At 6 foot 2, Babe Ruth's 250 pound "official" final weight made him the original Big Sluggi (in contrast, David Ortiz is listed at 6 foot 4 and 230 - an estimate that seems rather kind - all things considered). When "The Sultan of Swat" launched his final 3 home runs, he was too sluggish to chug around the bases, but he still gave the crowd 3 more moonshots to remember him by. They weren't his most famous home runs - the one that he called (or didn't, depending on who is asked, and history supposedly vindicates) stands as that, and while I tend to side with a pitcher who was willing to admit to having a hankering for drilling any player who would do such a thing (Charlie Root), baseball legend is gold - just ask Abner Doubleday.
And Yankee lore is all about famous home runs. Reggie Jackson swung at 3 pitches on the night of October 18, 1977 when he made Burt Hooton, Elias Sosa, and Charlie Hough wish that they never dared to come to the Bronx. Three at bats. Three swings. Three long fly balls into the stands. Gotham was in pandemonium and all was celebration. The straw that stirred the drink had done it and proved to the world that it was he and not Thurmon Munson, then Yankee Captain, who was running the show with a little help from all of the clout that a 5 year $3 million contract (when that meant something - not this inflated era of just above league minimum pay).
But Jackson was what it meant to be in New York, leaving Oakland to come to the Bronx, he made his name over a half of a decade before moving on to California and back to Oakland to finish up his show with 563 jacks and 2597 strikeouts (in this, I'm sure he's hoping that Jim Thome gets 2 more full seasons). That said, strikeouts must be OK in the Big Apple. After all, Alex Rodriguez quietly has 1836 at age 34.
But all things considered, there is only one home run that has ever been hit in the house that Ruth Built (by a Yankee) that really moves me (the Pine Tar incident not withstanding):
Chris Chambliss - The Game 5 1976 walk off home run that ends with Yankee Stadium emptying onto the field so that Chambliss has to shove the fans out of his way.
Granted, I'm a Yankee hater, and I was a Brett fan. Had it not been for that home run, the Royals would have taken the game to extra innings on the strength of Brett's homer. However, the Yankees went to the World Series for the first time since the Maris era, and Steinbrenner had arrived as the owner he was to become.
In this, part of the game is loving the game and seeing its finest moments. Since this happened when I was 5, it wasn't like watching Aaron Boone. Hell, I feel nothing with Bucky Dent - I was 7 at the time and didn't follow baseball, but to lose the game now - to Jeter, A-Rod, or Cano... I'd feel that blast.
Chambliss was a thing of beauty - a more riotous version of Hank Aaron's finest blast without the feeling of "get the hell away from me you sons of bitches."
Showing posts with label Abner Doubleday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abner Doubleday. Show all posts
Friday, March 25, 2011
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Jebediah Springfield
Until 1796, he was Hans Sprungfeld, a murderous pirate that once tried to kill George Washington, but then, he left Maryland and headed west, and after a series of adventures and a desire not to have marital relations with his cousins, he became Jebediah Springfield, the founder of Springfield. Some point after that, he left his confessions for the world to see:
Know ye who read this there is more to my life than history records. Firstly, I did not tame the legendary buffalo, it was already tame, I merely shot it. Secondly, I have not always been known as Jebediah Springfield. Until 1796, I was Hans Sprungfeld, murderous pirate. And the half wits of this town will never learn the truth. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I write this confession so that my infamy will live on long after my body has succumbed to my infectious diphtheria.
And if that was how it all began, then it wasn’t much different than how the history of baseball began. Sure, there was no Lisa Simpson to ethically debate whether or not to tell the world about it, but eventually the truth would have to come out. In the meantime, baseball needed a founder, and it seemed logical that when Abner Graves “misremembered” having been privy to drawings from Abner Doubleday, the Army Captain became the creator of baseball, and so the historians who were attempting to create a history had found one or at least created a suitable alternative history.
Thus, in creating a truly American national game, this seemed to be much better than simply modifying the game of Rounders and taking from the British more than we wanted to in a day and age nearly a century after Rip Van Winkle had woken up to a new America twenty years after this fledgling country had swapped Georges, for to do that meant that we would be taking her daintyness, Jane Austen, and using her words from Northanger Abbey, "It was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base-ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books" to originate the national pastime of America. And while Germans would try to claim the earliest remembered mention of "Englischer Baseball" rules, the reality is that the earliest mention of the game that I love is "away flies the boy to the next post and then home with joy, which was written in 1744 by another British person, John Newberry, in his work A Little Pretty Pocket-Book.
And technically, any "American" would have been British at that time as there was no inclination in Tom Jefferson's mind to write a Declaration of Independence to become a new and great country like he would do in another 33 years, but in the that period, a set of years equivalent to the life of Christ, the seeds of my sport would continue to germinate and become something greater, something more American than the British games of rounders and cricket.
For here was an America that was clamoring to be without the unduly English influence, and here was a beautiful new world whose nooks and crannies looked to be discovered while it discovered and created all of its nuances and culture during an age that would truly exhibit the promise of Jeffersonian Idealism. What better way to accomplish it than to do it with baseball diamonds in the fields of the ever expanding towns and villages along the way?
What better way to do it than to build a baseball diamond in the Catskills, which could then be named after a Civil War hero? And still better than that, what could be better than to enshrine the greats of the game within its walls?
