Baseball

In the 50’s, baseball was king.  No other professional sport had a following like the 16 Major League teams.  Baseball was indisputably “America’s game”. Up until 1958, and the so called “greatest game ever played” - the sudden death Colts over the Giants win - the NFL was small potatoes, although I must admit I always hoped for decent TV reception for annual the Packer - Lion game on Thanksgiving Day. The NBA had franchises in Syracuse, Cincinnati and Fort Wayne for heavens sakes and was dominated by the Minneapolis Lakers - yes, Minneapolis Lakers.  And the NHL had but 6 teams dominated by the Montreal Canadiens with a lot of players with french sounding names.  Hardly made the sports page.  And there were no “W” leagues.

In ‘57, the hated Yankees had appeared in 8 of the last 10 World Series, and won 7.  The others were won by Cleveland in '48, Giants in '54 and Dodgers in '55. (That’s the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers). So perhaps it was really New York City’s game.  But Willie, Mickey and the Duke debates were national and everyone had a favorite team.

Baseball was my passion.  It consumed my thoughts and my time throughout the summers. Summer saturday afternoons were dedicated to the Game of the Week with announcers Buddy Blattner & Dizzy Dean.  My mother would wince at Dizzy’s “ain’t gonna get nobody” or “he slud into second” or "he shouldn't hadn't oughta swang" grammatical constructions, but Dizzy kept things interesting even when the picture went haywire. Of course this was black and white TV, but the beauty and grace of the game came through just fine.

The Cleveland Indians were my favorite team - I not sure why, perhaps because they were the only team that seemed a challenge to the Yankees.  It annoyed me that the Yankees used Kansas City as a farm club. Whenever they needed shoring up at some position or someone emerged as a talent in KC, off went some over-the-hill veteran to KC and the next superstar moved to New York.  (Think 36 year old Hank Bauer for Roger Maris). My favorite Cleveland players were Rocky Colavito and Herb Score.  I would imitate them in our pickup games. I would point the bat at the pitcher like I was sighting in a rifle just like Rocky and when pitching, I would follow-through and fall off the “mound” just like Herb.  I decided that wasn’t such a great idea when Herb took a career ending line drive in the eye off the bat of Gil McDougald, so I changed my pitching style to match Warren Spahn’s, finishing facing the plate with the glove ready. 

I loved those Indians and I even ordered an “official” Indians baseball cap from the back page ads of Sport Magazine, dark-blue with the classic C above the bill, not the obscene Indian.

But I divorced the Indians for the Milwaukee Braves (the fact that the Braves beat the Yankees in the '57 World Series made the transition much easier, being the front-runner that I was). Cleveland had unbelievably traded Rocky to Detroit for Harvey Kuehn and I couldn't forgive them. Heck, I had traded a Harvey Kuehn, a Rocky Bridges and a Pee Wee Reese (I had two) for a Rocky Colavito. 



I had a major-league major league baseball card collection and the bubble gum cavities to prove it. Except for Sunday School offering and an occasional Sugar Daddy, every nickel I could scrounge went for those penny-a-piece bubble gum cards with pictures of heroes inside. I think I single-handedly kept Vrooman's Grocery in business. I could recite statistics like no tomorrow.  I knew every batting average, ERA, slugging percentage, win-loss record and all the teams each player had played for.  I would spend hours sorting and studying those cardboard treasures – and plotting some way to sucker someone into trading me a Jackie Robinson or Whitey Ford. I'm sure I could have retired years earlier if my mother had not trashed that treasure trove.

Offseason, APBA Baseball fed my addiction as well as my obsession with baseball statistics.  With this game, each year you received a set of cards representing each player’s performance for the year prior and statistically guaranteed that through the magic of the roll of the dice, that this performance would be reproduced in your game setting.  APBA allowed you to “play a season” of games.  By managerial strategy, I had the power to change history. I diligently kept statistics on every player as I went through the games – without the aid of a computer, I might add.  

Another outlet for my passion was the local “town team”.  Until Major League baseball appeared in Minnesota, virtually every town with any self respect had a town team. Every summer Sunday afternoon I’d either bike to the town team field on the edge of town or cajole my parents or my uncle to drive me the to the away game.  My dad was the groundskeeper. After church, he dragged the infield with a makeshift wooden contraption loaded down with cement blocks and pulled behind his pickup. The infield was dirt and my job was to follow behind and pick up any rocks the dragging dragged up. Anything to avoid those bad hops. I rarely missed a Lowry ball game. I tried to get there early enough to watch BP. King was the official batboy, but occasionally, I’d get a chance.  Wow.  I even had a uniform with “L” on the chest and #10 on the back. #10 was Jerry’s number and he was the pitcher and shortstop, the positions I aspired to.

Lowry was in the Resorters League and played Brandon, Evansville, Kensington, Millerville, Miltona, and Holmes City for the right to advance to playoffs. These guys were pretty good and usually were near the top of the standings and occasionally advanced to the state tournament.  The players were local guys who spent their week farming or bricklaying or clerking at the bank with a few high school players mixed in to fill out the roster. I loved those games.  Glenn, Geener, Gary, Donuts, Jerry, Davey, Georgie, Ben ... I knew all their statistics too. At home games, kids would scramble after foul balls or the occasional home run, because whoever retrieved the ball got a nickel from Uncle Dave. Baseballs were a buck apiece, so losing one was a financial setback for the club. The field itself was not quite major league caliber. The infield was dirt, the outfield fence was a snow fence and right field sloped so severely that you could just see the upper half of the right-fielder from the stands. Of course, there were no batting helmets then and one of the scariest moments I had yet experienced in my life was when Glenn was beaned by the Millerville pitcher and was taken away by ambulance.

