Monday, May 31, 2010

Ken Burns' Baseball, 5th Inning: 1930-1940

"The idea of community, the idea of coming together. We're still not good at that in this country. We talk about it a lot. In moments of crisis we're magnificent at it — the Depression; Franklin Roosevelt lifting himself from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees. At those moments we understand community, helping one another. In baseball you do that all the time; you can't win it alone. You can be the best pitcher in baseball but somebody has to get you a run to win the game. It is a community activity. You need all nine people helping one another. I love bunt plays. I love the idea of the bunt. I love the idea of the sacrifice. Even the word is good; giving yourself up for the good of the whole. That's Jeremiah. That's thousands of years of wisdom. You find your own good in the good of the whole. You find your own individual fulfillment in the success of the community. The Bible tried to do that and didn't teach you. Baseball did."
— Mario Cuomo


"The Depression hit the national pastime almost as hard as it hit the nation. Millions of fans could no longer afford even the fifty cents it cost to get into a game. Others, unwilling to give up baseball, made the nickel-ballpark hot dog their only meal of the day. Attendance fell off. The St Louis Browns averaged fewer than 1500 fans a game. The Cincinnati Reds, the Boston Braves, and the Philadelphia Phillies nearly went out of business. Organized baseball tried desperately to fill its stadiums. The Thirties saw the first all-star game, the spread of night baseball, the induction of the first players into the brand new Baseball Hall of Fame. Nothing seemed to work. But in a time when, more than ever, America needed heroes, baseball still provided them." — KB


Great is baseball. The national tonic, the reviver of hope, the restorer of confidence.
— The Sporting News, 1931


Negro league baseball:

"In cities and small towns all across the country there were other teams and other stars that may have been the greatest in the century, but whose deeds would live only in the memories of those who saw them play. Over the years, black baseball stars played white major league stars at least 438 times in off-season exhibition games. The whites won 129 of those postseason games. Blacks won 309. That's when we played the hardest, one black veteran explained, to let them know and to let the public know that we had the same talent they did and probably a little better at times. To the delight of crowds everywhere, barnstorming black teams liked to warm up in pantomime. They threw an invisible ball around the infield so fast, hit and fielded imaginary fly balls so convincingly, and made close plays at first and diving catches in the outfield so dramatically that fans could not believe it was not real. They called it shadow ball. [...]

"While most of organized white baseball faltered in the midst of the Depression, black baseball flourished as never before. Black entertainers sponsored their own teams. Louis Armstrong had his New Orleans Secret Nine. Cab Calloway played on his own team of all-stars. Bill 'Bojangles' Robinson was part-owner of the New York Black Yankees, and sometimes tap danced on the dugout roof. Teams were points of pride in black communities all over the country, boosting local economies, making life a little easier in Southern towns and in Northern ghettos, stitching black America together. In the 1930s, Rube Foster's old dream of a separate but athletically equal league finally came true. [...]

"Black players excelled under conditions big leaguers never had to face. Their season was longer. Their pay, far less. And to keep their teams afloat during hard times they were always on the road. The brand of baseball they played wherever they stopped was faster, more daring than that in the majors. And just as competitive."
— KB
We were worked like the mule that plows the fields all week and then drives the carriage to church on Sunday.
— Satchel Paige

"Back in those days we rode all night in the buses. Sometimes we played four games in one day. Nobody ever heard of that before. We'd play nine forty-five in the morning, one o'clock a double header, then go fifty, sixty miles at night and play a game. And traveling all night in those buses. That's the thing: I traveled in those buses 31 years, was turned over four times and you know what? Somebody upstairs liked me 'cause I never got a scratch."
— Double Duty Radcliffe

"We played in a rough league. When I say a rough league... I notice nowadays every time a youngster get a sprain: 15 days on the disabled list, and all this. Uhh, we didn't go on the disabled list. Unless we were broken and in a wheelchair and on two crutches. If we get hurt, we played. We don't have no relief pitcher. You go out there, you go for nine. That's it. You were paid for nine and that's the way they wanted you to pitch. Nine innings."
— Riley Stewart, Chicago American Giants

Spitballs, shine balls, emory balls... I never knew what the ball would do once it left the pitcher's hand.
— Roy Campanella, catcher
"Some pitchers used a bottle cap hidden in their gloves to scuff up the ball to make it break more sharply. As a result, Negro league batters learned how to hit everything. For years major leagues had scorned the bunt, but black players turned it into an art.

"As the Depression deepened black teams were forced to innovate. Some clubs expanded their schedules still further, to play for white fans in small towns starved for baseball." — KB
"They had a sizable following, especially among their fellow blacks, but also white people used to turn out to watch them. They were always sort of scrappy affairs. Seldom had a grandstand or anything else. And they were not often offered the use of the stadium, you see, so they had to play in all kinds of sandlot situations. I really don't see how they played baseball traveling the way they did in those ramshackle buses without any sleep and bone-jarring trips over those bad roads."
— Shelby Foote

"It's a trade-off. I think that the Negro leagues were a wonderful institution in American life, but they had the stigma of reminding black people that they were separated from and not a part of American life. That was a problem with all segregated institutions that we had: they were important in enriching the black community's life on one level, but they were stigmatized in telling us that we could not be a part of everything else that was going on. So you're talking about a very limited kind of life, on the whole."
— Gerald Early


Depression era:

1926; Joe McCarthy becomes manager of the Chicago Cubs.

1926; Mel Ott debuts with the New York Giants, right field. "He was so feared at the plate that he was once intentionally walked with the bases loaded."

1926; Babe Herman debuts with the Brooklyn Dodgers, then nicknamed the "Robins" after manager Wilbert Robinson.
"The Thirties were a time of clowning in baseball, particularly in the National League. You had two forms of the clown: On one end you had the St. Louis Cardinals. On the other, more inept level you had the Brooklyn Dodgers — the Daffiness Boys, led by Wilbert Robinson."
— Daniel Okrent

"Brooklyn had last won a pennant in 1920, but the Dodgers had never won a World Series, and with players like Pea Ridge Day and Hot Potato Hamlin, they were best known for what one of their own managers called bonehead plays. The most celebrated Dodger star was Babe Herman, who hit .393 in 1930, an all-time Dodger record. But he was famously inept in the field, carried lit cigars in his pockets, and once boasted that if a fly ball ever hit him on the head, he'd quit." — KB

It was an even bet that Babe would either catch it or get killed by it. His general practice was to run up when the ball was hit, and then turn and run back, and then circle about uncertainly. All this time the ball was descending, the spectators were petrified with fear, and Mr Herman was chewing gum, unconcerned. At the proper moment he stuck out his glove. If he found the ball there he was greatly surprised and very happy.
— Collier's magazine

"The Dodgers' best pitcher was Dazzy Vance [debuted 1922], a hefty righthander with an 83 inch reach, who had been the dominant strikeout pitcher of the 1920s. He literally had a trick up his sleeve..."

