Baseball; the Last Great American Pastime by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Baseball; the Last Great American Pastime
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#8- The Forties- Game Interrupted
The news that there was trouble in Europe actually started
to be heard in the US in the 1930’s. The official date for the
start of the war was 1939, but most Americans paid it no mind.
It had as much significance to those of the time as news of a
war in Africa has to us today; something to keep newspaper
reporters occupied. Under peace oriented Woodrow Wilson, the US
had taken plenty of financial hits and human casualties the last
time it had deemed it necessary to intervene overseas. We
listened to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fireside chats were told
that prosperity was right around the corner. This was again
“Europe’s War” and we were the isolationist sleeping giant; and
liked it that way.
One significant baseball player from this time is not much
remembered, though he entered the Hall of Fame posthumously.
Ernie Lombardi was primarily a catcher and the power of the 1939
and 1940 pennant winning Cincinnati Redlegs. His lifetime
batting average of .306 is a testimony to his hitting prowess;
as he never got any “leggers.” He is called the slowest man to
ever play Major League Baseball; and as a consequence; the
infielders played him on the grass in short right and left
fields. It was rumored that he could be thrown out a first base
if he hit a one hopper to the right fielder, but there is no
evidence of this having happened. Though listed at 230 pounds he
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weighed in the vicinity of 300 by the end of his career. Being a
gentle giant and a legitimate star, he was extremely popular
with Cincinnati fans. The Reds were truly a strange team at that
time. They really didn’t have any clear cut leaders with the bat
or on the mound. But a number of them did well and they won in
what was truly a team effort.
“Lombardi’s Big Snooze” became his single most well-known
play. The Reds were already down 3-0, and playing the fourth
game of the 1939 World Series. In the tenth inning, with the
score tied and runners on first and third, Joe DiMaggio singled.
One run scored and Reds outfielder Ival Goodman misplayed the
ball. Coming all the way from first base, Charlie "King Kong"
Keller beat the throw to catcher Lombardi and hit the "The
Schnozz" in his groin. Unfortunately, Lombardi didn’t wear his
protective cup that day and he was in pain and dazed. DiMaggio
came all the way around and scored while the ball was just a few
feet away from the dazed Lombardi. So, instead of 6-4, the final
score was 7-4. But, the press jumped all over Lombardi because
of this and it came to be known as "Lombardi's Big Snooze". The
sensitive big man was also voted the series goat.
In 1953, while battling depression, he attempted suicide.
He survived. He died in 1977 at the age of 69, and was put in
the Hall of Fame in 1986 by the Veteran’s Committee.
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The decade of the 1940’s started out where the 1930’s left
off. Ruth was gone, Foxx was playing out a short string, and
Gehrig would be stricken early; but DiMaggio and Williams
stepped to the plate, hit them out, and the Yankees were in the
World Series. Midway the holocaust decimated the troops as the
big stars went off to war. Encouraged by the President of the
US, the intrepid game of baseball continued on to the point
where it had to use players who ordinarily would have never come
anywhere close to the majors.
One armed St Louis Browns outfielder Pete Gray batted .218
in 1945, his only season. While that number is not staggering, I
always wondered if he would have hit .436 with two good arms.
While in the minors he did put up some unbelievable statistics,
batting .381 in one short season and .333 with five home runs in
a long one, the year prior to his being called up to the big
show.
The decade returned to some semblance of normality at the
end. The stars were back and the Yankees were again in the World
Series. But the saint came marchin’ in and stole the entirety of
the show in 1947 when Jackie Robinson integrated baseball. Not
enough can be said of this man as has been demonstrated in
numerous books and at least four movies. For here suffice to say
that not only did he easily have Hall of Fame credentials as a
baseball player; he also endured virtual daily abuse from
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teammates, opponents, and frankly from some of his own race. He
was told that if he fought back, that would be the end of the
“experiment.” He didn’t and made it possible for those to come
later. “Wow” is all I can say.
The 1940’s were already an unusual decade by baseball
standards. Though the game continued through the Second World
War, numerous players missed part or all of multiple seasons.
