WPCNR THE SUNDAY BAILEY.  News & Comment By John F. Bailey. January 21, 2024. Reprinted from the WPCNR Archives.:

The best league of all is not any of the professional leagues.

It is the Hot Stove League,  the league where every team and your team wins.

Because you talk about the coming season.

The Hot Stove League refers to the decades when baseball was the National Pastime. It no longer is, you rarely see pickup games around town anymore. Now they play  football and basketball, and if they play baseball they are in organized rec leagues, or little league which still places emphasis on playing the best players. (I wonder if this season they will install the 9 seconds to hit and 18 seconds to pitch major league rules.)

( Full Disclosure: I was 0 for 3 in Little League and struck out three times, and never caught a flyball in rightfield where I was played in the 1957 season. Why? Because the coaches never spent time to teach me how to catch a fly ball.)

But then neither is any professional sport really a national pastime.

They are television entertainment, and as we learn more and more they do not have the health and well-being of players or fans as one of their first concerns.

Can anyone explain to me why there is no heated tarp  on the Kansas City and Buffalo fields? How cheap! Playing games in 0 degree temperatures putting fans in danger of frostbite? Paying fans, not groundskeepers on staff to shovel out the stadium?  What an amateur operation. 

In America more people still see baseball games than any other sport. It is still the sport you do not have to be big or tall to play. You have to develop instincts and situational awareness. And if your’re a girl, you can play fast pitch softball a really lightning like game.

When I was a kid we listened to the World Series on the radio in the afternoons during school. Sympathetic teachers occasionally announced the score. It was what you talked about if you were a boy.

We’d race home in Pleasntville (we walked to school then) to catch the last few innings on tv if we had one. Series Games started at.1 PM or sometimes 12 noon.

Now there are so many playoff games leading in to the World Series that the series is played at night in cold weather and the games end late in the evening when we kids in our 70s have to go to bed.And Texas a wild card wins the Series.

When I was growing up in the 1950s, baseball’s World Series concluded the first week of October (in glorious autumn  had low sun and fantastic endings.

Podres shutting out the Yankees in Game 7 in 1955; the Don Larsen no-hitter, in 1956, saved by Mickey Mantle’s one-hand backhand robbery of a Gil Hodges drive in the left center gap, saving the no-hitter.

Lew Burdette winning three games in 1957; the White Sox playing the Dodgers in 1959; Willie Mays” Over-the-Shoulder robbery of Vic Wertz in 1954; If you saw those moments, or “saw them on the radio,” as Terry Cashman sang, you remembered them always.

When it is 10 degrees like it is right now on the 21st^th of January, old-timers would gather around a hot stove in small town general stores across the great continent and talk baseball about the coming season.

Arguments would ensue on who was the best Mantle or Mays or The Duke (at least in NY). In Chicago the lament was the long-suffering Cubs who never had winning season. Until 1969 when the Mets overtook them.

 

You aren’t having those discussions this year because nobody is making moves because of the lockout.

Baseball today, like baseball has always been does not care about the fans. The old owners would build teams and sell off their good players as Connie Mack did when he built three championship teams  1911 Philadelphia Athletics, the 1930s Philadelphia Athletics and the Philadelphia Athletics of the late 40s, poised to win, they even had a batting champion, Ferris Fain, but Mr. Mack  disbanded that team.

Calvin Grifith did that too with the Washington Senators of the mid-20s, and early 30s, they never contended after the mid-1930s.

Then we have the modern examples the owner of the Montreal Expos, who moved them to Miami. Nowadays in free agency days you never have a great player play a long time for team, or hardly ever. Fans hated it when the Mets traded away Tom Seaver and Nolan Ryan.

The Red Sox traded away Babe Ruth for cash and did not win again until 1946.

Are you getting the idea? This is what fans talked about in the cold dead of winter, the shoveling of snow.

At this time of year we could hardly wait for spring training which should start in three weeks. I loved listening to exhibition games on the radio hearing the Yankee play-by-plqy from St. Petersburg and eagerly hearing about Gordon Windhorn who was just tearing the Grapefruit League in Florida apart in 1959. He hit something like 400 in spring training. He made the team and went 0 for 11 in his first two weeks of games and the Yankees traded him. But Gordon gave young fans hope. He had, though a Topps baseball card.

The Hot Stove League warmed us until the ritual of the baseball season would return.

I was reminded of this when the best brother-in-law in America called me last week  while I was trying to put together this week’s White Plains Week.

He is a Giants fan, and he called to tell me about a website devoted to the Polo Grounds, the old home of the New York Giants before they moved to San Francisco, he called to share with me the views of the ghost ballpark, and how the pictures stirred his memory.