You couldn't hit him on a Monday. He cut the sleeve of his undershirt to the elbow, and on that part of it he'd use lye to make it white, and the rest he didn't care how dirty it was. Then he'd pitch overhand out of the apartment houses in the background of Ebbets Field; between the bleached sleeve of his undershirt waving and the Monday wash hanging out to dry — the diapers and undies and sheets flapping on the clothesline — you lost the ball entirely. He threw balls by me I never even saw.
— Rube Bressler

"Brooklyn rarely rose above sixth place. Even their diehard fans called the Dodgers, dem bums."

"Dem Bums became the Dodgers. That was their big name for them: our bums, our beloved bums. But the term, when it was first used, was pejorative. In the Twenties and Thirties the people in Brooklyn needed the Dodgers to win, and they'd go out to the ballgame and the Dodgers would lose, and they'd lose stupidly and carelessly and dumbly and people would come out of Ebbets Field saying Them bums, those lousy bums, they lost again — How'd those bums do today? And it wasn't until they started to win that the nickname became an admirable nickname. It became capitalized."
— Robert Creamer

"I think in the past that certainly Brooklyn's character was defined by the Brooklyn Dodgers. Even just the name Dodgers, coming from these trolley cars that everybody had to dodge. The idea that Brooklyn felt a stepchild to New York City, and that somehow the Dodgers, the Bums, were stepchilds too — they were gonna show the hotty-totty New Yorkers that we were really better than them — defined who Brooklyn was, and even in Long Island, where I grew up, I felt that sense of Brooklyn, and it was all part of the Dodgers. I don't know that that exists today in the same way, that you define who you are through your team and through your city, and I think it's a loss. It means that people are more fragmented. They've got themselves and a few friends but they don't have that group sense, unless there's a win — but that's not the same. That's not what this was all about when I was growing up. We hardly ever won and it didn't matter."
— Doris Kearns Goodwin
1926; Andy Cohen, the first Jew in the major leagues, is signed to the New York Giants by John McGraw.
Baseball is the great American sport, and as the Jew is thoroughly Americanized, there is no reason why his name should not be prominently found upon the baseball roll of honor.
— The American Hebrew, 1926
1927; Satchel Paige makes his Negro league debut with the NNL Birmingham Black Barons.
How to stay young: 1) Avoid fried meats, which angry up the blood. 2) If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts. 3) Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move. 4) Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. A social ramble ain't restful. 5) Avoid running at all times. 6) Don't look back — something might be gaining on you.
— Satchel Paige

"The most celebrated of all black baseball stars was a tall, gangly pitcher of indeterminate age: Leroy 'Satchel' Paige. A natural showman and shrewd self-promoter, he drew black baseball's biggest crowds for 22 years. He pretended to be a sort of sleepy country boy, giving distinctive nicknames to all his friends, and reporters eagerly gathered the aphorisms he loved to coin. He may have been the greatest pitcher of all time." — KB

"Satchel Paige had a good arm. A strong arm with no muscles. Like a slingshot."
— Connie Johnson

"On the mound, one rueful batter remembered, Satchel Paige threw fire. He had a whole arsenal of distinctive pitches: his Bee Ball, Jump Ball, Trouble Ball, Long Tom, Hesitation Pitch..."

"Number one, that's a fastball, he'd call that his Midnight Rider. The changeup, he'd call that Four-Day Creeper..."
— Sammie Haynes, catcher

"He kicked his leg impossibly high before pitching, then he'd throw around that foot. Half the guys, one victim remembered, were hitting at that foot coming up. They rarely hit the ball at all. When playing hometown teams Paige liked to guarantee to strike out the first nine men up. Then he would call in the outfield and make good on his promise."

People only saw the major leaguers in the big cities. I believe people got a chance to see me everywhere. I played all over. Farm fields, penitentiaries. Anyplace in this whole country where there was a baseball diamond, they know me, and see me.
— Satchel Paige

"Because black baseball was played in so many places, and because few black teams had the money to pay someone to keep score, no one knows precisely how many games he won. Paige himself estimated that he pitched in 2,500 games and won 2,000 of them — four times the major league record." — KB
1928; Carl Hubbell debuts with the New York Giants.
"Well I was always fascinated by Carl Hubbell. Mr Highpockets. He was a lefthanded pitcher for the New York Giants and his most famous pitch was the screwball, and he'd thrown so many of these things that his arm was literally deformed, and you could see it when he walked out to the pitcher's mound. His arm — a screwball is a reverse curve, like that — and he'd thrown so many that the palm was almost out when he walked out, and curious. And I was so impressed by this pitcher that I used to walk around like that when I was about 9 years old. My mother used to say, What is wrong with that arm of yours, anyway? They finally made me stop it; it looked as though I'd fallen out a window or something and my parents hadn't had enough money to get me the right operation to get the thing twisted back right."
— George Plimpton

"I saw so many great pitchers, and maybe it's because of an early impression, but of all the pitchers I saw — thinking in terms of their control of themselves spiritually, as well as their ability to throw the ball, to manipulate the pitch — I would say... Let's put it this way: If I had a ball game to be pitched and my life hung on the balance, I'd want Carl Hubbell to pitch it."
— Red Barber
1929 World Series; Connie Mack's Athletics defeat Joe McCarthy's Chicago Cubs.
"Finances had forced Connie Mack to disband his first championship team in 1914, and it had taken him 15 years to climb back to the top. His newly constituted A's won back-to-back championships in 1929 and 1930, and the pennant in 1931. Mack's finest pitcher was Robert Moses "Lefty" Grove. He was so fast, a sportswriter said, he could throw a lamb chop past a wolf. He was a savage competitor who sometimes threw at his own teammates in batting practice, and was notorious for ripping his clothes and smashing lockers when he lost, something he didn't do very often. During the Athletics' three championship years he won 79 and lost just 15.