Most odd, as a result of the stars being gone, the St. Louis
Browns won their only pennant in 1944, but returned to form by
losing the series in six games. The Browns rival the 1969 New
York Mets for being the most surprising pennant winners in
history. In nine out of the previous ten seasons, they had
finished in the second division. However, 1944 was the peak of
wartime baseball. The shortage of players dragged the talent
level of the entire league down, which benefitted the Browns
team in particular. The 1944 Browns were relatively untouched by
the military draft as nine players on the roster were 34 years
of age or older. Their otherwise codger infield included 23 year
old shortstop Vern Stephens, who led the league in RBI’s with
109 and was second in home runs with 20. Nels Potter pitched
well, putting up some excellent numbers as he did for the Browns
from 1943-45, contradicting an otherwise dismal twelve year
career.
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St. Louis started the 1944 season with nine straight wins
and continued to hang tough in a four-team race with Detroit,
Boston, and the Yankees. It came down to the final week, when
the Browns defeated the Yankees five times, winning the pennant
by one game over Detroit.
The aforementioned Pete Gray would join the squad next
year. Continual shuffling was a norm; and the Browns traded an
89-65 first place record in 1944 for an 81-71 third place in
1945.
The chart below of 1940’s World Series results speaks of
the relative, pre-playoff era, degree of relative diversity, if
one ignores the existence of the Mount Olympus residing New York
Yankees.
Year Winner Games Loser
1940 Redlegs 4–3 Tigers
1941 Yankees 4–1 Dodgers
1942 Cardinals 4–1 Yankees
Dismissing the aberrations caused by war, no matter who was
on the baseball field and who was on the fields of battle, once
again the Yankees won the most pennants and World Series. Names
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like Joe DiMaggio, Allie Reynolds, and Vic Raschi either jump
out or are recognized herein, as opposed to elsewhere, as well
complemented by a star studded lineup.
In the older, currently inconsequential league, the
Cardinals with Stan Musial, Enos Slaughter, and Mort Cooper; and
the Dodgers, with a host of stars including Jackie Robinson and
a virtual all-star team in Brooklyn, at decade’s end took over
in blowing the big game, from the Reds in the NL.
The 1940’s baseball decade was a time which produced many
memorable events; just like the Allies on an international
scale. In 1941 Ted Williams, recorded baseball’s last .400
batting average, and perhaps even of more significance, became
the only power hitter other than Rogers Hornsby to hit the
fours. Over 150 players from the major and the minor baseball
leagues lost their lives during the conflict. Many leagues shut
down operations during the War. Ted missed three prime years,
from 1943-45 in the military. The details of that circumstance
can get rather convoluted and can be gleaned elsewhere, but
suffice to say that if Ted wanted to avoid serving, he could
have. Further, years later, he served during the Korean
conflict, missing another two years in which his baseball skills
showed no sign of erosion. The point is, had he played these
five years, even assuming a less than average Williams’
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performance, his lifetime numbers would be in the stratosphere;
the power-average spectacle only rivalled by Ruth, Gehrig, and
Bonds.
A unique league did start up in the middle of this period,
the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. It was
founded in 1943, as women filled a professional baseball gap
when so many male players went to War, just as they did in the
defense plants where “Rosie the Riveter” became a national icon.
Typically, not that much is known of this short-lived league.
The movie made most people aware, and yet that movie is said not
to be entirely accurate. It existed in some form from 1943 to
1954. Its popularity peaked in the war years and ended, as did
some other baseball related norms, with the coming of
television.
After the war ended in 1945, there were a couple of power
plays which challenged the status of US major league
baseball. Mexican League owners signed US major league players
like Max Lanier, Sal Maglie and Bobby Estalella, the top Cuban
players of the era and some Negro League stars to form a strong
challenge to US MLB supremacy. Legal entanglements predictably
surfaced. The primary result of that was that those white
players who jumped contracts were legally blacklisted as they
were “legal property of the US team” and barred from the
possibility of return for a number of years; a hard slap for a
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situation in which the player could have fulfilled all the
obligations of both contracts. On a market basis, the Mexican
talent level and drawing power was not as high as they had seen
in 1940-1941, when people like Satchell Paige, Josh
Gibson and Cool Papa Bell were playing, and still in their
glorious primes.
