in increasingly complex ways during my school years, the splendid lexicon of baseball was a key part of the curriculum, while the New York Mets felt like something basic and fundamental – as normal, natural, and necessary as speech itself.

Baseball is a physical thing, of course, and I loved the grit of it long before Title IX and Little League finally opened the gates to young women. I played ball with Tunis Van Peenen and Michael Minervini every day after school on the John F. Kennedy playground. Traveling across the monkey bars, I sang my song of the ’66 Mets, their names forming a happy litany:  McMillan, Hunt, Luplow, Jones, Bressoud, Kranepool, Grote, Swoboda.  

The Mets kept me company long after the real boys went home.

While my best friend Janet Vandergoot gloated about Mantle, Maris, Murcer and Ford,  I defended Danny Napoleon and Choo Choo Coleman.  Baseball began with the names of men chanted on the playground, sung in the kitchen, playing on the radio out on the screened porch on summer nights, and read in the quiet of my closet while I studied many slim pieces of cardboard.  

The beginning of baseball was the word:   Edward Emil Kranepool.   6’ 3.”   205 lbs.   Bats:  L.    Throws:  L.   Bronx, NY. 

My eyes traveled slowly from one horizontal line to the next until a few diminutive letters stopped my breathing, and changed my life . . . .

 

 

 

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Literature, the NY Mets, and the Tug of Baseball

 

 

 

 

 

The Off Season

 

"It breaks your heart.   It is designed to break your heart."

                                                 

                                                                                                Veterans Field, Chatham


                                                                              

I am taking a break from baseball and baseball writing.   

See you in the spring!

 

 

"I was counting on the game's deep patterns, three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and its deepest impulse, to go out and back, to leave and to return home, to set the order of the day and to organize the daylight."

                                      -  A. B. Giamatti, "The Green Fields of the Mind"

 

 

 

Sacrifice

 

    Ted showed Josh pictures of his Marine exploits, and told him about being shot down in Korea.   He gave him the full load:  the mission, the attack, the ordnance involved, his eventual crash landing.  He said his favorite song, right behind "God Bless America," was "The Marine Hymn."   He said when people asked to know   "a little bit about me,"   in the way of summarizing,   "I say,    'I was a Marine . . .  It was the best team I ever played for."

                                                                         - John Underwood on Ted Williams

                                      

 

________

 

Sacrifice.    1.  Primarily, the slaughter of an animal (often including the subsequent consumption of it by fire) as an offering to God or a deity.

2.  That which is offered in sacrifice; a victim immolated on the altar; anything (material or immaterial) offered to God or a deity as an act of propitiation or homage.

3.  The offering by Christ of Himself to the Father as a propitiatory victim in his voluntary immolation upon the cross; the Crucifixion in its sacrificial character.

4.  The destruction or surrender of something valued or desired for the sake of something having, or regarded as having, a higher or a more pressing claim.

b.  A victim; one sacrificed to the will of another; also, a person or thing that falls into the power of an enemy or a destructive agency. 

                                                                            - The Oxford English Dictionary

 

________

 

sacrifice  1.  n.  A sacrifice hit.   Abbrev.   S,  1; sac.   1st Use.  1880 (Chicago Inter-Ocean, June 29; Edward J. Nichols).   2.  v.  To make a sacrifice hit.    3.  v.  To advance a baserunner by means of a sacrifice hit.  Etymology.  From the concept of a batter giving himself up for the good of the team by advancing or scoring a teammate.

sacrifice bunt   A sacrifice hit in which a bunted ball with less than two outs advances one or more baserunners and the batter is put out at first base, or would have been put out except for a fielder's error.   The batter is not credited with an official at-bat and may be credited with a run batted in if a baserunner scores.  A sacrifice bunt is not credited to the batter if any runner is put out attempting to advance one base or when, in the judgment of the official scorer, the batter is bunting primarily for a base hit.  Compare drag bunt.   1st Use.  1935.  "A sacrifice bunt is a bunted ball laid down for a like purpose."

sacrifice fly  A sacrifice hit in which a fly ball or line drive, either fair or foul, with less than two outs, is caught but hit deep enough for an outfielder (or an infielder running in the outfield) to handle and to allow one or more baserunners to tag up and score.  It has been typified as a "bunt with muscles."  The batter is not credited with an official at-bat, but is credited with a run batted in ...."