"The A's hitters rivaled even the Yankees' Murderers Row. Mickey Cochrane was the best-hitting, fastest-running catcher the game had yet seen, but he was called Black Mike because of the foul mood that overcame him when the Athletics suffered even a momentary setback. Leftfielder Al Simmons was a Polish immigrant's son, whose real name was Aloisius Szymanski. He drove in more than 100 runs 11 years in a row. He just couldn't help it, Simmons said, he hated pitchers. But the most frightening hitter was first baseman Jimmie Foxx, Double X, who hit 58 home runs one season, just two short of the record Babe Ruth had been sure would never be broken. He cut off his sleeves to display his massive biceps. Even his hair has muscles, a pitcher complained. Opposing players called him The Beast. Jimmie Foxx wasn't scouted, a pitcher said, he was trapped." — KB
Oct 29, 1929; Black Tuesday; stock market crash

1930; Babe Ruth signs a two-year contract paying $80,000 a season, the highest ever. When a reporter asked him whether it was unseemly, in the midst of the Depression, to be getting a bigger salary than President Herbert Hoover, he answered, Why not? I had a better year than he did.
"Despite the Depression, baseball was still big in New York, where Babe Ruth still dominated the game and filled the headlines. He was the idol of every schoolboy, the delight of every sportswriter, drinking and eating too much, cheerfully lighting up the half-smoked cigars he found on the men's room floor, doing his best to ignore the younger sluggers who were now overtaking him, including his seemingly invincible teammate, Lou Gehrig.

"Gehrig had become the best hitter in the American League, driving in runs at a faster clip than Ruth, but he still had to settle for second billing. The two men were growing increasingly distant, and now Gehrig became obsessed with setting a record no one could ever match. Since May of 1925 he had not missed a single game, and despite aches, sprains and fevers he determined never to take himself out of the lineup. Why don't you take a rest? someone asked him. There's no point to it, Gehrig answered, I like to play baseball, and if I were to sit on the bench the worry and fretting would take too much out of me." — KB
1930; Gus Greenlee, king of the Pittsburgh numbers racket, acquires and develops the Negro league Pittsburgh Crawfords, creating a crosstown rivalry with the Homestead Grays, the established black club owned since 1920 by ex-player Cumberland Posey Jr.
"Much of the drama of black baseball was centered in Pittsburgh. [...] Before long much of black baseball would be in the hands of racketeers, among the few members of the black community with enough money in the midst of the Great Depression to pay the bills." — KB
1930; Negro league Kansas City Monarchs begin carrying portable lights, for night play.
"Founded in 1920, the Monarchs dominated black baseball for more than 25 years. They won three pennants in a row between 1923 and 1925, and even in the darkest years of the Depression they were the most profitable of all the black ball clubs. One East Side black bartender remember that they made Kansas City the talk of the town all over the world. At the heart of the Monarchs was their hard-hitting first baseman, John Jordon "Buck" O'Neil, who would stay with the Monarchs for nearly 20 years, becoming their manager, leading them to 5 more Negro league pennants and two championships in the Black World Series." — KB

"We were the attraction. In our baseball the Kansas City Monarchs were like the New York Yankees in major league baseball. Very tops, very tops. We had the stars, and so to make a living we showed it to the world."
— Buck O'Neil
1930; Josh Gibson debuts with the Homestead Grays.
There is a catcher that any big league club would like to buy for $200,000. His name is Gibson. He can do everything. He hits the ball a mile. He catches so easy he might as well be in a rocking chair. Throws like a rifle. Too bad this Gibson is a colored fellow.
— Walter Johnson

"Josh Gibson was black baseball's greatest home run hitter, and, after Satchel Paige, its biggest crowd pleaser. He hit more than 70 home runs in 1931 alone, some of them soaring better than 575 feet, and his lifetime record may have approached 950. Legend had it that Gibson hit a ball so hard at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh that it never came down. The next day, Gibson was playing in Philadelphia, 300 miles away, when a ball dropped from the heavens into an outfielder's glove. The umpire pointed at Gibson and shouted, You're out! Yesterday, in Pittsburgh!

"Once when another player handed him a broken bat, thinking it was his, Gibson replied, I don't break bats. I wear them out. Gibson was often called the black Babe Ruth, but there were some who thought Ruth should have been called the white Josh Gibson." — KB
Sept 1930; Hank Greenberg, the "first great Jewish baseball star", debuts at first base for the Detroit Tigers. In 1934 he would lead the Tigers to the American League pennant, and in 1935 be the unanimous choice for MVP, driving in 170 runs.
"There had been Jewish major leaguers before him, including Andy Cohen of the Giants, but few did well, and the antisemitism of the times had forced many of them to change their names. Hank Greenberg never even considered it. Born in Greenwich Village, the son of a garment manufacturer who initially found his boy's interest in baseball bizarre, Greenberg broke into the minors playing in little Southern towns where crowds were said to be as curious to see a Jew as they were to watch the game. His power hitting brought him to the majors, where he soon faced a torrent of antisemitic abuse from players and fans alike. Greenberg's willingness to fight back eventually earned him the grudging respect of his fellow players. But Jewish fans, many of whom were recent immigrants and anxious to embrace the national pastime of their adopted country, worshiped him as a hero." — KB

"What better marriage of national aspiration and national passion, that one of their own could rise to become one of the great ballplayers of the time? He wouldn't play on the Jewish holidays, but he would hit a lot of home runs for the Detroit Tigers every other day of the year."
— Daniel Okrent

I came to feel that if I, as a Jew, hit a home run, I was hitting one against Hitler.
— Hank Greenberg
1930; Hack Wilson of the Chicago Cubs bats in 190 runs in the season; still a major league record. "He hit even harder than he drank. One writer said that Wilson was built along the lines of a beer keg, and not unfamiliar with its contents."

1930 World Series; Connie Mack's Athletics defeat Branch Rickey's Cardinals.

1931; Joe McCarthy leaves the Cubs to manage the New York Yankees for the next 15 years.

1931 World Series; Connie Mack falls in a rematch with Branch Rickey.
"Even the A's great lineup could no longer fill the seats at Shibe Park, and Connie Mack once again sold off his stars, this time to repay bank loans incurred after the Great Crash." — KB
1932; Greenlee Field, the first black-built and -owned baseball stadium, opens in Pittsburgh.
"When his black stars weren't allowed to use the showers in Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, Gus Greenlee built his Crawfords a $60,000 stadium. Then he stole Cumberland Posey's biggest stars, including Oscar Charleston and Judy Johnson [and Josh Gibson, not to mention Satchel Paige]. The result was a lineup which for a time rivaled the best white teams in history. The Crawfords played everywhere, a player remembered, in every ballpark, and we won. Won like we invented the game.

"Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige were relentless competitors. As teammates on the Crawfords they were a virtually unbeatable combination. But each believed he was the better ballplayer. You're the greatest hitter and I'm the greatest pitcher, Paige told Gibson when he left the Crawfords, Someday we're gonna meet up and we're gonna see who's best." — KB
1932; James "Cool Papa" Bell plays center field for the KC Monarchs and the Mexican winter leagues before bouncing to the Homestead Grays. "He may have been the fastest runner in baseball history, so fast that he once scored from first on a sacrifice bunt."
Cool Papa could snap off the light, get into bed and pull the covers up before the room was dark.
— Satchel Paige
1932; Shortstop Willie Wells, MVP of the Cuban winter league in 1929-30, plays for the Monarchs and the Grays before bouncing to the Chicago American Giants in '33, the Newark Eagles in '36 and, in 1940, Mexico.
"For most [blacks], the season didn't end in October. When the weather turned cold they headed south to Latin America, Cuba and Mexico, where they found a warm welcome playing wintertime baseball."

Not only do I get more money playing here, but I live like a king. I've found freedom and democracy here, something I never found in the United States. Here in Mexico, I am a man.
— Willie Wells

"Black and white in Cuba suffered that the blacks could not play in the big leagues, because we had many Cuban stars who were black. And we said, What a waste. It was the feeling, What a waste. And when the black athletes came to play in Cuba they were lionized. They were heroes, and they felt very comfortable in Cuba."
— Manuel Marquez-Sterling
June 3, 1932; Lou Gehrig becomes the first player to hit 4 home runs in a single game.

June 4, 1932; John McGraw retires.
After 30 years of continuous services, John Joseph McGraw has resigned as manager of the Giants. At the age of 59 Mr McGraw steps down because of ailing health, with his Giants in last place. Mr McGraw was a product of the old school of baseball, when fistfights were common, when red liquor was sold at all the parks, when only ladies of questionable social standing attended the game. To the end he was faithful to his truculent creed. The last official act he performed as manager of the Giants was to file a protest with the league against Bill Klem, the umpire.
— Joe Williams, New York World-Telegram

"He died two years later, mourned by many as the greatest of all baseball managers. The winner of 10 pennants. Not long after his death, his wife found among his affects a list of all the black players he had secretly wished he could hire over the decades." — KB
1932 World Series; Babe Ruth's called shot at Wrigley Field, the "most hotly debated moment in baseball history."
"One of the things about baseball is the imagination of people, and something remarkable happens. I was there! in their imaginations. When Babe Ruth allegedly pointed to right field bleachers before hitting his home run there against the Cubs, in that World Series — I've had at least, maybe a hundred people tell me, I was there! If everybody who said they were there really were there, Cubs park would seat a half million people."
— Studs Terkel

"The Yankees easily won the first two games in New York and then headed west. There was bad blood between the two teams. [Yankee manager Joe McCarthy formerly managed the Cubs.] Cub fans jeered and spat on Babe Ruth and his wife on the way in and out of their hotel. In the first inning of the third game Ruth hit a three-run homer off Chicago pitcher Charlie Root and rounded the bases amidst a nonstop torrent of taunts and abuse. It was only the beginning." — KB

"He came up again in the fifth inning, and this was after he'd fought for a shoestring catch and missed it and the Cubs tied the score. Ruth came to bat the next inning and the crowd was all over him, just hooting and jeering 'cause he messed up the play in the outfield, and he was yelling back at the Chicago bench and jeering and he said later, I never had so much fun in my life. It was the first time I got the crowd and the players on me at the same time. And he held up a finger when he missed — there were two called strikes and two called balls — he held up a finger saying, That's one. And he held it up again, That's two. And Hartnett, the Cub catcher, heard him say, Only takes one to hit it. A time-honored baseball phrase."
— Robert Creamer

"Then Ruth waved his arm. Whether he was merely gesturing toward the Cub dugout or pointing toward the center field stands, no one will ever know for sure." — KB

"And then he hit the home run. And it wasn't just that he hit a home run; he hit the longest home run ever seen in Chicago at that time to dead center field. And you didn't get center field home runs much in those days, that was a fairly rare thing. And it was a tremendous home run, and it just stunned the crowd. Ruth went down to first base and he told a reporter later he was saying to himself, You lucky bum, you lucky lucky bum! And he said something to the Cub first baseman, something to the second baseman, waved at the Cub dugout, came across home plate — Franklin Roosevelt was running for President for the first time and he was sitting in a box behind home plate, and they said when Ruth crossed home plate with a home run, Roosevelt just put his head back and laughed."
— Robert Creamer

"The pitcher, Charlie Root, swore that Ruth had never pointed to the fence. If he had, I'd have put one in his ear and knocked him on his ass. Lou Gehrig was no less certain that he had. What do you think of the nerve of that big monkey, he asked, calling his shot and getting away with it? [...] Ironically, Gehrig was the real star of the Yankees' four-game sweep, but few would remember his performance in the face of all the publicity Ruth got. Ruth himself was evasive when asked if he really had called his shot. It's in the papers, isn't it? he said, Why don't you read the papers?" — KB
Nov 1932; Franklin Roosevelt is elected President.
I have no expectation of making a hit every time I come to bat. What I seek is the highest possible batting average, not only for myself, but for my team.
— FDR
1933;
"As Franklin Roosevelt began to implement his New Deal for the American people, the Depression had devastated organized baseball. Attendance dipped to its lowest levels in decades. Only the Yankees and a handful of other teams were profitable, and club owners everywhere scrambled to save their businesses. Some sold off their stars to survive. The minor leagues were hit even harder; more than half went out of business. Desperate to lure back paying customers, minor league owners tried dozens of innovations and promotions: mortgage nights, beauty contests, grocery giveaways, raffles, night baseball and cow milking contests." — KB
July 6, 1933; The first All-Star Game is held in Chicago's Comiskey Park, "to try to revive interest in baseball. Fittingly, Babe Ruth was the hero, hitting a dramatic 2-run home run that gave the American League the edge."