Despite all those distractions, relevant as they were, it
can never be first forgotten that the baseball event of the
decade was Branch Rickey’s signing of Jackie Robinson. It was a
bold un-popular move, which also was intended to better his
team, which integrated baseball forever; perfectly and
selflessly executed by Jackie, despite his many vocal and
physical detractors. While Jackie encountered significant
hostility from all sides, Robinson eventually won the stubborn
support of teammates and of Commissioner Happy Chandler. For the
most part of possibility, by the end of the season, the American
League had also been integrated, with Larry Doby being the
ground-breaker, while a number of other black players had also
made their Major League debuts. The change was so rapid that by
the end of the decade, the Negro Leagues were on the verge of
collapse, as all of its prominent players had been signed to
contracts in organized white baseball. It should be fairly noted
that this time was also one which was on the cusp of the
proliferation of the one-eyed monster; often referred to as TV.
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Feast and famine was never more clearly defined within
baseball than in the 1940s. After a few glorious years to start
the decade, the major leagues had to play it lean, leaner and
leanest through 1945 as America diverted all of its resources to
the winning of World War II. So important the cause, baseball
offered to temporarily depart, only to be encouraged by
Roosevelt to keep on as best as possible. The majority of major
leaguers became absent from the game, enlisted or drafted into
the armed forces to aid in the war effort. In their place,
ballplayers, who under normal circumstances might had been
laughed out of spring training—low-level minor leagues, semi-
pros, and some older men not quite up to the usual MLB standard
of competition; in a few cases those hampered by physical
handicaps, joined the popular, scarce supply of veterans
technically unfit for service and provided the nation with a
brand of baseball that was far removed from the glamour days
which began the 1940’s, though the wonderful fans who
temporarily took their minds off war to watch them seemed to
appreciate their efforts and understand. Some will forever
remember them.
On a technical level, World War II stripped many of the
game’s greats of up to four years of their prime in baseball. If
not for armed conflict, Ted Williams; arguably the best pure
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hitter the game has ever seen might well have finished his
career with 3,200 hits and 650 home runs. Warren Spahn, already
the game’s most productive southpaw and perhaps the most
forgotten, quite possibly would have topped 400 wins. Bob
Feller, armed with a consistent 104 MPH fastball, could have
easily won 300 games and struck out 3,500. Hank Greenberg might
have joined the 500 home run club, while Washington’s Mickey
Vernon could have made it to 3,000 hits. But from the heart and
to a man, every ballplayer would have considered such a
relatively trivial loss of statistics as a small sacrifice when
compared to helping America defeat the Axis powers.
When peace returned and the stars suited back up for
baseball in 1946, the game enjoyed a fertile period lasting the
rest of the decade that may have made for the most satisfying
time of its long existence, if not the most award winning of
individual efforts. Despite the harbingers of a Depression which
had not yet truly ended, the fans filled all the aisles to see
the return of their glorious heroes.
Attendance boomed from its wartime-depression low, as the
game once again took its place in the sun, basking in a highly
popular postwar glow. As wonderful as that may sound, once again
and never too often, the pinnacle came in 1947 with Jackie
Robinson. White baseball’s monumental breaking of the color
barrier would have failed to the delight of many; if not for the
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gigantic ability, temperament, and willingness to sacrifice,
natural to this man. Time would show that his number of 42 would
be so sought by players in varying sports, that to avoid
conflict, it was permanently retired. His book is yet to be
written.
The Brooklyn Dodgers brought on Jackie, he having to endure
the painful litmus test of peacefully overcoming the racism so
long inherent within the majors. Robinson’s level swings did not
evolve into the sky scraping shots of the Babe. It was more like
a lot of one hoppers against the wall. Popular opinion seems to
say that he didn’t become an American sports hero. But, what do
they know of the thoughts and feelings of those sharing Jackie’s
skin? Regardless, it is unquestioned that his Hall-of-Fame
performance opened the door for a slow but sure stream of fellow
American blacks who would filter into the majors later.