He recalled Willie Mays the Giants centerfielder, whom he mused could have become the all time home run leader had he not only played 34 games in 1952 and all of 1953 in  military service. Larry surmised that Willie could have hit 40 to 50 homers in those years of service, giving him 760 possible homers for his career, best Henry Aaron and possibly Barry Bonds, the current homerun all-time leader (762), despite his use of steroids.

I remembered that Mickey Mantle, the Yankee young star did not lose any years to military service.  Larry was surprised by that.

According to Major League Baseball and I quote, “ While playing high school football, Mantle was kicked in the left ankle. An infection developed which resulted in chronic osteomyelitis. Mantle was classified 4-F the first time he was examined, but his draft board decided to re-examine him and disqualifed him twice more. We mused that Mays may have very well hit over two hundred homers naturally. Based on his record.

This led  Larry to remember the winningest left-hander of all-time—Spahnie, Warren Spahn who won 363 games.

I said yeah, I saw him pitch in 1958 in the World Series shutting out the Yankees, 3-0, and then again in 1965, losing 2-1 in a game I think against the Giants in Shea Stadium. Even in his 40s, he went  8 innings. And he pitched every 4^th day. He was crafty, had a sweeping curve ball that sunk and was unafraid to use it. Spahn served in the Navy in World War II losing 4 seasons  serving his country in the Pacific.

He returned to the Boston Braves in 1946 and in his first six years back from the Navy he won 21, 15,21,21,22 and 23 games with the old Braves.

If he had been pitching in his service years he possible could have won at least 15 or 20 a year in those 4 years giving him 423 wins lifetime.  We talked about his pitching motion, the high leg kick, and his pitching deep into games. (He went 10 innings against the Yankees in the sixth game of the 1958 World Series.)

In the cold 36 degree day Larry was experiencing that day last week in the south, and I was experiencing at 17 degrees in White Plains, the Hot Stove League of our own was keeping us warm, feeling the sunshine on our faces of early spring.

Larry remembered the first game he ever saw, in Yankee Stadium no less.

“I remember the thing most was how green the grass was as we walked into the lower box seats.’ I agreed with a huge smile over the miles of phone line, “Absolutely it hit me with its emerald majesty, the blasts of color from the billboards in the farflung bleacher adds “FYING A,’ “BALLENTINE BEER & ALE” ”.  Images of the Big ball Park were real again in our recall of our shared experience in a ballpark.

We warmed to the task. Talk turned to the Giants-Dodgers Playoff of 1951, and he wondered who had pitched for the Dodgers. I said I could not understand why Charlie Dressen the Dodger manager at the time called in Ralph Branca to face Bobby Thompson, who had homered off Branca earlier in the series.

Then I remembered Willie Mays was on deck. However I had to leave the phone to see what pitcher had Branca relieved. I was shocked to discover it was “Big Newk,” who had entered the 9^th inning after going 8 innings, handcuffing the Giants.

Dressen figured Newcombe was done after he coughed up three hits and Dressen took him out.

But Branca was not a regular reliever.  He won 1, lost 2, and saved 3 in relief in 1951. He came in fired two fastballs to Thompson and the second fastball landed in the left field stands winning the pennant. If Thompson knew the second fastball was coming he still had to hit it.

Just talking with Larry about that game brought me back from my January  bad news-17 degrees- covid funk.

This faded into conversation about pitching and baseball memories came rushing back.

Larry recalled when Juan Marichal , then 24 years old the great Giant righthander was locked in a late inning pitching duel with Warren Spahn. Alvin Dark, the Giant Manager, Larry remembered asked Marichal whether he wanted to come out. Marichal, “I ain’t coming out. As long as that old man is pitching. I’m pitching.’

Usually in the Hot Stove League, we’d be talking about the coming season, and in the Hot Stove League every team had made changes which would have them be contenders. Just anticipating the lazy atmosphere of spring training made you impatient if you were a fan in the ‘50s.

I loved that old ball park, the Polo Grounds. It had soul. I loved the old Yankee Stadium with its grand stand to the sky with original façade with a rake in the upper deck stands that hung over the box seats giving you God’s view of the game.

In my last moments of life I will be thinking baseball, my daughter and my wife, my parents, the day in 1961 when my father took me to a Yankee-Tiger night game in sweltering 95 degree heat. (My Dad hated the heat, especially humid heat).

The game goes 9 innings, 3 hours, with the Tigers putting ducks on the pond every inning. Casey changing pitchers every inning. Then the Yankees string 3 singles together in the bottom of the ninth with 2 out to win it. My father never even mentioned leaving the game early.