Sept 10, 1933; The first black All-Star Game is held, in Chicago at Comiskey Park as well. "Black fans also picked their favorites, voting in the pages of the country's top black newspapers. The East-West All-Star Game quickly became the biggest event of the Negro league season. That was the glory part of our baseball, one player remembered. The huge crowds sometimes reached 50,000."

1933 World Series; The New York Giants, under John McGraw's successor, Bill Terry, defeat Joe Cronin's Washington Senators. One year later Cronin is sold by his own father-in-law, owner Clark Griffith, to shore up the Senators' finances.

1934; Walter "Red" Barber, a young Southerner who has never even seen a major league ballgame, is hired by Larry MacPhail, general manager of the Cincinnati Reds and innovator, to broadcast the play-by-play at every game.
"Larry MacPhail was a banker's hard-drinking son, a born promoter, impatient with tradition, desperate to find new ways to boost attendance and rescue his club from bankruptcy in the midst of the Depression. He was also a champion of radio. Broadcasters had covered the World Series since 1922, but most owners feared that regular broadcasting would hurt ticket sales. Larry MacPhail was sure broadcasting would increase profits, and went into partnership with the owner of two local radio stations to prove it." — KB

"Anything new has to establish itself and gain its own credentials. When radio came along some of the entrenched conservative owners said, Wait, wait a minute. Why give away something that you're trying to sell for your living, to try to keep your enterprise afloat? And especially on days of threatening weather, when people will say, Well, it looks like it may rain, I'll just listen to the radio and I won't go. They did not realize at that time that it would be creating new fans, that it would be making families of fans. Before radio, by and large, the people who came into a ballpark were men. Once radio came along and came into the homes women began to understand the game. They didn't have to have somebody explain it to them; the play-by-play broadcaster was doing it. And attendance visibly went up when you had families coming instead of single members of the family. And that's the beginning of the impact of radio. Radio made new fans."
— Red Barber
1934; Buck Leonard debuts at first base with the Homestead Grays. "He was billed as the black Lou Gehrig. His steady, dependable hitting helped lead the Grays to 9 Negro league pennants in a row."

1934 All-Star Game; Carl Hubbell strikes out, in succession, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons and Joe Cronin.

1934; Gashouse Gang
They don't look like a major league ball club, or as major league ball clubs are supposed to look in this era of the well-dressed athlete. Their uniforms are stained and dirty and patched and ill-fitting. They don't shave before a game and most of them chew tobacco. They spit out of the sides of their mouths and then wipe the backs of their hands across their shirt fronts. They're not afraid of anybody.
— Frank Graham, New York Sun

"Baseball had never seen a team quite like the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals, of the National League: a perfect symbol for a country down on its luck. They were daring, hotheaded, raucous, unstoppable; the carefully crafted creation of general manager Branch Rickey and his revolutionary farm system. In a time when people were forced to make do with less, the poorly paid Cardinals were everybody's heroes. They were led by Frankie Frisch, the Fordham Flash, who was celebrated for his furious reactions to bad calls, and he considered any call against the Cardinals bad. He hurled his glove into the air; leaped up and down on his cap until his spikes had shredded it. At least once this proved so persuasive that the umpire actually reversed himself and called for a game to be replayed. Shortstop Leo 'the Lip' Durocher was brash and cocky and good in the field, but so bad at bat that Babe Ruth named him the All-American Out. Leftfielder Joe Medwick, called Ducky because he ran like one, swung at almost everything, but connected enough to lead the league in runs batted in three seasons running, and to win the National League Triple Crown — something no one else has managed since. Third baseman Pepper Martin, the Wild Horse of the Osage, was a fierce competitor and former hobo who liked to drop sneezing powder into hotel ventilation systems. He was said to be so fast that back home in Oklahoma he liked to run down rabbits." — KB

I was in the top ten percent of my class in law school. I'm a doctor of jurisprudence. I'm an honorary doctor of laws. And I like to believe I'm an intelligent man. Then will you please tell me why in the name of common sense I spent four mortal hours today conversing with a person named Dizzy Dean?
— Branch Rickey

"The most famous member of the Cardinals was a cocky righthanded pitcher from Arkansas: Jerome Hanna Dean. A farmboy who had dropped out of school in the second grade — I didn't do so well in the first grade either, Dean said — he was an eighteen-year-old itinerant cotton picker when Rickey's scouts discovered him playing sandlot ball. Right from the start Dean was convinced of his own greatness. I'll put more people in the park than Babe Ruth, he told Branch Rickey, even before he was hired. Anybody who's had the pleasure of seeing me play knows that I am the greatest pitcher in the world. He was very nearly as good as he said he was. He averaged 24 wins a year for five seasons. Son, he liked to ask a batter to whom he hadn't pitched before, what kind of pitch would you like to miss? He was a master at drumming up publicity. Before the 1934 season began, Dizzy announced that he and his younger brother, Paul, whom the press insisted on calling Daffy, would together win 45 to 50 games. They did. Dizzy won 30 and Paul won 19." — KB
1934 World Series; Cardinals v. Tigers
"Dean won the first game, 8 to 3. Afterwards he wired Rickey that this American League is a pushover. I think if they pitched me the whole four days, he said, I'd win all of them.

"At the plate, Ducky Medwick was well on his way to setting a World Series record for most hits. In the fourth game Dizzy Dean, running to second, was hit in the head with a ball fielded by the shortstop. The throw knocked Dean senseless and he was rushed to the hospital. Headlines the next day said: X-rays of Dean's head showed nothing.

