Pete Gray

On the recommendation of a student that I taught last semester and this semester, I read Pete Gray's book - One Armed Wonder, which tells the story of the St. Louis Browns outfielder.
In the first class that he took, which I taught, we used to heroic passages to write summaries and research papers. I used the tale of Adam Bender, and he found this book and the story of Jim Abbot as comparable tales to the life of Adam Bender, a one-legged boy who still plays baseball (he's a catcher) and high school wrestling as well as quarterbacking for youth football.
I've always said that despite age, we don't look down to find our heroes, and the reality is that Bender who is currently 10 has more leadership and heart than most grown people that I know. To be honest, I wish I had more of what makes him tick.
The same can be said about Pete Gray who always wanted to play at Yankee Stadium despite losing his right arm in a truck accident. World War Two's diluted player pool gave him the opportunity to do that, but he gave himself the ability to make the opportunity count. He learned to hit one armed. He learned to catch a ball and throw it to the infield with one arm. Nobody stopped the game for him, and despite the fact that the switch from glove to arm with the ball tossed into the air in the meantime took a few seconds, Gray did what it took to get better.
He even hit 5 home runs at Memphis in 1944 before making it to the St. Louis Browns in 1945. This was one year removed from their historic 1944 campaign where they played the Cardinals in their first and only World Series losing 4 games to 2 (and almost winning a third - quite an accomplishment for perennial cellar dwellers - even in a time where players were there because they were unable to be drafted for war service). Quite simply, he wasn't an also ran or a gate attraction like some people made him to be.
Instead, he was inspiration to the young and the injured war vets, who he had more respect for than they had for him (and that's saying something).
He was a hero - be it from roughly the same area that I live in (give or take a few hours) or from the world in general. He didn't let life get in his way. He didn't let those people who belittled him get him down. He fought to be on the diamond and to give his best, and he truly did. Be it in the majors or the minors, he was a great part of the game. In addition, his 11 strikeouts in 77 games would be something that many of today's free swingers took note of. Gray might not have had the muscle power to do one-armed Mickey Mantle shots in the pros, but he knew enough about small ball to get the hits, the bunts, and the seeing eye dribblers that put him on base to steal second. In this, he was a fierce base runner (more minors than majors, but still).
And like Jim Abbot (who wanted to be more like Nolan Ryan than Pete Gray) tossing a no hitter to celebrate his abilities and competitive nature, there is pride in any person overcoming their obstacles (be they disabilities or doubts or being picked second) to be great. Abbott did his no hitter against Manny Ramirez, Jim Thome, and Albert Belle in 1993. Those Indians weren't exactly the Cleveland Spiders.
Heart is all about what you make of your circumstances.
Pete Gray may not have had a right arm, but he had a lot of heart.