                                   -  Paul Dickson, The New Dickson Baseball Dictionary

 

________

 

Eddie Murray, Cal Ripken, Robin Yount, Hank Aaron, Frank Thomas, George Brett, Rusty Staub, Don Baylor, Gary Sheffield.   What do these ballplayers have in common?   They are career leaders when it comes to hitting sacrifice flies in the realm of major league baseball.   Dan Haren, Wade Davis, Jeff Francis, and CC Sabathia currently rank among AL leaders in "sacrifice bunts off," a curious distinction.

Sac fly, sac bunt, sac hit, sacrifice hitter.    I like a game in which there aren't just late-inning heroics, but quieter acts that often go unnoticed.  I admire the athlete who adopts the concept of sacrifice in a strategic approach to winning.  

Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, Bob Feller, Larry Doby, Duke Snider, Ralph Kiner and many more Hall of Famers once welcomed risks of a different order altogether.    Their names quietly grace a special plaque that stands at the entrance to baseball's hallowed chamber.  Lat. Sacrificium.  Sacred. Sacrosanct.  Sacrament.  Consecrate.  Sacrifice.

 

The number of major league players who served in the Army, Air Force, Coast Guard, Marine Corps, Merchant Marines, and Navy during World War II is truly staggering.  U.K. citizen and self-described "amateur baseball historian" Gary Bedingfield has gone the distance in honoring the ultimate sacrifices of numerous athletes in his masterful tribute, Baseball's Dead of World War II as well as in a blog, Baseball in Wartime, which memorializes many hitherto unsung heroes.  There is nothing whatsoever amateurish about Bedingfield's profound contributions to the game and to our nation's history.

Killed in action.   Died from wounds.   Died in hospital.   Auto Accident.   Killed in Action.   Killed in Action.   Plane Crash.   Plane Crash.   Plane Crash.  Military Accident.   Died from Illness.   Lost at Sea.   The list goes on and on and on and on.    Visit the  Baseball in Wartime site and read vertically the various causes of death; the mere act of considering that long, long list of fatalities while contemplating the nature of loss and sacrifice is a sobering way in which we fortunate ones, the beneficiaries of freedom, might begin to honor our dead.

In baseball and in war, there are both heroes and nameless ones.  Heroic acts are performed on the playing field and on the battlefield, together with countless acts of sacrifice that will never show up in any box score.

Today I honor the noble memory of American heroes and mourn the names upon names upon names of the dead, including those who left the game they loved and traveled to distant shores and skies, never to return to life from fields of war; the named and unnamed individuals whose formidable acts of sacrifice enter a realm that is beyond words.

 

 

 

To fallen soldiers let us sing,

Where no rockets fly nor bullets wing,

Our broken brothers let us bring

To the Mansions of the Lord.

No more bleeding, no more fight,

No prayers pleading through the night,

Just divine embrace, eternal light

In the Mansions of the Lord.

Where no mothers cry and no children weep,

We will stand and guard though the angels sleep,

All through the ages safely keep

The Mansions of the Lord.

 

 

                                                                                            -   Randall Wallace

 

 

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View from the Lone Red Seat

 

World Series 2007, Game 2

The lone red seat at Fenway Park offers a terrific view of the live action.   No wonder they named a radio show after it.   Views don’t get much better than this:  that’s what my son and I were thinking one windless October night as Curt Schilling took the field in what would be the final game of his career.