One of my fondest childhood baseball memories was going to a Minneapolis Millers game at old Nicollet Park.  My dad and a couple of uncles who lived in the Twin Cities took me to a night game against the Indianapolis Indians. The Twin Cities had two Triple A teams. The Millers bounced between the New York Giants & the Boston Red Sox farm team and the St. Paul Saints were the Brooklyn Dodgers team.  They played in the in the American Association, the last step on the road to the majors. Most didn’t get there, but lots of future stars came through these teams – Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Duke Snider, Roy Campenella, Ray Dandridge, Carl Yazstremski.

I can remember almost nothing about the game itself but the setting is seared in my memory. We had seats on the first base side under the overhanging second deck. I had never seen a night baseball game and flood of incredible light amazed me. Used to the dirt infield of Lowry park, I gasped at the incredible greenness of the place.  The players looked super human to me in their crisp whites and their amazing speed and agility.  When I saw the movie “Field of Dreams” with the scene where Kevin Costner and James Earle Jones were sitting at Fenway Park – along the first base line, no less – I said “That’s it, that is Nicollet Park 1957.”  That movie scene captured for me that same beauty of the game. The visit to Nicollet Park also confirmed the wisdom of my career choice - major league shortstop.

But my real joy was “playing baseball”.  My most treasured possession was my six-fingered Eddie Matthews’ model baseball glove.  I wasn’t a Boy Scout but I was “always prepared”.  The glove hung from the handlebars of my bike at all times.  I fancied myself a pretty slick fielder and envisioned my career as a shortstop, but since my hitting tended to lack some punch, a 4-eyes Roy McMillan model.

In a town of 250, organizing a baseball game called for some creativity.  There just weren’t eighteen guys available to play a real game, so most of the games were four on four affairs at best, played on the skating rink with the stone chimney of the rink house serving as a backstop. That stone chimney was brutal on a real baseball, so most of our baseballs had had the cover knocked off and were wrapped with black electrical tape - and weighed about a pound - so usually we used a 15 cent rubber ball - the kind with seams like a real baseball - so we could toss our “curve ball”.  We used only two bases.  Home plate doubled as second base while first & third shared a gunny sack behind the pitcher, so the pitcher was positioned midway between home and first.  A Brit might have mistaken this game for cricket, but to us cricket was something to catch and put in a mason jar.

One major problem with the rink diamond was that just across the alley was Hank’s garden.  I’ve got to admit it was a pretty spectacular vegetable garden, but for us it was a terrifying foul ball hazard.  We used the warming house as the backstop, but invariably someone would foul one off into the garden.  Now as I said, it was a pretty spectacular vegetable garden with sweet corn six feet high and carrots and string beans and leafy stuff that would devour the ball. It took a lot of courage to venture across that alley into the garden looking for the lost ball. If we weren’t quick enough, Mr. or Mrs. Hank would come barging out his back door screaming bloody murder and we would run for our lives.  Hank had a pretty fine collection of baseballs.  

For some reason, Dubshay had no fear. Courage or stupidity?  Most of us were pretty sure.  So, although his baseball skills weren’t spectacular, he was a valued team member because he was always willing to forage for foul balls.  I remember one memorable exchange between Mr. Hank and Dubshay:  

“What the hell you doin with that bat?”  

“What the hell you doin with that pail?”

On the rare but treasured occasions when we could muster ten or so of us, we would head over to the schoolyard and play on a “real diamond”.  We played without a first basemen, and used “cross out” for the plays at first. If an infielder (or an outfielder) fielded a ground ball and could throw the ball between the runner and the first base bag, the runner was out. This tended to keep you alert running to first base, and also inspired some extra hustle.  It was mighty embarrassing to be thrown out at first from the outfield. This rule did cause the flow of the game to be a bit disconnected because we were forever retrieving that cross out ball. Right field paralleled the highway, and it was paved and sloped sharply downhill, so when a ball got to it, it tended to go for a while.  The team at bat had to have someone on a bike as designated retriever. As a disincentive, and since we had only 1 guy who batted left-handed, any ball hit onto that highway was an out.  We had the shift defense long before the major leagues.  But there was a line of trees bordering the highway, so if you were daring you could hope that the ball would ricochet off a tree trunk and stay in play. The batting team always had to furnish the catcher, which frequently spawned vigorous discussions when a dropped throw at home allowed a runner to score.  In our league, you could strike out but there was no such thing as a walk. Swing the bat! If we only had a few guys, we’d play workup.  You kept batting until you made an out and then you went to the outfield and everyone moved up a position.  We only allowed 2 batters so if you hit a single you had to score from first on the next kid’s hit or it was out in the field with you.

My love of baseball has not faded over the years, enhanced by arrival of Major League baseball in Minnesota in 1961.  It is still the most beautiful game and I still hate the Yankees.