Ford Frick

In Saving Private Ryan, he was the sniper casually shooting Nazis at will until he got rushed and got blown up - taking out more than one could count. In 3, he plays Dale Earnhardt Sr., the badass legend of racing, in all of his glory. He's in a lot of other  movies... sometimes in more prominent roles, but mostly as the guy who rounds out the group of guys that he's with... i.e. Will Smith's confidante in Seven Pounds (a rather horrible movie if ever there was one - that guy just needs to redo the Fresh Prince or Independence Day).
But there was a moment of shining glory... an underappreciated gem from Billy Crystal of all people (well, actually not since Crystal is a Yankee drooler and it was right after the time that Mark McGwire was captivating the world and ESPECIALLY ME with his home run race to beat Sammy Sosa to 61 and make it to 70) that changed the possibility of what baseball movies could be.
That movie was 61*, and it's still one of my favorites. Sure, it was sentimental, and sure, it painted Ford Frick as a villain with the ghost of Babe Ruth as some unmovable slug (and in a way, that's about what he is - other than his larger than life big kid persona that hit a lot of home runs, was a great pitcher in his day, and all that yadda yadda yadda pap) in the way of a man's record setting greatness.
And perhaps, I can't say it as well as Bill Veeck in Veeck as in Wreck to talk down on Frick's destruction of the greatest story in baseball in ages (the tale of 2 men for the record with Mantle chasing as well for most of the season), but what this whole story really boils down to isn't an asterisk - it is just that: the fact that only 23,154 people saw the home run live because Frick doesn't understand baseball promotion. Baseball could have embraced the story, remembered its past, as it did with Maris throughout the entire 1998 season (he's still at the top of my all time favorite list of players with McGwire, Pedro, and Gibson). How many books have and will be released on Mr. Maris?
The point is that we don't need our heroes to be one dimensional. Some of them can suffer from having their hair fall out due to stress (I can relate to that - and I can relate to premature white hairs in my chin patch). We can relate to staring down the system that doesn't appreciate us. We can relate to a wife who supports us through thick and thin. We can feel the urge to walk away - but not doing so. We can feel the urge to bunt if it helps us win a game rather than to swing for the fences. Most of us are Maris.
The myth of Babe Ruth is an inflated pile of hooey. Mickey Mantle may have been the boyhood hero of his time, but a certain other center fielder had to leave the game first. There will always be room on the wall for the heroes. They come from a time and place, and they should be revered and respected at something more than old folks / timers days and as a great newspaper story 37 years later (as opposed to being portraryed as an uncooperative jerk to the media at the time).
These are the things that Crystal captured... well, that and the Ball Four side of Mickey Mantle, but that's neither here nor there. Tracey Stallard's price on the banquet circuit went through the roof, and he was a Red Sox pitcher, and yeah... it was a time and place that the rivalry wasn't, and the record wasn't worth watching, and Roger was hitting 2 extra shots that didn't matter since they were after 154 games.
That's the thing about the movie. It makes you want to understand why the media of that day went out of their way to kill the potential idol of the day. It makes you want to go to Fargo and pay respects to the man. It reminds you of why we play the game and live our lives strong. It tells the life of Roger Maris in a way that showcases the season of change for all of us.
Thanks Billy! Great movie

Joe Dimaggio

I once stated accurately that I prefer my baseball players dead. Sure, I love that movement that Tim Lincecum puts on his pitches. To go from a hanging arm to whipping a nasty pitch over the plate in a way that deceives the batter into a state of utter stupidity is a fantastic thing to watch. Now, I'm not a fan of the ponytail, and I'm definiteliy not a fan of his bong, but the man is one of the better players in the modern game.

Nevertheless, I prefer the mystique of the eras that I never truly got to see except on documentaries and the images that I see in my head while I daydream about what it must have been like back in the day. That said, I don't imagine life before baseball gloves and catcher's masks, but yeah... tobacco card era baseball and beyond (up until the players that began their careers in the late 70s / early 80s); those were the days.

A prime example of what they don't have any more in baseball is a Joe Dimaggio. We could ask where he's gone, but like Paul Simon (who Dimaggio initially wasn't impressed by due to an incorrect perception that "Mrs. Robinson" was an insult), we have no clue. In 1999, he shuffled off this mortal coil and left many fans sad and lost with only their memories to share. Fortunately, there's HBO's Where Have You Gone, Joe Dimaggio to help us remember the Yankee Clipper / #5 / Mr. Coffee as something more than a couple of pages in a best players ever baseball book.

I don't know if it's safe to say that he's that much better than what an Albert Pujols type player is, but there was something about him... a war era player that lost the best years of his career (43-45, 2 years after the 56-game hitting streak - 1 more would have got him some Heinz 57 money) to World War 2.

He lost Marilyn Monroe to the American people and a drug overdose (not to mention the Kennedys), but he kept a vigil to her for the rest of his life with the red rose he placed by her gravesite.

In 13 seasons, he batted .325 with 369 strikeouts TOTAL! In comparison, that's about 2 years of Mark Reynolds' career (not even). To top it off, he hit 361 home runs for his career.

He was so popular in New York, he could make Mickey Mantle feel like a schlub for daring to replace him.