The spoils of victory and the foresight of integration
fueled the majors’ resurgence, making the sport as popular as
ever. Now it was up to the lords of baseball to maintain and
grow within the ever-changing vision of postwar America’s new
frontier.
The biggest stars were Joe DiMaggio, Bob Feller, Hal
Newhouser, Stan Musial, Jackie Robinson, and Ted Williams. It’s
kind of sad and unfair to try to be honestly compelled to say
that Williams was the best.
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Modern Day Dis, Out of Context, or Sheer Stupidity?
This 65 year, time travelling excursion may not initially
appear to have any relevance to Jackie or anything else for that
matter; but I thought it did at the time. So, the following
article was printed August 24, 2016 on NESN’s website. The
acronym refers to an entity which is defined as;
“An American regional sports cable and satellite television
network that is owned by a slew of yadda yadda corporate
configurations as a joint venture between other yadda yadda
corporate entities. Headquartered in Watertown, Massachusetts,
the network is primarily carried on cable providers throughout
the New England area who seek to provide their customers with
the Red Sox and Bruins games no one else wants to show;
interspersed with ill-considered interviews. To complete the
interesting programming repertoire, it seems essential to note
that NESN also carries minor league baseball games, regional
college sports events, various outdoor and sports talk shows,
and tape delayed broadcasts of Premier League soccer games.”
David Ortiz Skeptical Of Ted Williams’
“Unhuman” Red Seat Home Run
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Have you ever looked at the red seat located in the right field
bleachers at Fenway Park and thought, “How the heck could
someone hit a baseball that far?” If so, you’re not alone. The
red seat — in Section 42, Row 37, Seat 21 — is stationed 502
feet from home plate and marks the longest home run in Fenway
history, struck by Boston Red Sox legend Ted Williams on June 9,
1946. The problem is the feat seems so unbelievable that some,
including Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, can’t help but question
the story’s validity. “You see how strong ballplayers are today”
Ortiz said Monday, according to the Boston Herald. “And I’m not
saying Mr. Ted Williams wasn’t. But you see how far guys are
hitting balls today. And none of them can do it? “That red seat?
I’ve been hitting bombs for years and I haven’t come close. No
disrespect. Mr. Ted Williams was a great hitter. But as far as
being strong, I don’t know if he was stronger than me and
(former Red Sox first baseman) Mo (Vaughn) … That red seat is
unhuman.” It’s pretty crazy to think Williams’ tape-measure
blast hasn’t been topped, especially when the record books
essentially were rewritten during the height of the Steroid Era.
No one even came close to reaching Williams’ red seat during the
1999 Major League Baseball Home Run Derby, which Hall of Famer
Ken Griffey Jr. won. “I go with an aluminum bat and I’m not even
close to it,” Ortiz told the Herald. “When players come to
Fenway, they say, ‘What is that red seat all about?’ I tell
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them, ‘They say Mr. Ted Williams hit a ball out there.’ And
they’re like, ‘Yeah right.’ Players. Power hitters. Guys who hit
bombs. They say there’s no way. You can barely see it from
second base. Adding to the mystique of Williams’ legendary homer
is there’s no video evidence to support the notion that it
actually happened. Instead, we’re left to rely on witness
testimony and newspaper records. And for a skeptic like Big
Papi, that just isn’t enough despite his immense respect for
Teddy Ballgame.” “How come there’s no video of it? I’ve seen
videos of him everywhere,” Ortiz asked, according to the Herald.
“It was in a major league baseball game where he hit it. You’re
going to tell me there’s not one video of it? Not one? I’ve seen
videos of Ty Cobb. He played way before that. I don’t
understand. I’m not saying it didn’t happen. … But what if I
told you, ‘OK, this white bat is black but used to be green.’
Are you going to believe it? Or are you going to want a picture.
Bottom line, you’ve got to show me something. It’s a long way.