Perhaps this is what Harry Chadwick and Albert Spalding had in mind when they created the commission to unveil the hidden history of my game in 1905. Nevertheless, instead of truth, they inherited the memories of an old man’s recollections from a life that never happened. To close the case on history with the nostalgic reminiscing of a the aged and tattered version of a man traveling back to age five and hoping that he managed to somehow remember that he met a man who was actually 155 miles away from where he was supposed to be on that 1839 day, seems a little far-fetched in this objective world of ours, but in the early twentieth century, it was all business as normal, and according to many sources, that half-assed glancing over is the real history of the great game of baseball that we Americans, Latinos, Asians, Canadians, and the smattering of other countries that have been able to field a team for the World Baseball Classic have inherited.
And so it is another hundred years later, I and many others can wonder why Graves would have sent the story in. Perhaps, he was looking to create a brief sense of notoriety by gaining his fifteen minutes of fame from the Akron Beacon Journal. Perhaps, it offered a chance to temporarily escape from his demons. All we know is that in the time after this, Graves managed to gun down his wife in cold blood and spend the rest of his life in an asylum. Perhaps, this is the most fitting end for the first chapter of this literary tale that is the world of baseball.
Whatever the case, it’s the beginning of this story that cements baseball as America’s game. And even if it’s not America’s game in the same way that it was, it’s my game, and that’s why I’ll be typing this story and these biographical expressions of baseball from now until November 4th. Stick with me until the end of the season. It’s going to be a wild ride.
Really.
Know ye who read this there is more to my life than history records. Firstly, I did not tame the legendary buffalo, it was already tame, I merely shot it. Secondly, I have not always been known as Jebediah Springfield. Until 1796, I was Hans Sprungfeld, murderous pirate. And the half wits of this town will never learn the truth. ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I write this confession so that my infamy will live on long after my body has succumbed to my infectious diphtheria.
And if that was how it all began, then it wasn’t much different than how the history of baseball began. Sure, there was no Lisa Simpson to ethically debate whether or not to tell the world about it, but eventually the truth would have to come out. In the meantime, baseball needed a founder, and it seemed logical that when Abner Graves “misremembered” having been privy to drawings from Abner Doubleday, the Army Captain became the creator of baseball, and so the historians who were attempting to create a history had found one or at least created a suitable alternative history.
Thus, in creating a truly American national game, this seemed to be much better than simply modifying the game of Rounders and taking from the British more than we wanted to in a day and age nearly a century after Rip Van Winkle had woken up to a new America twenty years after this fledgling country had swapped Georges, for to do that meant that we would be taking her daintyness, Jane Austen, and using her words from Northanger Abbey, "It was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base-ball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books" to originate the national pastime of America. And while Germans would try to claim the earliest remembered mention of "Englischer Baseball" rules, the reality is that the earliest mention of the game that I love is "away flies the boy to the next post and then home with joy, which was written in 1744 by another British person, John Newberry, in his work A Little Pretty Pocket-Book.
And technically, any "American" would have been British at that time as there was no inclination in Tom Jefferson's mind to write a Declaration of Independence to become a new and great country like he would do in another 33 years, but in the that period, a set of years equivalent to the life of Christ, the seeds of my sport would continue to germinate and become something greater, something more American than the British games of rounders and cricket.
For here was an America that was clamoring to be without the unduly English influence, and here was a beautiful new world whose nooks and crannies looked to be discovered while it discovered and created all of its nuances and culture during an age that would truly exhibit the promise of Jeffersonian Idealism. What better way to accomplish it than to do it with baseball diamonds in the fields of the ever expanding towns and villages along the way?
What better way to do it than to build a baseball diamond in the Catskills, which could then be named after a Civil War hero? And still better than that, what could be better than to enshrine the greats of the game within its walls?
Perhaps this is what Harry Chadwick and Albert Spalding had in mind when they created the commission to unveil the hidden history of my game in 1905. Nevertheless, instead of truth, they inherited the memories of an old man’s recollections from a life that never happened. To close the case on history with the nostalgic reminiscing of a the aged and tattered version of a man traveling back to age five and hoping that he managed to somehow remember that he met a man who was actually 155 miles away from where he was supposed to be on that 1839 day, seems a little far-fetched in this objective world of ours, but in the early twentieth century, it was all business as normal, and according to many sources, that half-assed glancing over is the real history of the great game of baseball that we Americans, Latinos, Asians, Canadians, and the smattering of other countries that have been able to field a team for the World Baseball Classic have inherited.
And so it is another hundred years later, I and many others can wonder why Graves would have sent the story in. Perhaps, he was looking to create a brief sense of notoriety by gaining his fifteen minutes of fame from the Akron Beacon Journal. Perhaps, it offered a chance to temporarily escape from his demons. All we know is that in the time after this, Graves managed to gun down his wife in cold blood and spend the rest of his life in an asylum. Perhaps, this is the most fitting end for the first chapter of this literary tale that is the world of baseball.
Whatever the case, it’s the beginning of this story that cements baseball as America’s game. And even if it’s not America’s game in the same way that it was, it’s my game, and that’s why I’ll be typing this story and these biographical expressions of baseball from now until November 4th. Stick with me until the end of the season. It’s going to be a wild ride.
Really.
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