When it came time to go, he didn't seem to know despite the fact that Casey Stengel was trying to make it easy on him. In the end, Life Magainze, Andy High, and Gene Woodling combined to show just how pedestrian that the "Greatest Living Player" had become. Like Lou Gehrig before him, a superstar being shown as being mortal knew that something was wrong. Where Lou Gehrig's finale came with being congratulated for doing the routine, Dimaggio was taken down to size for not being able to run, field, or hit in the way that he did when he electrified the 1941 spring and early summer.

For even with a bat stolen, he didn't complain. Sure, he wanted to bang heads to get it back, but he went right on hitting until it came back.

He tried his hand at TV, but he quit when he wasn't successful. As Ric Flair said, "to be the best, you have to beat the best," and to Joltin' Joe, if he couldn't be the best, he didn't want to play, so he did what he was good at - running restaurants, making appearances, signing bats, and adding his name to a children's hospital.

Sadly, the band who became a Les Brown record will never be seen at a Dinky Donuts again, but he will always be an example of what's right with baseball and the world.

Kurt Bevacqua

Every once in a while, I get a hankering to buy baseball cards again. I'll look for them on e-Bay in hopes that there will be something cool and cheap. The two don't often go together. I do have a Pedro Martinez and Bob Gibson jersey card that I got for under $10 with shipping. I don't care about the real value. I just like that two of my favorite pitchers of all time are memorialized on one card with their jerseys fashioned into the card itself.
Cards like this are what makes collecting nowadays special. I never pulled a card like that from a real pack, but I did get some cards that were above and beyond the sets themselves. That said, other than ones of Mark McGwire's numbered home runs (especially #55), I really don't think much of any of them.
Baseball card companies today had to go back to the concept of something special to set them apart. For example, there's a 2007 Topps Derek Jeter card that also features George W. Bush and Mickey Mantle. That's a cool card. Really.
However, it's not the 1976 card that features Kurt Bevacqua of the Milwaukee Brewers blowing a huge ass bubble to win the Joe Garagiola / Bazooka Bubble Gum Blowing Championship. Things like that don't happen nowadays.

That said, it took a whole different era to respect Garagiola since he was the guy who spiked Jackie Robinson back in the day. A large part of his life was spent explaining away how he wasn't a racist until he eventually turned into a voice of the good things in baseball.
But that's not why this card is so cool. Kurt played from 1971-1985 for 7 teams. He finished with a .236 average and 27 homeruns. He stayed around as a bench player for that time. He did have a 3 hit game in the 82 World Series that saw him hit a homerun, but he wasn't anything great.
That said, he was a bubblegum blowing champion, and frankly, that goes a long way towards something great.

Baseball cards today are still nice. My wife bought me a pack of 2011 Topps, which didn't really feature anyone special, but the anticipation that I'll get someone life altering in that 5 cards for $1 pack is still like playing the lottery and seeing if I can get more than 2 numbers.

However, going to shows is more about seeing the names and the faces than being able to plunk down big bucks for the Golden Era of collecting (1950s and 1960s). There's the Platinum Era, too, but I can't afford tobacco cards. Nevertheless, I'm always amazed by what cards go for - even in 1 and sub 1 condition.

All the same, it's still fun to wander around the Convention Center in Valley Forge and think about what I could get.