 “View from the Lone Red Seat” made its debut on Blog Talk Radio three weeks ago as Mike Lynch and Seamheads.com went national in covering the major baseball markets.   Sponsored by Big League Chew bubble gum, the Boston show and its hosts Dave Rattigan, Chris Mascaro, and Bob Lazzari got me thinking about the curious appeal of baseball talk, the phenomenon of talk shows in general, and the significance of human conversation.

Why do people tune in to this stuff?   Why do the conversations of others engage us, especially when we participate only as passive listeners, seldom contributing?   Where did the concept come from anyway?   I’m guessing Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, and Jack Parr had something to do with it.

I wonder what we gain from being privy to a two- or three-way conversation that doesn’t include our own voices.  The concept is mystifying to me.  What piece of our nature does it satisfy?

Talk doesn't happen exclusively in sports, of course.  Daytime television provides countless examples of famous individuals enjoying personal conversations with invited guests.  Strong-minded women on "The View" converse among themselves every single weekday while an entire audience sits rapt and mute.  Mike and Mike have their microphones, Regis and Kelly their coffee cups, while Kathie Lee and Hoda favor wine.  Martha, Rachael, Ellen, Rush, Oprah, and Dr. Phil have conversations too, engaging with others while hungry audiences sit back and process information.   Even the nightly news is presented on CNN, MSN, FOX, and ESPN in the form of conversation.  Sports talk keeps us alert during the long commute home, Don Orsillo and Jerry Remy entertain us with their laughter in the evening, and Letterman initiates late night conversation.  

What’s with all the talk?    We don’t even know these people.   

Are our own lives and personal interactions with kids, spouses, co-workers, and significant others so predictable, unsatisfying, or lacking in content that we turn to complete strangers to fill the void?   How curious that anyone should choose to listen.   

Conversations are a huge part of baseball, almost as significant as runs, hits, errors, and OBP.  First basemen can often be seen chatting amiably as they welcome opponents to the bag, sharing jokes or observations and exchanging a few pleasantries.  Keith Hernandez comes immediately to mind.  Guys who gather closely on the mound or as a trio in the outfield during a pitching change always engage in conversation, though it's likely their words have nothing to do with baseball.   There’s ongoing chatter in the clubhouse, dugouts, bullpens, boxes, and bleachers; before, during, and after the game, conversation is the essence of baseball.  The possibilities are infinite.

From what I’ve experienced in the past twenty years, baseball talk comes easily to boys who routinely learn a lot of names, numbers, trivia, and stats.  Their conversation entertained me one cold January afternoon in a venue that smelled of wet hay and manure.  (The damp arena housed youth soccer leagues and an annual county fair.)    I sat on the cold bleachers with a few moms who paid attention to the game in fits and starts -  take it to the side! - but mostly they discussed random errands and the week’s menus, both carry-out and home-cooked.    As if for counterpoint’s sake, a few boys sitting behind us talked sports nonstop.   Their conversation effortlessly became a competition, and I happily tuned in.

Name whateverMLBplayers you can fromAtoZwithoutstopping.   Abreu, Bonds, Canseco, Delgado.    Leftover chicken parm, salmon is cheaper at Market Basket, potato skins at the Ninety-Nine, Niekro, Ojeda, Piazza, Sal’s Pizza, stuffed shells, Chinese, Yastrzemski, Zito.  Score.  One kid spoke all the way to Z without breathing.   I love hearing what boys bring to the table.

Baseball talk is a language I don’t always understand, however:  “If you drop the arm to the ten o’clock position, you will get under the slider and the spin will become fat . . . if he could become very strong from his fingertips to his elbow, he could throw the slider effectively by just cutting through the ball . . .  that means it moves faster and goes down with more bite.  That doesn’t necessarily mean the pitch will be better, but the tighter the spin the more controlled the pitch can be . . .  the quarter slider can back up and be a funky pitch.”   Drop, fat, bite, slide.   In case you don’t recognize the voice, that’s Tim McCarver talking about Steve Carlton.  The spin will become fat:   what exactly does that mean?  