There was the first game he took me to in Yankee Stadium in 1956 when I was 11. It was Indians and the Yankees in a Wednesday afternoon game. The Yanks won 3-2 when Billy Martin kicked the ball out of the thirdbaseman’s bare hand as the third sacker was trying to tag him out. Martin was a dead duck, but he kicked the ball out of his hand and scored. My father in the only burst of fan interest I ever saw from him, said “Did you see that? He kicked the ball out of his hand.”

I see that play in my replay of memory perfectly to this day.

I miss that Hot Stove League, where there’s never a losing season, you can taste the crisp refresher and stretch in the middle of the 7th, and the great plays, the greats play and cavort on the endless green once more.

So thanks Larry for that call. It was like old times.

Hits: 95

 

WPCNR NEWS & COMMENT. By John F. Bailey. January 15, 2024:

Editor’s Note: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday is today..  

There was a more important proceeding (that is actually not proceeding) why his spirit is dimmed this day .

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s ghost is in the Nation’s Capitol before a joint session of congress called at Dr. King’s request today.

He had to appear in Washington D.C. today to address a joint session of the United States Congress on a situation of utmost importance to every man and woman of any color, position and race in this nation and the nations of the world.

The man who spearheaded the civil rights movement in the 1960s has traveled on our behalf to address the President, the Senators,  the Congress on the impending roll back of voting rights now being implemented across the country that could apply to every person, no matter who they are, unless the both houses come to their senses.

The session has been called to order by the Vice President.

President Biden is standing awaiting for Reverend King’s introduction. It will be interesting how Dr. King approaches the two houses which is at an impasse on the Voting Rights bill.  It has been striking how few members of the joint houses have issued statements on Dr. King’s Birthday.  Dr. King has appeared. A solo figure at the entrance to the Senate chamber. Applause starts. Here is the President:

“I am proud to welcome to the Senate chambers, The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr.”

(Applause sustained, rising to a crescendo. Dr. King in black suit, black tie, is walking slowly down the aisle hands at his sides turning his head left to right, acknowledging the Senators with nods of his head. He looks the same as he did when when we lost him to an assassin’s bullet in 1968.

The steadfast eyes that appear always focused on the sky, the big hands at his side. The  din of applause is unlike any this reporter has ever heard in the Senate chamber.

Dr. King approaches the podium circles and is welcomed by President Biden. Then Dr. King turns and approaches podium, rises. Looking at Senators and congressional reps, he acknowledges his accolade.

He has no notes. No teleprompter. Now, Reverend King is about to begin. Here we go:)

“President Biden, Distinguished Senators, Republicans, Democrats, Vice President Harris, thank you on this historic moment in the history of the United States for inviting me to address you today. Today is a time where  to paraphrase Charles Dickens, observer of another tumultuous time, that is the best of times it is the worst of times.

In my life on Earth I was fortunate to advance the cause of the Black Man resulting in the desegregation of schools, and emboldening more awareness of their rights and a new effort grew more fairness, restricting segregation in employment, housing, and increased programs for the Black Man.

This era since the mid-1960s has seen the greatest expansion of the economy, housing, education and success America has ever achieved because it involved all of us black men, black women, Latinos. immirants, because they came to us and were fairly employed and paid by American companies.

I ask is it just a coincidence that this prosperity has come parallel to expanding education for those long denied equal education, training, and equal opportunity employment, and has seen more leaders of minorities elected to offices  for the first time? It is not. The diverse make up of congress and leaders across the country were responsible for that.

But now a majority in this great cathedral of freedom feels this has not worked. They express fear of the immigrant. Fear of the Black man, the Hispanic man, the white race is afraid of them.

Parallel to this tumultuous time came the move for women’s equality that has greatly  fueled the American Economic Engine  the last 60 years.  Our workplaces became more like the faces of America: white, Irish, Jewish, black, Latino, Asian, Muslim, Indian. More than at any other time, America today is the work of  the votes of these citizens, because they could hold politicians accountable.

They had freedom.

They voted for Republicans for President, Democrats for President, they decided.

You sit there before me and I ask you to dream another dream of the future of what will happen if the voting rights being denied by some 36 states through selective rules for registering voters and how votes are done are not preserved in the Voting Rights Bill you have before you.

I have a very different dream for states applying measures denying votes, requiring identification, proof of citizenship, all designed to make it impossible for persons present (you fearful elected officials) feel would not vote for them.

Let us tell it like it is:  not vote for white politicians— would suffer a departure of persons of all nationalities (targeted by these measures) that would hurt the state workforce quality, ability and earnings potential.