Duke Snider

The Duke is dead.
In his time, he hit .295 and whalloped 407 home runs for his career with the Dodgers (East and West Coast versions). Through the years, he was an 8-time all star.
He was up there with Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle in a cheesey and overplayed song (that still waxed nostalgic to all that was good in the game) as sung by Terry Cashman. He wasn't either of them in popularity or ability, but by 1980, he eventually made it to the hallowed halls of Cooperstown in his 11th try. Talk about the pain of being overshadowed.
In this, he's the forgotten center fielder in what Ken Burns referred to as an era that was the Capitol of Baseball... a time when New York City had 3 teams. A time before baseball truly went national as 2 owners abandoned the city to take in the new attitude of California that was rapidly becoming hip to a new beat. If you need proof, he's not on the front of ESPN today and he's not even the featured picture in the section on baseball.
For a man that never was the MVP, he was the most powerful of all hitters in the 1950s crashing 326 homers and 1,031 RBIs. Of course, this was before Stanzanol and Deca Durabolin, so the numbers mean a little more.
The Duke was the teammate of Jackie Robinson. He played with Sandy Koufax, Roy Campanella, Maury Wills, and Don Drysdale. He played with Gil Hodges, Don Zimmer, Pee Wee Reese, Carl Furillo, Frank Howard, Johnny Podres, Carl Erskine, and Tommy Lasorda.
He came of age with Jackie Robinson's 3rd game in the majors. From that point on, he was a key element in the drive to move from Dem Bums to World Series champions to Los Angeles.
As many of us come of age in baseball in 2011, we have to wonder what has become of the greats of the game past. I knew who Duke Snider was, but I didn't really ever feel for his stats because they were largely a star player instead of a great of the game. Even the stars of the game that I grew up with - Paul Molitor, Dale Murphy, Robin Yount, Fred Lynn, Steve Garvey, Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammel, and Harold Baines - are forgotten as we only hang onto the best of the show, and even then, their accomplishments are made nothing in the light of shorter ball parks and PEDs. Of course, there are nutritionist, trainers, and other modern treatments like Tommy John Surgery that keeps our heroes' numbers improving, but alas...
A once great man has died today.
Our fathers and grandfathers will remember.
Will we?

Harold Reynolds

America is a land of second chances. From 1983 to 1994, Harold Reynolds wasn't an offensive threat at all. His 21 home runs from the second sack weren't anything to write home about. Hell, Ryne Sandberg had more home runs in a season during 6 of his years in the pros than Reynolds had total, and considering that he was the new face of second base (before Utley, Cano, and Soriano showed just how much power one could have from that position), Mr. Reynolds was just rapidly decelerating into career ending lack of productivity. All the same, he did have 60 stolen bases in his best year, but as a whole, he was what he was - average and his batting average of .258 for a career proved just that.
Nevertheless, he became a face for baseball because he went on to be a baseball guy for ESPN Baseball Tonight, and in that, he was always knowledgeable and interesting. However, after nearly a decade, he was canned from ESPN for hugging a female intern, which was considered offensive and sexual harassment when 3 weeks later, she said something about the hug and the dinner afterward. Maybe it was because she was white and he was black. Maybe he didn't return her further advances or maybe she just didn't hit it off with him. Either way, ESPN was not happy.
Later that year, he filed suit and won against his former network in that they settled the money he had asked for, and eventually, he went his way until MLBTV picked him up, which is unlike Steve Phillips, also an ESPN guy canned for issues that he had while being in a bizarre love triangle (cue New Order). There began the 3rd chance for Mr. Reynolds.
Now, Reynolds is on the air daily with Billy Ripken (the least of the Ripkens), Dan Plesac, and Mitch "Wild Thing" Williams (getting another second chance for himself after becoming Joe Carter's monkey boy and the most hated figure in Philadelphia history this side of JD Drew and Santa Claus). Together, they're disseminating what can only be described as "porn" since the constant baseball images on MLBTV are not only addictive and a guilty pleasure when I should be working or being productive on my days off, but a constant opportunity to gawk at the money shot home runs and defensive gems. I get to skip to the best parts of the greatest arguments, relive the memories past of glory that is missing from my life in this cold, nasty winter as I wait for life to come back to a former glory. Somehow, the images of the past and a past never seen have become my substitute for a daily life.
Not that I'm complaining. The countdowns are incredible and the Bob Costas interviews are enlightening me to all that is the grandeur of baseball. While they play the old Ken Burns Baseball stuff (I have this on DVD - it's the Vivid Entertainment of baseball), they haven't gotten to the new stuff yet. Someday, I'm sure they will, and I'll be able to record it rather than having to pay for the DVD just yet. On really good days, there are things on there like the entire game of Bill Mazeroski's home run to beat the Yankees and make Mickey and Roger cry.
If only MLBTV reached out to the world with their history (through Youtube), there would be a generation of baseball converts, but unfortunately, the already converted will be the only ones to relish in this greatness of a past world that can no longer be - at least until baseball becomes a game instead of a business.
Nevertheless, the hot stove is always burning - at least until my wife gets home and we watch "acceptable" television together.