"In the seventh and deciding game Dean and the Cardinals were already ahead by seven runs when Ducky Medwick, star of the series, came to the plate. A fight broke out between Medwick and the third baseman. The Detroit crowd turned ugly. When Medwick later took his position in left field the Detroit fans pelted him with eggs, fruit and bottles. Commissioner Landis removed Medwick from the game for his own protection, depriving him of the chance to set the record for most hits in a World Series. The Cardinals won the game anyway, 11 to nothing, and the World Series, 4 games to 3. Afterwards Medwick was puzzled. I knew why they threw all that garbage at me, he said, What I could never figure out is why they brought it to the park in the first place." — KB
1934 postseason; Babe Ruth tours Japan with an all-star team.
"Half a million fans turned out in Tokyo to cheer the mythic hero they called Beibu Rusu. The Americans won 17 of 18 games and Ruth hit 13 home runs. But in one game a high school boy named Eiji Sawamura struck out Ruth, Charlie Gehringer, Lou Gehrig and Jimmie Foxx before the Americans managed to get a single, winning run. Sawamura became a national hero, and the tour sparked the formation of the first Japanese professional league." — KB

The Babe's big bulk today blotted out such unimportant things as international squabbles over oil and navies.
— New York Times

We like to believe that countries having a common interest in a great sport would rather fight it out on the diamond than on the battlefield.
— Sporting News
1935; Babe Ruth sold.
"He was, according to the Associated Press, still the most photographed man in the world, but by 1934 Babe Ruth was growing increasingly unhappy. He knew his best days were behind him, and he had glumly absorbed a series of humiliating pay cuts as his averages dropped. He no longer spoke to Lou Gehrig because of a misunderstanding between his wife and Gehrig's mother. And he couldn't stand the new Yankee manager, Joe McCarthy. Ruth desperately wanted to be manager himself, But how could you manage a team, Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert asked him, when you can't even manage yourself?" — KB

"That's sort of a myth: Ruth couldn't handle himself, how could he handle other players? That nonsense. I mean, the man drank a lot and he raised hell and he caroused but he was a major league player for 22 years; he must've taken care of himself pretty well. And could he have managed? Who knows. Some terrible people have become great managers and some likely people were terrible managers. He certainly deserved a chance. He didn't get it."
— Robert Creamer

"Ruth's Far Eastern tour was a triumph, but when he got back he learned that the Yankees, the team that he had built, had decided to dispense with his services and had no intention of making him a manager. He turned down an offer to run their best farm team as beneath his dignity. Instead he joined the worst club in the National League, the Boston Braves, lured by a vague promise of becoming manager the following season. The Braves never really meant to give him the manager's job. The main hope was that his mere presence would boost receipts." — KB
1935; Effa Manley and her husband become co-owners of the Negro league Newark Eagles. Effa runs the team until 1948. "Tough-minded and shrewd, she was a power in Negro baseball and the black community for more than fifteen years, sometimes donating the home game proceeds to the most important civil rights issue of the day: the campaign against lynching."

May 24, 1935; First night game in major league baseball. Larry MacPhail arranges for President Franklin D Roosevelt to push a button in the White House that lights up Crosley Field in Cincinnati for a game between the Reds and the Philadelphia Phillies.

June 1, 1935; Babe Ruth retires.
"On the last Sunday of his career [May 25], when he was 40 years old, playing for the Boston Braves, heartbroken that he'd left the Yankees, couldn't sign on with them, changed leagues — trying to prolong, trying to stay on in baseball, which all players want to do — fat, worn-out, near the end — the Boston Braves played in Pittsburgh and that last Sunday he hit three home runs, and the third home run, the last of his career — number 714 — went out of the ballpark, over the roof in Forbes Field. No one had ever hit a ball out of there, up to that point, ever. That is a farewell. Goodbye, baseball."
— Roger Angell

From then on, until the day he died, he sat by the telephone waiting for a call to manage that never came.
— Claire Ruth
1935 World Series; Tigers defeat Cubs.

1936; The First Class of the Baseball Hall of Fame is selected by vote of the Baseball Writers Association of America:
Ty Cobb
Babe Ruth
Honus Wagner
Christy Mathewson
Walter Johnson
May 1936; Joe DiMaggio debuts in the Yankee outfield.
"At 17 he had broken in with the San Francisco Seals at shortstop, and was moved to center field after committing 11 wild throws in a single exhibition game. But he hit safely in 61 straight games in his first year in the minors and batted .398 in his third. The press was ready when he joined the majors, and he did not disappoint, hitting 29 homers and knocking in 125 runs in his rookie season. DiMaggio was the perfect complement to Lou Gehrig. He would help lead the Yankees to four consecutive world championships [1936, 37, 38, 39], an accomplishment Babe Ruth and Murderers Row had never even approached." — KB

"Always you look for heroes. Always the people look up to see something that represents them, that is larger than they are, and, if it's perfect, that they might become. As a young boy when I was taken to my first game at Yankee Stadium — my god! Yankee Stadium! talk about awesome sights — to see Joe DiMaggio, whose name had that happy combination of vowels that mine had, to whom you could relate without knowing anything about San Francisco or anything else about him. But he was an Italian American. He was a baseball player. He didn't seem to have any other credential but his ability, and that was sufficient to make him a great hero and a great success, and therefore a great inspiration."
— Mario Cuomo
July 1936; Bob Feller, a 17-year-old fastball pitcher from Iowa, whose father had built him his own practice field, debuts with the Cleveland Indians. "In his very first start he struck out 15 St. Louis Browns. A few weeks later he set an American League record by striking out 17 A's. Then he went back home to finish high school."
"My father and mother brought me up. I knew where the stakes were set, and I concentrated on my game. I was very conscientious; good night's sleep, good nutrition. I practiced hard, worked hard, I did, as a kid on the farm, and my baseball career was number one. So I just didn't exactly, say, fall off the turnip truck.

"We went to the World Series in 1934 in St. Louis and saw the Gashouse Gang. And I thought right then and there that — I was only 15 — that major league baseball wasn't that far away. And, not being cocky, I had a lot of confidence. My father gave me a lot of confidence. I never was afraid of a batter on the mound. They may hit me, hit me well, but I was never afraid of them."
— Bob Feller

"Imagine Bob Feller, seventeen years old, in the small farming town of Van Meter, Iowa, throwing against the proverbial wall of the barn and having a fastball that could beat any in the major league at that time. What was particularly extraordinary — when the young Feller, at 17, came into the major leagues — and what people forget is that his fastball was so great because his curve ball was extraordinary too."
— Daniel Okrent

"Baseball stories are so various, and they swap characters in 'em, but the way I heard it, Lefty Gomez, himself a pitcher, faced an 18-year-old Bobby Feller. The first one came over and the umpire called a strike, and the second one came over, called a strike, and the third one came over and the umpire called a strike and Gomez said, I thought that last one sounded a little low."
— Shelby Foote
1936 World Series; Yankees defeat Giants.