(A wash of boos ,with vigorous applause)

How are you going to entice persons of the race you want in your workforce to do jobs the white portion of the population feels too good to do —  if they are going into a state that harasses Mexicans, Haitians, Muslims, Blacks, Indians, Asians for identification, restricted voting hours, only in-person voting.

I see a vast declaration  of independence by persons blatantly targeted by states seeking to preserve their whiteness in government and politicians in office who think that way and exclude persons of other races from voting.

(Catcalls, mixed with applause, applause slightly louder)

Senators and Congresspersons, I direct you to other consequences of suppression of voting rights: economics.

If you restrict voting  and gerrymander districts to create a state unfriendly to change or to address their needs they are going to be poorer and not spend as much money.

Your economy will not grow. Without a workforce educated and successful and involved, you will have nothing to offer companies. Your ability to tax will decline because you will have less people to tax. The wealthy will have to stop firing staff to make a fatter profit (at workers’ misfortune), or as the Captains of Industry explain it “right-sizing.”

(Boos cascade)

I have a greater dream today. When I and you see where America is today, what a more equal fair and accepting society we built the last 50 years, that I believe is what you have to see.

America is not worse for bringing the oppressed from other countries into our country. The facts are there to prove it. They build businesses, they serve in our restaurants, they host television shows, become doctors and nurses who have fought us through Covid.

The politics of hate and division have been with us just five years. My spirit is here today because I am troubled at the  horrifying atmosphere in this country that is Jim Crow at its almost worst (without the whips and the overseers).

The endorsement of hate was introduced by the worst President of this country ever, Donald Trump, who sparked mass shootings of minorities ,school children. Instead of lynchings we now do shootings. We have heard on this Senate floor heinous threats of Senators on Senators.

(Wait Dr. King is raising his hand, pointing his finger. You can hear a pin drop, ladies and gentlemen.)

Now, I have a dream that must become real, this body should not be remembered as the one that took away voting rights in the United States of America.

This body is the the congress that will forever be known as the American Reichstag that turned the country over to the Fourth Reich.

This Senate should not be the one that strikes from the Constitution, Article 15, ratified in 1870 on February 3, 152 years ago.

(Voices are buzzing in the crowd, the tension is thick.)

1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude
2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation

(Roars, boos, applause intense, impassioned, vigorous fills the chamnber, I do not believe what I just heard, ladies and gentlemen.)

Is this Senate is this house going to take the responsibility for suppressing  the vote in elections this fall, by ignoring the obscene laws being passed to crush the minority votes across the country?

Ask yourself Republicans who have stood on the side of decency once very long in 1965, can you not summon an ounce of courage to vote to eliminate the filibuster?

Send it to the floor. Let the Senate have its say

Then you all will own it.

There’s a dream I want you to realize tonight.

Better yet all Republicans should vote yes to eliminate the filibuster, then bring the Voting Rights to the floor, with the proviso that the filibuster will be reinstated.

There I have given you a way to do it.

There’s even a greater dream. The Republicans can all vote to eliminate the filibuster and then repudiate the hate I saw in the 1960s by unanimously approving the bill, shaming the two Democrats refusing to vote to preserve voting rights.

(There is awed silence, ladies and gentleman.)

You do not have to be afraid, Republicans and Democrats. It is the easiest and the right way out of this fear of Trump wrath. He has no power unless you give it to him.

You are about to give it to him and endorse a dictatorship. Support for him is make him an overseer, and he will use more than whips. He will suppress the media. He will curtail the internet websites. He will charge reporters with insurrection, or God knows what else. He has already stocked the courts with justices whom I have no faith in because of their lack of reason.

You now have a Supreme Court that has the same reason as the court that made the Dread Scott decision that started the Civil War. We have Court that that restricts appropriate health care for women. You in this body have participate in this courts decisions by not voting legislation overturning the court decisions on women’s help. Yes, you could do that, but you are too afraid.

Right now the man about to turn American into a white plantation who has enslaved you to do his bidding under threat of flogging through his own fixed elections.

You are as enslaved as the blacks of the past.

(A din of angry boos coming from the Republican side of the Senate, ladies and gentlemen, some are walking out. Dr King waiting until the din subsides. He is reaching under the podium, he is withdrawing a book. It is The Bible)

I dream that all 100 of you have a sense –conscience and an awareness of history.

An awareness of the holiness of the vote.

I suggest you listen to your mind tonight the voice within telling you what you should do.  Please do not send America back to repression of the past and pave the way for God knows what.

May the almighty guide your decision.

I know, I KNOW, this dream has to come true, for persons white, Negro, Latino, Indian, Asian, Muslim, Arabic all the citizens and people who are in America because they love what it stands for and will always stand for –for them, not the politicians

Thank you.

Please do your duty!