Roger Maris

Waking up yesterday morning to a story in the New York Times about how the U.S. and Israel worked together to release a worm into the Iranian nuclear program so that it couldn't get up and running has me contemplating exactly what is the point of the media. On one hand, I have to ask myself if this is something above "no duh." I mean really. Why on Earth WOULD WE NOT try to take out a hostile country's nuclear program that could hurt us or our friends? On the other hand, I have to ask myself if this is about some kind of attack on the U.S. as a whole. I mean, if this is top secret, and we'll assume that it is, what business does this have playing out in the media?
But alas, this is a baseball site, not a political outlet, and I use media attacks to lead into Roger Maris and the transition from the media loving players to attacking them viciously. Sure, there was Ted Williams before him, but was there ever an attack as concentrated and individually damaging as that, which was perpetrated against Roger for being "boring" (at least compared to Babe Ruth) and unable to stomach stupid questions (considering many NASCAR guys give the same kind of F U response as Roger and Cee Lo Green) and just unwilling to provide a day in day out story while pursuing the home run record that he was deemed unworthy of.
Currently, I am reading Roger Maris: Baseball's Reluctant Hero, and overall, it's pretty good. You can skip the first few chapters about how his grandparents moved to America from Europe and how his parents relationship started out in dysfunction (it ends in divorce - so it goes) and start about 30 pages into the book at chapter 4.
I've always been a Roger Maris fan since I first heard his story in 1998 as Mark McGwire pursued his record. It was sad to hear about the asterisk and the total devastation of what should have been a joyous race between Maris and Mantle (who had been hated in many circles for not being Joe DiMaggio - at least until Roger came along). Maybe the media made up for this with the race between McGwire and Sosa (and maybe the Curse of Not Being Babe Ruth made the media feel inclined to destroy them and everyone else who got close to Babe Ruth in a way that wasn't worthy - steroids be just a cover story).
But in the end, Roger took a pitch deep on the final day of the season and was branded forever with the asterisk that was there despite it's never been typed into the official record books and for 37 years he suffered in pain despite a momentary stay with the St. Louis Cardinals in 67 and 68. He then retired and died in 1985, a tragic end to a great human being. I wish I would have known his story sooner, but the fact that I do is a story I will continue to tell throughout the course of this blog.
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes Maris or baseball. I've been reading it nightly in sight of a teddy bear that belongs to my wife. More than anything else, that bear reminds me of her, and when I think about it and her, I think about how wonderful she is to me. For our wedding, she knew that gifts are given between husband and wife (I didn't, so if you're reading, take note), and she gave me the Roger Maris PSA8 rookie that I always joked she would buy me if she truly loved me. When I took it out of the box, I was shaking, and I had no idea what to say. I felt like such a fool for not knowing that I had to get her a gift as well (we ended up putting a lot of money towards the things that she wanted for our home that we bought a few months later). I ran all over Toledo looking for something worthy of her and feeling totally freaked out on the night before our wedding.
Even now, I don't know if I feel worthy of such a great gift. I'll occasionally open the locked box and pull Roger out of his protective cloth bag - not all the way mind you - and look on his visage and think of all that his family went through in 98, all that he went through from 1961 until he left baseball a completely broken man, and how his wife came through for him above and beyond the call of duty (something completely left out of Tom Clavin and Danny Peary's aforementioned book).
Maybe Roger was the best way to give me a physical gift that came through to me, but to be honest, nowhere am I happier in the gift I was given than the "I do." And perhaps that's hokey, but alas... it is what makes me happy in life.
And that thought and her presence is what keeps me from feeling the news of the world in a way that makes me sad as I wait for spring and new life and no more snow - just warmth and good times.