I haven’t fully mastered baseball’s vocabulary, but I do love its sound.   (That’s pretty much what Virginia Woolf said after hearing    T. S. Eliot read The Waste Land back in 1922, by the way:  "I didn’t understand the meaning, but I liked the sound.")

When the Seamheads.com radio hour made its Boston debut a few weeks ago, I tuned in while eating supper at the kitchen counter, laptop near my plate.  The baseball conversation was like dinner music to my ears.   Maybe I’m wired a little differently, but I would choose “View from the Lone Red Seat” over THEVIEW any day of the week.

Sports talk radio hosts are fascinating to me.   They know so much.  They can sustain monologues for unbelievably long stretches of time.  They treat complete strangers as their good friends.  They have trivia at their fingertips and never seem at a loss for words:   “In 2009 and 2010 the majority of his fly-outs were to center field and left field; only 26 per cent of his fly-outs were to right field.   I think that indicates he’s either late on the fastball and pops out, or he can’t get his hands inside or tries to pull the outside pitch causing him to weakly ground out to the right side.”  That’s an intelligent analysis of Jacoby Ellsbury’s limitations.  

To my knowledge, the hosts of “Lone Red Seat”  had never met each other prior to going on the air; they’re connected simply by a love of sport, the common ground of Red Sox nation, and the magic of cyberspace.

Unlike some forms of shrill talk radio and the noisy, contentious stuff I often mute on television, the Seamheads hosts generally agree on most counts while enhancing each other’s understanding of the game.  Upbeat, intelligent, and respectful, all are good listeners.   It doesn’t hurt that Mascaro’s smooth, articulate voice bears an uncanny resemblance to that of Theo Epstein, lending his substantive delivery added credibility; that Bob Lazzari offers tons of broadcast experience together with a balanced perspective that considers the Yankees and Red Sox with equanimity rather than with extremes of venom and affection; and that Dave Rattigan displays the swift and sometimes self-deprecating wit of a stand-up comedian, which is precisely what he is.   Rattigan’s appearance with Heidi Watney in a popular Olympia Sports commercial may endear him even more to Boston fans.

In just three weeks the trio has established a nice chemistry and pleasant sense of camaraderie.  The ensemble works.   Loosely scripted but sensibly outlined in advance, last week’s broadcast featured at least sixteen different topics and a few entertaining digressions, all of which the co-hosts ably managed in a 60-minute time frame.  

They began with a consideration of the Opening Day lineup, prompted by the daunting news that Terry Francona’s offense would be facing lefty C. J. Wilson in early April. “What are we gonna see?”  It's only March 1, I thought (participating inaudibly in the conversation), and we’re already worked up over Opening Day.

The ensuing discussion focused on Ellsbury's relative strengths and weaknesses (“sure would be nice if he could get his hands a little further inside”), with the inevitable comparisons to his predecessor:   “Everybody has been waiting for Ellsbury to turn into Damon.”   All agreed that Damon had been a “sensational” lead-off guy who “saw a lot of pitches . . . hit with enough power . . . and  displayed a complete mental game as a hitter.”  Mascaro wistfully concluded: “It was sad to watch him leave.”   

Looking back on 2010, Rattigan and Mascaro remembered Daniel Nava’s exhilarating first-pitch grand slam, though for a few seconds of genuine comedy they couldn't remember his name.  They pondered the uncertain future of Saltalamacchia and the worthy contributions of Marco Scutaro, a career .267 hitter “you can win a championship with . . . because he’s gritty enough.”  They applauded Youkilis for being a “good soldier” in transitioning over to third after the Gonzalez trade.    “He’ll make every routine play, and he’s gonna make that diving play to his right,”  Rattigan asserted, voicing concern that Youkilis might not always handle the slow chopper.

With Bob Lazzari situated in the tricky geographic territory where Boston and New York fans overlap, Tuesday evening's conversations are bound to turn to the Yankees.  From their imaginary vantage point up near the lone red seat, the hosts looked toward the Bronx and  pondered the uncertain future of a mighty franchise and its aging marquis players.  Before long we’ll be watching a whole new group of men in pinstripes, Lazzari reminded the audience, and what an unusual and profoundly strange sight that will be: “You’re replacing legends, not just good players.”