1937; Trujilo All-Stars.
"In the middle of the 1937 season, Satchel Paige and 19 other Negro league players suddenly disappeared. They turned up in the Dominican Republic, playing on a team organized by the dictator, General Rafael Trujilo, a man who could not bear to lose. Their assignment was to win the national championship for the general. Trujilo had Paige's team put on armed guard the night before the big game, and gave orders that anyone who sold the players whiskey would be shot." — KB

By the seventh inning we were a run behind, and you could see Trujilo lining up his army. It began to look like a firing squad. In the last of the seventh we scored two runs. You never saw old Satch throw harder than that. I shut them out that last two innings and we won. I hustled back to our hotel and the next morning we blowed out of there in a hurry. We never did see Trujilo again, and I ain't sorry.
— Satchel Paige
1937 World Series; Yankees defeat Giants, again.

July 29, 1938; During a radio interview, Yankee outfielder Jake Powell "cheerfully explained that he kept in shape during the off-season by cracking niggers over the head while serving as a policeman back home in Ohio. The white press paid little attention, but the black press was outraged and threatened a boycott. Yankee management suspended Powell for ten days and sent him on a tour of bars in Harlem to apologize."

October 2, 1938; Hank Greenberg shoots for the home run record.
"On the last day of the season, newsreel crews were dispatched from New York to cover what might possibly be a historic confrontation between Cleveland and Detroit. Greenberg had already hit 58 home runs that summer, tying Jimmie Foxx's record for righthanded hitting. If his luck held he might tie, or even break Babe Ruth's record of 60, and the cameramen wanted to be there to record the action. But facing him on the mound that afternoon was Bob Feller. It was Feller's turn to make history. He set a new strikeout record of 18, and Hank Greenberg struck out twice. The next day Adolf Hitler's army invaded Czechoslovakia."
1938 World Series; Yankees sweep Cubs.

1938; Martín Dihigo, El Maestro, "the most versatile of all Negro league stars, a Cuban too dark-skinned to be considered for the majors, who played brilliantly at every position", leads the Mexican League simultaneously in both pitching and hitting. He will be the only player inducted into the American, Cuban and Mexican Baseball Halls of Fame.

1938 postseason; Major league players are polled as to whether they would object to playing alongside blacks. Four-fifths say they have no objections. A small band of black sportswriters begin actively campaigning for integration of the big leagues. Club owners are not interested. Chester Washington of the Pittsburgh Courier sends an unanswered telegram to the manager of the struggling Pittsburgh Pirates:
To Pie Traynor, Pittsburgh Pirates, Congress Hotel: Know your club needs players stop Have answers to your prayers right here in Pittsburgh stop Josh Gibson catcher Buck Leonard first base S Paige pitcher and Cool Papa Bell all available at reasonable figures stop Would make Pirates formidable pennant contenders stop What is your attitude? stop Wire answer
1939; Red Barber is brought from Cincinnati to New York by the Dodgers' new owner, Larry MacPhail, to become radio broadcaster for Brooklyn.
"No one ever came up with the expressions that Red Barber had. And so what he brought to New York, to the Metropolitan Area, was that country flavor that they were not familiar with at all. I mean, when he said rhubarb, everybody would go, Wow...rhubarb. And so he became part of the language: ducks on the pond; sitting in the tall cotton — I mean there were just a million of 'em. You would suddenly say, I wonder what that looks like when somebody leaps up against the wall or dives head-first into second or bowls over the catcher? So they'd come out to see what they'd been listening to."
— Vin Scully

"My first memory of baseball is radio, listening on the car radio to Red Barber talking from Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. My father wanted to know how the games were going on. He was following Brooklyn. My mother and I — I was an only child — driving in the car, began to listen, I suppose, out of self-defense. And both of us, at about the same time, my mother and I, became caught up in the drama of the game."
— Donald Hall
1939 spring training; Lou Gehrig ails.
March 16, 1939, St. Petersburg. The older newspaper men sit in the chicken coop press boxes around the circuit and watch Lou Gehrig go through the laborious movements of playing first base, and wonder if they're seeing one of the institutions of the American League crumble before their eyes. They watch him at the bat and note he isn't hitting the ball well. They watch him round the bag and it's plain he isn't getting the balls he used to get. They watch him run and they fancy they can hear his bones creak and his lungs wheeze as he lumbers around the bases. On eyewitness testimony alone the verdict must be that of a battle-scarred veteran falling apart.
— Joe Williams, New York World-Telegram
May 1, 1939; Lou Gehrig, the Iron Horse, takes himself out of the Yankees lineup for the first time in 14 years, after playing 2,130 consecutive games.
"He was only 35 but had begun to play like an old man; dropping balls, missing again and again at bat, sliding his feet along rather than lifting them. During batting practice one afternoon, Joe DiMaggio watched in astonishment as the Yankees' hitting star missed ten fat pitches in a row. Gehrig could not understand what was wrong. Neither could his teammates. But he could not stand the thought of letting them down. He was benching himself, he said, for the good of the team."

To whom it may concern: This is to certify that Mr Lou Gehrig has been under examination at the Mayo Clinic from June 13 to June 19, 1939. After a careful and complete examination it was found that he is suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. This type of illness involves the motor pathways and cells of the central nervous system. The nature of this trouble makes it such that Mr Gehrig will be unable to continue his active participation as a baseball player. Signed, Dr Harold H Habian.

The road may come to an end here. Seems like our backs are to the wall. But there usually comes a way out. Where and what I know not. But who can tell that it might lead right on to greater things?
— Lou Gehrig, writing to his wife
June 12, 1939; The National Baseball Hall of Fame officially opens its doors in Cooperstown, New York, on the game's "dubious centennial". Twelve figures selected by the Baseball Writers of America are inducted, including Christy Mathewson, who had died in 1925, and Ty Cobb, who "refused to appear in the official photograph just to spite his ancient enemy, Kenesaw Mountain Landis". Inductees present are Eddie Collins, Babe Ruth, Connie Mack, Cy Young, Honus Wagner, Grover Cleveland Alexander, Tris Speaker, Napoléon Lajoie, George Sisler and Walter Johnson.
It is our belief that baseball is loved by an entire nation, that it is the very backbone of America itself.
— Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis

This week the 100th anniversary of our — pardon us — national pastime is being celebrated. During this century of diamond-doings, however, Negro baseballers, in spite of their undoubted ability to bat, run, pitch, snare gargantuan flies, cavort around shortstop and the keystone sack and think baseball, haven't reached first base insofar as getting into the big leagues is concerned.
— Amsterdam News