It’s like if I tell you I walked from here to Miami. You’re
going to be like, ‘OK, but want to see it.’ ” The Red Sox are
planning several changes for Fenway in 2017, like the
replacement of the famous Pesky’s Pole located in right field.
But the red seat figures to remain in place and probably will
until someone hits a ball further ..... if that’s possible.”
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Ostensibly that was the end of a conversation Mr. Ortiz had
with another organization which NESN attempted to somewhat copy
for their own article; the wrong and confused references to who
was speaking at any given moment were corrected herein so far as
logic might suggest.
If the context and quotes are correct in their attribution
to Mr. Ortiz, here is a list of longest home runs ever hit; most
exceeding 502 feet. One might note that the hitters were not
necessarily fat, but rather had a general appearance of being
tall and skinny. A few, either overtly or “with nuances”
admitted to being performance-enhancing-drug users. Whether the
muscle was gained down on the farm, at the gym, or through pills
or injections, in this context it seems most relevant to point
out that twelve of them went over the 502 Ortiz says cannot be
reached. The first list only includes fifteen home runs, the
evidence for which all appear on documented tape, which has not
been altered.
# Player Distance 1 Jose Canseco 540 2 Mark McGwire 538 3 Adam Dunn 535 4 Reggie Jackson 532 5 Dave Kingman 530 6 Andres Galarraga 529 7 Darryl Strawberry 525 8 Mark McGwire 523 9 Jim Thome 511
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10 Mo Vaughn 505 11 Adam Dunn 504 12 Richie Sexson 503 13 Cecil Fielder 502 14 Manny Ramirez 501 15 Glenallen Hill 500
Below is a table of the longest home runs ever hit by just
one player; “The Tape Measure Kid,” Mickey Mantle. Films of the
alleged blasts do not exist, presumably because back then all
games were not taped, and even if they were they were either not
saved or were lost in the warehouse. What does exist is plenty
of anecdotal evidence.
To add to it, I offer my own anecdote and its inference. I
was at the stadium one day, when Mantle was batting lefty, and
had two strikes on him. He was completely fooled by the off
speed outside curveball, and out on his front foot. Disaster?
No. He then proceeded to use only his arms to hit it 425 feet
into the left center bleachers. In his prime, “The Mick” weighed
198 pounds, and steroids had not yet been invented.
Regarding Mr. Ortiz alleged remarks, it should be noted
that everyone acknowledges what a great player he has been. He
would do well not to jeopardize that with silly, incorrect
remarks. On the other hand, I suppose that it is difficult to
not allow one’s self to be misquoted by a secondary at best
dispenser of “information.”
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Ted Williams was 6’3” and 205 pounds. He may have been the
first to recognize what is now commonly accepted; that the
distance a ball travels is most affected by the speed of the bat
through the strike zone. The speed of the pitch and the weight
of the hitter are also factors, but not as significant. Mel Ott
hit 511 home runs, at one time the most in the National League.
He was listed as 5’9”, and a generous 170. Some say it was more
like 155.
Sadaharu Oh, who hit 868 dingers in Japan was listed at
5’10”, 173. There are many more long ball artists who carry less
weight than David Ortiz. Ignoring the success of Babe Ruth’s
forty or more ounce bat, Mickey Mantle used a light 29 ouncer,
well known to Little League eight and nine year olds. He whipped
it and it is said that he did something like this.
# DIST DATE BALLPARK PITCHER B
1 734 5-22-63 Yankee Stadium Fischer L
2 656 3-26-51 Bovard Field Lovrich L
3 650 6-11-53 Briggs Stadium Houteman L
4 643 9-10-60 Tiger Stadium Foytack L
5 630 9-12-53 Yankee Stadium Hoeft L
6 620 5-30-56 Yankee Stadium Ramos L
7 565 4-17-53 Griffith Stadm Stobbs R
8 550 6-05-55 Comiskey Park Pierce R
9 535 7-06-53 Connie Mack Std Fanovich R
10 530 4-28-53 Busch Stadium Cain R