All agreed that it’s Boston’s championship to win in 2011.  How great it is to hear such optimism early in the season.   Words like championship and fun, and happy prophecies:  “This team is gonna be fun to watch in the field,” said Lazzari.    (You might be inclined to doubt this opinion if you happened to see the action on the infield at Ft. Myers this past Saturday in the top half of the first.)   Nagging issues and questions will invariably surface day in and day out:  Beckett's freak head injury; the lefties vying for a spot in a crowded bullpen.   “It’s somebody’s job to win.”   Auditions are in progress on a Sunday afternoon in Port St. Lucie even as I write this sentence.

All three hosts acknowledged that while a what-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong attitude has plagued Red Sox fans for decades, those days of gloom and doom are over.   From a distant southern location many miles from Fenway Park, Mascaro offered an apt corrective:   “We moved out of that neighborhood.   We used to live there . . . but we’re all about championships now.”

The momentum of a new season was picking up in the quiet of my kitchen, thanks to the pleasant rhythm and pure sounds of talk radio.  No visuals, no bells and whistles, just words.  A few friendly, intelligent voices, individuals who knew what they were talking about, agreeable company, and optimistic mindsets got me excited for a true spring.   The hour passed quickly and the show wrapped up as I cleaned my plate and took a final sip of inexpensive wine.

Do you ever find yourself in the midst of a dull encounter while a far more interesting conversation is happening across the room?  That’s how I feel about baseball talk.   Someone at very close range might be speaking to me, but I have no idea what those lips are saying because my ears are tuned to a group of guys who are having more fun on the other side of the room.  Blahblahblahblahdugout.   Something about seats near the dugout at Fenway Park - that’s the conversation I prefer to hear. 

Listening to sports talk on a quiet evening at the end of a long winter is not unlike dining in a restaurant alone.  Three guys at a nearby table are having a really  good time, more fun than anyone else in the place.   They’re talking baseball nonstop.  They have no idea you’re eavesdropping on their conversation, but you’re privy to it anyway, and their lively exchange makes the night more interesting.

Talk radio lets you in.   You can partake of it anonymously without an invitation.  You'll probably learn something, and heck, you can even call in:  347.945.7172.      It's a level playing field; just open the gate, and walk across the sweet turf. 

I love the give-and-take of a good baseball conversation no matter when and where it happens.   Familiar names and memories return, anecdotes are shared, predictions ventured, and baseball fans connect across the miles.    

Much as I like the sound of intelligent sports talk on the airwaves, the best conversation I know is the kind that happens, literally, up near the lone red seat, where my son and I once enjoyed a spectacular view and chatted about baseball the way it’s always best:  between pitches, between innings, at the end of a game, and finally in the car where our own animated discussion played out in counterpoint to a recap on the radio, and we talked about baseball all the way home.

 

 

 

 

"View from The Lone Red Seat" airs Tuesdays at 7 pm.  

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To join the live conversation please call  347.945.7172.

 

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of Fenway Park and the view from the lone red seat.

 

 

 

Let Freedom Ring

 

"I just felt the spirit of the game in me.  At that moment I felt the love of baseball."
 

 

 "It all came together, the sunshine and the music and I said to myself,  'Man, how fortunate you are to be playing this beautiful game in this beautiful country!'"

 

 

 

 

"I just looked at the whole picture of my life and thought about all the people around the world and  other planets and how I'm just a little dot on this earth but I got to play baseball."

 

 

"I truly, truly love baseball."

                                                                                      - Ernie Banks                                                                                                                          

 

 

 

Land of the free

 

 

 

 and home of the brave.
 

 

 

God bless America, my home sweet home.

 

 

 

 

 

Ernie Banks citation courtesy of Seth Swirsky, Something to Write Home About: Great Baseball Memories (Crown Publishers, 2003)