On Monday one of the great rites of spring will be celebrated. Only apple pie and Chevrolet say America more than what used to be called the National Sport. It's Major League Baseball's Opening Day.
Baseball had a firm grip on an adolescent America, capturing the hopes and dreams of those toiling away in the city as well as those tilling the soil. It is often said that baseball is timeless and it is, being our only major sport where a clock doesn't play a role. That's always been part of its siren call. Played outdoors in the sunshine on a luscious carpet of lovingly tended grass of the greenest green with a splash of red clay dotted by the sparkling white exclamation points of the bases. Baseball has always been a game for romantics.
Now it seems that the grand old game is losing its luster. Too slow... too irrelevant to people who so quickly jump from one tweet or text to the next. Who have not the desire to watch the game unfold, from the first inning to the last. Who just aren't in love with the game anymore.
I admit it. I don't follow the game on a professional level anymore. It has become co-opted, like everything else in our culture, by big money. Even if I wanted to shell out the dough to go to a big league game today, being constantly bombarded by Jumbotrons imploring me to buy, buy, buy is not my idea of a relaxing day at the ballpark.
It was not always like this, though. And you can still find baseball more or less as it was meant to be played and watched at some little bush-league ball-yard out in the hustings and that's where we're going today.
figgy: Hey, Michele. Wanna take in a ballgame and swap some stories? I hear there's a kid pitcher goin' today, s'posed to have an arm that throws lightning bolts. There's some seats with our names on 'em right there along the 3rd Base line, too.
Michele: Sure, got my San Francisco Giants shirt on and holding my Chicago Cubs bear so I have all bases covered.
We hope you'll sit in the stands with us, have a $2 beer (or two), some peanuts and crackerjacks and tell us your own baseball stories. Share your favorite baseball tunes. But first some warm-up music
Michele: I was destined to be a tomboy and a sports nut. I was the only girl among four boys and Dad wasn’t sure what to do with a daughter so he treated me as one of the boys. Besides I was the one who would say yes when Dad asked if someone wanted to play ball with him. In the fall it was throwing footballs but in the spring we turned to baseball. Living in the San Francisco Bay Area we had two teams to cheer on the Oakland A’s and the San Francisco Giants. Fortunately for us fans our teams never scarpered off to another city unlike the Oakland Raiders football team who went to Los Angeles for a while.
figgy: Oh, I came to baseball geneticallly, too.
I was very close to my paternal grandfather Roy growing up He and my grandmother raised me until I was eight and she died. Then it was me and grandpa and a housekeeper. I was his pal, he’d always say, and how I did love the sound of that.
Once his 3 boys got old enough they all played cow-pasture ball with the Cook boys down the road. We lived on a farm, you see. He would regale me with stories about playing baseball when he was a kid. He was a catcher, not very tall and stocky, while his younger brother Ray was a tall and lanky pitcher. Ray told me just a few years before he died that he had been offered a contract by the St Louis Browns, Grandpa’s favorite team. Uncle Ray didn’t sign. His wife thought he’d be away from home, too much. So ended his baseball career. Nothing ended their love of the game though.
One thing I loved so much about Granddad Roy and baseball was that he always let me stay home from school when there was a World Series game on. He ate sardines on saltines, washed down with a can of beer. I didn't. Oh, and he loved the Dean brothers, Dizzy and Daffy. It was so much fun.
Michele: My Dad got his love of baseball from his Dad, too.
"My happiest times were when I was with Dad; walking out to the park to see a baseball game, or just walking with him. Until the depression started in 1929, Dad played semi-pro ball for the company he worked for. He was an excellent catcher, and had played with many of the future major league stars. He had progressed up to Triple A Ball with both Beaumont of the Texas League and Milwaukee of the American Association, but was prevented from going on to the majors because of his size; he was only 5’8” and 152 pounds. He was a better defensive catcher than Mickey Owens, and a better hitter then Wade Killefer, but he was just too small. The then New York Giants did have his contract in perpetuity though."
When Dad was with Sandia he played on their softball team. I have his 1966 Softball Champs trophy near the glove his Dad wore as a catcher.
Grandfather James Francis Wilson
Dad and his winning softball team. Dad is the short man in the back row in the white shirt.
figgy: I never knew my Dad to have been a particularly good ball-player. My uncle Harlan, though, wrote an autobiographical sketch of his life that included this:
My dad did let me go out for baseball but I always had to walk the 7 miles home because the bus never waited for anyone out for sports. We didn’t have too good a team until my senior year. We were in the finals of the County tournament and it was cold that day. The coach threw me a sheepskin coat. I asked him what that was for. He says “you are pitching today.” I says, “I have never been on a pitcher’s mound in my life. “Well,” he says, “you will be today.”