Every known nationality, including Indians, Cubans, Filipinos, Jews, Italians, Greeks — with the lone exception of the American black man — have played in both the National and American Leagues. The white sporting public wants to see a good ball game. They do not raise the question of the nationality of a player who can knock a home run or can pitch a good game. There was no Hitler movement created in America when John McGraw of the New York Giants put Andy Cohen, a Jew, on second base. It was up to Cohen to make good or go. What is the matter with baseball? The answer is: plain prejudice, that's all.
— Chicago Defender

"I would like to think of the Negro leagues and the tragedy of the Negro leagues — the fact that these men were excluded from baseball — the way that Buck O'Neil thought about them: that nobody owed him any apology; he had his career. But I can't think of it that way. I don't think any of us can, and that O'Neil has a generosity of spirit that perhaps goes above and beyond the call. Systematically, for six decades black Americans were excluded from playing in the major leagues, in the minor leagues, in the organized wing of the national pastime. One thing one could say is that it was, therefore, not the national pastime. It was a closed society. One could also point out to those people who would say that baseball was at its best in the Twenties, at the time of Ruth and Gehrig, or in the Thirties when DiMaggio and Williams came along: Impossible! Impossible! When part of the national population was being systematically excluded from baseball it couldn't have been the best. What we are left with from the black leagues is memory, legend, and an endless series of what-ifs with the names attached to them of Josh Gibson and Ray Dandridge and Cool Papa Bell and Willie Wells and what might have been. What if these men had been there to play in the majors against the Ruths and the Cobbs and the Walter Johnsons and back farther, against Cap Anson who started it all?"
— Daniel Okrent
July 4, 1939; Lou Gehrig's farewell address. He dies two years later of what is now called Lou Gehrig's disease.
"A huge, sad crowd packed Yankee Stadium to pay tribute to their beloved hero. Babe Ruth came back and the two old teammates ended their long feud. Manager Joe McCarthy presented him with a trophy. At first, Gehrig was too moved to speak..."

For the past two weeks you've been reading about a bad break. Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the Earth. That I might've been given a bad break, but I've got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.
1939 World Series; Yankees sweep Reds.

1942 Negro League World Series; Satchel Paige, pitching for the Kansas City Monarchs, finally faces Josh Gibson, batting for the Homestead Grays, in Game 2.
"Satchel Paige always thought he was the greatest pitcher in the world, and Josh Gibson thought he was the greatest hitter in the world and we did too. And Satchel and Josh in this World Series ballgame. Satchel's pitching, and we got a ballgame won — the Kansas City Monarchs. With two out in the ninth inning, the first-place hitter, he tripled off Satchel. We got two outs, so that didn't bother us at all. So, Satchel called me, said, Hey, Nancy, come here. I said, What do you want, Satchel? He said, Let me tell you what I'm fixing to do. I said, What are you fixing to do? He said, I'm going to walk Howard Easterling, I'm going to walk Buck Leonard, I'm going to pitch to Josh Gibson. I said, Man, don't be facetious. He said, That's what I'm going to do. I said, Time! I called the ump, I called the manager, who was Frank Duncan — great ballplayer himself — I said, Frank, you got to listen to what Satchel said. And so Satchel told him what was going to happen. And so, in walking Easterling and walking Buck Leonard to fill the bases — now, when he was walking Buck, Josh was in the circle, you know, and he's talking to Josh all the time, said, Josh, do you remember the day when we were playing on the same team and I told you that one day we were gonna meet and see who was the best? He said, Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Satchel said, All right, said, Now is the time to prove this thing. So when Josh comes up to the bat — listen, let me tell you what this man did. He said, Time! He called the trainer. Our trainer was Jew-Baby Floyd — and I don't know why they called him Jew-Baby, 'cause he was black as me — but anyway, when Jew-Baby comes out with his, you know, like the smock that the doctor would wear, and he's got a concoction in a glass. He's got a glass, he's got some water, and he puts this — I guess Alka-Seltzer or something — he pours this in that water and it fizzes and Satchel drinks it down. He lets out a belch — I can hear it, but nobody else heard it. And so, he said, Now I'm ready. So, the fans, now they know what's happening now, everybody — we got to have 40,000 people — they're standing, and here comes Satchel. Satchel said, You know, Josh, I'm going to throw you some fastballs. I'm going to throw you a fastball belt-high. Boom! Strike one. Josh didn't move the bat. He said, Now, I'm going to throw you another fastball, but this is going to be faster than the other fastball. Boom! Strike two. He said, Now, Josh, I've got you two strikes and no balls. You know, in this situation I'm supposed to knock you down, you know, brush you back, he said, but, uh-uh, I'm not gonna throw any smoke at your yoke, I'm gonna throw a pea at your knee. Boom! Strike three. And when he struck him out — you know, Satchel must be 6' 5" — Satchel stretched out, looked like he was 7 feet tall, and he walked off the field and walked by me and said, You know what, Nancy? Nobody hits Satchel. That was the end of that story."
— Buck O'Neil

4 comments:

  1. Yes, thank you for the 5th inning quotes and talking-heads stories. This is invaluable. Waiting for the sixth inning for June. Thank You!

    Jeff

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  2. I am putting together quotes for my students and talking head interviews along with the narrator notes (KB) read by John Chancellor. I teach a Baseball History class and these are awesome. Keep them coming. I'm almost caught up to you. Looking for the 6th inning. Thank you so much. An appreciative fan of your work.

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  3. Hi Tiberius, I finally caught up to your fifth inning. How is the sixth inning coming along? I have used every one of your quotes thus far, what can I do to help things along? You are doing me a ton of good with the BASEBALL blogging.

    Thanks,
    Jeff

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  4. Thank you for this extraordinary classic work on baseball. I loved reading the quotes and stories on this site and could not get away once I started, until I was filled. It was a pleasure to read. The honesty and character of this work is finer than any wine. The legends come to life and shine in print again ... hooray!!! I am so grateful to have run across this. Having been in the right place at the right time to find it pleases me very much. It is often a hard road to find suitable reading material, I guess because much of my own personal experience is so freakin' depressing. I reaaly enjoyed the true account about Walter Johnson's heroic world series win in "Ken Burns Baseball" on hulu.com as well. For awhile I thought Johnson got all those wins and no world series ring - it was news to me when I found out he did get a ring.

    Thank you bloggers and webmaster for putting together something here that will bring many enjoyable reading through historical accounts in record and scholarship on this site. I don't exactly go looking for pleasure, but when anything comes to me in this form - with such exquisite grace - I make the time to embrace it - and with bravado!!! Thanks to all, Steven

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