My regular position was shortstop. Anyway, We won 10 to nothing. Then we got to the finals of the Sectional tournament. Same thing, “You are pitching today.” We won that one 3-2. Then we went to Rockwell City for the State tournament. I think everybody in town went but we lost the first game 7-4., but it was an accomplishment because Winthrop High School had never been to a State tournament of any kind.
I made All-State shortstop and after we got done with the tournament I was batting .527. Not bad for a 16 year old, I thought. Well later on, a fellow from the Yankee farm organization got my coach, Dad and myself together and asked me if I would like to try out for one of their farm clubs. That would have been in Salt Lake City that weekend but my Dad thought I should go home with him and help finish planting corn. Guess that is what I did.
Michele: Dad taught me how to throw both a baseball and a softball. He also helped me hone my batting skills. Dad started out being a pitcher and made the minor leagues when he was a teenager.
"I spent many an hour playing catch with Dad, honing my pitching skills which got me a tryout with Terre Haute of the Three I League when I graduated from high school in 1935. Three I was an AA league at that time and Terre Haute was a New York Giant team. So like Dad, I was under contract to the Giants. Unfortunately, after just part of one season with Terre Haute in 1935, I hurt my arm and brought may career to a screeching halt. I don’t know who was more disappointed, Dad or I. I did manage to play semi-pro for a few years after that. But I still remember time after time going out to the Ball Park in Indianapolis where Dad would introduce me and talk with old timers he had known; new managers, or coaches, on their way out. I enjoyed the few games I pitched for Terre Haute though. Since I was only 16, I couldn’t go on any road trips, but was restricted to home games. I would get up early in the morning, throw my glove in a satchel, walk down to the Greyhound station, plunk down my $1.50 for a round trip ticket and spend an hour and a half each way to Terre Haute. Suit up, practice with the big boys, and take my turn in the pitching rotation. The money was fantastic; $10.00 if I started a game, $15.00 if I pitched a complete game, or $20.00 if I won the game. Sure fun while it lasted."
figgy: The fateful endings of those two stories just get me. "Guess that is what I did." and "Sure fun while it lasted." Wow!
I did have one blood relative who made it to the highest level, though, and I can't tell you how much I idolized her. My Grandpa Roy's niece Shirley Stovroff played in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League for 5 seasons. She was a catcher. Surprise, surprise, right? She played virtually all of her career with the South Bend (IN) Blue Sox.
She wasn't bad either.
When I took this picture at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown I hadn't seen Shirley's baseball cards which weren't published until the mid-90s. I found out about them on a genealogy trip I took to meet Shirley's niece Nancy for the first time. Cousins are the best!
I'm pretty sure that baseball card they used in the AAPGBL exhibit is Shirley. Don't you think?
Michele: When I moved to the Chicago area I became a fan of the Cubs. The White Sox were just a little too elite for this down home girl. Of course being a Cubs fan means getting your heart broken over and over again.
figgy: Oh yes, baseball for me has been a love affair and like so many it ended badly. When I was just shy of my 13th birthday I was jilted and left standing at the altar, shocked that such a thrilling game could be so low. That was when my heroic Dodgers left me and Brooklyn holding the bag and headed to L.A.. I had been deep in the thrall of love and pretending to be Duke Snider patrolling center field on my hometown ball yard.
My dreams of going to Ebbets Field were over but many years later I turned out to be a sucker for the Cubs, too. I even had dreams of my daughter being the first female MLB pitcher. The first song she learned at my knee was "Take Me Out To The Ballgame." The Cubs were gigolos, though, just like the Dodgers before 'em and I finally gave up the real thing for the Rotisserie version. I had 15 years of rollicking fun with that before I finally hung 'em up.
Michele: So now I have three teams to cheer for. If both of my teams get into the World Series at the same time I just cheer for whoever is at bat. Of course last time that happened was in 1987 when the A’s and Giants were in the World Series and Mother Earth was so shocked that she let loose with the Loma Prieta earthquake.
figgy: I'll leave it to you to imagine what would happen if the Cubs won the World Series. I'm afraid to.
"Say hey, beer man! I don't know about my friend here but what she just said makes my throat itch somethin' fierce."
Batter up......